 Good evening, this is the alley to school committee meeting Thursday, December 18, 2014. We are we have a quorum before members. Traffic is very heavy. I assume the other three members will arrive when they get here. We want them here safely. I would like to welcome as fully the AEA representative. And at this time I would like to mention Jane, I hope I pronounce this right, Sverkel of Allington who passed away peacefully on Saturday, December 6, 2014. Jane was a graduate of Mercy Nursing Program, Johnstown, Pennsylvania and retired from nursing in the Allington school system after serving the children and staff for over 30 years. This time I would ask us all to observe a moment of silence in her memory. Thank you. I would like to direct everyone's attention to the artwork we have around the room. Right here we have abstract landscapes, but this project down students looked at the work of contemporary artist Terrence M. Führer because he is able to create striking and colorful compositions that remind us of landscapes. Inspired by Führer's watercolor paintings, our idea was to try to look at landscapes in new way. We tried to simplify them into their most basic elements. Students were asked to think about how the landscapes felt in addition to how they looked. This resulted in rich colors, textures and some very creative interpretations. You will see different amounts of original landscapes that inspired these drawings and paintings. Students enjoyed the experience of looking at their subjects in a new and different way and deciding how to interpret and represent the subjects. What grade was that? I'm sorry, I didn't have it on. To my right over here is an International Dot Day painting. This project was a collaboration between Dallin's librarian Rebecca Aransson and odd specialist Stacy Greenland to celebrate International Dot Day on September 15, 2014 with all the students at Dallin. International Dot Day reflects the values expressed in the story of the dot, wherein main character, Vashti, overcomes insecurities about her art and gets so bravely creative that she helps another younger artist get away with his own fears. International Dot Day is celebrated by people all over the world and is described as a day to celebrate creativity, courage and collaboration. During library time, the librarian read the dot by Massachusetts author and illustrated P to H Reynolds and introduced students to the original artwork signed by the author that are now part of the library's art collection. Then the students led the creative juices flow exploring tempera brush painting in art class. Each student was asked to make your mark and sign it. In just four days, Dallin's students made over 800 paintings exploring dots, mark making and symbols of all kinds. In the back of the room behind our audience, three day forms and charcoal. Dallin's students learned how to draw 3D forms by identifying direction of light and observing how this casts different values of light and shadow across geometric models. Students use models of foam, paper mache and wood and were provided with small book lights with which to direct a light source across the models. Some students completed several studies on one page and were encouraged to depict objects with light sources coming from different directions. Working on neutral tones of pastel paper, students also got to practice drawing with charcoal, chalk and erasers. Most students favored blending the charcoal with their fingertips. Students noticed that one of their favorite contemporary artists, Saul LeWitt, uses geometric shape representations in some of his large scale color works. Right here on the side we have tape resist painting. These tape resist paintings are made in multi-step process. First making tape is applied, excuse me, masking tape is applied to a white piece of paper. Next the tape is painted over with tempera. Then students choose to remove some or all of the tape and optionally they may draw back into it again with marker. This multi-week project really gets students to be invested in the creative process. Many contemporary artists use materials that resist paint such as tape, wax, plastic and stencils. When we looked at the artwork of Paul Kolker and Micah Richardson, we noticed that the paper or canvas they left, white made, excuse me, or canvas they left, white made interesting negative spaces and increased the contrast in the composition. To learn more about the techniques used in the tape resist painting, students also looked at the work of contemporary artist Mark Bradford. Bradford uses collage, adding on and dick collage, removing in his art. You can see how the students were inspired to make choices about what to leave on and what to remove from their papers. And last right here, mixed media paintings. The term mixed media means that multiple kinds of art materials are used during the art making process. These mixed media paintings were made primarily with oil, pastel and glue. We looked at the artwork of Australian contemporary artist Daniel Boyd, who also works primarily with oil, pastel and glue. His paintings feature high contrast and are often dark and shadowy. This process takes several classes to complete. The first step is to carefully squeeze liquid glue onto black paper. When the glue is dry, students draw into this picture again with oil, pastels or even metallic markers to add the depth of the picture. Thank you to all the students and the teachers, the teacher who was involved in this. Wonderful. Do we have any public participation this time? Thank you. At this time I would invite the Arlington Educators' Association to come forward. Good evening. My name is Linda Hansen and I'm the president of the Arlington Education Association. I want to start off by just thanking the school committee for giving us a chance to present the teacher kind of remarks on budget priorities for next year as you're going through the budget process. You'll be relieved to know that not all of the teachers here this evening are presenting. We'll just have a representative sample from teachers at every grade level. So I'm going to start it off just by giving a brief introduction. Over the past two school committee meetings, teachers have listened with interest as administrators presented their thoughts on the additional supports and positions they prioritize for next year's budget. Tonight you will hear from teachers at each level of the district who will be responding to the administrative requests as well as emphasizing teacher priorities. One important source of information the presenters will be reporting out on comes from the teacher forums that were held in each building this past October. Teachers who attended the forums were asked two questions. What is your vision of a quality Arlington public school education? And what is getting in your way? What are the impediments to achieving this vision? I want to start by adding a little context to this discussion. In the past four years since the last operating override in town, the district has restored and improved on the amount in kinds of services available to students, teachers and administrators. Full time social workers are now in place in every building. Additional BCBA and ESP personnel better support students with social, emotional and behavioral challenges. Math coaches in every elementary building and math support and be support teachers for each grade at the oddison better support the district math program. Additional math computer science and world language offerings at the middle and high school allow students a greater variety of courses to choose from. And a third full time assistant principle at the oddison better supports the students and staff in that building. In addition, over the past few years, we've also increased access to more technology for teachers and students. And we now also have additional I T supports in the district. These efforts to regain and surpass the level of service we had before the 2011 override have been important for the district. The last few years, the district has rightfully prioritized restoring and adding additional supports for teachers, students and administrators. For next year's budget, teachers would like to see more attention paid to competitive compensation for teachers. Two years ago, the town undertook a salary study for all job categories in town. Through a collaborative process that included town and school management and union leaders, a group of most comparable communities was selected. This group is now referred to as the town manager 12. Many factors were taken into consideration when selecting our most comparable communities. But at the top of the list was a community's relative wealth and its ability to generate revenue. The results of this study are in and it's clear that Arlington teachers provide an above average education for below average wages. Teachers have waited patiently for the results of this study so that we could have a salary discussion taking the most objective information into account. We now have the results of the study and we hope they will be considered in your budget deliberations. Teachers are very aware of the overall budget limitations and it's clear to us that increasing salaries can only happen if we focus on maintaining and further supporting the programs we currently have in place while adding only carefully targeted modest additions. At this point in time, Arlington does not collect enough revenue to add much in the way of new programs or initiatives while maintaining the programs and supports that have been put in place and paying teachers a competitive wage. Every new initiative or position you add this year will increase personnel costs that will need to be sustained over time down the road. Future initiatives will crowd out the opportunity to better support current programs, maintain reasonable class and caseload sizes, which is another top teacher priority and pay teachers a more competitive wage. In order to achieve this, teachers have looked long and hard at separating the nice to haves from the need to haves. You will now hear briefly from teachers at each level about the prioritized targeted additions that teachers feel will help us continue the work we are doing in a feasible and sustainable way. Each speaker's comments will be brief. We will start with the monotony preschool program and work our way up to the high school. I will ask each teacher to introduce themselves, state where they work and their position at the school and then make their remarks. So first up is Patty Tuig from monotony preschool. Thank you. I am Patty Tuig and I'm a speech language pathologist at the monotony preschool. I'm here to represent the staff at the monotony preschool as well as the speech language pathologist at the elementary level. Monotony preschool like the district in general continues to grow. Since September we have added eight children to our Arlington preschool program. Between now and June we will need an additional 13 spaces to allow 13 more children into our preschool program. The classrooms are currently at or close to capacity. The preschool teachers therefore hope you will include an increased compensation package to help offset the growing caseload workload and demands that they are currently experiencing. The monotony preschool is located here in the basement of the high school. The facility itself continues to be an ongoing issue. Pests continue to be a concern which is particularly problematic since our children are playing on the floor and often putting toys in their mouth. Currently there is a shortage of space in the preschool. Therapists are already sharing spaces within the office spaces. The preschool is split between two of the areas of the high school, two houses in the high school. And children need to be walked outside through the courtyard to participate in their therapy sessions. This means walking outside into the cold on snowy and icy walkways. Many of our children are slow and unsteady walkers. Finally safety issues are a concern as there is no monitoring in the back area of the building. And we would like you to consider making some upgrades to our facility. The speech language pathologists at the elementary level are seeking more manageable caseloads. Three out of the seven elementary schools have supported learning classrooms in their facilities. And they require an intense amount of speech and language support to the students, the staff, and the parents. Many of the speech language pathologists are split between two schools. And this is a setback as previously there was one therapist in each school. Currently there is no evaluation time in their schedules. And they're having to cancel therapy sessions in order to complete their evaluations. The speech language pathologists are not able to participate in regular education RTI initiatives as a result of their expanding special education caseloads. Being split between two schools does not allow them to schedule all therapy times for children during their students flex times, which are designated times provided by the principals for specialists to be pulling out students. The additional staffing of a one point of a speech language pathologist will allow for more thoughtful and appropriate push in services. It will provide opportunities for consultation and communication with regular education teachers, special education teachers and parents. Additional staffing will allow for increased flexibility with IEP team meetings. The speech language pathologists hope you will include some room in next year's budget for an increased compensation compensation package to help offset the growing caseload workload and demands that they are currently experiencing. Thank you. Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, Siobhan Foley. I teach at the Thompson School, third grade. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the elementary teachers. As has already been stated in Linda's introduction, elementary teachers are very concerned about class sizes and the increased workload that accompanies large classes. Their primary concern, however, is the fear of letting a child slip through the cracks because there are too many students in their class. Elementary teachers would also like to see a significant increase in teachers' salaries. We know we are doing a good job. We would like to see our pay reflect that. In their address to you, the elementary principals mentioned that the grant that was helping to fund the social workers in each elementary building will be ending this year. Teachers would echo the principal's request that these positions continue. The social workers are a necessary part of the elementary schools. Time is a major concern that continues to grow in importance as the demands on teachers have increased. Common planning time, time for analyzing data and then using its planned curriculum, time to complete the progress reports that currently take many extra hours of work, time to set up classrooms, etc. Elementary teachers have historically put in many extra hours and days to complete, accomplish these tasks. But more work is being added to this pile without tasks being taken away. It has become too much and we request that the school committee keep this in mind when considering adding new curriculum, new requests for data analysis, changes to the progress notes or other budgetary items that will increase the workload for teachers. We love our teaching assistants. They do not earn a living wage, however, and therefore understandably do not stay for very long. We support the elementary principal's request that their salaries be increased. This is especially important for those assistants who work with our most vulnerable and challenged students. Two other issues have risen to the top of our list at the elementary level and they are within the elementary arts specialist position and the kindergarten teachers positions. I want to turn over the microphone for members of those groups to address you briefly. Thank you for your attention. Hello and thank you so much for your time. My name is Erica Doosam and I teach kindergarten at the Hardy School. I'm speaking for the kindergarten teachers and young students that are in our care to make the case for full-time TAs in our classrooms. As a district, we have taken the tools of the mind curriculum on full swing and are embracing the positive outcomes it is having on our youngest students. Although we are implementing this curriculum to the best of our abilities, the demands of the curriculum are high and involve teacher scaffolding throughout all moments of the day, academic, social and everything in between. The program was designed for a class size of 18 with a teacher and a full-time TA. Unfortunately, our numbers in Arlington are much higher than that. This year's average class size is 22, with one class having 19 and the remainder in the low 20s, two classes have 25 students. These large numbers greatly impact our ability as kindergarten teachers to effectively implement the tools of the mind curriculum. Along with the growing numbers in kindergarten classrooms, we are also seeing an increased number of children with special needs entering our program. Most often children enter our classrooms with no additional support. For many students, kindergarten is the time when their needs are first recognized. Oftentimes, we spend the entire year figuring out exactly what a child's particular needs are, be they behavioral, academic or medical. In the meantime, the classroom teacher and part-time assistant teacher must provide the support. Often, these children will have had their needs documented and will be connected to special education services by the end of their kindergarten. But for the majority of the kindergarten year, kindergarten teachers are managing the challenges alone. Most of the children entering kindergarten are coming from a preschool environment with a much different student-teacher ratio than what they experience in Arlington Kindergarten. Students typically come from preschool programs with 13 students and two teachers or 18 students and three teachers. As we listen to these preschool teachers describe their programs, it becomes more and more apparent why we have some kids that really struggle when they transition into kindergarten. In the morning, they have two of us, but in the afternoon, although it is the same group of kids, the same number of kids and the same curriculum, the students only have one teacher to go to. The odds are stacked against both students and teachers. Another reason for the need for full-time TAs is the growing number and types of assessments and data collection that have been put on our plates. As we attempt to teach the curriculum and teach children how to just be in school while also helping that child who has just had an accident or has spilled their milk all over themselves, we are simultaneously asked to collect data for baseline edge, collect data for district determined measures, and to collect mounds of data for the state mandated teacher strategies goal. We ask ourselves how can we possibly do all of this. Kindergarten is a unique place. As kindergarten teachers, we are faced with children who are experiencing school for the first time, even if they have some preschool experience. They come to us with needs that have yet to be identified or supported. Our goal is to provide them with a positive experience that will lay the foundation for their future success. It feels like we have our heads just above water and have reached the tipping point. To implement the tools of the mine curriculum, collect and upload the mounds of data required, and teach the growing needs of our children, we strongly feel that our youngest students and their teachers need and deserve full-time TAs. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for giving us the time to share our concerns with you. My name is Deborah Martin and I work at the, I'm an art teacher at the Bishop and Hardy Elementary Schools. And I'm speaking for the four elementary visual art teachers in Arlington. The majority of the elementary visual art teachers have been teaching in Arlington for over 10 years. Each of us have a vested interest in our students' artistic and academic learning and progress. Our students are the reason we come to work every day, and it is a privilege to be a part of their creative growth. We love to connect with them through visual art and help them flourish in a discipline that is not only important in and of itself, but also spans across all curricula. Unfortunately, the way art is currently scheduled, it is not supportive to our teaching, our professional goals, or our students' learning, and it is frankly very stressful to the teachers in the program. The large number of classes we teach per week and the short amount of time we have to prepare, teach, allow time for students to create, and clean up before getting ready for the next group puts undue stress on both students and teachers. Students complain that there is not enough time to work on projects and teachers find that there is not enough time to teach our curriculum. Projected increase in enrollment will only exacerbate these issues. The art teachers are looking for a budget solution that would decrease our course load and increase time between classes. These types of changes would allow us to provide better art education program in an environment that also takes better care of the art teachers in the district. Please consider helping us to improve the elementary visual arts program in Arlington. David Ardido is going to present specific obstacles in comparative data to help you better understand the scope of your problem. Thank you for your time. Hello everybody, I am Dave Ardido, the director of visual art for Arlington Public Schools K-12 and thanks again for giving us this time to share the concerns we have about the way elementary artists is scheduled. I was hired by the Arlington Public Schools six years ago to improve the K-12 visual art program and we've made a lot of progress. A revised K-12 sequential art curriculum focuses art teachers and their students on essential habits of mind and ways of thinking that will last students a lifetime. Enrollment in elective art courses at the high school is at an all-time high. We have added a third teacher and developed exciting new courses. We've taken important steps toward making digital art imaging at the high school a reality including video and animation. We've added four ceramic kilns and four buildings to the delight of hundreds of elementary students. We've more than doubled the number of student art exhibits within schools and within the town. We've engaged with the community through public art initiatives, the Center for the Arts, the annual film festival, the Arlington Education Foundation, the Martin Luther King celebration, local design competitions and much more. The one aspect of the K-12 art program that has not improved under my leadership is the way we construct and schedule our elementary art program. And frankly, improving the way we offer valuable art experiences to K-5 students is the highest priority to me. Obstacles exist that prevent our teachers and their students from accomplishing much more or even more. My part of this presentation is not just about the way we are treating elementary art teachers, although we really have to examine and change that. It is also about improving the quality of art education for the thousands of Arlington students who will benefit from the important changes that need to be made. You should have two documents from us. One summarizes the issues, three counting dubs, but one summarizes the issues and the other prevents comparative data that clearly shows how Arlington's approach to providing K-5 art education is so lacking compared to nine other neighboring communities. Let me highlight just some of the key issues from the first document called proposal to change the way K-5 visual art is scheduled. Deb alluded to some of them. Number one, elementary art teachers can be required by contract to teach 35 classes per week. This number is far above the average required by surrounding towns. The result is very short art classes, 40 minutes, and seven classes most days for all four teachers. This maximum of 35 classes also creates extremely large student loads. Try to imagine having 700 students per week per teacher to be responsible for, even to get to know their names. Number three, there is no transition time between each art class. The next group of students is waiting at the door while the current group is getting ready to leave, leaving no time for adequate cleanup and preparation of different materials. And four, grade levels change almost every art class each day with six different grade levels scheduled each day. Getting excited. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade are all scheduled in the same day for that teacher in that building. The educational benefits are significant if we reduce the total number of classes per teacher per week and if we make other adjustments to the way art is scheduled. To save time, I'm choosing to highlight just three of the most important educational benefits numbers two, three, and four in your document. Number two, a significant increase in class time means that art teachers can interface with many more students during each class. Individualized instruction is the backbone of every successful art program because it makes differentiated learning possible in an open, creative environment. Assessment and documentation of student work will be more thorough. An increase in class time, this is number three, gives students opportunities for sustained concentration on their work, for valuable assessment at the end of every class, for increased exposure to professional artists' work, for richer integrated learning, and for more complex art experiences in a greater variety of materials and techniques. That's a lot of gain for increased time. And number four, teaching art under the current conditions creates an enormous amount of stress on our teachers both physically and psychologically. And if this stress is reduced, there will be an increase in their productivity and effectiveness. Finally, if you look at the second document called the summary of elementary art scheduling comparisons between Arlington and neighboring towns, you'll see how nine neighboring towns have provided so much more time, structure, and support to help their K-5 art programs succeed. To highlight some of those, the average of the nine towns for classes per week, per teacher, is 21.5. The maximum required by the contract is 35 per teacher in Arlington. The minutes per class of the nine, the average is 53. The fact of 40 minutes per class for Arlington. The grade levels per day, three for the nine towns, five to six grade levels for Arlington, mostly six grade levels each day. Total number of students, 461 for the nine towns. In Arlington, the art teachers have a workload, a student load of 710 students each week. Transition time, six minutes, average for the nine towns, none for Arlington. So I think you can see the nature of the problem. We want to help find a solution. We have several ideas for how we can improve this situation. We would welcome the opportunity to go into our ideas in more detail at a future date. We stand ready to work with the administration and the school committee to review and discuss alternatives that would improve the scheduling of art classes and that would lead to the kind of art program that our students and our teachers deserve. Thanks very much. Hi, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Juliana Keys and I teach eighth grade world history at the Ottison. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight on behalf of the faculty at the middle school. We naturally echo the sentiments of our colleagues that an increase in salary and decrease in class size and caseload are both in order at this time. In addition to the reasons that Linda has cited, these will attract and retain a quality faculty to provide necessary stability during a period of great growth for our school. This year we have accepted the challenge of welcoming the largest APS class in recent memory into one building. The addition of a sixth grade cluster has kept class sizes more manageable for that grade but unfortunately this is a one year solution. We already know that the student population is going to increase even more in the coming years and we need to implement plans immediately to ensure that all teachers both of core subjects and specialists will be able to provide the personalized education that our students deserve. Coupled with the issue of class size is the issue of physical space. We strongly support the additional staffing that our administration requested but we're going to need more room to accommodate our growing student population and more teachers as well as furniture to fill these spaces. Our students need a safe and comfortable environment in which to learn and teachers must have their distraction free spaces in which to grade, prepare lessons and confidentially store our education materials. Relevant professional development is another of our goals. As the DESE has expanded its recertification guidelines to include special education and English language learners it is our hope that the district will provide and or fund more offerings in these areas as well as the continuing requirements for pedagogy and content areas. At Ottison in particular with this year's new advisory program we'd welcome thorough and professional training into how to truly run and maintain it successfully. Finally with all the other changes technology in our building has become insufficient. The exodus of printers and favorable copiers in the past two years has cost teachers considerable time. Specifically longer wait times waiting for one small job while somebody else's large job is running and longer trips to receive documents. Then if the copiers break down which happens very frequently there's no recourse sometimes for days. We need more machines that print in the building. Furthermore as our student laptops and iPads are aging and they get very heavy use we do need some sort of replacement budget to repair and resupply these essential items. Our jobs are getting harder and harder and we're asked to do more every year with more students more data less space and fewer resources. There aren't enough hours in the day anymore to get it done. We're hoping that you can help us to restore some balance at the autism for your budgeting process. Thank you. Good evening. I'm David Moore visual arts instructor here at Arlington High since 2001. Thank you very much for tonight. In a TED talk I learned that the Air Force discovered that their cockpit seats were the single source of a decline in critical performance because it was designed to fit the average standard pilot. This is life and death. Once we designed to a car like adjustable seat performance dramatically improved. Let's move from the standard one size fits all education to the edges in education. We appreciate we appreciate an improved access to administrators and a more collegial atmosphere. This gets often gets lost in the avalanche of emails, DDMs, PDs evaluations work and department chairs who are just two part time racing to catch up. Yes, we still have mice and water leaks. We must not only maintain but improve the facility each year for a safer and healthier environment while we all wait for a new building. Please do not increase current class large class sizes but reduce them with an efficient schedule with more than the proposed 1.2 faculty increase 1.4 excuse me. Case lows and paperwork documentation for special ed specialists and guidance counselors must be reduced. The impact of foreign students needs more study. We're working together to improve the AHS schedule next year with a more consistent model, reduce the number of school meetings and use early release time for more meaningful work. We need time to collaborate with each other but we also want more outside experts brought in to provide professional development and more outside resources. Baseline edge is unacceptably time consuming for all. We emphatically reject licensure tied to evaluations. We support the training of evaluators to embrace a more positive coaching model and collegial atmosphere instead of through punitive actions by some. Faculty would like the opportunity to participate in administrators evaluations. We support the addition of a house dean, the cost and the shifting to teachers has reduced their prep time and student contact hours. A big thank you goes out to the AEF for supporting technology improvements but let's not stop there. As I say there is no MCAS for passion. Teach to the edges not the standards. Dependence on high stakes testing is very questionable. As we seek more influence on district goals curriculum should be an inch wide and mile deep. With student and faculty inspired learning instead of top down directives. The success of our students is well documented and publicly praised. We the faculty feel that substantially increasing teacher salaries is a basic and necessary step towards recognizing our achievements maintaining student growth and appreciating the work we do. Thank you. So I'm looking at the clock and I think we did pretty well. We're coming in right around the time we were supposed to. To sum it all up teachers are looking to you to shore up the programs and supports that we currently have in place. Use the available funds to limit class cluster and case loads and focus on increasing teacher wages. On behalf of the association we want to thank you the school committee for giving us the time to present this evening and for all the work that you do on behalf of the students and teachers in the district. I also want to thank the teachers who agreed to speak this evening and those that came to support their colleagues. We know that we are all here to make Arlington public schools a great place to teach and learn. So we can stick around if you have any questions. But that's the end of our presentation. Thank you very much. I want to thank everybody for all of the insight into I think all of the levels of teaching and learning that go on in our schools. Because when we hear from the principals while they came with the list they didn't necessarily give us a lot of the detail and I really appreciate the detail that you brought to a lot of the information that you gave us. I do want you to understand that in the budget process there are a lot of things that we can't change. Things that you're talking about like scheduling space. All of that stuff happens kind of outside of the budget process that we're currently going through. While space obviously is a budget concern it kind of happens through a different process that's not part of our yearly budget. So I don't want you if you don't hear from us or things on those things don't look like they're in the budgets because some of these aren't. But what I want to do is make sure that I understand from all of what you've said the things that I took that were different from what we have already heard from the principals and district heads. I got three additions to our large laundry list of desires. One is general increase in teaching salaries. Two was change to art teaching at the elementary school level. And three was technology at the oddison in the way of printers and copiers. We're there. I know it was a lot but I don't know if any of you can kind of help me trying to differentiate between yours and you know our job is to try to sift through everything and make sure that we have a very comprehensive list of things that we can then kind of price out and prioritize. So I want to make sure we have that. I would say that's a pretty fair assessment of kind of where there wasn't overlap. There wasn't overlap. That's what I'm going to look around just to see if anyone else can think of anything else. But I think that's that's a pretty fair assessment. Yeah. I just just want to make give you all an open invitation to come visit my classroom and see what we were really doing. And art exhibits are the the exam you might say. But it's good to see what they're doing. Excitement teaching each other. It's pretty amazing. So I encourage you to come visit anytime. Oh. So I just wanted to. You know what I'm about to say which is that there's a tension here between the desire to increase salaries and the desire to decrease case load and maintain class sizes or make them smaller. And and I know that different people in the room are going to answer the question differently. But but I guess I'm still trying to sift through. You know when we have to prioritize one which one do we really push for. And as I said I'm sure there's different opinions. No we're all of one mind. OK. It makes it so much easier. I have to say I feel like we're skating on kind of thin ice here a little bit because we are also actively in negotiations right now. Right. So I do need to be really careful about how I answer a question like that. But I think the case that you presented and the emphasis that you heard speaks for itself. And if that I hope that gives you enough information. We are aware of the tradeoffs. I can say that we're interested in both things. But and I think Ms. Starks has asked some good questions at other meetings about kind of what is that that high point that that people are willing to tolerate in terms of class sizes and case loads. And I think that's something that we need to take back and talk about and think about some more. But I think you did hear. I'll just leave it at this. You heard a heavy emphasis on competitive salaries being something that's of primary interest. Thank you for coming and talking to us. I just wanted to point out Mr. Ardita refers to a second document in his talks. And we didn't get at least I could find the second page. No there's no. No there's something else. It's titled cover memo. It's badly titled. Yeah. No but this I know there's a second. I think it's the one that has the details. Anyway I'm going to have Mr. Ardita check in with Ms. Fitzgerald and they can make sure that you have access to both of those. Thank you. Mr. Schleckman. I'm going to deliberately avoid the things that involve contract negotiations because that's another ball of wax. But the question I have regarding the scheduling of art teachers in the elementary school. How much of this is a function of the other need of the building in order to have common planning time across grade levels. Is that is that what's happening. It's certainly part of the equation and part of the calculus that we'd have to make if a change were going to be made there. Because one provides the other. Yeah I have a hard time. I've had to build elementary building schedule and assign our teachers. So you know I know that that I know that tension between our teachers who'd like to teach all the second graders on Tuesday and all the third graders on Wednesday. But that not being possible if your goal is to maintain a common planning schedule for the second grade. So there are trade offs there and I just wanted to raise that point because I don't think that that's one that we're going to be addressing internally either. But the issue of the time in minutes is really a contractual one as you prefaced. I think that's it. Time minutes and staffing level I think is the thing. There were some actually concrete proposals that I made Mr. Ardita remove from his presentation because it is one of the things that we're actively planning on negotiating around. So that's why you didn't hear as much detail as you might have otherwise. No I think you know obviously that I think the school committee is committed to have a positive environment in which to negotiate the contract so I'm not going to go into much more discussion here. I just want to quickly respond to. I taught for 12 years elementary art 25 classes a week and I could adjust the transition time according to the grade level and work it out with the teachers. They had planning time. They all worked it out. What I'm my concern is to have consistency from building to building so that it all works. So this brain trust can all think out of the box and be really flexible. But I know what it's like to have a regular schedule and it's wonderful. And kids really learn. It's just torn away from the wonderful things at their most formative years. So please consider it being flexible. Real quick thank you all very very much for presenting and thanks everyone for coming. I had a couple of quick questions one for I think it was Erica from Hardy. He mentioned that you've seen personally an increased number of children with special needs behavioral academic medical. About how can you put it into any context for us. Is it is a double is a triple. I mean it just seems that every year there are more kids that are coming in with more needs specifically language based needs seems to be a huge increase. Children that have language seems to be a really a deficit for our kids and providing the support for those children is really challenging. It seems to be can be taxing on other other people in the building too because these kids come in with nothing and now we're we're kind of scrambling. No we have 65 new new kindergartners that there might be you know it depends from year to year but it's been a steady increase in that need. OK so it's not proportionate to the increase in the kindergarten enrollment. No it seems to be you know per class you know even though we have four classes a share at Hardy we all have a handful of kids that there's a significant need there. OK which sort of dovetails into my last question Mr. Chair which is the supports that the school committee and the administration have been able to add on to over the last three four years here. With the majority of all of you or say that that has actually helped your jobs to do your jobs better or have they been not as helpful as you would like to say. I think as I indicated in my remarks everybody feels like they've been essential and very helpful supports the full time social workers and all of the elementary buildings have been key. I think the math coaches and the math support people at every grade level of the oddison have really helped our math you know math teachers and elementary teachers improve the math instruction in the district. So and I'm hearing that the high school is safer as it's more well staffed. So I think overall we think the supports that have been put in that have been put back in place because some of them were cut before the override and then some of the additions on top of that have all brought us to a pretty good place right now. It's never going to be perfect. We're always going to want more we want more for teachers we want more for students but we feel like the supports have been robust well received and are doing their job. Thank you. Just one comment I'm struck by the alignment between what the principles presented to us and by what the faculty has presented today I mean am I missing any differences of opinion because I see for example you you're saying you want to maintain the full-time social workers after the grand period is over the principles are saying the same thing. There's a request here by the high school principal for a new dean you're saying the same thing. There's a need there's a request for to keep a class size is low there's a request from the middle school principal for to add two cluster teachers and other teachers. So I'm just I just want to know if there's any if you if there's anything we're missing where there's a major difference between what the faculty with the administrative team is advocating for and what you're advocating for. I think Ms. Starks said it when she highlighted her three things we're advocating for increased compensation okay that's a big one. Yeah there are all there are also a few things that we left off our list that that we we chose we highlighted the things that where we were in agreement but there were some things that you didn't hear us talk about that are not that didn't make the top of our list. Okay. And I also think we might prioritize them a little differently. Could you speak to that. You know what I think the administrators are going to be going through a prioritization process as well I don't think they've done that yet so I would rather that we kind of step back and do that collectively too than do it kind of off off the off the cuff. Fair enough. Okay. But we would be happy to to give you some more information on that. Okay thank you. I have just one question and I'd like to preface that I believe that the data collection that is taking place is very important but I guess I have to ask the administration the data collection done by the teachers is it all required by statute. Well that's a very broad question very broad. What is required is providing evidence around goals and evidence around meeting standards and primarily that well there's two functions for baseline edge one is to provide a repository for communication around observations and also for evidence. So the answer is yes on what the need is to be the need is what is not mandatory is that we're using baseline edge but what I will say is that every district has some type of electronic form of doing this. But the other part of baseline edge is the what we're beginning to do is to is to have a data bank of student achievement whether it would be on MCAS or DRAs common assessments so that teachers when they're looking at the state it can make some very informed decisions about teaching and learning. So it has both and I think that the part for the teacher evaluation system is a little bit more evolved at this point and the other is something that we are working on it's we've had to have baseline edge do some adjustments to meet our needs and our and our requirements so it's evolving. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Okay. Moving on to budget priority discussion. Ms. Starks do you want to start us off or. Sure. So. I apologize. Just give a chance for the room to settle down. What they don't want to hear our priorities. You don't want to hear our priorities. Thank you. Thank you. You'll hear it. Thanks a lot. Yeah it's been a it's been a pain person. But baby it's a lower story. Oh my God it's just our second few weeks ago. Oh my goodness. And she handles everything. Like very new like like with ease it seems. Are they still on the. Thanks for sticking around. Thanks for staying. I know they didn't have a big place. I sat down. Something like said. I mean it's six thirty one when I turn on the iPad. There were only four people. OK. All right. Ms. Starks. So I think that the point of this or having this time on here is to kind of make sure that the superintendent hears from us as well. So you know I really appreciate everybody who's come and talk to us all the principals all the teachers you know department heads special education department. I mean I think that it is just it informs us in our in our budget deliberations. And I think that the idea and I kind of sent out you know this over email to kind of kind of prep everybody. But whether you have different priorities or what you'd like to do is kind of voice the prioritization that you have of the items that have been given. I think that it just is really important that we each have a chance and that we have some discussion around this table before the superintendent goes off and you know creates her budget to kind of give her an idea of what what our thinking is not that obviously we're still going to be part of that as those deliberations occur. But I think that sometimes we just want to make sure that you know that that happened. So I thought that that would be a good I'm happy to start it off. But I'm also happy to let other people go as well. I kind of just went through and I looked at the list of you know all of the things that we took out of what everybody's asked for. And then I kind of picked out the I would say two or three that I thought were really things that I would think really have to be at the top of the list. And I don't know how other people did it. But that's that's what I do. So I don't know if we just want to go around or I want to this process. I'm going to relinquish the chair to you and let you pick on the people who speak to you. Since you're responsible for this. OK. Go ahead. Why don't you go first then because you don't usually get to go first. I I see from what I've heard and the benefits of it. I would like to maintain the social workers. I think I think that's a very important thing. We were fortunate to get a grant ahead of time. But we need to step up that the benefits came for the what we get out of it for the dollar I think is well worth it. The other thing is and it's a minor thing I would like to establish a little bit more money in the professional development for the school committee. This year several of us we have expended that money in the past members have not gone for whatever reason. But one member went to something a little bit different and we'll be talking about a little bit later in tonight. We have another member talking about going to a national conference and things of that nature. So I would like to suggest I don't know how much but something to consider those are the two things that at this time. Thank you. So I first of all the list that was presented us both by the faculty and by the administration. You know there are all things that are going to directly help kids. So it's not you know I think it's important for the public to understand we don't have people asking for you know a load of administrative assistance or even more custodians which we need by the way if you were going to the schools we need more support because those kind of folks help make the school run better and but you know that we're asking for you know things that are just going to directly help kids. So I think people need to understand that. My my guidance would be that a priority is always to hire people and add positions that are going to support teachers and allow them to do their jobs better. So a dean for example at the high school level seems to me to be a pretty high priority because it allows teachers to do their job better social workers maintaining the social workers is critical because if we don't have the social workers that's going to put a drain on teachers. They're going to be the social workers even though it's not in their contract even though it's not expected they'll take on those responsibilities. The literacy coach support for teachers it seems to be a felt need expressed by the elementary school principals. I'm not in the elementary school every day. I don't know but it was expressed pretty I was not at that meeting but I read the minutes and I saw a little bit of a TV and so I you know I got a sense that that was an important thing if we were going to address some of the literacy needs of some of our learners and support our teachers in their effort to help our kids improve. So the half time middle school high school psychologist and this is all in the area of special education. The first thing in special education is you know we've got to be mindful of the fact that just a few years ago we were we were following a corrective action plan by the state of Massachusetts so we don't want to go back to that era so we have to do what we need to do to make sure we don't go back to that era so you know my guidance is real general it's making sure it's thinking about positions that allow our teachers to do their jobs well things that are not so sexy like social workers and deans and things like that. I came across I came about this in a different way I tried to think of the things that weren't mentioned so I agree I think the list that we've gotten from the principals and administrators and things that are is very good I'm not going to discuss salaries because of ongoing negotiations I want to step into that. I guess this one has been heard but I would like us to see class sizes maintain as low as possible I say that first because it'd be good for our students but also it will be good for our teachers both in the classroom and in retention. I'm also saying this because our class sizes are on the outer edge of what's considered a large class already so I'm not trying to say we need really small I'm trying to just pull us back from from really what I think is considered large class sizes something I would like I think we've requested this number but I'd like to see it I'd like to know what the cost of adding staff to keep high school students and maybe middle school school students out of directed studies I'm not sure that we can fund it but I'd like to know what that number would be more for thinking in the future I'll talk about this a little bit more but the conference that I'm going to talk about talked about late that I'm going to talk about later talked about that the loss that the much of the gap in lower income students in reading achievement can be attributable almost directly to summer reading loss and so that's something that I'd like us to see starting to talk about and I don't remember really hearing about that before and it you know if we're trying to bring up our kids in achievement this is a different place to be putting things and then the final thing that I would like to hear is discuss at our next meeting in executive session is any security measures that we need in our schools I talked to Mr. Heim this is a totally appropriate thing to discuss and in executive session it comes under reason number four and I think we need to have an honest conversation of any needs and is there anything that we can do to start addressing these needs this year so those are my thoughts thank you first of all with the teachers in the room here today that sort of grounds us in terms of who's actually doing the work we're asking to happen and I want to without the context of being in negotiations to just say that a lot of talented people here doing a lot of great things and one of the concerns that I have always is ensuring that Arlington is a great place to come to work both for recruitment and retention and I'm not going to go into any of the specifics but you know there's more that I wish we could do from within our limited budget to make that happen and I want them to know that we really appreciate them and hear their concerns the social workers to me is my top priority of everything I've heard we have principles and buildings without assistance and I think that rather than having an assistant principal having a social worker who's able to address the social emotional needs of students who are having adjustment problems within a classroom as far more beneficial than taking a disciplinary or punitive approach and I think that it's a very enlightened view to focus on social workers and last year I could not have lived without a social worker in my building it's an essential part of making an elementary school work so that would be my first priority I think that we need to be cautious in our budgeting because we saw last year and this has been sort of repeated discussion of all of a sudden we're getting enrollment increases that appear in June, July and August and we need to ensure that we have the resources available to address the folks who enroll their children after the budget process is concluded and so we can make appropriate adjustments to do that. The coaching to me is a critical issue Tom Brady as a coach Tiger Woods as a coach. How many coaches on the Red Sox are 25 players I think they probably have as many coaches as they have players every teacher deserves a coach because it's a way to respect their professionalism so the request for coaching additional coaching support I think is very appropriate and it's a way to improve teaching learning the district. The copiers resonates with me because there's nothing more frustrating for a teacher than not be able to get things done quickly and so that if we're going to the copier model with the internet connection and feeding into that I think maybe we need to look at how many machines we have and what the availability is is to think about that. I don't think that that dollar for dollar is going to be a tremendous expense to expand the capacity within the building and that's something it would if it is indeed a log jam in places to identify that and solve that problem go a long way to making this a great place to work. The thing that has me nervous and it still has me nervous is to request for a half cluster of the oddison because you'd be having folks teaching out of their primary license area with within a half cluster unless we were doing two half clusters across grade levels where they have to be licensed in both. Well you you but still you'd have a humanities license but you'd probably have an English teacher or social studies teacher who isn't as a lot of teachers they have multiple certifications because I have multiple certifications and a lot of people have multiple certifications it doesn't mean that they are as wonderful in the multiple areas and so it makes me nervous in terms of finding hiring people who can pull off consistently to high quality to content areas in the middle school format it can be done but it makes me nervous and that's my first reflection of the things that I've heard over the past three meetings. Cool. Judd. Thank you. I was struck by an article I read this week from a teacher a high school teacher she wrote in the Washington Post on December 12th Valerie Strauss and she was writing from the perspective of a teacher who had worked her proverbial butt off and was burnt out and she said that was the experience of a lot of her colleagues and I think that's kind of what we heard today kind of what we heard from the administrators before them here in the United States she quotes I quote we continually examine teacher greater teaching data to understand why other countries are doing better than we are one thing nobody ever talks about is that teachers in the U.S. have a larger workload than teachers in almost any other country according to the organization for economic cooperation and development she says the average secondary school teacher in the U.S. puts in over a thousand instructional hours per year instructional hours are hours actually spent in front of children other words about half the job the other half being planning and collaborating with teachers. Well in Finland the average teacher spends 553 instructional hours per year half Korea 609 England 695 Japan 510 and so the common planning time is essential for the for the teachers and I fully support and I'm I want to see this happen some day as priority a longer instructional longer school day to allow for many of these things that they simply don't have any time for I mean if we want to see our children doing assessments on iPads or typing them how to how and when are they going to learn to type we can't squeeze in typing for elementary students right now there's just no time for that but they're going to need to learn how to type in probably have to learn on their own right now there a lot of class blog sites are saying oh use this free instructional program on your on your homework time to learn how to type it would just be nice to have a little bit more time for the teachers for their common assessment and planning a dedicated a dedicated time for that my three big ones you asked for three I think that's a great idea I mean my three big ones are what many of you said class size is my first my second being social workers and keeping them I've seen firsthand the impact they can have and the third being curriculum at the high school level and really seeing more of a robust especially in the place of Miss Dunn who has left us and I miss her so much someone who can look at the world studies and the history develop a curriculum for the high school that's a little bit more robust than what we have now thank you yeah similar to Dr. Anthony I I have I wanted to have three additions they're not huge but they're things I've heard from the community one you've heard from which is a the need to evaluate and fix the playgrounds that are under the ages of the school committee we we have some playgrounds that the kids play on our parks and rec are in charge of and they are in charge of maintaining them and some are under the ages of the school committee and we haven't really been doing a great job so I want to make sure that that's a priority for the next year that we that we do inspect them and that we do fix the minor things that we can fix the second priority I've heard from the community that some of you know is at Thompson the fifth grade science camp as you probably know some children can't afford the fifth grade science camp and at most schools there's only a few and the PTOs can adequately fund that at Thompson the numbers just much larger much I mean Thompson's PTO budget is much smaller than the other schools and the need for science camp support is much larger so this year I think they had 17 kids and the estimate for next year is 15 this is based on free and reduced lunch kids at that level what has happened at Thompson I've heard is that the individual donors that were once funding this outside donors now have shifted their donations to the new Arlington Eats program which is this fabulous program helping kids eat throughout the year and on the weekends and so there's just less money available so I'd just like to make a plea for maybe trying to get in the community development grant money that the school department is in charge of or uses seeing if we can find some way to fund that and the third thing I've heard from the community is on crossing guards this is from the Hardy community there's a desire for a crossing guard at Marathon Street and so what happens is that there's a bunch of kids and who live across Mass Ave now they could go out of their way and walk you know well one block to block the other way to get to the cross the light they don't necessarily I know that when I bring my I brought my kids to school more late you know that the two blocks can mean a big difference but and I wonder if it seems to me that the need is probably greatest now before the Mass Avenue quarter project is completed and that once the mass so that we could even do this as a temporary funding so that once Mass Avenue quarter project is completed and there's bump out so you can see people it just may not be at feel as dangerous but right now it's four lanes of traffic there's no visibility and it just feels very dangerous when when people cross so those are my three sort of littleish things cool all right and I went through the lists of things and kind of thought about what I would pick off of each so I have a couple from each level so at the elementary obviously I think we all social workers and my second highest priority would be the full time kindergarten TAs in every classroom I think those two things at the elementary school would be great at the middle school I think that we need the more cluster teachers whether it's the two or if we can afford it to get the four to do a full cluster I also include in that another school nurse at the high school level the new dean the point for increase in science and the point to increase in computer science I think I would love to see more of science and computer science as kind of an idea at the high school and obviously the dean as the support for the teachers as far as the special ed both the special the special ed requests are kind of district requests the increase in the TAs salaries would be my first and that my second actually all falls in the preschool all of the needs that the preschool has to open another classroom and I know that you know I think there were about three and a half fte's there and last but not least I think that the last thing we should think about is that if it really is budget neutral and I you know we don't have numbers yet or anything like that but I know that special education talked about bringing in contract services into district and possibly using the differential to get another bcba or whatever the highest need is in special education I really like what we've done with special education in that and I feel like doing more of that always ends up saving us money in the long run so if it really is budget neutral and we can do some of those things I would love to see see those so I guess that is kind of our like our Christmas list really our holiday list for budget I know that and we'll talk more about what happened at long range planning this morning later I know that it's always more than we have money for but hopefully that will help you in your as you think about it I know when we come back from the holiday we will start to have conversations and start to really look at some of the nitty gritty so I just like to add that this is the beginning of the discussion for us this is all we want just listening to all of you a couple of things I'm glad to hear this and we spin off each other on this I shared with Dr. Bode today it must be wonderful to live in a community where money is not a driving force in education and there aren't many of them but there are communities out there that they deal with just the as Mr. Thielman said the the needs of the teachers needs of the students so do you have anything you'd like to add other thank you I I I agree with your observation there's a lot of congruence between the teachers and the administrators I think the challenge for us all is going to be of course just the issue you brought up strainer and that is the available funds and so one of the things that we will be doing is certainly trying to fine tune that so we have an idea of what would be the available funds that would be a differential for next year and that will be certainly part of this this whole discussion I think that just nothing that has been presented either by the committee the teachers administrators that are not needs and as Ms. Hansen said underneath all of those issues that were brought up those needs there were others that were not mentioned and the same thing could be true of administrators I think that our teachers administrators do an enormously good job with the resources they have in having said that I think that also Arlington as a community has been very supportive of our schools to the best that they can be and that scene in the long-range planning we do is a scene in the enrollment growth factor that we were able to have last year to meet these needs so we will be having more discussions ourselves we will be working on it I know that this is going to consume Diane's time over the next few weeks for sure and this will not be the last time we talk about this at all I would just like to re-ask the cost of staff to eliminate any directed studies that we have at any of the schools if you could through the principle I don't know if you have directed studies at the middle school I know the rest Dr. Banger mentioned them here and that's I mean I'm not suggesting it's going to happen but it's a number that I think that we need to know it will be like about eight slots well it depends on the schedule it's going to be a number of people per school it's going to be I'm not suggesting it's going to happen I can give you a more firm I have that a note to think through it but I can tell you it's it's significant I think we need to know so that people ask can I ask one other thing is we do our budgeting when we talk about teachers that are being held in reserve for additional enrollment can we make sure how we talk about it that whether it's covering the expected enrollment I mean the expected increased enrollment or whether it's beyond that and I think I had always been somewhat confused I thought it was beyond I thought we covered our expected enrollment I mean our expected increase and then these ones were for unexpected surprises exactly and actually I know now that that was incorrect and I just think that's something we should be we're doing our budget at this time the with the population numbers that we have available may come March or April April beyond is the unexpected so those reserve I think that's the question of those I think it was those reserve teachers are unexpected at that later date no they were for the additional students yeah that's why I think we need to all understand what we're talking about I have a point of clear for I mean Diane can join in this but it's a little bit of both we did if you go back to last year's budget we did build in positions identified positions for expected enrollment growth yeah but there was the unexpected now there is some reserve because it's it's in this is where it's in a gray area that we know that we're going to need more staffing when we do the reserve position but we can't say exactly it's going to be in special ed or it's going to be a second grade teacher so it's for enrollment increases that we expect with a little bit for what might be unexpected so what happened to us last year is that we were building this in for an expected enrollment growth of about 80 maybe 100 but not twice that and there's it's so hard to know that so it's it's it is for the people that are that we expected just couldn't tag that's going to be a point two at the high school for world language or whatever right I'm not asking for that I'm just saying can we say this is planning for our current enrollment plus an expected 80 students and then we have five teachers in reserve if there are more than 80 new students after you know whatever just I just think how we talk about this did you Dan did I cover everything would you want to say anything else on that no I agree I mean I think I think if anything you know the only consistency we can see is that we keep getting surprised by how many kids show up so I think you know in addition to budgeting for the kids we're projecting that aren't real kids yet that are theoretical kids we have to go a step beyond that you know and we have gone a bit beyond that but we need to go significantly exceeded our expectations these so what would the formula be to because I'm always conscious of when we build a budget with a reserve that is too great we take away from programs that help existing kids so I would be curious to know the formula you're going to use to calculate that reserve well is it going to be a three year average if I had my way I would and of course I don't but I would budget for our projected needs right and then I'd put with the understanding that if the enrollment growth didn't exceed our expectations or in fact came in below our expectations we'd have some flexibility to fulfill wishes that were unable to be fulfilled you know my hope had been when we had those reserve positions that some of the things that we said no to we could say yes to when we didn't need them for other things I mean budgeting is a tricky thing and you're the right person to say that we need to have a big reserve or a significant reserve I don't know if you see the formula and I think it's something that needs to be discussed because when you build too big a reserve that's too big you can take away from a program that needs it but if you if you plan that that reserve that you know when it comes to be late August and you see that you don't need those reserves then you go back to that wish list of things that got cut like we included in the budget last year remember under the superintendent's message there was and one of the things that we were very conscious of is when we do that bifurcation is that we think about the the types of ads that we can do late in the year that are not going to be problematic as problematic as hiring somebody that you need to go out and look for in May so it's it's a discernment in terms of how to divide that list up right because you don't want to be looking in August you don't want to be looking for dean in August that's exactly right that's right that's not an easy add on in August no it's a hard hire but grabbing an elementary teacher there's a yeah a math coach forget it we've agreed with the town for the unexpected enrollment we had the unexpected enrollment this past year that formula will be kicked in this year for the numbers that we got this year we'll so it's next year's budget that's adjusted and that will whatever we have next year will affect the year after that right so there's a one year league do we have a number as of yet oh yes okay thank you one quick question that came up the science camp that this was is that private or is that public it's it's our science camp it's great so how should we be able to go yeah and every child that wants to go I thought you said there were some children that weren't able to go they didn't have sufficient funding there were some children that their parents couldn't pay and right historically private individuals have stepped in and paid for that at elementary schools where there's only a few kids in need the PTO's cover that but it comes in it's beyond what a PTO can cover no child oh no no and this year as I understand cavalry church stepped in and helped so this community is bad this community is filled with generosity but I just wonder if we could find some way to well it can come out of the principal's budget and some and some scholarships have come out of that fund we're all set student attendance report just a couple of things but the first the most important is the news I think that you all know it's important to mention it here is that we had disappointing news this week from MSBA that given the the number of applicants this year for the available monies we've been invited to reapply but we are not going to be considered in this new round so the new it's very similar to last year that the window for application begins I think January 7th and closes early April 10th so it's the same window we certainly are going to reapply we will refresh our application and in two areas in particular one will be enrollment updates for in fact I had asked MSBA whether they would have accepted in this fall and the answer was no but they strongly encouraged us to update all of our numbers in the reapplication the other is that we still we continue to have needs that have developed in this building that we're going to have to address and so it's just more evidence of the the needs that exist and that speak to the fact that we really need to do something about the building for example when that last the last storm that we had we had significant leaks in many parts of the building and in one area some of the science areas we actually have ceilings which are crumbling and so we're going to have to replace that but the fact that we have all of these leaks and not little leaks even up here on the sixth floor we had a big barrel for the water that was coming in down by my office so these are these are not insignificant patch kinds of problems when you have that so we will reevaluate even some of the things that were said about the building and refresh that as well and have an application so one of the other issues I don't know if we have an update quite yet on Straton but there is just on that issue in the MSPA I'm sorry I just had a couple questions I know Representative Garbley was going to speak with I think his name is Jack I had an opportunity to find out ways in which we could perhaps increase our chances for the coming year any opportunities for I have I've talked to his assistant several times this fall okay and they have criteria and as we've known enrollment growth in terms of the capacity of the building is one of the the top criteria the other is of course the integrity of the building in terms of what it's needed but enrollment growth is a huge factor and I think that what we're seeing our projections of what the population will be in our high school has changed since we last submitted it because of the the effects of what we're seeing from this year's growth is there something to be said for the first time it's not always the charm here with this type of process we do have to reapply yes yeah I've looked at a bunch of them over time and you could see here it is and then finally it gets picked okay it isn't just always standing in the queue because even though people are lined up if something dramatic happens such as Springfield with the tornado right next to where they found PCB under the school in Lexington they immediately get put as the number one priority and everybody gets knocked down we have also continued to have physical problems with the building and the way it was explained to me health and safety is the priority number one priority the second priority is population so population is definitely we qualify in that number two I think we're quickly qualifying in the number one is too is different incidents happen in this building yes did MSBA give us any feedback on the application I mean besides the population not specifically to our application I think the comments I've had from Mr. McCarthy himself as well as assistant is that there's just been so much need expressed in the state and in a large number of applications came in from cities and so that that also sometimes rises to the top certainly when you have a school being replaced in the city there's also higher reimbursement rate which means that there's a sort of a fixed pool of money you're going to have a different distribution in the number of schools that can be renovated or replaced so no we don't have specific we'll certainly see if we can get any feedback on that but as I know that the assistant application is to the the main criteria that they that they look at and you're absolutely right health and safety and that's the physical building problems here as well as enrollment growth well yes actually some good news on buildings our Thompson school was featured in the 2014 schools and university architectural magazine which is a nationwide magazine and they sent to us the disc of the of the actual pictures that were in here and it's really actually quite impressive when you see the pictures in the description so at any rate I've asked Karen if she just put these up so you can see it I don't know if that can be larger or not I don't know the pdf we have it it really looks it looks beautiful maybe but it's also the all the interior shots too but it's it's it's impressive that they're featuring this building as well as an exemplary elementary school and of course the also the attention that's gone into it to have it be a green school it adds to it's appeal as an exemplar so basically that's it tonight thank you Karen you can just leave that on if you want we'll be on to the consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so request which event the item warrant number 1507 7 dated 12 4 2014 total warrant amount 421 899 dollars and 57 cents approval of draft minutes December 4 2014 second second any discussion all those in favor thank you very much moving on to subcommittee and liaison reports policies just thank you I'd like to move that the domestic violence leave policy that we had for first read last time be adopted file GCCD second any discussion on this all those in favor say aye aye opposed approved thank you nothing for budget the stocks all right well it's budget time so lots to say all right so we had a budget meeting last week and one of the things that came out of that was that Mary Volano came to talk to us and it turns out that more and more of our foreign students foreign visa students who are that are here want diplomas and diplomas are a fairly high task I don't know lots of hours to actually make that occur and so she is requesting that for students only for students only for foreign students who request a diploma that an additional thousand dollars be added on to the foreign student fee to cover the man hours administrative hours needed to cover the diploma more and more foreign visa students are asking for this and they have to do a lot of things like make sure I mean they have to meet all of our requirements so we have to kind of you know they have to match all that up they have to you know help them with colleges just like we do other you know seniors and so it seemed very reasonable she had it all broken out as to what the costs were and so I would recommend and would recommend to this committee and we do need a motion to yeah are you looking for that motion tonight? yes motion has been made is there a second for the purpose of discussion? so I move that we the move to approve the addition of a thousand dollar fee for those foreign visa students who want a diploma from Arlington high school just for these people usually come in do they come for the full four years or one year or I think it varies I think most of them don't come for a full four they usually come for one year some students are coming after they've already completed school their high school equivalent is there my only concern is I mean it's more than just providing the state requirements for the diploma do we treat them as like a transfer student from another district and we have to inquire the background to make sure that we've met so I just want to make it clear I'm comfortable with that this is just not a quick paper thing for this thousand dollars tremendous amount of background work to check and verify many of the trans students they meet the requirements for Arlington High School and of course they have to take them cast and then we have to pass it and then they there are state requirements as well that they have to have which would be the four year English requirement so the people who are setting up their schedule have to be very intentional about and state requirements in order for them to graduate so it's a very time intensive and some students were coming and just think oh yeah I'll try to get an diploma but not it was only living with this we realized how time intensive it is my concern is a thousand dollars enough to cover all the work that it potentially seems to think that's all those in favor say aye aye opposed unanimous vote alright I also wanted to let people know that work is starting on the visual budget from the schools I know Diane was going to meet with we had both Annie LeCourt and Alan Jones came and spoke to us at the budget meeting and I think that the next step out of that was that Diane was going to meet with Annie and kind of go over and kind of figure out how to kind of make that tell a story that we want to tell and and you know give data that actually gives people information and not just overwhelm them with all of the budget what we have up there yes is all the budget detail but I think sometimes it's really hard to get the story of the schools from that and I think the whole idea behind the visual budget is that you kind of get the story and you get more context so that's started if I may yeah will this reflect our final budget I'm just concerned if it's reflecting the whole process no no no this is last year okay so it will reflect the final budget that it did yes it goes before telling me so right now it would be the budget we're living instead of not the way we're coming thank you yeah and then the other thing that we talked about at the budget meeting was a proposed reworking in town of maintenance in town and schools which I think is just exceedingly exciting because Bill and I were just talking about this when we were at the superintendent's goal committee the other night and I said boy you know what would be really great is if there was somebody whose job it was to just kind of keep track on the schools too because I feel like it's nobody's job and then Diane came to our budget meeting and that's what it was it was like oh my gosh someone was actually doing it so I wanted to let Diane talk about it because she can probably talk more about kind of what's what's going on and I think what is going to happen is obviously this is this is kind of two things coming together so again townside and schoolside working together so again maybe you can again give a little bit of background about kind of what the steps are because while we will eventually approve it it's got to go through a bunch of other things before it comes back to us but we definitely wanted to make sure everyone here had heard about it because I think it's going to be pretty exciting so. The maintenance committee was formed by the select board about 18 months ago and we've been meeting to explore how budget did a good job with long term planning and that our existing maintenance structure did a pretty good job with emergency things but the stuff in the middle the long term preventative maintenance the regular cycle of interior paint the oh my god that carbids 10 years old time to go kind of work fell by the wayside if it wasn't big enough to be capital or small enough to be an emergency it tended to get neglected until it became an emergency and that's not the most effective so we did a lot of work in this committee and what we've come to is that we will be proposing over a set of time a new governance structure for maintenance maintenance currently is budgeted for the most part out of the school budget but is managed by the DPW and the DPW director's job is just way too big so the plan is to pull maintenance out of DPW to have a department head director on the townside with a deputy director and an administrative person we have an existing superintendent of buildings who his position would effectively become the deputy director the energy manager who's now part of DPW would be part of maintenance this admin person deputy director director the custodial day manager and night manager as well as the maintenance manager would fall under this deputy structure one of the really good things about it is right now on the townside there are 10 different people managing custodial affairs there's four different custodial cleaning contracts there's a variety of custodians it's very decentralized and it's basically it falls to department heads to recommend maintenance and then there's an incredibly elaborate rebuilding process called gray billing whereby if one of our maintenance guys goes off to work over at the police station there's this big rebuilding so it's time we get credited for those hours and they get billed and it's the enormous amount of paperwork and bureaucracy by creating a consolidated maintenance department all the buildings in town would fall under its jurisdiction and they would be able to appropriately prioritize not only emergency maintenance but the long term preventative maintenance in the middle between capital and emergency that is the weak link in how we manage our buildings right now the way we hope to go forward with this budget cycle is that the town manager will propose adding half the administrative position and half the new director level facilities manager position and we'll offer to do the same so it'll be half us and half them for FY 16 the maintenance funding will stay in our budget such as we have it but the town will consolidate the pieces of maintenance that are in all their town departments into one so instead of it being 10 and one it'll be two that will be the FY 16 if successfully defended through the budget process that'll be what'll happen in 16 at the start of 16 we'll have a director a deputy director an admin and the energy manager sliding in from DPW that already exists and the people that are on the school side will be under the management of this team and at 17 we would vote to move the budget that is currently what we're spending on maintenance off to that new department so that they would be self-funded they'd no longer be part of the school responsibility fiscally or in any way they'd come out of our budget basically and they'd have their own budget and they'd be responsible for nothing but maintenance so they could focus on that exclusively and for the long term care of our buildings I think this is a great move I think we'll see efficiencies I think we'll have better we'll just have a better smoother way I mean I think the kind of the system has been building runs down we rebuild it it's gorgeous and it runs down again and what we need to do is rebuild it and keep it at a high level and that's what we want to do we're almost at the end of our elementary rebuilding cycle and we're not going to do another elementary rebuilding cycle for a very long time we're going to be paying off the high school God willing so I think it's super important at this juncture to really put that attention to the preventative maintenance so we can keep these nice buildings nice we can get a good niceness out of them and not let them run down well pardon me well the program that you talked about the past couple of years will they be using that to school dude right to fit everything in so that when on a regular basis will be gone off you alluded to it I just want to confirm absolutely they will be doing the preventative maintenance on a regular schedule we had been planning to pilot it this fall will that require more staff actually preventative initially as a we won't know until we one of the modules of school dude is to take all of our capital assets the age of the boiler the age of the windows the age of the roof and all of the stuff and put it in and it turns out this particular type of HVAC system requires filter changes at these intervals and it's time to change your filters it's 10 man hours or whatever it is and using that kind of a software can help us develop something of what the staffing needs are but at that point when it gets to that point the consolidated maintenance department will be going to finance committee and to town meeting they'll be part of the town budgets and not ours I see the potential increase at first but in the long run it should save a lot of time and a lot of money well and create for the money we're spending a much better environment for everybody healthier more attractive clean not just clean carpets or at least not badly worn carpets and walls that aren't dinged up and all of those kinds of things it's always the stuff that you're squeezing and I know at least from my perspective is a budget person who's handling the money side of this I am reluctant to say sure Christmas break let's paint everything when I don't know how the rest of the winter is going to come out I don't know if I'm going to blow three elevators instead of the two I have budgeted and so I'm always holding back not willing to commit the funds I don't want to have time to paint everything so I think this would be great anything else on the budget and then I wanted just to say so long range planning met again this morning and Adam gave us his recommendation for moving forward and the good news is that at least for next year so for fiscal year 16 his recommendation right now is that schools at the three and a half seven percent with the growth factor so basically we are being held constant for FY 16 moving forward what they're trying to do is get everybody town and schools to try to slow the burn rate in hopes to well in this case what I see it doing is pushing off the override need for another year and so in fiscal year 17 this has still the seven percent for special education but three and a quarter so 3.25 for general education still with the growth factor and then every year after that we would be at three percent at the general education still at seven percent at special education I think that one of the things that was important is that we talked a lot about special education there seemed to be one of the important things I think is that they are going to try to stop picking on us about special education with the understanding as well and I think that this was semi enlightened is that if we doesn't if we don't ever have to use the full seven percent what they'd like to do is see us put that into reserves which I thought was great I mean that's what I would like to do anyway so I don't really see how that is a negative we spoke a lot about how they talked about how everybody's doing this and I thought that one of the things that Linda Hansen said who was also at the meeting is that it's important to understand that no other department in the town has increased requirements like we do from Desi to increase performance every year and how that drives us and makes the things that we have to do increase every year even though we're not getting more money I don't think that's necessarily going to change Adam's mind but I think it was interesting I think also the interesting thing about it is that this has the long range so this has the absolute we fall off the cliff so we have a negative balance so the town has a negative balance in the year 2021 2021 if we follow this plan if we follow if we follow this plan right if this plan moves forward so that would be 2021 and nothing else happens and yes and nothing else happens I also brought up the need I think to really start thinking about a general override as well as the debt exclusions that we're going to be asking for and making sure that we time them and we start having those conversations and start having that planning well before this because if we can pull in an override earlier and start saving so that we don't ever have that you know massiveness that we need so I mean there's a lot going on there is going to be a budget revenue task force where I believe this will all be rolled out that is going to be February 2nd that's a Monday that's a Groundhog Day at 6pm in the Selectman's hearing room and so you know any and all should attend if you want to hear and I think at that time they will kind of by then a lot of things will have settled down we will have some idea where the state stands as you all know state has a pretty sizable deficit the new governor is not required because he's new I guess to have his budget until the beginning of March so things are a little bit delayed but we've they felt that by the end of January certainly they would know better where things stand and so they wanted to have this right at the beginning of February can I add a couple things so what Cindy didn't mention is that the town will drop their percentage increase to 3.25 this in FY16 and then they'll go to 3 after that so they're leading us I also want to say that we heard what the town manager was saying and we understand the need for conservation of funds we did not accept this as a wonderful idea on my part it's because our current plan with 3.5% plus the enrollment increases plus the growth factor plus the special education still has us verging away from what the state average and what the town manager 12 average of spending is as we go over time we're already falling farther and farther from what other towns are requiring for the education that we're required to give and I'm concerned that any decrease of the amount that we get just has us falling farther and farther behind and that's just not and it's not like I can go around and see lots of places we can trim we did that last we already did that they're gone now so I just wanted to so I think we would like to see what Dr. Bodie and Ms. Johnson have to say about what can we do with these amounts of money and how far are they from no no we need numbers behind it the piece that keeps coming up is that school committees across the state I'm sorry and we're part of it too I'm guilty of it I've been very passive with all the unfunded mandates from the state which just adds to our problems continually and maybe someday the revolution will take place and the state the idea of the state mandates is even further away because the condition of the state is but somewhere along the line the legislature has to get the guts to tell desi no enough is enough is there anything else that's all for me sorry thank you very much for everything community relations Mr. Schlickman we're putting a doodle out for a next meeting thank you curriculum instruction and assessment accountability Dr. Ampe we met on Monday we had a discussion with the parent who is concerned about some of the travel that's happening at oddison whether it's equitable whether it's fair to students who are unable to afford it and other issues around it and we decided that we need to get some more information from the sources about how some of this is taking place so we're going to do some fact finding and meet again after the first of the year we haven't scheduled yet would you like take this position okay so this is not curriculum this is so as Mr. Heiner said I was able to attend a conference in late November and it was held in Boston it was called learning in the brain focused organized minds using brain science to engage attention in a distracted world and it came like this it was a two and a half day conference I took 64 pages of notes and mind you I was sick I couldn't actually talk the first day and a half I was there I tried to ask one question I kept going what what yeah so I was there so I I'm I may not absorb quite as much as I could have because I wasn't on my top game but I tried I tried to sum up so what they were there's a whole bunch of talks I couldn't you could only attend one and there was keynote things so there was a bunch that I couldn't attend one thing I did I did pony up for the actual set they'll do a set of slides for any speaker who is willing to do it and the audio from that so I've got that coming and I'm happy to lend that out or share it there's one talk in particular that I wanted to see not I didn't see it myself I heard about it because there were a group of teachers from another town next to me and talking about this amazing talk they went to that morning that it was like it was going to change their teaching practice for years and I thought this sounds like a wonderful person maybe to come in for PD as an outside speaker and I wanted to get albeit we'll be able to listen to this talk I've already talked to Ms. Hanson we're going to sit down and watch it and we'll tell you when we're doing it but to see if it's going to be worth bringing in that was talking about how to just make a lesson plan engaging and different things you can do in the different parts of the lesson and stuff so I tried to because there's so much I can't talk about I mean you wouldn't want me to talk about it I tried to sum up kind of the three take-home things that came that really hit me the first one is just talking about focus what they're saying is one person was a is a coach and works with MDs and helping people learn how to do things better and what she said was she had been approached by the head of surgery and by one of the hospitals in Texas saying that my new surgeons come in and they can't focus for the length of the operation he can see them starting to drift away they can't maintain interest and just being able to concentrate and that's a scary thought it's a very scary thought which hospital is it it's in Texas so we're okay here but it wasn't just that place it's kind of focus is a skill you happen to be the patient and I just wanted to ask and talk about what I mean not here now but just to get people thinking what are we doing to foster this in school because it is something that I think needs nurturing and needs training and it's not something I've really heard about before and it actually made me think enhance and maybe help kind of strengthen the attention muscle something that they talked about is that multitasking is a big problem for kids that even if they think they can do it they really can't and every time you change your focus of attention you lose brain energy and so if you keep doing it back and forth you're just wearing your brain out and devices like these and those are all a problem and that also makes me think if we're doing these things like doing BYOD for the high school how can we minimize the distraction ability and what we need to be thinking about this kind of approach and how to minimize the negative things so that was one the second thing was anxiety and kids this was also the topic of a number of the talks what I was especially interested in was how there are some subtle things that contribute to increasing anxiety one of them is just if kids are not having long periods of focus that can be increasing anxiety so if they're having lots and lots of interruptions like the pings and the social media and stuff that this can be a problem and it's something that we could do something about also that slight sleep deprivation can contribute to anxiety and again this seems like something that we can work on or work on their students or to the students themselves if they're older but one of the things they talked about is how students are very susceptible to the blue light that most devices put out and that can be a problem in terms of it'll just keep them awake and that if they use the devices too close to bed that messes up their sleep cycle and then you get this whole thing going on and the take home from that for me was that there are many things that can be improved and I'd like to see as maybe get a group with a psychologist maybe a social worker people who understand children just to pull out some of the best practices and communicate them out to parents so that at least people know have a resource in things that they can be doing to help their kids instead of having to use Google and everything then the final thing was the one that I mentioned before which is that summer reading loss and low income students the keynote speaker on Saturday was a person who is her name is Joanna Christodulo she's a professor at Harvard she does research and reading and other education things she's a neuroscientist and she presented some research that she had done in Cambridge and basically what she found was having an intensive reading reading augmentation program during the summer didn't so much help kids gain ground in at the end of the summer but what it did was it kept them from dropping significantly and if you could keep doing that they would have kept on track with all of their this was in lower income students if you kept doing this they would have kept on track with all of their higher income classmates and I actually talked to Linda Hanson today I went over I got the slides from the from Dr. Christodulo and went over the talk with Linda and she's very interested in it and it's going to be that some more and it kind of roped into some other stuff that she's been doing and that was basically it I mean when you when you decide to do the slide and discussion would you just let the committee know and see if we can move on that's great yeah but we'll have the whole I mean we'll have the slides and stuff from a lot of the talks that's wonderful thank you very much thank you facilities no report thank you special study group superintendent's evaluation we had a meeting last week as we and I come up with goals and you all have two of the ones that the superintendent had presented and there's a recommendation from the group for us to approve those two goals and we also the second piece that you have in your package these are just suggestions discussed we came up using district goals goal 3-4 and I fiddled with it today there was a miscommunication I thought the superintendent was going to do this and she thought we were going to do it so is this sub goals from study group sub committee yes yes superintendent goals from superintendent we're suggesting that for the purpose of the superintendent that the superintendent have four goals the first two that you've got we're from the superintendent herself and laid out we made minor modifications in that on the benchmark we added evidence we're going to the superintendent is going to create an electronic box so as the superintendent achieves different aspects of it they will be identified put it in this electronic drop box throughout the year available to any of us those of us that want to do it sequentially during the year those of us that want to do it at the end of September in anticipation of the evaluation it will be available during the whole time it will be continuous so on the first two we could look at the practice goals superintendent's annual it's been there published as far as I know and I'd ask Cindy to correct me it was the benchmarks I think we made any changes the calendar will show in the schedule and time of each visit and at a later date we're going to provide the administrative survey that we're going to be working on Cindy's already done a draft for that probably in the first meeting in February we have another meeting scheduled for this group in January the questions being developed will directly relate to these goals going forward the other one the other goal from the superintendent student achievement goal again I think I guess I didn't I don't think we should I didn't do the adjustment isn't in there again the drop box will have the evidence and it will be also reflected in the administrative survey that we mentioned before yes actually I have a few things one quick comment is I was wondering if the study group is or I guess curriculum and assessment is going to look at the recommended documents on the evaluation form you know how there's seven to eleven documents and see if there's any that we would want to ask the superintendent to provide to us so that we use that to inform our request as we're doing the evaluation we say okay you know the state thinks that these seven to eleven documents might be valuable in doing this kind of evaluation and we sort of look through that the are you talking the actual form that we tried to go through yeah there's a bunch of check boxes on it that say you know evidence these are some kinds of evidence right and we didn't see that kind of evidence so I was just wondering I would just like to sort of look through that list have some sort of concert effort to look through that list and figure out which things we think are important then I have a couple of other small points on the first goal for student achievement there's a reference to hiring people and I'm wondering if that should be in the goal given the budget calendar does that make sense to have that as part of the goals to hiring the three substitutes or should that happen what it's happening it's happened oh it's happened already okay I see so it's not part of the upcoming budget no no it's this is this year oh this is this year okay got it sorry sorry I misunderstood then okay and then I have one more comment which is the second goal which is the going into the schools there's at the end there's a discussion about the district goals reference and some of those references seem to obscure to me like I didn't quite understand how those goals were satisfied with going into schools and doing evaluations of this principles and stuff like that that same question well one of the things in the evidence drop box when a piece of evidence is brought forward it will be you may want to speak to this better if I don't say it correctly it will identify if it's a district goal if it's dealing with a specific rubric that the state has put out on this or it's the personal goal and it may be several of those things the connecting I think their question is that there are four district goals referenced for a practice goal and they don't understand how they relate to that practice goal exactly right it has nothing to do with evidence they just want to know so I don't know do you know which one no I was just standing there and saying I just didn't see maybe I need just a better explanation of how those goals are satisfied by the practice or how they're maybe if you could just give us a little bit more dialogue as to why these are some how you think they're linked because obviously we're not making the connection that's right how's that so there's you know the one one one four one five and two four here are referenced and so just why is it that those kind of tie in right yes just a couple quick ones on numbers four and five under key actions which which goal student achievement okay to make these smart right going back to our retreat how are we going to assess the time how much time will these high school teachers be provided during department meetings to review and analyze student performance data similarly on number five you know how many sessions right how many sessions well so you just like to quantify it you would like those actions aren't goals well they've got to be measured well okay one of the things that we have available to us this time is the survey from administrators okay if we put the survey together correctly and address some of these things the administration principals department heads and the top administrators on this floor will have an opportunity to respond to these questions and provide us this information feedback again it's our responsibility to make the survey questions reflect the goals and if a question may be developed so we could have a question like do you feel you know the superintendent was you know set up so that you had enough time to do this and if they say yes or no then we would know because you're right it's hard for us to know those things hopefully between now and February we'll approve the goals in January sometime and then in February you take a look at the questions that we prepare in the survey and give this to you probably had a time to develop questions for us to have discussion here I was just going to say that what we're approving is the student achievement goal and what we're measuring is the student achievement goal and the goal is we have MCAS baseline data in 2014 for high need students and did it go up yes or no and the key actions are a sampling of some of the things the district is going to do to try to drive improvement as we're done we're trying to hit the goal it's helpful to find out what the key actions are but I'm going to presume that some of these key actions are going to impact improvement some aren't and that you're going to find some different things that work over the course of the year in a discussion we talked about that there was a concern that it might not be achieved and from my perspective if the superintendent is working to achieve this goal and there are factors that did not allow the goal to be achieved I'm satisfied with working towards this we're not looking if you make goals that are always achievable within a small frame of time we're looking at the teachers the teachers are stretched and it's understood the teachers are not going to have a perfect score on everything every single time we don't want to get into an excuse the goal is to improve the performance of high need students that's what we're driving for and we're going to bring ourselves to it and if we don't do it then we have to do some reflection as to why we didn't achieve it yes on the student achievement goal we don't clarify by what measure on the MCAS we are expecting to see student performance improve do we mean score do we mean growth do we mean percentile you know do you see what I'm saying and this I realized earlier also that we really hadn't clarified that and I'm bringing this up so we can say what are you thinking yep no that's a good idea so we're not voting on these tonight probably not but I may I get you to look at the we I'm sorry I'm just looking just in terms of the the goal in terms of student achievement for high need students I think that meets 51st percentile and that we're meeting the state of accountability targets and if we're doing that I think we're yeah I think what I'm hearing that needs to be stated in the superintendent's goal in other words to pull the language out of the district goals if that's what we're looking for yes we're looking for something different we need to clarify for both sides to understand we're on the same page different thought if you get too specific in the goal you might lose out I mean there's MCAS baseline data for high need students for FY for 2014 it's there I mean all we want to see is a year from now where are they and I you know I'm not sure how specific you need to get here I disagree because we stated we were going this is not going to work with MCAS and I'm not saying that it does necessarily we need to have a specific measuring element it's only fear to Dr. Barty to know what it is and be clear Mr. Schlickman offered a suggestion and I think we've been some of us have been using that as a yard stick again maybe we need to we need to think these out a little bit better with whatever I'm getting there if I could get you to look at that for better Cindy and I came up with from the school committee two additional goals from the district goals from the district goals goal 3-4 and I it's develop a plan space need now that may need to be tweaked we may decide to tweak it a little bit we'll develop a concise and definitive plan addressing growth of space needs now we've heard and presented to the committee no later than September 2015 now that's a suggestion that's all that is the second one was from goal district goal 4-3 dealing with the website evaluate and implement the changes and develop a new school web page again suggestion only we are in need of a web something a little bit easy to use there's a tremendous amount of information from my perspective just on that front page I would also love to see if we had a district look that then was the same on every school page like every school's front should look the same and the same information should be accessible and they should all have something that ties them back to the district look and feel this is something we have in conjunction with the superintendent I mean all the goals are in conjunction with the superintendent the personal goals superintendent she should be driving those so I guess we need more work on this it's a great start I like what the school committee's district goals are already with the website in the space we were thinking we all know we all are feeling the space issues and we really feel like we need to know kind of how we're going to move forward on that and communication being one of the things we've always wanted to work on I feel like the website was one of the things in our district goals that we could easily pull could I get a consensus from the committee just to go forward with these two or is there something we'll keep refining them that those are the two that we think we should just to make a point we desperately need a better looking more accessible website but I would worry that unless we have the people in place to do this work that I wouldn't want just cobbled together something that's slightly better but not really what we want this is where we have to refine the goals so that we do what we want so just to figure out maybe just have a plan who do we need how many hours of work do we need you know this is where we need to be in conjunction with the superintendent discuss this it's not fair to ask for something that's not totally attainable right do we hire an outside person do we do it in class let's make her do something and not give her the funding to do it yeah that sounds great I mean the goal of analyzing and implementing changes I mean we don't know what it's going to cost to do this so I think that you need to be cautious here because upgrading a website redoing a website for a big district like ours with nine schools I mean it's not cheap this language here was thrown together last minute just what I'm asking consensus from is to bring back to you this is the focus that the subcommittee wants would like to go to if you're happy with these two additional goals focus 34 and 43 can I ask a question thank you so are we are we doing 34 already Kathy I mean the thing is we're doing all the district goals no no no I'm talking about develop a plan to address space issues related to enrollment growth you're working on that definitely working on that yes okay so alright there's nothing new here yeah and I will say about the focus I think the website is something we do have to think about in terms of what can be accomplished in a year when the town did their website it took over two years and it did cost money yeah and it takes time so there can be incremental improvements the question is what we have to decide is how improved we want it and how much can we pay for it from my perspective I do not see suggesting to you that the web page of the age is developed between now and next November but we need in conjunction with you setting a reasonable set of expectations this may be an ongoing goal right a goal continued a lot of teachers have yes I just want to put the goal in perspective the website one and that the intention of it was not to have a whole new website because that just not a reasonable thing but if I feel that there are some minor tweaks that could be made that would increase the accessibility and you know it's just the front pages too dense we need to make a few different likes to them right that's always I guess I worry that if we do some minor tweaks that are better that we then forget about it right no we need a plan we need a plan we need to figure out okay I'm asking the committee to let us go back develop something with the superintendent bring it to you and at that point we have a further discussion on all four of these goals okay thank you very much we'll be down you've heard from the chair all night so I have nothing else to say on this does the committee any individual in the committee have an announcement that they would like to make yes miss darks I just want to put a shout out I was at the vigil on Sunday for black lives matter that was at the center and I saw my friend Mr. Slickman there Dr. Janger was there and I just it was a very nice event and I was just really glad the schools well represented you know we were orderly peaceful and it was was kind of nice so just wanted to put a shout out to that one last thing the joint subcommittee with Human Rights Human Rights Commission there was a slight miscommunication they do not have administrative staff so I'll let her announcing that we've formed our part of the committee did not get to them until just recently I'm in the process I will let the two the Susan Mr. Pierce will be setting up a doodle in the near future the next meeting I neglected to mention for the superintendent's evaluation group will be meeting on January 26 as far as I know we have nothing for executive session tonight nope at this time I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second second not debatable all those in favor aye all those opposed unanimous vote happy holidays happy holidays