NEWTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF REGULAR MEETING, MAY 23,2005 EDUCATION CENTER, FRAZIER ROOM, 7:30 P

NEWTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE

MINUTES OF REGULAR MEETING, MAY 23,2005

EDUCATION CENTER, FRAZIER ROOM, 7:30 P.M.

PRESENT: Vice-Chairperson Dori Zaleznik, Gail Glick, Susan Heyman, Patricia Kellogg, Marc Laredo, Nancy Levine, Reenie Murphy

ABSENT: Chairperson Anne Larner, Superintendent Jeffrey Young, Mayor Da\ Cohen, student representatives

OPEN SESSION

MOTION: At 6:20 p.m., it was moved, by roll call vote, to convene in executive session for the purpose of hearing a grievance. If passed, the Committee will reconvene in open session at 7:30 p.m.

(Murphy - Levine) 8-0-2

Absent for vote: Zaleznik

Absent for meeting: Mayor Cohen

ROLL CALL VOTE BY WARD:

Ward I, "yes" (Glick); Ward II, "yes" (Murphy); Ward III, "yes" (Larner); Ward IV,

"yes" (Levine); Ward V, "yes" (Heyman); Ward VI, "yes" (Kellogg); Ward VII, "yes" (Laredo); Ward VIII, absent for vote (Zaleznik); Mayor Cohen, absent for meeting

CALL TO ORDER

Vice-Chairperson Dori Zaleznik called the meeting to order at 7:35 p.m. She

noted that the Chairperson and Superintendent are at the Board of Aldermen this evening.

PUBLIC COMMENT

Bette Lupo, President of the Newton Secretaries Association (NESA), asked the Committee to reconsider the cuts to their organization. Tonight she will talk

mostly about the impact on the secretaries in the schools and will return at the

next meeting to address those in the Education Center. After last year's budget

cuts, their members have taken on more tasks and increased responsibilities and have yet to even assess the impact from those decisions. Now they face the loss of an additional 4.5 full-time equivalencies (FTEs), which will only have an

adverse impact on the services they provide. Despite what some may think, secretaries provide direct services to students in addition to all of their

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administrative tasks. On a daily basis they are asked to pass messages along from parents, provide lunch money when students forget theirs, make arrangements for pickups and drop-offs, and often just lend an area to a student with a problem. Secretaries not only provide clerical services, but chaperon dances and field trips. It is these personal touches that make the difference in a student's day. At the high schools, they are in charge of the college application process, in which students are now applying to many more schools than they had in the past. As the system becomes less centralize,d, they take on more tasks that were once conducted at the Education Center. State mandates require much more reporting from the school level.

Lucia Dolan, Mason-Rice Elementary School parent, addressed the Committee with regard to the math curriculum. Three years ago her daughter's third grade class was still doing single digit addition and she became concerned that the curriculum was not sufficiently rigorous, so she began doing research. Many well-renowned mathematicians do not think highly of the Everyday Math

program, which is used in Newton, and over 200 of them wrote an open letter to the Department of Education (DOE) asking that the National Science Foundation withdraw their endorsement of this program. They cited neglected algorithms which need to be practiced to be prepared for math at the college level. Newton has a gap in math scores based on economic status. Students eligible for the free and reduced lunch program perform well below others. She believes this gap is a result of more well off families supplementing their children's learning with private tutoring and extra homework assistance. They need to strengthen their math curriculum with a reemphasis on basic skills.

Stephanie Fidel and Sue Rosenbaum, Cochairpersons of next year's Newton South High School Council, addressed the Committee as a follow-up to their presentation at the last meeting regarding class size. In one year the five large academic departments have seen the percentage of classes with 25 students or greater double. They know the Committee and administration are committed to stemming this trend. However, the latest projections for next year indicate that 44% of these departments will have classes with more than 25 students and this is with the current restoration provided by the Committee. The numbers are even more staggering in the honors and advanced placement courses, of which nearly 80% will have more than 25. They then provided some data on specific courses and noted that even a small portion of an FTE can go a long way toward addressing these problems. Students are getting less individual attention. The stress is greater on both students and staff. There is little opportunity for good dialogue and for teachers and students to really get to know one another. They have been experiencing increased enrollment for several consecutive years and this year had 40 more students than projected. This puts tremendous strain on their building. They hope consideration will be given to additional staffing allocations at the high schools.

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STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES' DISCUSSION

None.

RECOGNITIONS

The following students, from the Bigelow Middle School Drama Team, under the

direction of Michael Fitzgerald, were recognized for winning best ensemble and a silver medal for overall performance at the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival in Lynnfield:

Angelina Zhou, Jesse Kaplan, Lucas Simonis, Sarah Garcia, Kimberly Arsenault, Jordan Ascher, Derek Butterton, Jennifer Diamond, Olivia Donnini, Skylar Fox, Samantha Gluck, Annie Gombosi, Rebecca Greenstein, Kirsten Holland, Alice Howe, Emily Hutchinson, Casey Knotts, Emma Mayville, Gabe Nicholas,

Annabel Raby, Eva Saltus, Tili Sokolov, Ariel Yoffie, Paul Batchelor, Brendan Hathaway, Will Batchelor, Genya Shapinko, Anthony Tucci, Prateek Allapur, Elliot Raff, Charlotte Robinson, Janling Quek, Ashley Young

APPROVAL OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

MOTION: It was moved to approve the School Committee meeting minutes of 3/14/05.

(Glick - Murphy) 7-2

Absent: Larner, Mayor Cohen

REPORTS

CURRICULUM UPDATE - MATHEMATICS

Carolyn Wyatt, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction, introduced

members of the panel who will be speaking and answering any questions from Committee members.

Mary Eich, K-8 Coordinator of Mathematics, stated that the report includes a lot of emphasis on the middle schools, as it has been an area of concern for a number of years and it is where children start entering different levels of instruction. They have been carefully reviewing the transition at all levels to address consistency of program. The report includes some recommendations in draft form.

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Steven Rattendi, Mathematics Department Head at Newton South, talked about how he and his counterpart at Newton North have made a concerted effort to open up the lines of communication and have realized that there is more consistency between the high schools than they had expected. Now they are reviewing the curriculum to see what is being offered at each grade in both schools and feeding that i~to what occurs at the lower levels.

Cindy Bergan, Mathematics Department Head at Newton North, commented that the review has also helped them see that the communication piece between school and home is key. They need to better articulate how they conduct placement and the transition from middle to high school. The additional instructional time they are afforded for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) preparation has been very effective and each year they learn how to better utilize that time. They have also been working collaboratively with special education (SPED) staff in co-teaching a number of curriculum 2 classes, which has been very successful.

Susie Heyman asked about the comments made by a previous speaker around the Everyday Math program.

Mary Eich replied that they have been using this program for at least eight years and Newton was one of the first communities to adopt it on the East Coast. It

was a well-researched and piloted program and is now in its second edition. It is a K-6 program but up until now they only used it through grade 4. The program has a number of strong qualities. One of its problems is that it does not look like what adults learned in school and texts are not provided until third grade, so

some parents do not find it easy to understand how the worksheets that children bring home fit into the larger picture. They have been addressing this by hosting meetings with parents in the classroom to explain and even have them

participate in the work so that they have a better understanding. The program

has a lot of surface mathematics and then when one digs deeper there is another more complex layer of mathematic concepts, but in forms that are accessible to elementary children. They are also working with teachers to better understand what they are building on from a previous grade and what they are passing along to the next grade.

Marc Laredo asked why they had stopped using this program at grade 4.

Mary Eich stated that this decision was made prior to her coming to Newton. The program that was chosen for the middle schools was Connected Mathematics

and some of the units were used in grade 5. While it has worked well for some students, it is missing substantial pieces of the fifth grade curriculum because it was not written for that level. Teachers have done a good job of filling in the missing material but it has not been successful from a systemwide standpoint.

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Therefore, they are recommending moving the program into the fifth grade and then having a consistent middle school program.

Marc Laredo asked what other type of programs they reviewed.

Mary Eich stated that they researched a lot of programs, but the three contenders were Singapore Math, Turk Investigation Series, and a text that looked more like the traditional math most adults remember. None of them seemed superior or offered anything better than the Every Day Math program and would also require purchasing a great deal of supplementary materials.

Gail Glick asked if they could talk about the transition into high school and how they will assure that students will not be repeating things learned in the accelerated math courses at the middle schools.

Mary Eich explained that throughout elementary school, mathematics has a multi-strand feature, which involves number operations, algebraic concepts, geometry measurements, etc. Once students get to the seventh grade, mathematics becomes more of a one-strand focus into pre-algebra and algebra and then at the high school level it becomes multi-strand again. In reviewing the middle school program, they are looking for something that will be less one- stranded, so as to ease the transition.

Cindy Bergan added that the high school math teachers have been meeting with the seventh and eighth grade teachers citywide to talk about the topics that are being covered and issues around the transition. At North they offer an upper curriculum and honors option and will be improving those programs so that students are not doing repetitious work. At the same time, a lot of students in curriculum 1 require some repetition of algebra, as it forms the foundation for trigonometry and calculus in the higher grades.

Steve Rattendi stated that they have done it somewhat differently at South, where they were finding a great deal of repetition of materials. Their curriculum is designed so that students in 8th grade accelerated math can skip into 10th grade curriculum 1 and they have added a few geometry units into the eighth grade to make that work.

Reenie Murphy asked about the parental override at the middle school level in terms of student placement in math and the issue of tutoring.

Mary Eich responded that the difficulty with the parental override is that it is not easy to predict how much a child will mature each year. While they do not want to shut doors any sooner than they have to, accelerated courses are not the best

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option for everyone. The teachers do an excellent job in making their recommendations and the majority turns out to be accurate. Ideally she would like to see the teachers' recommendations stand but the principals are reluctant to do that and she is reluctant to recommend it for a variety of reasons. In terms of outside tutoring, this adds a level of difficulty because it becomes an issue of equity. While they try to counteract that with additional help from teachers, it does not meet the same level of support. They do not have much control over

this, so what they hope to do is make it easier for students to move between levels at the high school, so that the decision with regard to tracking in the middle schools does not necessarily determine a permanent placement.

Cindy Bergan commented that mobility between levels is important, but given the somewhat sequential nature of the material, it can be problematic. They have developed some summer programs that help students move up a level as they mature and feel more capable of handling the load.

Marc Laredo asked if they have any information on the success of students whose parents requested an override of the math placement, as well as how many families use supplemental tutoring.

Mary Eich stated that the override data is handled differently at each school. Some feel strongly that teachers should not be made aware of which students in their class are there as a result of a parental override, thereby eliminating the possibility of a predisposition on children's abilities. Anecdotal data indicates that students placed in a higher class than what was recommended by a teacher often struggle. This does not mean that they do not work hard or become successful, but the transition is very difficult. I n terms of the information on tutoring, they did conduct some surveys and she can provide the Committee with that data.

Marc Laredo suggested collecting the data without identifying the students.

Cindy Bergan stated that she offers parents an opportunity to review the course work and tests, as another tool to help them in their decision making.

Mary Eich noted that North offers an entrance exam for math which has worked well. While she hesitates to add to the already large amount of testing that occurs, it might make people more comfortable if they had a systemwide tool that could help in making these types of decisions.

Dori Zaleznik commented on some of the MCAS data, which indicates that there

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are more students of color in the lower level classes, which do not get as much algebraic concepts.

Mary Eich stated that moving to a multi-strand curriculum in grades 7 and 8 should help this issue. However, the 8th grade MCAS exam is not an algebra 1 test and some teachers have indicated a preference for spending more time on some of the other strands and less focus on algebra. Teachers are doing what they feel is best for their students and she has not dictated a particular text until she feels comfortable with what is being chosen.

Marc Laredo asked when they anticipate having a standardized text in the middle schools.

Mary Eich replied that they plan to introduce a single text in 1h grade in the fall. The idea is to begin the new curriculum in grades 5 and 7 next year and grades 6 and 8 the following year.

Patty Kellogg asked how students in the SIMMS Program did on the MCAS exam.

Steve Rattendi noted that they only have one year's worth of data and that indicated that the results were right in the middle, which is where they expected given that this program draws on students from the lower and upper curriculum 1 classes.

Susie Heyman asked if they are planning to add a math lab at Newton South.

Steve Rattendi responded that they have applied for grant funding through.the Newton Schools Foundation for this purpose and he hopes to have this in place next year. He anticipates drawing from the student population and utilizing them as tutors for credit.

Susie Heyman asked how reducing the number of levels in 1h and 8th grade will help the program.

Mary Eich stated that it goes toward the notion of not closing doors on students at too young an age. Both Bigelow and Oak Hill utilize this model and it has

been pretty successful. While it eliminates the third level and requires a lot of additional support for students who were in that level, they have been able to provide that with the additional time and use of the SPED teachers, which was mentioned earlier.

Dori Zaleznik asked if there is any way to determine if the achievement gap is

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related to reading ability vs. understanding number concepts. She also

wondered if there is any thought to modeling mathematics teaching along the lines of the literacy program, to focus promoting literacy as a way of advancing mathematical learning abilities.

Mary Eich noted that there is a correlation between students' scores in math and reading. Most of the questions involve words and interpretation of language.

The traditional word problem is gone and now it is all questions asked in words. They have been very explicit about teaching reading in content areas in the elementary and middle schools. Elementary teachers are better prepared for this because they have more training across disciplines. Added to that is the fact that math has its own special vocabulary and even ordinary words, such as table, have different meanings, so, there is a great deal that has to be explicitly taught. In terms of the question regarding the achievement gap, obtaining that type of data would be better accomplished through teachers compiling information vs. getting it from the context of the MCAS.

Marc Laredo asked if they anticipate additional costs to implement their recommendations.

Mary Eich replied that the textbook cost is already factored into next year's budget and they will have to do the same the following year for grades 6 and 8. There will be a need for a lot of professional development as they continue to make further recommendations, but have not yet determined how that mechanism will play out.

Gail Glick asked about the recommendation for employing math curriculum specialists.

Mary Eich stated that math curriculum specialists like the literacy specialists, can identify and mediate early on for children who are having difficulty in the subject matter. They have put in place a K-3 assessment tool to begin this process.

One of the differences between English language arts and math is the level of available research. There has been a tremendous amount of work in language acquisition, reading skills, etc. but very limited amounts in the field of mathematics.

Carolyn Wyatt mentioned that their work with the Education Collaborative

(EDCO) has allowed them to connect with other districts that are exploring the notion of how to provide early intervention in mathematics, in the hopes of identifying effective research, as well as drawing from within their own structures of successful models. They do not anticipate having additional dedicated staffing for this purpose, but rather utilizing current staffing differently. They have been working with principals around identifying how they can capitalize on site-based

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people who might assist in tutorials and coaching. They are only in the preliminary stages at this point.

Patty Kellogg asked if they could offer a full year of regular calculus rather than a half year of calculus in curriculum 1, as it can become a very important component of a student's career choice.

Steve Rattendi replied that a full year of calculus would limit other options they can offer students. They could do this in curriculum 1 but they would be covering the material in such a fast pace that not all of the students would be able to keep up. South does not offer even the half year option, which was a decision made before his time. If they do decide to offer the half year course, he wants to be clear about what would be eliminated and then how that compares to North's curriculum. There are some senior half-year electives, which may be one way to add it to the curriculum. Part of his concern is introducing calculus to students who are not necessarily ready for it and creating an even bigger problem when they get to college and have to take a remediation course. At the college level there are some good debates going on among professors that want no calculus taught in high schools and those who want more.

Carolyn Wyatt ended the discussion by noting that there is no perfect math curriculum and there will always be debates among mathematicians and scientists about the quality of a program. Their job is to look at the scope and sequence of skills and concepts and work with teachers to present these skills and concepts in a systematic and consistent approach. They must constantly be thinking about the effectiveness -of the materials to meet the goals that have been set. They believe the recommendations coming from this math review will

cement this into a very solid program. Newton students continue to perform exceedingly well in this area and now they must work to bring all children to that level.

Dori Zaleznik requested that in the future they attempt to reflect the data on the same cohort of students so that they can see their progression. Looking at the data each year skews the evaluation in some respects because they are looking at different groups of students.

Carolyn Wyatt agreed. This is the first year that they will have a full set of longitudinal data.

UNEMPLOYMENT UPDATE

Dori Zaleznik noted that the Committee had asked the administration to come back to this item in May, to see if there might be additional funds that could be

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recovered in this account once they had more information.

Sandra Guryan, Assistant Superintendent for Business, Finance & Planning, stated that their information is now more specific in terms of retirements and resignations. They have determined that there will be very few to no layoffs of existing personnel in the teaching area. However, they did leave in a few as a precautionary measure in case there was a particular subject area that could not be covered by one person moving to another job.

Marc Laredo is comfortable with this analysis and understands the need to be conservative at the start. The additional data paints a clearer picture.

Dori Zaleznik asked how unemployment calculations are made.

Sandy Guryan stated that the payments are related to the amount a person earns, but there are caps. This has been figured into their calculations.

DISCUSSION ITEMS

None.

ACTION ITEMS

CONTINUED DISCUSSION/VOTE ON SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLANS:

--~ ~ ~ - ---

MIDDLE SCHOOLS

MOTION: It was moved to approve the Middle School

Improvement Plans and Amendments to the High School Improvement Plans, as outlined in the 5/5/05 materials.

(Heyman - Levine)

7-0-2

Absent: Larner, Mayor Cohen

COMMUNICATIONS

None.

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PUBLIC COMMENT

Deena David, Waban, thanked them for the opportunity to hear about the math

curriculum review. One observation she has made watching her children go through the schools is that students sometimes lose confidence in their math abilities when they enter the next level. When teachers are nurturing and relate well to the age group, students feel more comfortable taking risks, raising their hands, and asking questions. In choosing math teachers for the middle and high schools, it is important to select these type of people because they can make all the difference.

Paul Friedberg, West Newton, had a few suggestions as they finalize their math curriculum. First, he believes it would be more helpful to parents to see the textbook ahead of time so that they have a better understanding of the program, as opposed to just getting sheets of paper that do not show the holistic view.

This can help parents make better decisions about how to assist and supplement the needs of their children. The supplemental work or tutoring that parents provide to their children will be important information to obtain, as it will correlate to the work they need to do in the curriculum revision. He also suggested that more succinct report be sent to parents that would just highlight the main topics. The linkage between math and literacy is important and he suggested other types of correlations, such as taking real-world problems and translating them into mathematic formulas. At what grade students use calculators is something

that should also be added to the area of systemwide consistency. With regard to the achievement gap, they should look at some systemwide community effort in this area, whether it be tutoring or some other type of program, to provide these students extra assistance. And in looking at the other end of the spectrum, if there is a higher percentage of students in a particular cohort doing well, perhaps they could learn from that and apply similar strategies to those in the lower categories. They should also be taking programs that are successful in one school and applying them to all schools. Finally, he supports the recommendation to increase the number of SPED teachers competent in math, but understands the budget situation they face. He suggested considering using student teachers from local colleges.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at 9:10p.m.

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data would be better accomplished through teachers compiling information vs. getting it from the context of the MCAS.

Marc Laredo asked if they anticipate additional costs to implement their recommendations.

Gail Glick asked about the recommendation for employing math curriculum specialists.

Carolyn Wyatt mentioned that their work with the Education Collaborative

Patty Kellogg asked if they could offer a full year of regular calculus rather than a half year of calculus in curriculum 1, as it can become a very important component of a student's career choice.