Ninety-four percent of students at McCann are either partially or fully meeting expectations in mathematics and English language arts. For science, technology and engineering, 88 percent of students fully or partly met expectations. 

 

"The bottom line is, our kids are passing the MCAS at a higher rate than the state average," said Principal Justin Kratz. "We'd love to see a little bit more of a bump up in the exceeding expectation categories."

 

The total enrollment at the school, Kratz said, has also increased to 538 students, 15 more than last year. 

 

As part of discussing MCAS, Kratz also mentioned the school improvement plan. Major goals include reducing achievement gaps, preparing for standards-based grading and participating in a community service project.

 

Another goal of the improvement plan, the principal said, is to increase school spirit among students. He said the goal was actually something suggested by the students, especially after the pandemic. 

 

"Kids are really proud to come to McCann, kids are really proud to graduate from McCann, to be alumni," he said. "The school spirit stuff like the pep rallies, getting fired up at sporting events is something that we've traditionally sort of not always excelled at. And so we want to try and find ways to increase that." 

 

In other business, Kratz updated the committee on an upcoming visit from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The organization, which gives the school accreditation, will conduct its decennial visit from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3 to evaluate the school. 

 

"Over the last 18 months, The faculty has been preparing the self-study report of what we do here at McCann. It ended up being a whopping 184 pages, so it's a lot of time, a lot of energy spent by the faculty," Kratz said. 

 

Superintendent James Brosnan said he appreciates the work Kratz and others put into the preparation for NEASC's visit. 

 

"It's quite the adventure, but it's something that all schools do. And I think to Justin's point, we use this as the barometer of how are we doing from a peer review, and then we can continue on from there with the recommendations," he said.