The Reading School Committee (SC) is meeting on Thursday November 3, 2022. The meeting is being held at 7pm at the Reading Memorial High School (RMHS) library and will be broadcast by RCTV and also be accessible via zoom.
The meeting will include the following votes: a vote on reviewing/approving Superintendent Goals and a vote on “Hold Public Vote on Pursuit of Potential Litigation.” Note that there is NO information in packet on what this is about; however, this vote comes after an executive session with two topics, one being collective bargaining, the other being “To discuss strategy with respect to ongoing litigation and review advice from counsel on the same.” This vote may or may not be related to the executive session topic. Since no information has been released publicly on this, I can offer no more in this preview.
In addition, the meeting will include the usual approval of donations, approvals of minutes, and presentations and/or discussions on the following topics:
- A proposed new set of “RMHS Innovation Pathways” that are being proposed to be available to what appears to be limited subset of RMHS students in class of 2026 and class of 2027, starting in the 2023-24 school year (see pages 5-18 of packet and slide images below). I have some thoughts as well, see below.
- Presentation on Superintendent goals and focus indicators to be used in connection with Superintendent Evaluation conducted later in year (no slides in packet; see memo at p. 28 of packet).
- FY2024 “guiding principles” (i.e., budget priorities) and budget timeline, p. 30-31 of packet and images below.
- A discussion and first reading of new RPS policies: these include a first reading policies JFABE and JFABF. Policy JFABE pertains to Educational Opportunities for Military Children. Policy JFABF pertains to Educational Opportunities for Children in Foster Care. These were adapted very slightly from “model” policies put out by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC). Currently, RPS does not have such policies in place. They are not provided with this preview, but you can read them at p. 32-36 of the packet.
ANALYSIS/THOUGHTS ON INNOVATION PATHWAYS PROPOSAL
The idea of innovation pathways in high school is an established concept that some other schools are doing, with state requirements, guidance, and standards. For example, the Mass dept. of elementary and secondary education (DESE) lists standards for innovation pathways, along with a number of school districts that already have them (see, e.g., the list here and also here).
Per the state, “Innovation Pathways are designed to give students coursework and experience in a specific high-demand industry, such as information technology, engineering, healthcare, life sciences and advanced manufacturing.” As the slides show, it appears RMHS has looked at its existing course offerings and tried to create, as a start, several possible pathways: The “Information” pathway (with two sub options, “Digital Media,” and “Computer Science,” and the “Manufacturing” pathway. The slides indicate the specific path of classes that would apply to that pathway. Some of these pathways require new courses and/or dual enrollment courses.
This idea had been previewed to the RMHS school council (which I’m on) last year and this year, and I think it is a great initiative for RMHS. However, I do have questions about a couple of things, and I’m sure the SC will have lots of questions. A first question I have is about the targeted student list (see the slide found at p. 10 of the packet, and also below, where it includes as goals: “Targeted groups will be females and High Needs students” and “ Representation of these groups in IPs [innovation pathways]should be reflective of their percentage of the overall student population.” So for RMHS, as FYI, females are 48.2% of the population and high needs students are 25.5% of the population. I do not know the male/female breakdown within high needs. I wonder if it will be difficult to achieve both of these goals at the same time.
Also, I have a question regarding why “females” are a targeted group, given that, per DESE data going back even before pandemic, females at RMHS generally attend college at significantly higher percentages than males. It would seem that females are less in need of encouragement for moving on to higher levels of training and education than males based on recent data (see below). It may be that there is a goal of “targeting” females is to redirect more females into STEM fields vs other fields. There is no public data that I know of regarding how many RMHS females are moving onto these “innovation” related fields vs other fields, in college. But the data is very clear that significantly more RMHS females than males go on to a 2 or 4 year college.
It is actually surprising to see, in DESE data, the large discrepancy, at least in recent years, between the percent of females at RMHS who move on to any college, vs % of males. Here is the data on % of students moving on to any college, 2 or 4 year:
* 2020-21: 89.4% females 75.6% males
* 2019-20: 91.0% females 84.6% males
* 2018-19: 92.0% females 84.1% males.
* 2017-18: 97.5% females 92.6% males
* 2016-17: 96.6% females 83.6% males
* 2015-16: 88.8% females 90.1% males
* 2014-15: 91.4% females 92.1% males
* 2013-14: 93.2% females 86.7% males
* 2012-13: 90.2% females 90.8% males
One wonders what seems to have happened around 2017 to create such a consistent difference at RMHS. But I digress.
The other question I would have is on the choice of the type of “digital media” pathway at RMHS being mostly music-types of courses and whether it has to be limited to just that type of a pathway. To me it seems like there could be another valid digital media innovation pathway as well, given that RMHS has courses in digital photography, graphic design, animation, TV production, and film production.
HOW TO WATCH THIS MEETING
The RCTV YouTube live stream link to watch the meeting is here.
You can also watch via Xfinity channel 99 or Verizon channel 32.
As of this writing (10:30 am on 11/3/2022), the posted agenda and packet do not include Zoom links for tonight’s SC meeting. If the agenda or packet is later updated to include a zoom link, I will update this preview.
