The committee introduced each other to Shawna McCoy since it was her first committee meeting.  

Wendy shared an update about staffing and hiring for next year.

• We expect a strong teacher retention rate for next year (projecting 86% staff retention overall, but this could be higher). 
• This is a time of year when people solidify their decisions so this rate includes those who said they are "maybes" based on their life circumstances.   
• Wendy shared the openings we are posting for and the committee discussed the need for a Special Projects Manager role to support Bill and other leaders with governance, compliance, and a range of special projects. 
• She also discussed the strategies we use to maintain instructional stability, as we experience frequent parental leaves and given the regional teacher hiring market.  For a variety of reasons, it's now more common than it was previously for teachers and staff to leave mid-school year, so we think about strategically staffing for this, primarily through our Associate Teacher program. 
• Amneris asked about the typical profile of candidate we see in our Associate Teacher program.  Wendy explained that we see strong candidates, invest a lot of time and resources into supporting their success, and they typically have very high rates of success. 

Beth gave an update on the status of high school placement.

• She explained how we think about "College Prep" and "Priority High School" options.
• 86% will attend one of these two options, which is an increase over last year.
• We are finding Springfield Honors Academy (SHA) to be a really good fit.  Students say the school feels similar to them in terms of the attention they get from teachers and the challenge they get from classes.  Students are increasingly interested in attending SHA.
• Sally asked about students who are not represented in the "college prep" or "priority" high school categories.  Beth explained that students attend a range of schools.  
• Bill shared that these categories are designed to be helpful proxies for schools that are consistently strong but attending another school does not necessarily mean they will not be successful there.   
• Beth noted that she sees more interest in smaller schools in her meetings with students.
• She shared that one of our alums was recently admitted to Deerfield Academy with a full scholarship, which is very exciting news.    

Christine and Shawna reported out on academic and culture data.

• On the third round of ANet testing, we generally see strong results.  
• Christine noted that we already administered the ELA MCAS, so we use this data to make instructional choices for the end of the year and the start of next year.
• Bill talked about how we use the projection tool.  It can give us a sense of how we are supporting our students in reaching rigorous goals, but the tool is imperfect and we could see variations in the MCAS outcomes.
• Shawna asked about how we use the ANet assessments in terms of the teaching and learning cycle.  Christine explained that we use the ANet assessments to continuously inform the standards we teach and the ways we support groups of students and individual students.  Kate shared that Math is similar, although the standards do not spiral as much, so it is slightly different.    
• Shawna shared that STEP data is looking very strong.  Accuracy performance was strong and comprehension was too, although it's always an areas of focus.  In K-1, we've changed the books to make them more challenging and grades 2 and 3 are always challenging in terms of comprehension.
• The committee was excited to see the positive data in early literacy.  
• Enrollment data is stable.  
• Attendance has improved a lot since our last meeting.  We are slightly above our attendance rate and slightly below our chronic absence rate from last year.  
• Out of school suspension is very low and we are trending slightly lower than last year.  She highlighted the breakout by race, grade level and reason.