| 0:00:06 | The recording joins in progress | The first two rows are fragments, “Next year.” and “Attendance are here for.”; the chair’s first line at 0:00:17 opens “Here are spread. Heather Whitney here.” The call to order, the Pledge and most of the roll are not on the recording. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:00:17 | Minutes of May 21 | Whitney: “we have, minutes for approval of 52125. I think those were sent out by Chelsea today or yesterday.” | |
| 0:02:21 | How to read the charts | Koski: “Blue below. Proficiency red. Getting there. Yellow is at or above proficient. The solid line is the state average for New Hampshire of last year. They haven’t published their state average for this year. And the dotted line is our scores from the year prior.” The key exists only in this spoken description. | MEDIUM |
| 0:02:52 | Science | Koski: “If you look at our score from last year, which was 39% huge improvement due to move up”; “close to getting close to the state average in eighth grade, still pretty far behind in fifth grade”. The sentence is too garbled to say which grade the 39% belongs to. At 0:03:18: “the statewide average in the 40s or the high 30s is, is is kind of rough. But our, our 11th grade students really did themselves compared to years past.” At 0:03:52 he credited “Doctor Harrington [Herrington]”’s talk to the junior class. Minutes: “the 11th grade strongly outperformed previous years in science”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:04:58 | ELA | Koski follows the same students from fourth to fifth grade: “you can see a big improvement through for those students via their fifth grade teachers” (0:05:36). At 0:06:34: “looking at the names and seeing who’s in PD and, and things like that, we I can see a connection between the teachers who have kind of embraced the professional development”. No teacher is named. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:07:34 | iReady against NH SAS | Koski: “I really seems to be a little more generous with proficiency ratings then. The sass test, certainly for third grade. For fifth grade, they scored much higher on the Sass test than they did on the I ready” (0:08:02); “fifth grade proficiency on IRA [iReady] was only 36%.” At 0:08:22: “Fifth grade on the Sass test was 48%.” So iReady ran higher in grade 3 and lower in grade 5. The minutes generalize: “there is higher proficiency demonstrated by iReady than SAS, particularly in reading”. | MEDIUM |
| 0:09:52 | Turnover, not free and reduced lunch | Koski: “This year we had some schools, struggled with, leadership situations and teacher turnover and that seemed to very much impact their scores.” On socioeconomic status: “No, we we really have such a large population.” At 0:10:42: “We’ve got the right curriculum in place. We’ve just got to get the instructional practice elevated across the district”. | |
| 0:11:21 | Petrin: required professional development | Petrin: “kids are doing poorly because adults are doing poorly.” At 0:11:46: “there should be some required professional development or you will do this. You will have this coaching.” Koski at 0:12:10: “I think we finally have enough data to support that kind of approach.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:18:04 | Madden: “a ceiling” | Madden: “You have it looks like a ceiling with the average state score.” At 0:18:14: “That’s a failure. Now, it would be an achievement for our situation right now.” At 0:18:25: “We got to raise the bar dramatically.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:19:13 | Opt-outs and participation | Madden: students whose parents opt them out “get a zero.” At 0:19:21: “I think we should make it uncomfortable to opt out.” The row at 0:19:46 merges the administration’s reply: “We can’t exactly put up barriers to a state rule”; “We had 95% participation.” Minutes: the district “had above 95% participations which is the requirement”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:23:36 | Math | Koski: “You see fourth grade making a big improvement. This is their score in third grade below 20%. Now they’re up near 40%.” At 0:24:09: this was the first year of the new math program; “we are again all over the place with growth or loss. But some signs of, of improvement.” iReady math at 0:25:10: “right around 40% low 30s for, for fifth grade if we flip back fifth grades 28, fourth grades 39, 27.” Those numbers cannot be sorted by grade from the audio. | MEDIUM |
| 0:29:52 | Test preparation | Whitney: “is there a reason that we are not mandating test prep universally?” Koski at 0:30:16: “we’re just shy of mandating it”; interim practice tests ran at all schools this year (0:30:47); at 0:31:16: “we can be happy to take direction from the board”. | |
| 0:32:40 | The evaluation tool is bargained | Koski: “teacher evaluation tool is part of the negotiated contract.” Pratt at 0:32:55–0:33:20: a replacement system foundered on cost and a vendor’s refusal to sign the state data agreement; “we weren’t able to use Esser [ESSER] funds.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:40:17 | Howard’s caution | Howard: “before too quickly jumping into pointing fingers at an individual teacher, I just want teachers who may be watching to think” about class assignments. Hawkins at 0:43:32: “I was in no way suggesting publicly”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:41:17 | Blinded comparisons for teachers | Whitney asked whether a teacher can see how they compare “but have be blinded”. Koski at 0:42:39: data teams in every school look at student data “every two weeks”; at 0:43:04: “people aren’t named, but within that small team.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:45:10 | Where resources should go | Koski: professional development, because “we’re still going to have another 20 plus new teachers this year” (0:45:24); classroom materials, “we’re sorely lacking science materials at the elementary level” (0:46:34); building-level consistency. Hawkins at 0:49:13: “Time is is a resource that I think we’re short of.” | |
| 0:49:30 | Grade 11 SAT | Koski: “We have 50% ish of our students there. We have a little over 10% scoring above that, but still a good chunk below in both math and in English.” At 0:50:05: “we are a state that tests everybody”; “we’re in the 1050 range.” At 0:50:29: “we nationally score as a state above the national average, but, we as a district are a little bit below that right now.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:51:35 | Coaches move to the elementary schools | Pratt: “we have coaches at the middle and high school. We don’t have any elementary”. At 0:51:54: “We have three elementary schools. We have three budgeted positions for elementary coaches.” For school year 2026–27 (0:52:21); at 0:52:45: “next year would be the, you know, the final year” for middle- and high-school coaches. At 0:53:29: “we’ve budgeted for three. We only have two”. No vote. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:54:05 | Social workers | Pratt: “The need for social workers, have grown tremendously. But we’re finding is that we need them, but they’re just not out there”. At 0:55:00: “The ones that we have now, I think, spread very thin.” Petrin and Whitney proposed an assistant or “Social worker extender” (1:02:00); Pratt at 0:59:43: “just to be an assistant social worker, you have to have you have to come to the table with a lot of tools already.” | |
| 1:04:30 | Two Plymouth State interns | Pratt: “We just. Did that with two psych psychologists from. Plymouth State.” At 1:04:57, a row opening with a member’s question: “What is that program, Mr. Pratt? That’s Plymouth State and that’s our psychologist”, with “Mike McCusker [McCosker]” credited for the contact. The minutes attribute the report to the business administrator. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:07:15 | Classroom management | Pratt: next year’s “primary focus to be, is classroom management”. Koski at 1:08:52: a summer course, “Skillful Teacher, run by research for Better Teaching”, at no cost to teachers (1:09:49). | |
| 1:13:29 | The public-forum committee that was not formed | Howard: “timeline maybe 12 to 18 months, ideally a budget implication of $0.” At 1:15:49: “I’m really 50/50 with going forward with the committee or just going forward with discussions.” At 1:19:23: it began with “the awkwardness of somebody coming to the podium and asking a question, and us feeling like we can’t answer”. Petrin at 1:24:40: “You can’t just as an individual, you can’t answer for the whole board.” Resolved at 1:29:13 with Petrin named to the advisory committee. | |
| 1:33:16 | Policy Subcommittee: one meeting ahead | Hawkins: “we met this afternoon, and what we’re doing is we are looking at policies that will be presented at the following meeting so that we are one step ahead.” At 1:33:51: “Our goal is to get through the priorities so that we are in line with statutes that are currently in place.” At 1:50:25: “we do meet every the day of every board meeting before the board meeting.” | POSITIVE |
| 1:34:56 | “Do you think we’ll need a second read” | Whitney: “Do you think we’ll need a second read for this or would you like to try to adopt it?” Hawkins at 1:35:00: “I don’t think we need a second read. I think that I don’t know, we didn’t talk about that at our meeting today.” GBEF moved at 1:35:14, adopted at 1:35:44 (“policy is unanimously adopted”). | MEDIUM |
| 1:36:55 | JICL: “adopted. First reading.” | Hawkins: “So I will move to adopt JICL school district internet access for students. I’ll second.” The second is Howard’s, merged into her row; the chair at 1:37:02: “Mr. Howard seconds.” Vote at 1:37:07: “saying no opposition policy is adopted. First reading.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:37:23 | JICK consolidates two bullying policies | Hawkins: “We actually right now have two separate policies. And this is consolidated into one. It’s the New Hampshire School Board Association sample”. Asked about rescinding the old two, at 1:38:08: “because we have to have seven days notice for withdrawing, that’ll be at our next meeting.” Adopted at 1:38:23. | MEDIUM |
| 1:39:03 | IHBA | Hawkins: “The one that we currently have is from 2007. This one is been revised in 2024 and it gives more specific information relative to Idea [IDEA] and section 504 programs and safeguards.” Adopted at 1:39:57. | MEDIUM |
| 1:40:50 | CHCA: the wrong version in the packet | Hawkins: “This is not the revised one. So I’m going to defer.” Pratt at 1:41:28: “You can adopt it based on those revisions. I’m sorry. You can adopt it.” Hawkins moved adoption with revisions (1:41:35); Howard read the wording from the subcommittee’s shared drive at 1:42:58–1:43:21: handbooks in the packet “for the first meeting in June”, a publication-ready copy “by mid-July for final approval at the August board meeting”; at 1:43:40: “to verbalize it for the public in the minutes”. | POSITIVE |
| 1:45:26 | CHCA sent to a second read instead | Whitney: “Should we include that, it would be voted on, approved by the board in the first meeting in August.” At 1:46:37: “So I want to just do this a first read”. The motion at 1:46:49: “move policy CACA [CHCA] to second read with amendments and additions that were made in this meeting”; Petrin seconded; carried at 1:47:07. | POSITIVE |
| 1:47:31 | ADC: “not in your packet” | Hawkins: “the last one is policy a DC [ADC] which is not in your packet. I believe we talked about this last meeting to include e-cigarettes per that New Hampshire Department of Education regular.” Pratt at 1:47:58: “For the grant monitoring?” Hawkins at 1:47:59: “the monitoring piece. So I don’t have that. I see that’s not here, but it’s the same policy we have. It’s a revision.” At 1:48:13: the policy in force dates from 2004. Whitney at 1:48:23: “is the board comfortable adopting this without a second read?” Adopted at 1:48:36: “And we’re now compliant there.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:48:57 | Seven more policies; procedures to the website | Hawkins: “for our next meeting we will be bringing forward seven additional”, including finance policies and three attendance policies consolidated into one; at 1:49:34, “Procedural safeguards for special education”. Whitney at 1:51:00: the business administrator “is going to be working on those procedures to make sure that we have links to those procedures”. Hawkins at 1:51:29: “the procedures will be on the website”. | POSITIVE |
| 1:53:58 | Handbooks | Hawkins: the new policies will change the handbooks so they are “consistent across all three levels” (1:54:26), with the strategic plan and values up front. Madden, on commenting in the Google Doc, at 1:53:29: “That’s that’s too much work for me. How about if I just hand them paper cup.” Pratt at 1:53:54: “Yeah, I can make it work.” | |
| 1:57:48 | Honor roll before graduation | Madden: “I was hoping that we could follow the approved honorable [honor roll] process for Stevens, especially for the senior class before graduation.” Pratt at 1:58:54: “we can look at it for as moving forward. But but having it for the day after tomorrow would be a tough sell.” No vote. | |