SAUGUS — The School Committee received presentations on MCAS data from principals at Belmonte STEAM Academy and Saugus Middle High School, as well as from the curriculum staff.

Belmonte Principal Christopher Blair gave the first presentation, noting that multiple scores didn’t exceed 50% in grades three, four, and five for reading, math, and science.

“I’m new here at the Belmonte, and I would like to see those improve, and we’ve tried everything that can be tried… I think it’s a credit to the teachers, coaches, everybody else to try and make those scores reflect better teaching and learning,” Blair said.

He said he wants students to take ownership of their test performance.

Blair talked about how he’s done weekly videos for the kids as a part of the school culture he is trying to build, and that the next one will focus on MCAS.

“That’s just my attempt to motivate everybody. I think we’ve done everything… And that’s every district I’ve ever worked in, to try and get scores better to get learning better, and we’ve done everything except get the kids to own their performance,” he said.

Committee Chair Thomas Whittredge said the video was “awesome” and that he loved seeing the motivation. Vice Chair Stephanie Mastrocola agreed.

“My daughter at the Belmonte talked about your video every week… It’s working, and I think that it made me understand what was going on a little better,” Committee member Brian Doherty said.

Whittredge commented on how it’s difficult to motivate kids right now when the MCAS doesn’t really count.

“I do get the feeling that if we were to even get them motivated to finish and do their very best, we might be able to get them 5 to 10% better,” Blair said.

Member Dennis Gould asked if there was a metric for how they were three years ago and what they’ve improved on since the new curriculum has been put together.

“We knew the first couple of years of implementation were going to be a struggle. We’re not where we hoped we’d be but where probably where we expected to be,” Superintendent Michael Hashem said.

Dr. Carla Scuzzarella spoke about the Middle High School next.

“I’ll start with math, and I think you’ll see in all of our grades, 6 through 8, we’ve shown some good promise. We’ve either gone up proficiency wise or we’ve had good student growth. It is the second year in a row that our 8th-grade students are number one in the state for student growth,” Scuzzarella said.

She said the 8th-grade students are working to their capacity and above.

“We had one perfect score in 8th grade, which is something nice to brag about. In the 10th grade, we’re holding steady,” she said.

Scuzzarella said she might need more motivation for high schoolers since it is no longer a graduation requirement. She also said there were two perfect scores in 10th grade.

She said in English Language Arts, it was “a mirror” for 6 through 10.

“There was progress. There was one perfect score in 6th grade and two perfect scores in 10th grade,” she said.

Scuzzarella said something that has jumped out at them is that the writing throughout the grades wasn’t where it should be.

“That’s an obvious component that we can work on every single day and not just in English classes,” she said. “…After the first of the year, we’ll be putting some emphasis on writing across the curriculum across all grade levels to get our writing improved,” she said.

Scuzzarella noted that the students in the AP pre-calculus class are doing “great work.” She said that 100% of the students in that class scored a three or higher, while the state average was 83%.