Meeting Notes: School Committee Reviews MCAS Scores; Epson Whiteboards

The Medfield School Committee reviewed the results of the district’s MCAS testing, viewed a demonstration of the Epson Whiteboards installed in various classrooms in Dale Street, Blake Middle and Medfield High Schools and discussed the fiscal year 2013 budget at Monday’s meeting.

MCAS Results

Bob Maguire, Superintendent of Medfield Public Schools told the school committee there was an error with the mathematics scores of the MCAS results and the scores reviewed at Monday’s meeting were the correct ones.

“There was a scoring error,” said Maguire. “The math, grade 10 results, were incorrectly tabulated by the [contractor]. It turns out they used the scaled score information from 2010 inadvertently. So, they used the wrong scoring table for the grade 10 in math. It is going to affect about 55,000 students in the Commonwealth.

The correction will result in better scores, according to Maguire, who said the error would not result in any scores being lowered.

“It turns out that a number of students, a little over 3,000, will actually move up in a scoring category,” said Maguire. “Scores will increase on average about two points. There are some students that will move up in a category, for example, from proficient to advanced. It’s a pretty big deal.”

After reviewing the correct scores, Maguire said in general, the MCAS scores throughout the district were “very good.”

“In many instances, the schools are up [in scoring],” Maguire said. “The performance of the kids was very good. … The results are strong across the board.”

Demonstration of the Epson Whiteboard

Jessica Durdel and Teri O’Brien presented the capabilities of the Epson whiteboard to the school committee.

O’Brien, who as seven years experience working in the elementary schools, presented some of the tools teachers are using with the Epson whiteboard projectors at the Dale Street School.

O’Brien demonstrated the use of online text books that become interactive through the whiteboard.

“If students forget what [the teacher’s] lesson was [they] can log into their online book and go through the lesson again and there’s practice [activities] there,” O’Brien said.

The online text books can prove effective for students because it enables them to review, practice and learn through games revolving around material being taught in the classroom. It also allows teachers to review lessons, materials and student’s work online.

Durdel, who is the technology specialist for grades six through 12, demonstrated a “couple of things” that are being done at both the middle and high schools with the Epson whiteboards.

“Some of the examples are interacting with text,” Durdel said. “Interacting with a website. If a teacher is using an article they brought up online to discuss in their class they can have the students interact with it. They can have the students come up and highlight what they think is most important about the article and actually write what they were thinking [on the board].”

Drudel said this technology in the classrooms gets students out of their seats and “really participating.”

The other benefit of these whiteboards in the classrooms is teachers have the software to create interactive lessons on them. For example, a social studies teacher can create interactive maps to teach geographic locations of countries around the world and have students get out of their seats and interacting with the whiteboard to fill out the maps.

At the conclusion of the demonstration, Maguire provided some details regarding the Epson whiteboards and where they are located throughout the district.

“These are the devices that have been deployed throughout the high school and middle school,” Maguire said. “What Teri was mentioning, with that deployment, we were able to take some of the other equipment and move it down to Dale Street. Now, basically, pretty much, grades four through 12 have these [whiteboards].”

Maguire said there’s currently “a lot of training” taking place throughout the district to get teachers comfortable using the new technology.

“We had a release day this past week and we actually had some pretty lengthy discussions about [the technology],” Maguire said. “Some of it is pretty basic the Easy Teach is a much more complicated software. There are tricks and tools in there that we’re trying to get the teachers to be using. That’s the other focus, is there’s a lot of training.”

FY13 Budget Update

The schedule has been issued to the school committee, budget documents have been prepared and two budget makers have been sent out, according to Charles Kellner, schools director of finance and operations told the committee.

“We will be asking for the [budget makers] information back at the end of October or first week of November,” Kellner said. “There’s a meeting [Tuesday], a budget kick-off meeting with the school principals.”

Maguire said he had been working on enrollment numbers.

“We are early on our budget process,” Maguire said. “Much earlier than some other towns. So that puts us on a little bind with enrollment information. All districts use Oct. 1 enrollment as really what you use for budgeting purposes and stuff. The good news is the enrollment, from what I’m seeing, is fairly stable.”

Other News

• The Medfield High School Student Advisory Council met with the school committee for the first time this year, addressing what is happening with each class in the high school. Andy Letai, who represents the freshmen class, introduced himself to the committee and listed the ninth grade officers. Dennis Krawec, who represents the sophomores, discussed prom plans for the class, including choice of venue. He also discussed fundraising ideas, including the selling of Medfield High School sweatpants and possible student council events. Henry Gagne, representing the junior class, also discussed prom and the booking of Steve Marino, hypnotist. Andrew Velichansky represents the senior class and provided a summary of the senior picnic, which was held on the MHS turf and the new dance schedule for the different classes.
• Maguire suggested the committee start thinking about the principal search committees that need to be filled for the Dale Street School and Ralph Wheelock School principal searches. Screening for those positions will likely take place in the beginning of January.