Recap from the Natick School Committee Meeting from 4/4/2022

Slide Deck here Pegasus Link here

Committee Reorganization:

Ms. Cathi Collins - Chair (vote 6-0-1)

Ms. Hayley Sonneborn - Vice Chair ( vote 6-0-1)

Dr. Donna McKenzie - Clerk ( vote 7-0-0)

Ms. Catherine Brunell - Paraprofessional negotiations (appointed)

Mr. Shai Fuxman - Administrative Assistants negotiations (appointed)

Our Re-organization will continue on 4/25 for subcommittees, advisory committees and liaison positions.

Teaching and Learning Update

Middle School Mid Year State of the Union Slides

What is a Student Growth Percentile (SGP) in lay persons terms? Watch a video tutorial here.

SGP is measurement of how much the student "grew" or learned between two points in time.
Much like the height charts you might see when you go to the pediatricians office. Instead of just learning how tall your child is, the doctor also looks to see if the child is growing at a consistent rate.
The median of all of the SGP’s in the class becomes the Grade Level SGP
Dr. Nolin described that DESE recommends a median SGP between 40 and 60%. As such, Natick has chosen that as its goal for all students.
These next two charts show a big picture element for us to celebrate!

Natick High School Mid Year State of the Union Slides

- We will hear more about these observations in the coming months but I do want to draw your attention to a summary slide provided to our committee:

Vote to Amend the Superintendent's Contract

The committee voted 6-1-0 to amend the Superintendent's contract for FY22.

The vote allows the Superintendent to buy back an additional 10 vacation days this year. Per her contract before this amendment, Dr. Nolin receives 25 vacation days with the ability to buy back 10 and roll 5 over to the next year. With this amendment, for FY22 only she has the ability to buy back 20 days.

To see the committee vote please see the meeting video here at minute 1:57:20.

Future Agenda Items Requested:

Changes to the map of the Johnson district

Student and Teacher Rep Involvement in our Committee

DEI on the School Committee

Statement on Recusal

Here are the remarks I gave last night when letting my committee know my decision to recuse: After the School Committee meeting on October 15th, several individuals wrote into the SpeakUp Natick portal requesting that I recuse myself from voting on the possible closure of Johnson. The substance of these messages, sent to the full committee, carried a familiar refrain. The messages - often using the same language – said some version of the following: Catherine Brunell should recuse herself from deliberating and voting on the closure of Johnson because she lacks objectivity, as her children go to school there and she is from that neighborhood. I asked myself the question if there was any merit to the request for me to recuse myself and started to do some research about why people recuse From what I can tell from the minutes, in Natick, It’s never happened before - not with the Kennedy, Wilson or the High School - not even for members whose children were to attend the future rebuilt s

Questions that I am asking or have received...

Serving in this role, I hold a seat that gives me the ability to ask my questions and yours to our administration with the hope that the questions reinforce our strategic goals. I've long relied on the value that, "two heads are better than one." So here are some of the questions that the School Committee has been asked this week by parents and constituents: Cameron Middle School in Framingham 1) Will outdoor structures be used in the fall to allow for outdoor mask breaks when the weather is poor or lunch in a safer setting? While this falls into an operational issue at the school and is not typically in the purview of the School Committee, because of COVID we have an interim COVID policy (page 120) where it is stated that the school committee establishes an emergency, interim policy to promote public safety and safety of students and faculty. Perhaps one example of the use of the application of this policy could be seen in the March 15th School Committee meeting

In other news... (With correction about the Special Election)

If you voted yesterday in the State primaries... you might have been surprised like me - I thought I would also be casting a vote for the Natick Select Board seat that sits open... But, because of laws beyond anyone's control - Natick has to hold another election next week for an uncontested race on Tuesday September 13th. Voting information here. I'm told that years ago Natick had to hold PRIMARIES because there were often so many people who wanted to run in the elections. Sigh. I'm always grateful to anyone who will run and am happy to cast a vote next Tuesday - but I'd like to hope we have some contested races in March. Correction: After publishing the blog, thanks to my readers, I learned that the above is incorrect: The Select Board, by town charter, can have a vacancy until the next election (March 2023), they may call for a special election themselves or be required to call for a special election if 200 people sign a petition calling for one. The speci

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