Kicked off the meeting and re-introduced the Boston Prep HS and MS Principals. Icebreaker question "What are you most looking forward to in the Spring?"

Called for public comment

School team presented the wins and the opportunity to be strategy in how we deploy resources. The goal is to have ideas from the committee on how we can best move forward. Started by talking about the story about what the school has been building this year. So that the committee has a good idea of what the data is telling us and understand is we are moving in the right direction.

Started by discussing Crescendo. All core teachers are part of this and it is focused on open-ended response strategy. On today's agenda we are discussing the bets we made, the community impact, and the date behind it. The conversation part of today is focused on three questions: 1. Why are our ninth grade students struggling at higher rates than other grade levels? How do we accelerate student growth to close learning growths, particularly for people below grade level? how do we capitalize momentum that we have built with literacy?

Committee reviewed what DEAR is at Boston Prep. Showed a short video of students and staff talking about the DEAR culture. Students have gotten into a rhythm with DEAR. Put some numbers to it, students have logged over 53,000 minutes of reading, over 1,000 books. One 7th grader has checked out 58 books this year. Also Staff reported that the stamina with reading has increased. Students are now successfully reading the entire block.

Team also reflected on NOVEL ELA and college prep writing. Student's reflected on how these systems have improved their writing. Previewed a sample essay, with teacher feedback, and the next draft with the teacher feedback implemented. 

NOVEL also visited school and gave some external validation. Fall visit they celebrated the joy of reading, teacher investing in intellectual prep, high-level rigorous thinking, leaders enmeshed in content alongside with teachers, culture of observation and feedback. When they came in the winter they saw students and teachers engaging at a high level. General feedback was around students not being prepared for discussions, giving us the confirmed roadmap of investing our students in independent learning. 

Some wins were excited about are the middle school retention is down from last year. ML students show strong 3.0 GPA gains across multiple HS grade levels compared to SY25. Upper school leaders building growth, majority of standards improving. iReady math gains are strong in 6th and 7th grade, ML students both grades exceeding 70%. 

Question posed: what do you think is leading to this growth? Turned it to principals to discuss how grading is working this year. 

Highlighted some of the rooms for growth: High school retention rates have increased in grades 9, 11, 12. But there is improvement in 10. Noting, 56% of new 9th graders at risk vs 16% of returning students.

Help us refine our thinking: 

- Why are ninth- grade students struggling at higher rates than other grade levels? A hypothesis, is culture systems are tighter in MS and academic demands are higher. We are wondering if we need to restructure 9th grade experience, with a gradual release model

- How do we accelerate student growth to close learning gaps, particularly for students whoa re significantly below grade level? Currently we screen students with i-ready but we not not diagnose the underlying cause because we not have enough. Increase teacher staffing to administer diagnostic assessments based on i-ready scores and provide targeted tier 2 and tier 3 interventions 

- How do we capitalize on the momentum we've gained this year around explicit literacy instruction and building a culture of reading? Calibrate writing expectations and instruction across the school to develop teacher skills and to create a consistent student experience that is likely to accelerate their development as thinkers and writers

Questions:

- What are we doing to support the new students? Want to ensure communication with students and families are clear and support kids getting fully immersed into the school culture. There are many sessions that students participate to help with this. 

- Committee suggested using the research RISE and the programs that are addressing this issues: advisory tools we recommend using, updating the approach based on this that have been deeply researched, even if not all the tools apply to Boston Prep

- How do experts in the field suggest how we focus on reading vs. writing?

- Suggestions of starting the transition for 8th graders