Page 12 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRiDAy, OCTObER 24, 2025 See Say App Relaunch: A Better Way to Report Issues in Everett T he Everett Police Department is excited to announce the relaunch of the ELERTS See Say app, which is a quick and convenient way for residents to report concerns directly to the City of Everett. See Say is a cloud-based reporting tool that empowers community members to share issues or observations right from their phones. Whether it’s a public works concern, parking issue, or safety observation, residents can report it in the way that’s easiest for them— through the mobile app, text, web form, QR code, email, or even voicemail. All reports go to our Office of Emergency Communications (E-911), which operates 24/7. If a report isn’t related to police or fire, it’s immediately forwarded to the appropriate city department, such as Public Works, Engineering, Parking, or Code Enforcement, to ensure it is addressed quickly. Why the Relaunch? When the See Say app was first introduced in late 2024, it wasn’t used as much as the city had hoped. After reviewing the feedback, the Everett Police Department decided to give the app another opportunity, this time with a renewed focus on awareness and community participation. The goal is to see whether more residents using the tool can make it a valuable long-term resource for keeping Everett safe, responsive, and connected. The Everett Police Department believes that open communication between residents and the city is key to maintaining a strong, vibrant community. The See Say app offers one more convenient way to share concerns, report issues, and play an active role in improving our city. This tool complements the city’s existing communication channels, including the Constituent Services/311 system, the city website, social media pages, and our non-emergency phone lines. And as always, residents should call 911 for emergencies. School officials set goals on literacy for ESL and learning-disabled students S By Neil Zolot chool Improvement Plans will focus on literacy in the current school year. “We want to increase students’ ability to read texts, annotate text and their ability to write about what they’re reading and learning,” Assistant Superintendent for Teaching, Learning and Student Success Margaret Adams said at the School Committee meeting on Monday, October 20. She also said one instructional priority will be “to ensure students with disabilities and Multi-Language Learners, formerly English as a Second Language or English as a Learned Language students, are working at grade level competency.” A PowerPoint presentation charted Student Centered Instructional Strategies from implementation of best literacy practices to support increased student achievement, through professional development on strengthening literacy and meetings of professional learning communities to analyze student data to identify how to increase literacy using high-quality instructional materials. The process will include school leaders providing feedback to each other, which leads to similarity in Student Improvement Plans. “There’s a lot of similarities in the plans, not because we’re copying each other but due to collaboration,” Adams said. “We’re leveraging professional communities to share best practices.” In addition, members of Instructional Leadership Teams will visit and observe teachers to see what’s working best and what’s not working. Principals from all the schools were at the meeting, but only Madeline English School Principal Paola Lambresa and Lafayette School Principal Janet Taylor spoke. Lambresa outlined plans for grade level teams meeting weekly to analyze data and look at student work and plan for individual student needs and implementing partner reading and writing strategies. “Our main goal is to get students to do additional reading and writing in the school day,” he said. There are also plans to encourage independent reading at home through the Open Books/Open Minds program, which will include reading logs, which he feels will improve test scores. “The more they’re reading, the better off they are,” he said of students. Data Chats will be instituted, which include students and their families in assessing performance, which, hopefully, involve students in setting their own goals and understanding their strengths and weaknesses and create a sense of student ownership of their own education. “Allowing students to be involved in setting goals is a powerful strategy,” Adams said. “Setting your own goals and meeting them is important,” Ward 4 School Committee member Robin Babcock interjected. She and other members asked the principals to explain the edu-speak acronyms they used from time to time. A Social and Emotional Learning Goal is to improve attendance and decrease absenteeism by involving families through letters and follow-up communication and visits to homes. “We want to reach out to families to let them know how important attendance is,” Lambresa said.” If students are not in the classroom they’re not learning.” He hopes Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) will “create a sense of welcomeness in our schools and get kids excited about coming to school.” Taylor’s remarks overlapped with Lambresa’s, but she also mentioned professional learning community meetings to ensure vertical alignment, which is aligning curricula from grade-to-grade so students at each grade level have knowledge to succeed in the next one. (Horizontal alignment is aligning curricula so learning and teaching in multiple classes of any grade is at the same level.) She also mentioned the RACES rubric, which stands for Restating, Answering, Citing Text, Explaining and Summarizing work. “It’s a strategy to get students to write for themselves, which they’ll build on each year,” Adams elaborated. “We’ll look for them to get more sophisticated.” Taylor also outlined plans for math, including Turn and Talk, in which students discuss problems with a partner, and 3 Reads of (Word) Problems, in which students try to understand what is happening without focusing on numbers in their first reading, find the important numbers and how they relate to each other in their second reading and determining a way to solve the problem in their third. She also outlined a schoolwide attendance initiative, including recognition of students with perfect attendance, and establishing a school attendance support team to identify students with chronic absenteeism and reach out to families. “School Improvement Plans connect us to what school leaders are doing with their staffs,” Superintendent William Hart said as conversation wound down. ”We want students to succeed and want to find strategies to move the needle.”
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