 Good evening. I'm going to get started and read my piece as people are coming in. This Open Meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's Executive Order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate transmission, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings, and as such the governor's order suspends the requirement of the Open Meeting Law to have all such meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access can be afforded and the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment for this meeting. The Arlington School Committee is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website. Please note this meeting is being recorded. Some attendees, excuse me, are participating by video conference. Please be aware others may be able to see you. Take care not to screen share your computer. All of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus agenda dashboard. We recommend members and the public follow the agenda as posted, unless I note otherwise. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude I will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide any comment questions or emotions. All votes taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. So let's make sure that we can all hear each other and do attendance. Ms. Exten. Here. Mr. Cardin is going to be a couple of minutes late. Dr. Allison Ampe here. Mr. Thielman. Here. Mr. Schluckman. Good evening. Mr. Heiner. Here. Dr. Bode. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Mr. Spiegel. We can't hear you though, actually. Let's make this super hard. Sorry. I'm here. Perfect. I can see you. My mic isn't working on my laptop. I don't know what's going on. Ms. Elmer. Here. Ms. Peranti. Here. Thank you. I see Ms. Sheridan Curran. Thank you. Perfect. We can hear you. And I think that's it. Okay. So the first item on the agenda tonight is public comment. There was no public comment. Nobody signed up today by 3pm. So we will move along to the next item, which is the COVID testing program update. I know that. Yeah. I'm happy to do that. I don't think Sue Franke is here yet. Dr. Sue Franke. But with me this evening to talk about our testing program. Is Cindy Sheridan Curran. Who has many titles in our district. But the one this year that is probably taking up. More time than anything is our testing program. I will let her give an overview of what we have been doing, but I can't resist giving some good news of our testing program this week. That we had 385 staff members tested. And we had zero positive cases. So that was quite, I think. That was remarkable. Not remarkable, but a change from last week. We were wondering whether we were going to start seeing more of a surge post the holidays. So. As I think most people know from emails that have sent out that we have had a testing program in our district or staff members. Since September. That testing program has been run by. By both Cindy Sheridan Curran, as well as our director of nursing, Susan Franke. We'll be here probably momentarily. But anyway, if I could at this point ask. Sheridan Curran to. Talk a little bit about the program that we've had. Which has changed over the semester. And where we are today and what we're looking to be doing. And then your future. Hi, everybody. So I've got a lot of information for you. So feel free to slow me down, jump in with questions. I will try to make this as brief as possible and give you a clear idea of what's happened so far in our district. From September to present. We have done three thousand six hundred and twenty five tests. Of those we've had 18 positives. In September and a few weeks in October, we were working with concentric. By Ginkgo fireworks. That was a saliva test that we rolled out. That was, we found to be more costly than the lower nasal swab test. We worked with the Armstrong and we had one week in October where we use both in different locations. The Armstrong test was. Little less costly. And we had wonderfully empties from Armstrong, who really did a great job running the sites. And Armstrong, as I'm sure everybody on this call knows, the Armstrong has always been a really strong community partner. So that was just easy. So we had pretty, we had a pretty decent response. Every time we sense the registration out, reminders went out every week with the registration attached and additional reminders went out. So staff members were given the opportunity to access the test every week if they chose. And we had several tests every single week. On average, you know, is anywhere between. On average, I'd say about a bit three, three 25. We would have larger numbers be right before or after those long weekends. And again, our. Positivity rate last week seemed to have been an anomaly. It made for a very busy day on Tuesday. As you can imagine, eight positives has a pretty major impact. When you're talking about in person staff. Of course that was handled beautifully by the principals and staff. So. Here we are moving into next week. We're doing one more. PCR individual testing. For staff. All this testing. Since October has happened out of the high school. We use a pretty small footprint in the high school. So the traffic and the flow is, is nice. And tight. And we don't have people kind of wandering around the high school. We don't have a lot of traffic. We don't have a lot of traffic. We don't have anybody students in doing the first field trips or what have you. There's no very low impact. We several weeks ago started looking at the realities of moving into 2021. And what that would mean in terms of finances. So several weeks ago. We started attending. Meetings and getting to know what districts across the common region are doing. And then we started looking at, you know, what is the cost of surveillance testing. And we thought, you know, we wanted to continue to offer staff a reliable. Weekly test. We really had to look at the sustainability of the individual PCR tests that were quite costly. Once we. Got into 2021. I met with the folks over at concentric. They had a lab in New Jersey, which is where we were sending our kits in early fall. They have a lot of, of like any new lab, they're trying to make things efficient and quick. And so while I was discussing moving into pool testing with them, they started talking about a pilot program that they'd like to do. And if we agreed to join the pilot program, we would be able to test at no cost. So after a lot of conversation. With other people, including an Armstrong about it, we decided we would move forward and, and see how we could roll this out. So we decided that we would pilot pool testing. In our classrooms. So we started kind of planning for that and, and thinking about what that might look like over winter break. And as all of you know, after, after that, the memo came out about the state pooling pilot. We attended a meeting, a statewide meeting a couple of days ago, and they talked about the pooling in classrooms. And what their kind of design was. And they were requesting a survey to be filled out, which we did fill out if we were interested in participating in their pool, which doesn't, in their pilot program, which doesn't start until the end of January. We are already involved in this pilot program. Again, with concentric. They have not been specific about who they will be contracting with. It is likely the concentric will be one of the people they're contracting with. And so, I think that they did. Hint around that there would be more than one contractor. So we have the infrastructure. We're doing our own pilots now. So I'm hoping that we can move smoothly into the state pilot as well and continue. Testing both staff and now moving and expanding into testing. Students as well. So next week. We're going to test every single person. Who volunteers to be tested at Thompson. So every student will have the opportunity, every staff member. Again, just like our staff testing, this is optional. So we are, we're very careful in our language and inviting families to participate with us. And making it clear that this is certainly voluntary. The plan is to have a practice day. And then we're going to have a, we're going to have a, we're going to have a, we're going to have a practice day. Karen Donato is going to buy lots of Q tips. And have the children, some of the older children practice. This is a self-administered test. Now in the experience of the concentric employees, they have found that the districts doing this have done it with relative ease in terms of the self-administration. I think we all. They have done it with a lot of, a lot of their jobs and telling them to do exactly what we always tell them not to do is stick something up their nose. And do the self-administered tests. So we plan on practicing with those who are volunteering. We will have consensus. We'll know, we'll identify exactly who will be involved. The nurse at the Thompson will be very involved. And in each classroom to be sure that the students who may And then of course, the younger students will have the nurse do the swabs. The swabs for the self-administered kid, I have props tonight. These are the swabs that students and staff would use for the pool testing. Now the pool testing, we will, and this tube will be only labeled with either the teacher's name or we will, you know, we will put a room number on it or something. And that is sent to the lab along with the other tubes from the school. So the information, any identifying private information about our students, that is not provided to the lab, just the pool testing. The pool, the pool testing is done in the lab. Once it's done, and we get it back, if this tube comes back negative, we know that every single person who put a swab in here is COVID negative. If it comes back positive, of course, we've got to think about addressing that cohort in terms of reflex testing. Now, because we're doing the pilot at Thompson, we're going to offer reflex testing to anybody who participates. So our nurses all, Dr. Franke secured the by next now, which I'm sure you've all heard about at this point. Every nurses office has these. Again, is a pretty simple procedure that the nurses do. This is a card that is activated and once the swab is put in the card, and the test is done, it takes 15 minutes for the results to come in. Now this is an antigen test. This is not a PCR test. And I know we've talked a lot about the gold standard being PCR. This is, as our weeks into COVID have rolled on the antigen tests have become highly accurate. And I'm sure Dr. Franke can answer questions about about the efficacy of these different tests for you. But we plan on for the pilot on doing the reflex testing on any student or staff who comes back if they're in a cohort of a tube that came back positive. If the tube comes back positive in that cohort, that cohort then would would have to pivot to remote learning for 10 days or come back on the 11th day. So whatever school days that would be within that timeframe, they would have to be remote. So that of course from an operational standpoint, we've got some, we've got a lot of work to do to make sure that that goes smoothly. But I, we're very fortunate to have gotten into this early pilot. And it's, I think, in terms of Dr. Vody agreeing to do this, it's a it's a courageous thing to do there are many districts who I think are concerned about what this might mean for operations, and not to mention of course then just rolling it out and doing the actual tests. So that is happening next week. So we're really excited about that. I certainly won't give you all the details about what's going on and there's certainly some that still need to be hammered out as as the days go by, but we will be ready and prepared to test anybody who wants to be tested at Thompson elementary next week. That's that all for you. Yeah. Dr. funky didn't. I just texted Mr. Gerald to send you a letter in. So that's why she's not here. He's here. He is here. Okay, great. We also did a trial one this week with teachers and overlapping both tasks just so we could one take a look at the act, you know what we're finding with the accuracy which we expect to be very big 100% but also just the amount of time that's required a lot of there are a lot of logistical pieces to this that we've been working on and I have to say that there have been hours and hours of talking with the three of us and others as well about logistics because this is it's important that we anticipate as much as we can. But with any kind of piloting that we will do, there's, we're doing it this way, so we can learn in terms of what goes well what doesn't how we need to adjust some of our procedures. And of course, doing the staff was flawless as we did the as we did that. So, Dr. funky you're here I don't see you, you're probably you're here. I've been listening as we're trying is going through this but there, there is a lot of continuous research on in full testing, and I, I don't know if there's anything comments you would like to make before we open up for questions. I didn't hear everything that Cindy said so I apologize I couldn't get in. And one of the things I like about the pool testing the way that is formatted the way that Dr. Bodie and Cindy have formatted it is that we're looking at smaller sample size, which give you more accurate results. So the larger your pooled test I mean there are some places that will go up to 25 swabs, the larger your pool test the more there's a possibility for what's called a false negative. It's basically like diluted results so there wouldn't be like enough genetic material be picked up. So we're keeping the pool samples small so that it has far greater accuracy so it really is equivalent to having. As long as we keep those pool size small. It's pretty equivalent accuracy to the individual PCR tests. The next antigen tests, which would be the follow up should we have a positive cohort a positive pool are pretty accurate as well, especially in somebody who is symptomatic, even more accurate with adults than children, but pretty good fidelity in terms of accuracy. So I again I didn't hear everything that was said and I'm not sure if there's any other information that I could share with you but I'm pretty confident in the robust accuracy of this test so it's a good move. We did receive those pool test back about two hours ago so we know that, you know we're looking at less than 48 hours of getting the results which will help with our logistics and our response. And they were all accurate and was accurate. It matched our individual PCR testing so nobody pool tested this week, who didn't do a individual PCR test as well so we would know ahead of time. And we kind of tried to work through the science and logistics of this. Any questions. So I think we'll go in our usual order to talk about questions I just I want to, I have, I have questions that I will hold for the end but I do want to say. I think it's a great job that this has been just an extraordinary effort. It's something that the school committee has been talking about for many, many months and the community has and that that this district has, you know, taken a really clear and consistent lead for testing and has moved towards that it has been so impressive there's nothing there's no education or professional development that can prepare anybody to do this kind of work I've been on some of the some some emails about this in the very early stages and and all I could think of was gosh this is way beyond my like comprehension of what it takes to do something like this and so it has been so extraordinary. So the three of you and then, you know, your other colleagues have have gotten us to this point so I want to go ahead and do questions so miss extend. I just want to echo miss Morgan's comments and thank you all for the work that you have done and coordinating all of this. I think it's been really important for educators to have this kind of support and this kind of reassurance that that testing is available near their schools. And for the most part we're not seeing a huge number of cases. I also want to thank Karen Donato and the Thompson nurse for, you know, being willing to pilot this pool testing and for students I think it's a it's a huge next step. And I also just appreciate all of you being really proactive about there being financial constraints and finding ways to work to work around that. And I'm also glad to hear that you signed up for the for the state program that was sort of my question. And the comment coming into this was that I was hoping that you would choose to do that. So one of my questions is, is the teacher going into the coat like, when we start to do this. The teacher goes in with cohort a just cohort B have to then quarantine as well just because the teacher will not be able to come in or Dr body are going to have staffing. Well, the, the answer is it depends on staffing really we would like cohort beats and if let's say hypothetically a teacher in cohort a test positive, I will say this so that our, our intent is, and we will be able to provide a follow up testing right way for teachers so we will, they will know whether they are positive, I have to say that in the evolution of our thinking on this, we may not test teachers in the same batch with students but this is evolving as we think this through. But your question, should that happen. Then, as we have right now, if we can have staffing cohort be convenient school, and then we can have a staff member there and teacher teaching remotely. If that happens, it depends on the situation whether a doable that is, as I had mentioned the other day that we are keeping our other staff teaching assistants and building subs within a two grade span in elementary. So, there's some unknowns, and another unknown that we don't know is that right now that in the general population people are testing right around two and a half percent. So if we have that same percentage with our students. How many classrooms or perhaps a learning community may be affected by this and that is, I think that is one of the things that is an unknown and certainly something that we have to consider and all this and parents have to understand that as well, but that is the consequence of more testing as well. I don't know if we've talked about this so much. I don't know if anybody else wants to add a comment to this. So, we're going to take steps next week during the pilot to separate the teachers from their pools. And to test them that day with the binax tests. I for a couple reasons I think that if the pool comes back and they've been in that classroom I think there's you know what we're trying to to manages also from like the emotional impact, it may have. So we're putting everything in place that we can to assure our staff that. So that they have an understanding of where their health is as these pools come in. So I think that that will be important next week to see how that. How that works so the binax tests have been great to have and the nurses all are able to use them quite easily. So we will we will it next week, we will learn a lot of lessons. We are though hoping that we have iron just about every foreseeable issue out already and that was certainly one of them is, we don't want to take a teacher out because of a pool, and then not have the ability to bring the other cohort in. So are they. So are the teachers not the teachers are not getting tested in any pool like they're still going to have the individually tested. So next week, we are offering the individual PCR test on Tuesday so they're signing up for that. Then again this is optional. So they will have the option of participating on Tuesday, as everyone else will. They will also have the option of taking a binax rapid test, the day that the pool test is taken the day that we do the surveillance testing. So they'll have an opportunity and again though this is voluntary so this is if the teachers want to do that so we will have that ready to go and they will be offered that and explained why. So that they know they can rest well over the weekend. I believe we're probably going to do it on Friday so the results I'm hoping will be in Sunday. And then we'll have Monday of course to give us some some room to kind of figure out what needs to be done as a result of any positive cases. So we were really taking care to be sure that we have the supports in place for our staff as we're as we're going through this. So I guess what I guess my my concern is that if we pool, if we at some point are pooling only staff together. And that pool test positive that takes out 510 staff members. So that's so we in terms of the staff pool testing. We are, we've been thinking about that longer than the classroom piece because the classroom piece I think for us weeks ago. Several weeks ago we started talking about pool testing. So we kind of conceived that we would be able to figure out how to how to pull that off funding logistically materials labs. So we've been we've given a lot of thought about how we would pull staff. And in that instance we would keep the swabs you can you have a minimum of five swabs per tube. So we wouldn't do more than five. And as we're doing it we would keep the central location. So we would have a larger easier opportunity to mix the pools. So we don't have no five teachers from the Bishop walk up. You know, we're going to know that and we're going to split them up and not have five teachers from the Bishop going into the same pool. So the first issue is pooling in a way that isn't going to have a detrimental operational impact so and that's those of you know me and I'm constantly thinking about school operations. And so, so there's that the other piece of it is the rapid tests available to immediately respond to a positive pool. So, in the end what we hope is that pulling people together won't matter because we'll be able to respond so quickly that we won't be impacting operations of the building. And, and we won't be impacting personal lives either we're just we're hoping that we'll be up to speed and be able to offer rapid tests. And if the numbers continue as we have seen all year. So we're not going to be, it's, it's not going to be a logistical nightmare to test one pool of people because what we've seen is one two at the most many weeks zero. Thank you. No, thank you and I again I really appreciate how complicated this is and how much thought has gone into that. The last comment is I would, it would be great if Arlington could have a dashboard much like a lot of the other districts have just to share the case counts and and how those things are are going. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. Thanks and yes thank you all for all your efforts and for getting in both to this pilot and hopefully the state pilot. One one clarification I did see the email from Mr. Nato at Thompson and it looks like the pilot is actually going over two weeks so one cohort a is coming next week and then cohort B will be the following week. So then so it'll be over two weeks. And then what's is there currently a plan to roll that out further. Are we going to wait for the state plan to kick in. The first week in February will roll it out to additional schools. So we what what we would like to do and what we've been working every day to do is to roll this out as widely as as is responsible to roll out so we plan on engaging in the present pilot. As extensively as we can without being a detriment buildings without without bringing it into a building that isn't perhaps prepared to the logistics around it. So we most likely will see it in the middle school. The following the same week as as the Thompson cohort B is done. So Brian manager is all systems go and he's already kind of, you know, he's already kind of thought through what it would look like there and logistics of how that would work. Dr. Janger has already thought through the way that we could efficiently cool test students walking into the high school, because it gets complicated the high school music because you have the students who are there. Part of the day or the students are there full day and then the students coming in. But Dr. Janger has already thought through some of those things so people are are thinking through so we want to engage in the present pilot. As as responsibly as we can and as fully as we can. And my hope of course is that will be in a really good position then for the state to look at us and say that they've got the infrastructure and they're ready to go so that you know and allow us to participate in their pilot. Another question is the state guidance guidance on their pilot says that the pooled results do not need to be reported to the local or state DPH. Are we planning to to share that information in our pilot. Yeah, so that that I'm sorry there's we working on so many letters today that information, I believe was shared that the pool testing is not reported. As we've said from the beginning a case isn't a case until it's a case. And that is when an individual has been identified as being coded positive. So with the pool testing that's not a case that's not something that we have to report to the state, it's not something that goes in the state system maven. We do not have to report that desi also gave us further instruction and information about if we were going to engage in reflux testing, which is the response testing to a positive pool and what that could look like, and lifted some of the restrictions about what that could look like. So the states thinking along these lines to and kind of shifting some of their practices. Thank you. So we had to get what's called a clear waiver in order to do these by next antigen tests. It's basically a waiver from the state labs to be able to conduct what's called a point of care test, sort of like getting a rapid stress test Once we do that we put the information parents or guardians have also an account with something called project beacon. That is the third party vendor that is the same vendor that the stop the spread sites have so if you go to a stop the project beacon is managing your information and sending sending it to the state so the state will have the results of the antigen tests, positive or negative, but they won't have the results of the pool test I just wanted to clarify that a little more. Great. So my only suggestion is that that wasn't discussed in principle to Nato's letter and I think it's an important point for parents that even if the pool comes back positive. They're not going to the cohort might might be remote but they're not required to quarantine until they individually get a positive test. Well, that might be that might be in an FAQ or something as a follow up going. And I think we will on on Tuesday, possibly over the weekend Karen I know Karen and I are working on a project on Sunday together so we'll spend some time thinking about additional information. Great. Thank you all. Dr Allison Ampe. I also appreciate all the work that's been being done on this. I'm sorry I'm kind of behind I think there's been emails that I haven't seen, like the one from this Donato. I appreciate the desire to decrease costs and I very much appreciate the ability to test students, but I'm wondering a bit about the turnaround time. And I'm trying to understand the logistics of how we're putting cohorts into remote or not, and whether they need to quarantine. And I guess one thing that would be helpful is just if we had this whole thing written down I mean maybe it's already on there and I just haven't seen it yet but I listened to what you said and I could kind of follow it but I'm not sure I'm missing some stuff. But I'm right now what's the turnaround for the PCR test that we're doing. The PCR turnaround is about no more than 24 hours, sorry I'm in the office, 24 hours and it before it was we saw results rolling in by four o'clock the next morning. And now it's getting later and later as the volume increases, but 24 hours at the most. And what we saw with our smaller staff pilot this week was a little more than 24 hours from the time they received the box of the lab so it's sent to the lab the night of the testing. And so we're talking about today the day, two days after the testing is right now the turnaround part of their pilot is moving that marker so that it's a 24 hour timeline. So that's part of what they are working on very specifically is to get that turnaround to 24 hours. And so that was a little bit of what's the better day to do it. So that we have some time to deal with the fallout. Right that that's kind of I'm trying to think of logistically. I'm concerned about a 48 hour timeline basically that it means that we'll have more kids who are maybe exposed but maybe not. And I can't, there's too many things up in the air for me to figure out what it means but I just want to say, I appreciate that we're saving costs, but have the PCR tests gone up in price or are they staying the same. They're staying the same if the cost per week is pretty drastic. For those who are opting in the, you know and again it's a matter of the timing I mean if we, if we did testing on Fridays, then we know that that those results are back and we can manage the operational piece before people are back in school. But for Mondays, if we do it Mondays, then we can get it done by Wednesdays. I understand what you're saying and the 48 hours, you know I breaking a cold sweat if it's 6am and the results aren't in yet. We are talking in terms of student population. It's, it's kind of that or nothing. Right, and that's I understand first I'm kind of delineating between teachers and students students I think anything is great. And so I would like to see all this and writing by somebody, if possible, just because it's, it's too hard to put all the pieces together and think through and be able to ask. There's a lot of pertinent questions, but one other thing I wanted to know is, what if you had the staff test both with their cohort and in a single pool so do two tests for pulled so that that way, if only one of those is positive. You know it's not the teacher. Right, I mean, or if, if, yeah, basically if, if one of those is positive, you know it's not the teacher in that cohort. And it, I mean, yes, it gives you one more test to do, but it's a way of maybe keeping some of the kids in school or keeping a teacher in front of them for hopefully not, you know a little bit more inconvenience and stuff so. Yeah, Dr. had a whole algorithm about that. So we could just do pool testing and we'd know the results. You know, yeah, people participated in several different pools. I do believe that as we roll through this, what is also going to become available is is more of the rapid antigen by by both Abbott labs and by concentric. And we may get to a point very quickly, where for our staff, that's the offering. Okay. I guess the other question I had about the antigen test and Dr Frankie said that it's positive, especially in the case of a symptomatic person but if somebody is symptomatic they shouldn't be going to school. Either kids or, or teachers so I'd like to learn more about how that works if in asymptomatic people. So, thank you. You want me to answer that now or. Yes, please. So it was Lowell general they did a study that was well over 1000 people and they did common in testing PCR and antigen and within a seven day window they had the most accuracy of anywhere on average 85 to 98%. The folks who were truly asymptomatic and had zero symptoms. They, they didn't, it wasn't quite as robust. I mean that is a concern because I do wonder about children, especially if their viral load is low. But at the same time, if their viral load is low and they're not producing a lot of genetic material, because it's early days for them then it may be negative on the PCR to so it's not a perfect system. It is a really great system. It is a system that's being used in many states across the country as just a screening tool. A lot of places aren't even using pooling tests pool tests they're just using the binax tests. The cost of them is relatively low we're getting them for free from the state right now, but I do have confidence though that the problem is you mentioned someone shouldn't be coming to school if their symptoms and you're right they shouldn't be but we're seeing it happen. There are some mild symptoms, even with adults oh I have a headache well. There's so many things that could be a headache, but it could also be covered. So I think sometimes people are on the fence of she was I just have a headache. And they coming in anyway, fortunately every by next test we've done so far has been negative. But, but you are raising a very good point. Good question. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to echo what everyone said about the good work. Our team is doing I think you know it sounds to me like we're way ahead of other districts. My. So my observation is 18 positive tests out of 3500 test taken I forgot the exact number. But that is that is a low that's low that's I mean I think people should feel good about that. Do you have any. I can tell you that's a very low rate, I mean, do you have any comparative data other school districts that are doing testing into how we compare, like, and also I do want to clarify for the public. We're talking. This is testing of teachers and other staff or is it just teachers we're talking about teachers and staff anybody, but I will qualify that you have to be in a school building to qualify. So, how do we compare to other districts as anyone have that that have you kind of talked to any colleagues and other districts for any information. I think the person to ask is, perhaps Dr funky who is in touch with a lot of the other directors. First of all, not that many districts are testing as we have been testing. So there's probably not a big pool of people to compare to. So anyway, let me just let her answer because I know she's in constant contact with her colleagues. So, the biggest rollout that I know of as well as Lee they've had a pretty robust rollout. And they're getting their numbers are not high they're not getting large positive pools. So that's good I mean they've had some, you know, some high school kids that have come up positive that's. But it's been a pretty good rollout for them and they've they've utilized different testing formats as well. I'm not familiar with everything that they're doing, but it's been a successful program. I have to tell you that I'm really surprised that this a lot of the surrounding towns are not doing it, but might be are certainly considering it. I had a meeting last night with some of them. The only one that is doing testing on students right now is Medford but they're also in the collaborative with Summerville and the Broad Institute through Tufts. So, I think that's why they're rolling it out as well. And they've had pretty good luck they've had to shut down schools as a result of some of their testing. And I think that's kind of anecdotally through some of our own nursing staff. But yeah, a lot of our surrounding towns who I'm in close collaboration with are just starting to look at this. I think we should feel good about the positive your positivity. I mean I think it's a very good sign that people are for the most part being careful and cautious and using good judgment. And even if you know I don't want to, I don't want to, and even those, and I want to imply that people who test positive are not using good judgment, but I think we have a low positivity rate, we should note that and be aware of it compared to other other places. And the other point I was, Mr. Cardin was asking about this and I was confused as I was following along about who, and I'm talking about student pool testing. If a student who test, so who's going to quarantine can you clarify that like if in a student situation, is that there are two different responses to a COVID positive case there's a school response and then there's a quarantine order. The school responses, if you are a close contact if you've been identified as a close contact, then we will see you on day 11. Day zero being the day of the contact, and then out of our buildings for 10 full days and then back in on that 11th day quarantine orders have shifted twice in the last couple of months. So right now the quarantine orders are if you test, if you test negative on day five, then you can come out of quarantine at the end of day seven. They are, so for us, if you're close contact. We'll see you on day 11. If a positive pool comes back in a, a classroom. In that classroom, we know there's a positive case in that classroom so that classroom those 12 students and that teacher would be considered close contacts in an elementary setting. Those 12 students and a teacher and a TA would be considered close contact so they would pivot to remote. The circumstances of a pool test coming back positive, even if, if we roll this out. District wide, if parents choose not to get their students tested and just keep them in quarantine for 10 days. So you can quarantine for 10 days. If you don't test, and you have no symptoms. So, we may not know if we roll this out we may not know the individual who is positive, because we can't force anyone to have an individual test, but we do know that that small group of people are close contacts. So those, so we would want to keep those pools together so that it doesn't have an impact outside of a group that wouldn't otherwise be close contacts. So automatically everybody in that pool is a close contact by definition and you really can't do the kind of contact tracing you would normally do. Right, right. Okay. I was confused about the dilution of the pool. Dr Frankie was saying what so what is it, but we're talking about 1012 people in a pool. So, I just want to just insert something so in the new lab with concentric, they, they are not diluting. So that is. Okay, this is really exciting because each swab that the accuracy will be much higher in a pool test like this in a test that is diluted. And I thought that was important that we're involved in this particular pilot and they have that and I'm sure that Dr Frankie can explain that further, but that in with the concentric lab, their accuracy rate should be better than some of the surveillance testing that's going on across the country where those labs are diluting the samples and because the average size of a pool is if I heard you correctly is 1210 12 people is that consistently yeah so okay that's a small, it seems like I mean I'm not into the field but okay. So I can't speak on concentrics, I would love to go toward the facility, the new one that city was mentioning. I can't speak on what they're using as any kind of Jill you end or I don't know how they're processing them specifically I the information that I'm sharing is all straight from the CDC. So, which is easy to find CDC talks about the larger the sample size, the more you can have that false negative result. Because of because of the daily one so. Okay. Yeah. Okay, thank you for clarifying me. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Schickman. Thank you. This is this this sounds really good. I'm really impressed by the work you're doing this town is maintaining a website and is reporting statistics and the thing that has me anxious is that for the age zero to 19 cohort. We had 53 cases on the day before Thanksgiving, and yesterday was 161 and I don't know this is the graph that that applies, and I'm just wondering. You may not have the expertise understanding what's going on with the whole cohort of townwide cases, but I'm just sort of wondering how this compares contrast impacts what we're looking at with our students. So they, I don't know what the most recent breakout is, but the last breakout of that age group that we saw. It was clear that the high school age group had a higher incident of transmission and positive cases. So that, I mean that tells us, I guess that it can probably tell us whatever we want it to tell us, but for sure, we see that, you know, high school students are not some of them are making many of them are making very safe healthy decisions. And others are less concerned and possibly they aren't concerned about the individuals they're with at home. But there's more togetherness at the high school age and probably some of what they're engaging in is a little bit riskier, which is of course natural that high school students would behave in a riskier manner than the younger students but that. Last time I saw it broken out and Paul I don't know what the latest breakout is, but I do know the last breakout, and possibly the one before that that it was the 15 to 19 that had the larger numbers. So hypothetically moving forward, even though the states and really tough shape right now we're one of the top five in terms of per capita I believe when last I looked at the Washington Post, and we're above the national average in terms of confirmed cases at this point. So, you know, I am nervous I am anxious I am worried, just because of what I'm seeing being expressed publicly. I guess the translation that I'm hearing from you is that for our K to eight operation we're doing really well the teachers aren't testing positive the kids are doing well we're not seeing many cases but hopefully by the time we get to having kids in the building at the high school on a more regular basis in February that curve will drop down and will be in a little better shape so we're going to be watching that right. Some teachers in the high school are being tested right now. Teachers who have been working with students that are in the school. So it's not like we haven't tested any teachers at this point, and the incident rate has been very low. Now I understand that I'm saying as as we get to the point where we're going to have more kids in the building at the end of February. That's going to, you know, we're sort of hoping that the curve will be down the vaccinations will start to kick in and we're not going to get slammed as soon as we start increasing our student population in the high school building that that's my hope in my worry to Well in the high school Dr Janger is here. We're still maintaining the six foot distance the mass, all of those protocols that we had in our other schools and our ventilation system has been brought up to design capacity which I think is really important in this, particularly in the winter months and some rooms putting air purified so we're putting in the infrastructure and the safety protocols says keep this as safe as possible but to your point and Cindy's point, this is the age group that would have a higher incidence than our younger children. And that's been shown with the, the town data as well as data other in the state as well. So have we received an estimate as to when we are going to be able to start vaccinating teachers and professional staff who interact with kids. Well, teachers are in phase two as you know, the estimates of this keep very quite a bit. And I know that right now, the role of who's going to be in which particular group that can be vaccinated one has been changing a little bit. And the Department of Public Health is rolling it out more on a week to weeks, you know, two weeks out kind of information. So the short answer to that is we don't know. And it could be that some of our, our teachers who are 65 and older and who maybe Arlene Arlene to residents may be able to have earlier I'm not sure this. There remain a lot of questions about this. I think I've asked that question so many times. And the, I don't think there's any clear answer on that right now. Okay, just as word leaks out. Let us know because absolutely. Yeah. Thank you very much. I yield the balance of my time. Mr. Heiner. Thank you all. Dr. Frankie. Miss Kern, I really appreciate you and all your staff and all you've done. When you sign on for these jobs you weren't expecting to be doing anything like this and very appreciative of the quality of the work you're doing. When the pilot is over. Will this be done. We're looking to do this and all the schools at least once a week. How often will this be done. The goal certainly is once a week, whether or not logistically that will happen. And when we say tested once a week. You're talking about two different cohorts so in fact that's twice a week so we have to look at how we can manage that district wide, and if that is plausible. The other question and bear with me because I don't understand how you do this. In the classroom. There's a pool. We all get tested. It comes back one of them support. We get a notification there's a positive in that in that class. So we're all totally go home for. You'll see us on the 11th day as you said, is there immediate testing on that day we come back. Or do we assume that if anybody had it. They're over it. We don't have to follow state guidelines and CDC guidelines in terms of their own quarantine even without taking a test. So yes, so there would be no requirement once quarantine is over. And once our 10 days are over we don't require tests to come back. Okay. Just just to clarify though but once the pool come back positive, each member of the pool will have an opportunity to come in for a rapid test. So, is that a question about the classroom or staff. Classroom. So, in our pilot. We are going to offer an opportunity for that testing district wide. We don't know if that's if we will be able to provide that level of reflex testing for all the students. And then for the pilot we plan on doing that. We don't want to promise something that we can't deliver. And so we need to be mindful of will we have the material to do it do we have, you know, right now, total we have 400 and something by an accessory is it. We have the first 400. We have about 750 ish. And then we have, and you can imagine that we could roll through that pretty quickly. And if we don't have an ability to get to replace that then we have to see what the weeks bring. We, I know Armstrong. So there's a habit is talking about rolling out and making available these tests much more widely. And so that will make a difference as well. Just to follow up. So the student needs to get the result comes back positive. Do you then consider isolating all you know the students in that room. They have brothers and sisters throughout the district. Is there a ripple effect throughout the district. No. Okay. So there is no, there will not be, we will not consider anybody outside of the pool of close contact without having an identified positive individual case. So there will not be contact tracing as a result of a positive pool. Beyond the contact tracing of anyone who is in that small cohort. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first one is, and maybe this is actually a question for Dr McNeil. Can somebody remind me about the translation capacity for the Google form we're obviously relying on that to do that parental consent at Thompson and I know that I know that Karen's great about making sure that everybody can can read it and gets it but but I know that can can somebody just remind me about where we're at on translations for Google forms. So, when, when there's a, we have various forms that we translate in of itself, so you don't have to go through the Google, you know, translation process so if there's a form that we feel that, you know, needs to be translated into that particular consent form. We can send it out to base state translators. We have a line item in our operational budget to handle that, and we can get the form translated and then in the languages that we've been identified as the most frequently used in Arlington. Okay, but that hasn't happened yet. Correct. Because I from what I believe I don't I'm not sure if we have a Dr Franke can affirm this that we I don't know if we have a final draft of the consent form as of yet. I have sent a draft, I don't know if it was finalized or a vetted yet, but I did send in content draft. Okay, great. Well, let's just let's let's let's get that translated as soon as as absolutely right. It's really important because we really want people to engage in this because it's only as effective as it is that people actually sign up. My other question was, so I know that we've had a couple actually a couple may not be right. I know there's been at least one after school teacher at Thompson that was a positive case. Are are the after school teachers that Straton Bishop down and the best program eligible for testing, because they're not technically APS employees. Yes, I are they're not. They are great. Okay. Yes. And the other question I had. Oh, so, so we were talking about these teachers right and they're in their pool, and then there's five of them, I'm better with like specific numbers so there's five of them, and the pool test positive. And so then you buy next test them, which makes sense and you have your result right away is a negative by next test enough for them to come back into school, as long as like presumably of that five you get you should get one positive right or two or five God forbid, but assuming they're not a close contact which whichever is your pool like your, your positive, then that teacher can come back to school. We, the by next test is good enough for us, a negative on that as long as they are not a close contact is good enough for them to get back in. Yes. Okay. And then for the, for the students. And I have two questions about the reflex is the problem is that the reflex testing is the hard part right obviously. And so the first part is so next week, right. I don't know, we get our first positive pool back would be my what I would expect how are like we going to bring those kids back into the building like one of them has coven right. So, like, how, like, how, how is that going to how's that going to work, because we're going to buy next test those kids to find out which one it is. Right. And again, that would, that would, that would be a different additional consent. So again, this is an offering and they do understand. Okay. So the next question is going to be about, once we're out of the pilot but let's, I'm playing out the first, you know, next week first in my head. So, if, if a positive pool came back, we would contact that family, and we would already have a plan, we will, we already have a plan in place. We have two different plans actually. If they choose to, we'll give them a consent. That was one piece that desi stated on the larger state meeting earlier this week is that they will allow a cohort to come back in a building for the binax now tests. If the pool comes back positive. Now, would they come, they would not be coming into fully into the building if we did it in the building at Thompson. We would have an in and out exit strategy and then we would, we would have that particular area electrostatically cleaned after and, and, and then some. And it would be a very small footprint. The other plan is to do a depending on the numbers and the weather is to do a drive up. So, when we do staff, staff testing, we started staff testing, part of the challenge for staff, excuse me, part of the challenge for staff is if they were close contact. It was, it was difficult to be told you can't come into building for a test that we're offering staff and you're close contact specific, especially if they were close contact there was as a result of being in the classroom. We, we developed a drive through system for those staff members who are in quarantine or, or if they were on a travel quarantine. So we've already done, and then we did a drive through in October in a much larger way. So, we could do a drive through weather permitting, you know if it's raining out of snowing out that could impact the testing itself. So, if it was a smaller group, and a drive through as possible, or a walk up was possible. We could do that Thompson was one of our sites. When we did. When we broke it into three different areas in town to do test staff testing at the beginning. And the nurse over there, Christina DiNafrio who isn't just superstar. She has a whole system out the window of the nursing office and she she's figured that out. So there's several different scenarios that we already know could work. And of course we want to be mindful for any residents who don't have vehicles to access a drive a drive up. So that will be the plans are in place we know where it could be. And we know all the circumstances on that particular day that would make one of those plans. And that would make a better improvement and make a better operation. So, that helps, thank you. So, alright, so now we're in the next phase, right where where we're not doing the reflex testing. What I'm hearing is that kids students are not going to be pooled with other students with whom they would not be considered close contacts. In other words, my kid is only good my kids are only going to be in pools with other kids who if they had tested positive for COVID, if they tested positive for COVID, my kids would already be close contacts of those kids. Okay, so then, because we can't do the we were we're not we at this point we don't know that we can do the reflex testing on the kids so the pool comes back positive. I'm going to get a call from the Board of Health or the Department of Health to say you're a close contact, because we're not doing that but I'm going to get a call from the school department and they're going to say, there was a positive pool, you're a close contact. Right. So then my kid, I understand they can't go to school, but they also really can't go anywhere else, either. So that I guess that like that's the peak because like I've always the way it's always been in my head is that the Department of Health quarantines people, right, the school district like not really right but you like the school department can say see you on day 11, you guys can say see on whatever day you want as long as you're beyond whatever the state says, but that the quarantine order is the piece that I'm trying to like wrap my head around. That's an excellent question and I think that is another point of clarification that we need to make to families. Maybe over the weekend or at the beginning of the week. The pool testing comes back it is not an identified positive case but we as reasonable people know that somebody is positive. That cohort that would be close contacts anyway if that individual is identified would go out of our building and we'll see them on day 11. They would not be under a quarantine order. Until the time that that you figured out who the kid was in that pool, who has COVID, at which point the Department of Health would say, you're a close contact because you were with because we now know I mean, you wouldn't tell. We wouldn't tell them who the kid was but they would now identify the kid and then they would know. That's correct. And we would work as we have all along we were very, very closely with the Department of Health, and we've gotten to a point where we're doing like these large scale contact tracing events. We're not doing the contact tracing we're assisting them, we're getting to a point where we're figuring out how to communicate together, so that we don't have. I think the thing that was really confusing and difficult for families early on who were close is they're getting a communication from us they're getting communication from the Department of Health, and then they have questions and who do you call so we figured out how to combine very efficient clear way that information. But the quarantine order still comes from the Department of Health, it might come through us, but it's from the Department of Health. And in a case of, if Jane you took your child for a PCR individual test and your child was positive that would be reported. We would work with the Department of Health so there's it's not like this whole other piece to what really should be kind of a nice smooth operation so you're not kind of not bumping it up and changing dates. So it we would work together with them so it wouldn't be kind of this this this whole thing and also to try to protect people's privacy. And of course, I mean really the thing is if the if the pool takes 48 hours to come back, and then we either need to wait for if it's in the pilot, it's going to take another some amount of time to get that by next testing. I mean nurse Christina is a is a miracle worker but she can't bend time right so there's going to take a certain amount of time to get that testing back. You're going to be close you're going to be starting to bump against that fifth day where somebody could go and get their PCR test and then be out of quarantine I get they're not coming back to school, but they're out of quarantine on day seven. They get like you could be very close to your potentially I see scenarios where you could find out I could find out there was that my kid was in a positive pool, but then it, I could be very close to that fifth day for PCR testing. So that then they're released from their quarantine on day seven. What I anticipate is that families in Arlington have been so thoughtful about this regardless of kind of what their opinions are about some of the details but people been so thoughtful so my, my expectation might, I believe that what will happen is probably most people want their child to be tested contacting their pediatrician and, and staying in. I don't, I don't see, I don't see a scenario where parents are their child is part of a positive pool, and while they're not in our buildings but they're running around the community I think that we were very fortunate to have a community like this and people been really thoughtful about it. I agree I just think that they're stressful situations when they happen to you and so having there be like a really clear flow chart of like okay so like when can we act like, how does that actually work like when are you actually in a place that you can go okay. Um, that's it. That's all I got. All right, anybody else. Follow up after we went all the way through. Okay, seeing none. Thank you. Sheridan current and Dr franke for coming and for spending so much time explaining us, explaining this to us tonight it's so important the work you're doing is so valued. And so anyway, that's, that's, that's all we have. Just one last suggestion that we, we'd put out a district wide notice that this is happening because people are going to start talking about it. Now that it already has gone out from from Thompson. Okay. The next, and Dr body, do you need miss Sheridan current or Dr franke to stay beyond. No, they've stayed longer than they anticipated so thank you to both of them they have just been an amazing team of people to work with that you can tell the level of expertise and and commitment to this work. It's complicated. I can assure you having spent many, many hours talking with them of all the various things we need to think about. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm trying to be better about releasing people when they're done. All right, Dr Janger Arlington high school update. Thank you for your patience. Hello. Well, it's always good to hear this gone through one more time because there's a lot of details, and I'm always trying to fix them in my head. So, I'm come back as I understand it to give an update on where we are in the semester to planning so there's some details that have been clarified in terms of the departmental shift. And then the details that are clarified in terms of what we're doing with the, what we're calling now at the moment the in person Academy. In terms of increasing opportunities for students to have in person instructions is it okay if I share the screen for it. So I'm going to go fast because I know that all of you have heard many versions of this before so hopefully you'll be quick studies there is a. I'm going to send this slide show out tomorrow there is a little recording in there and I'll add some recordings for the different sections. But the basic summary is semester two is going to look a lot like semester one and that most of the classes will be remote. And following a similar schedule there's some differences students who have been coming in in person will continue to have those offerings available to them. And there will be some expansion of offerings, mainly based on identified students and students for being invited in. So those are the two big pieces. So in the departmental shift, each class will come in for we've now determined for six in person classes those shifts per semester. That's roughly every other week if you take out the first and last week, and the weeks of MCAS and AP and other interrupted weeks. English math history and world language will rotate through the large spaces. And so they have their own rotation and then science facts art and performing arts at this point we've figured out the spaces and the basic rotation they're going to have individualized schedules and specialized labs. And in the next couple weeks we will explain this to the community and let students choose whether they want to remain all remote they'd stay in those classes. And then we'll start out of the shifts and be provided alternative assignments. We've also developed lists of hiding students. And from those lists as I'll explain in a minute we've developed with the class offerings will be, and will be I will be in fighting those students over the next couple of weeks. What we'll get concerned about or confused about is if in the departmental shift students should expect that they can keep their current course selection and they'll continue to take three or four courses per week. We're starting with making sure that everybody has the opportunity to take their three courses. And if there is additional, if there are additional courses or additional seats available in those courses, we will let students where appropriate take a fourth course. So if you look at the schedule it looks a lot like but a little bit different from the schedule that we've been sharing if you remember the last time I came here. I said that there was a solution for some of the travel time things but that we hadn't cleared it past folks and now we've had a chance to discuss this with all the departments. So instead of what we've had this year. I'm sorry this semester which has been for 80 minute classes that were remote Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday. We now have five classes a week same number of minutes of instruction, but it's 7070 and then a 40 minute class on Wednesday, and then 7070 again. And what we've done in order to do that as we've shifted those PE classes, the P1 P2 P3 and P4 to the middle of the day. So that's one of the things one it gives students a more structured time on Wednesday and opportunity to check in which for some students I think is going to be really important. There's been a lot of conversation for students low but still it really appreciating the sort of break. And so there is still this break in the day which is that it's, you have the X block in the afternoon where students can get extra support, we can have meetings and clubs and those kinds of activities. And in the end students will also have a screen break that's a little longer spread out across the week. And what we see here is at any half the school is taking PE. And there are, and you know only one quarter of them are in any of these periods. So at any given one of these periods only one eighth of the students are in there. So most of the students at any given Wednesday, any given day, have an 80 minute break and so the idea is, if you go to the shifts that the students are coming in as we've talked about 20 minutes early or 20 minutes late depending on whether it's a or B or C or D block is half an hour breaks between the classes to allow students to transition home. But if students aren't able to transition in that period of time or don't want to. They can stick around and then there's an 80 minute break in the middle of the day that allows most students to transition in for their C block, or out after their B block. So this is the schedule people wanted to know the time so this is the shift periods just so you can see the difference in times. Nobody would ever follow this whole schedule the teachers would the student would serve they're coming in for an A block class. They would come in at 830. They would finish that class at 920, and they would have then until the 950 class to get to their next class the half hour for their remote classes, and then the teachers. And this is actually a nice feature of this. The teachers have the 50 minute class, then there's the 20 minute break before and the 20 minute after and the 20 minute break before. So they actually have a good chunk of time to make their. Their setup changed allowed the build the rooms to air out between classes so there's a really high level of COVID protection in terms of this model. And it's interesting because we know that the district as a whole has been having a lot more in person contact than most of the high school. But there's a concern in the high school obviously that there's higher level that tend to be higher levels of infection and transmissibility among the older students. Because we're doing this kind of spacing in the room we're in really using the larger spaces. And we're creating a large gaps between large cohorts of students. So we really can minimize close contacts, and we can really do what I've been calling extreme distancing if we choose to. And so we have a lot of flexibility there. So the way the departmental rotation is worked out we asked the teachers, so that we could try to work around their daycare and other needs whether by department they preferred Monday Tuesday or Thursday Friday. It worked out pretty well. But actually the different departments wanted different days so the current plan is that in a two week rotation it would go English for two days history for two days. Math for two days and more language each teacher would only come in for one of those two days in order to have all of their classes. And then, in terms of labs as we've worked it through. We're creating these specialized labs we've got a two room chemistry lab. One two room physics lab to two room life sciences labs because there's a lot of classes that need those facilities. The visual arts labs were doing to two room visual arts labs although it may work out sometimes the teachers choose to use all four if they want the kids to spread out more. And then the culinary labs have actually already been doing a rotation using both of their culinary labs. Performing arts have a schedule that is too complicated to explain but we're going to we have six patio heaters for under the links to allow for outdoor singing which will push mainly towards the warmer times of the year. They can do some work in the theater, and there's a whole bunch of new guidance around essentially masks for for for instruments and so they're using those spaces as they can. Most likely some of those will shift their time so it won't be on an exact rotation, but they may do one day in and then wait a couple weeks and do two days in to do something like a lab or a special activity. But the expectation is that those classes will come in at least six times. And so we've talked already about sort of what is the difference between the shift and the reverse field trips. There's the frequency but to is the planning that we're really going to have facilities set up for those folks so that they can come in and run a class. And that students are expected to opt in or opt out so teachers will know in advance who they're expecting to come and how they're going to plan around what it is they're going to do. And so this is that sample student now working around the actual rotation we envision this student has four classes because they're taking chorus. But the idea would be that they would come in right for they so imagine their day on Monday is the first day of the English rotation their teachers coming in that day. So they could do block a and block B remotely, and they would have 80 minutes to travel into school for their 50 minute English class. And they would have a half hour to travel home or if they chose, they might stick around and do a study hall and stay in for their English class. The next day Tuesday would be all remote Wednesday would also be remote with the 40 minute classes Thursday again, they would have 70 minutes 70 minutes remote they could transition in during the 80 minutes and take their English and study all, or they could transition in during the 30 minutes and have their history for 50 minutes. And that's the same as you go through the rest of the week. So in this one as you see they would have an English class in the history class the chemistry class in the chorus class. Now it might work out that they cluster a little bit more. You know, in one week or the other week, but the expectation is that over the course of three week of a two week rotation, you'd have all three or all four of your classes. And just as reminder because some folks are saying you know what are we going to do. Obviously we're not going to hold in person instruction if that's a change in the district as a whole. If there's reasonable concern about in school transmission and we don't feel that we can do so safely. And the nice thing about this setup is essentially that the teachers and the schedules don't shift if a student needs to be remote or a cohort needs to be remote. They can cancel that shift, and if possible make shifted again later. And then any and all students may choose remote so there's not changes in what's offered to the different students remote and as we said before we're developing considerations about how those students will do it in each of the departments has talked through what their expectations and what they would do in terms of alternate assignments. So we have an in-person academy and what we decided to do with the in-person academy was to work sort of deductively that is to say start with student needs. So the deans, the guidance counselors have gone through the DNF list, gone through the attendance list. They've gone through students that are coming up in terms of screens or on social emotional concerns, and they're getting recommendations from the teacher, the teachers have created a list of high-need students. We have a list of like 90 students on there. And then they're looking through to see first of all what classes those students need, and whether those students are appropriate for or receiving services elsewhere. There are other options. Our special education students have all been offered in-person instruction. This program is still running. Harvard and Shortstop has room. The Learning Center is an option. Study Hall is an option. And we've also been doing individualized credit recovery with students using Play-Doh or tutoring or other programs. But the courses have been chosen to serve the identified needs of the populations. So the idea, having looked at those students, what came back very quickly from the teacher is, given the concerns about these students' ability to engage, having them come in for two days in person, one 40-minute remote, and then two days independent, they weren't particularly convinced that those students would be successful. And given the numbers that we're looking at in terms of high-need students, we think that we'll be able to offer those students four days of in-person with the Wednesday remote. So that's really what we're targeting, which would be classes of 12 to 15, based on our using four or five of our larger classrooms. If you expanded it to 20, which would be the reasonable size of those classes, you'd add only a small number of students and you'd significantly drop the contact time for students who we think really are going to need it. Because most of the time, these issues are on social-emotional connection, which needs consistency and executive function, which really needs that consistent contact. So staffing has been a challenge. We've posted in English, math, science, and history. We've done some hiring, but science is, we are already a couple of staff in the whole in science anyway. We would have hired someone earlier just to fill large class sizes. And we've had some staff that have left, so we are right now, we could easily off hire two more science teachers. So we think we might be able to offer one section of science. The idea is that the classes would be offered A and B block, so that students can fill their other academic needs in the afternoon, either remaining in the school or if they want to transition home. If they're in special education, they could receive their special education services and their third class in the afternoon. So I've already explained this that we've got approximately 90 students identified and we'll start inviting soon. And what the sections that we at this point are planning and offering is we have staff two sections of algebra one and two sections of geometry. In English, we would offer a 910 English that would be a sort of different than nine and different from 10th. So a ninth grader could take it and then do 10th next year. A tenth grader could take it and then you know they could flip flop. Either way they could cover both of those get those things. And then in history we're planning on offering us one and us to because a freshman can take us one, and then follow up with modern history modern world. We're hoping that we can get an additional section staff in which case we would also offer modern world which is the required sequence in science we're looking at offering a physical science class. And if we can staff it. And then the rest of this is actually information we've talked about before but I just think sort of important to know that there's still the 128 students are in school. Those numbers are increasing. Well, they fluctuate their substitutes to choose to transition out. And we bring students in as we identify needs. And the timeline that we're working on which is really very tight there's an enormous amount of planning going on in terms of getting things ordered. And scheduling getting the information out to the kids changing kids schedules, preparing the rooms all that but the idea is that we're, we're now around here. So we are, we'll finish up the department rotation schedule specifically that's actually pretty much done it just needs to be put into a clean form, having the students often knocked out by the 25th so that we can have a couple weeks to finalize their schedules and then February 8 semester begins, we have a break after the first week and then we would begin the shifts February 22. And so we've been buying lots of things. We bought speakers we've got screens coming in we've got headsets coming in for students headsets coming in for teachers. We've got projection screens, electric lights all that thing those things are coming together pretty quickly. And then it's important to know that we're continuing to develop these other interventions right the credit recovery the in person options for struggling students. Right now the mental health screener is going forward at this point we've screened the freshman class, and the senior class. I think that about 30% of students are coming in at elevated levels of, I guess, concern, which is consistent with what we've seen in other districts. And every single one of those students that is individually contacted their parents are contacted and they are offered, depending on kind of where they are in the hierarchy of need is students who really extreme risk they're recommended for evaluation. So we're going to support them and getting outside support. And then students who are simply sort of an elevated level of mental health distress, where we'll begin or beginning to run support groups in terms of resiliency and supporting the students and that's been a really positive experience of making sure that we're having individual contact with each of these families and making sure that they're connecting to the resources because often, as much as we think we're getting the word out. The most distressed are not really in the ability to find necessarily or to just straighten it because there's so much information coming out. There's individual contact. So that is it. Great. Thank you, Dr. Jinger. Questions or comments from the committee. I guess I'll look for for hands at this point. And then Mr. Heiner. Thank you. Thanks for the update, Dr. Jinger. So with regards to the shifting the time to Wednesday, I see how that does help with with some travel time concerns, but I've heard some concerns from from faculty and students about that and I wonder what whether you've heard that similar concerns or whether you think the faculty is on board with it. It does require them to re chunk, you know what they've done this semester into new new new time frames. So I think that's that's where the concern is students don't like, you know, losing their Wednesday mornings but that's not not as much my concern as the faculty having to redo redo what they've just done. So, I mean, the faculty have been consistent, they'd rather not change their schedule. They have really appreciated the way in which they've been able to use the time right the time has shifted at any minute break every day is nice, but having this sort of larger time that they've already planned how to use and gotten used to using as a preference. You know, and so how would I say this. There's only, there's only so many things we can do right so the question was either to not change it which would leave us with the concern around travel time which we heard pretty strongly from a lot of folks. Or to change it in order to support that in terms of the Wednesdays I heard on both sides as you guys have heard most of these surveys and things that some people really loved the Wednesdays and some people found that for their students. They really needed the structure that they seem to sort of slept late and and didn't make good use of the time. We thought about surveying folks to see whether or not we could do it. And this point, I mean I if the school committee told me that you felt that it was important that we survey folks to get feedback on it I would do so. Sometimes I feel like it's important to simply let people know what they have to plan for, because if we decide to go one way or the other, then they're waiting another couple of weeks for us to go around and get the survey out get the feedback back and to make the choice sometimes on things like schedules. There's no keeping everybody happy. And so you sort of have to make the call. I spoke with each department individually. And people were like I'd really rather not change, but I can live with it was basically the feedback that we got. And then some folks who are feeling higher levels of distress or I'm planning, we're more distressed around making changes. So I had made the decision. Yeah, as I said to each of them, I sort of made the decision to take feedback. And if it didn't seem like a deal breaker on the part of everybody. This seemed like an option that was better. And one of the big examples is our Boston bus we're going to run a new bus, because we'll have more students coming in from Boston. And so they won't be able to fit on the bus all the time, but they can come in the morning, we can actually have the Boston bus take students who came in the morning, home in the middle of the day. So that then the remainder of them can go home with the bus that they share with the middle school. So those sorts of shifts really make a difference in terms of equity for a lot of kids. And so if it wasn't something that the staff are saying we can't do this it's going to break our, our structure. We thought we would do it as one person said, some people experience this as instead of having four classes I get five so I feel like I get more contact. And some people said, but it's a big thing that to shift it around and sort of scrunch my classes. And then as one wise person said, yeah, I'm actually happy about one and mad about the other, because it's just changing what it is we're already doing. Okay, thanks. I just, you know, wanted to hear that concern. You know the other, the other option would be of course just expanding the lunch, you know, to an hour which would have to extend the day which would be, you know, a contract change but I didn't know, you know, I just wanted to make sure that this is more of a collaborative process and you know, at least some thought was given with the staff to come up to the solution. So this was shared with the Faculty Senate and the Union before I met with you. Back on December 10, but I hadn't had a chance to and then over the week before break and then the week right after break I hit the last two groups. We reviewed that with all of the departments. Great. Thank you. Anybody else? Mr. Thielman, and then Dr. Allison Ampe. Oh, sorry. It was Mr. Heiner after Mr. Cardin. Heiner, Thielman, Allison. Thank you, Mr. Cardin covered what I wanted to ask. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. Thank you very much. So I just want to make sure I'm clear and others are clear. Each class will come in for six in person shifts per semester. So if a student has two classes in that semester, two core classes, they'll come in 12 times. Well, the vast majority of students have at least three, three. Okay. So they would come in 18 times. Correct. Okay. We get to a point where staff are vaccinated and the situation is different. Is there a way to shift to more in person learning and say April or May or even June. So you guys have asked this question every time and I get it because I asked myself the same question. So I think realistically, depending on the content area and the staff, there are many folks who are trying to figure out, I mean, right now, family consumer science has actually been bringing kids in for shifts already. And they do it every other week. So they're, they're, they're a little more rapid. I think as teachers are more comfortable bringing in the shifts and finding the more useful. You might see where there's space, people bringing in more shifts. If we're not able to change the spacing, and if we still have to keep everybody six feet apart, we still have some significant limitations in terms of the facility because although the teacher may feel more comfortable, we're still expected to keep everybody spaced out for the welfare of the kids and transmission in the community. So I kind of wait for somebody to tell me that the levels have gone down and the level of infection has gone down, and that that means we can be closer together and put more people in a room. And then, yeah, potentially you could find a way to sort of bring people in more regularly. And it would really depend as everything is on the actual physical constraints that the folks gave me and you, you've seen like with the testing it's the devil's in the details right it's in terms of exactly how it works. It's possible, but I, I think more likely as numbers come down and staff is more will do a be able to really push more into sort of some of the in person social activities things like senior events will be a lot easier to run. If we can get more staff and more easily to supervise those split them up cover more students. And then this question came from a person in the community I want to make sure I answered it right so I'm happy to be corrected. About the six foot distance between deaths is from the center of the desk to the center of the desk or is it from the edge to the edge. It's a center to center it's. It's sort of shoulder to shoulder as I understand it the reality is the nice thing about the spacing that we're going to use is, you'll have plenty of room, right, because the classes are not going to be. I mean, what's weird about this is we were not going to fill all of our spaces to capacity because there's no it's sort of not enough to do a lot more. So, you know, you're going to be having an entire 25 kids in a 3000 square foot room. You're not going to have to wait. Can be six feet shoulder to shoulder can be six feet nose to nose we have plenty of room in those rooms for the whole class is there big rooms. Got it. You know one thing I would just say as mean if we get our staff vaccinated on. This is one person's opinion so it doesn't really it's not a doesn't have the weight of law here but I do think the district should do everything it possibly can to bring students and staff back otherwise you'll have people going into the summer not believing we're going to open in the fall. And that is not a good message to send to the community. So I'll leave you with that I don't. I'm one vote here, but I will tell you that just my, my, my sense of the community right now is the parent community and the parent student family community in the town is that that's what they want to see and that. And that, you know, so that's something to keep in mind as we proceed over the course of the next several months. I mean, I can't agree with you more I mean we want, you know, we're trying to keep our hand on the tellers we wait to see what's coming going ahead. Right and as the epidemiology shifts we're watching it we meet every week in the core group. And we will do as much as we can, you know, we're reading the tea leaves like everyone else, hoping that you know in February is if we get February vaccinations and by March people have their second vaccination. And at the end, I mean, you know, you can count forward how it goes. I when people ask me. I said that I, I'm strongly helpful as sort of expected in the fall we will be back in person but I don't know right but I everything, having as a as a person who talks to a lot of people and thinks really hard about it. And with vaccinated staff with I think most anybody or anybody over 16, who wants to be vaccinated vaccinated by June. I think that's realistic with summer dropping off because we have spacing. And so numbers in the non vaccinated population dropping down to kind of where things were last July. It's reasonable that we would be able to see an ability to be closer together with precautions in the fall. And then we just all have to sort of take a deep breath as I've been trying to do and like not, I can't, I can't read I can't. If anybody told me on March 13 that this is where we'd be now. So I would never have believed it in a million years so I have confidence that things are moving forward positively. And I think we just have to kind of breathe our way through things that are within our control and as soon as we can make moves we will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation or truncated presentation, Dr. Jenner. So, I have also been hearing from families in the community concerned about the transportation, especially people say way deep down in the east, where they're having to drive their kids to school because they there is no way for the kids to get there quickly. So the new schedule, if kids have a PE class, is it going to be scheduled so that it's not next to a class when they're scheduled to be in school so they get the 80 minute transportation block to understand what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean we are not planning on hand scheduling, you know, Johnny so that he doesn't have an A block English shift and and on that one every other Monday, a PE class. I think the number of individual kids for whom they live in the park corner town they don't feel like they can walk. You know, we don't have buses because the expectations that the town is sort of walkable. They don't want to ride public transportation and all the reasonable things but the number of kids that that's going to individually impact. I think is going I've done the math like if it's this percent of this percent of this percent of this percent is going to be extremely small and I think then they can give us a call and you know we'll look at whether we want to do a lateral move or whether you know that teacher doesn't care whether they're on Monday and Tuesday in this room, although that probably will affect more kids so most likely would be kid would look at a schedule change, or the kid might choose to opt out of that in person instruction. Like that's the only way I can imagine being able to do that. That makes sense. So if the family, we can tell families if they're concerned about their ability to get the kids on time with the schedule that they have that they should reach out to the school. But you've got to be on any given day, one eighth of the school has PE. But then what percentage of that those kids then have English a or B block, so that affects them at lunchtime. And then, you know what percentage of those kids live in the far corner town I think it's going to be a tiny number of kids and we'll just talk to them. Yeah, that's fine. It's just helpful. The only reasons we allow for a lateral move that that will probably get me in trouble because lateral moves there are not very popular and create scheduling problems. I was thinking this PE could be moved. Yeah, you could switch PE classes easily. Yeah, that that seems like the easy one. And then I'm still confused by the families who are very strongly advocating for in person education because their children are not thriving at home yet from your description for the in person Academy, I don't have the sense that we're picking up the same kids who were their families were so concerned about. I don't know. But is that your sense or, you know, are we talking about two different groups or is this, are we actually picking up these ones who are, we're so concerned. So, we are referring kids and make the list of 90 kids includes kids where there was social emotional distress. It probably does not include what I would call the worried well, like, you know, there are people who write me a letter saying my kids doing okay but I'm really worried about them. Right. And those folks it's not picking up because that's, that's me. Like that's, that is a very large percentage of folks we would rather kids are back in person. I will say that you know once we've gone through the list and this is something we're struggling with exactly how to do it and we'll wait till we know what the numbers are. I actually think that once we go through that list of 90 we will still have capacity we still, you know, but unfortunately a parent is very concerned about their child and we are, we are picking up we're having conversations with those folks. As a result of the screener so the deans and the guidance counselors are calling. And that's helping to flag for us whether we think we have services that will serve those students unfortunately for some folks that are writing those letters. What they want for their kid which is what I want for my kid is a feeling of normalcy. Right, it's not that they want, they could come in right now and be in the learning center. They want to come in and be in a class that feels like a normal class. Right and, and that requires us to get everybody else in but then we don't have room for everybody else. So, you know I think there will be some folks who think that's not what I was looking for but I think that is those folks should contact the counselors and sort of think about ways to problem solve what they can do. But again if the kids actually doing fine academically if they're doing their work they're just really want more social interaction. They're probably not going to want to do this program. Okay. And then my final question isn't exactly related to this but I'm just wondering roughly what percentage of students right now are taking three classes and then what are taking for. I think we're going through that trying to figure that out exactly, but it looks to be about two thirds are taking three and about almost a third are taking for and then a small smidge more taking five. Thank you. And we're hoping that we can get those numbers up and that'll depend on some on staffing in term to. Okay. Great, thanks, and I'll be driving soon so I'll be off but listening. And just to answer that question so we've asked parents who are requesting that their student be able to take a fourth academic class we're keeping the list. And basically they're on the waiting list once we've gotten everybody into their required classes. Mr. Heiner. We are this high school students going to be required to take an MCAS test this year. We don't know the January MCAS so funny we keep writing notes and then to keep not being quite right so I want to make sure I get this right on camera. The January MCAS was called off at the moment the recommendation Kathy correct me if I'm wrong but the recommendation from the Department of Education is that there not be that for seniors who need the competency determination seniors who haven't passed the MCAS that they'll do it the same way as they did it last year for science but that that would be that they would do it based on passing MCAS level classes. And they won't have to take the MCAS that has still I believe to be approved but it's what the proposal is and is what I expect to happen. They're still saying that they will have an MCAS in the spring, and they haven't given us all the specifics. Dr. Bode, I think it's important. I'm really concerned for those students for prep. I realize going to be a lot of latitude as a result of COVID and everything, but a student that may not have math this semester and all of a sudden confronted with an examination not having it. So we are targeting students who we have concerns about who are not in those classes to make sure that they are getting MCAS preview classes and support so that I mean it's a small number of students that are only going to high school thankfully. And so we're targeting students for extra support. But historically pre COVID and everything's to be students in the sophomore and junior years taking it, trying to get that requirement out of the way. You're talking about basically seniors that you have concerns with them I can. So if there is based on their performance in ninth grade, and their performance in eighth grade on the MCAS student who in 10th grade, we are concerned might be at risk of not meeting standard on math or English MCAS. We're making sure that those students get extra support. Thank you. Yeah. Anybody else for Dr. Janker. Great. Thank you, Dr. Janker. Thanks for coming. Thank you all very much. The next item on the agenda is the synchronous learning time report. I do want to, I want to make sure that people are aware that we did meet. Was it only yesterday. So we met for a long time, like, I don't know, a couple of hours in CIA led by Mr. Cardin and talked about synchronous learning time. So we've covered a lot of this already. So, Dr. Bodie, do you want to go ahead and start? Yes. For some of you, this will be repeat by thing for people who are listening to this for the first time just want to give a brief overview of what has been asked of districts. So back in early November. The Department of Education was trying to get a sense of really how many instructional hours students were receiving either in person or synchronously. And I think at this point, everybody in our district knows the difference between asynchronous and synchronous instruction synchronous being where you actually have a remotely a teacher leading the instruction. The data was rather details in what they were asking. So it was broken out into. Well, first of all, was we're only looking at four grade levels, but we were looking, we had to provide data on the hybrid program, the remote Academy or if you had a remote program in some other way. So the students who might be receiving more instructional time than the typical typical student would be. So it was a rather significant dive into some of this data. So just for example with the, the hybrid program. One knows we have at the K a we have both a hybrid and a remote Academy. So the data on both those programs was provided, as well as the additional time for students so just take the hybrid program so we had to look at the number of in person instructional time in person non instructional time remote synchronous time is instructional time remote asynchronous instructional time and remote not instructional time. So any kind of non instructional time. The things are falling to that for at the elementary level. Lunch recess. And I think at the beginning of the year we were finding it's not surprising that there was more time spent in, and having students learn the protocols of how you walk to the halls. The halls of hand washing and that was done multiple times a day. All of that, which affects our data has been trimmed up since the beginning of the year. So the same, the same thing was done at the seventh grade level. And then the 10th grade. Now, in the chart, people who are accessing this will find that well where's the fourth grade data. One of the questions they ask upfront is, is the amount of time in your fourth grade program, similar to the time in your first grade. And the answer is yes we have a consistent elementary program across the, the full system so the answer is yes. And at the time, districts. We're not able to review any of the potential errors or confirm or any corrections that would happen with data so back in December. So in mid December, a district for giving the opportunity to go back and see if there were any errors because one of the issues we had the original. I don't think I mentioned yesterday is that you couldn't see your data when you entered it, you could only see the first digit of your data. So if you had four and a half hours you can only see the four. You didn't put decibel sympathy, but so that was not something that you could prove very well that changed by December. And so, but also in reviewing some of the data, some of our linkins did change. And that was all done in consultation with our principal. One of the report they they have provided a report in terms of our instructional time and they look at a district in terms of whether your primary instructional models hybrid, or it's remote. Arlington is able to call a blended district so we have the 10th grade we all know we have a remote program and that has been true for the first semester. Okay, eight is a, we have both, but two thirds of our students actually more than that are in the hybrid program as well like 30% are in the remote Academy so the dominant model is hybrid. And I'm not quite sure how this the hours in this new mandate were determined, but the new mandate, or districts that have a hybrid predominant model is the students receive 35 hours of either in person, or synchronous instruction over a two week period. And when we looked at that one, when our data was assessed and I knew this upfront, well I didn't know what the 35 hour requirement was until after the December data was submitted. Our elementary program has 31 hours as of November in an early November. And I want to add to this is that when we did the corrections in December. We didn't change it based on what was happening in December we still had to keep it. What the case was in November. The long and short of it is this that the elementary, we have 31 hours. At the middle school 37 hours over that two week period. And the high school. So when we put the data in December we're thinking about it in terms of instructional instructional program. We've refined that a little bit more since then, in terms of what those hours would be if you are remote program, you have to have 40 hours. However, as we've been talking about tonight the high school in a couple of weeks is going into a hybrid, and the high high school also would would have to have 35 hours of instructional time over the two weeks. So, as we look at the element so we're fine at the middle school and the high school. So in February we'll have a focus on right now. And some of that instructional time is being has already been increased it's not going to be it has been just in tightening up the amount of time for non instructional activities in the course of a day. We are looking and have already put up plan today to the, the, our specialist teacher, and this will go out once they have a chance to look at this plan. We will share with the rest of the elementary teachers as well. And the plan is that we're going to increase for each student, an additional specialist class during the course of a week so a will have an additional effect, remote specialist class on the remote day and be the same will have one. By the way, this is not measured, this is measured by cohort. In turn, so that technically though, this gets really into the weeds but it's actually sort of important to know that a district is number of hours that you need to increase is determined by a district average, not a grade level or even in this case to grade levels. So, technically, we only need to provide another hour. In fact, in the report. It says we need to increase our instructional time with the elementary by 12 minutes every day. And how that translates is an hour a week for each week. So, we have met that requirement just in terms of what we're currently doing but one of the things I know elementary parents have talked about is that they would like a more robust remote days. About 40% of our students right now have more than morning meeting as special. They have reading support, academic support, math support, and formal music. But we need to find more for the other 60% as well. So that will be going into effect on Monday, January 25. And the thing though is a little challenging is that we will do that and that I have to for the district report the data of the two week period from January 25. For the next those two weeks, the week of the 25th and the following week. Unfortunately, and I say that fortunately that those two weeks happen to be the end of the quarter because the schedule that parents will receive for their, their child will change in quarter three because specialist schedules change. But, and so I'm sure some of you, some people will say well why don't you just wait to quarter three. And if we're going to meet the mandate of 35 hours for. You know, a student hybrid program. This is something that we need to initiate sooner than just quarter three. So, I know people listening or heads are probably spinning about this. And it is a little bit in the weeds a little complicated in terms of numbers but the, the important message is that, that we are going to meet the mandate at the elementary of 35 hours of either in person or asynchronous. I'm sorry, synchronous instruction. And we have, we don't need to do anything right now at the middle school to high school. I have questions. We did talk about this a lot with that you Mr. Thielman. No, okay, sorry, we did talk about this a lot. A lot yesterday so I appreciate the efforts that are being made to bring our synchronous learning time into compliance. And so I look forward to seeing what that looks like for our kids. The next item on the agenda is the Student Opportunity Act SOA for approval, Mr. Mason. Thank you. Can everybody hear me. Yes, okay. First and foremost, I like to know that this plan has got to you later than we would like. And I know it puts us in a tight spot. In order to get this plan submitted to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. So with that said, the deadline for the Student Opportunity Act plan did move several times. And the, the adjustment to the incremental increase in state aid led to inquiries that we had sent to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. We were informed earlier this week in regards to which form we should actually use for public schools. It was also uncertain if certain if the districts would be required to complete the plan at certain times because of the amount of funding that the state that the state was providing was not really being implemented to the levels that was supposed to be implemented initially. The Student Opportunity Act was, as you may know, was legislation that was established to fix the deficiencies in the chapter 70 formula, which was established back in 1992. And that the Student Opportunity Act also that was this overhaul to that formula which made some revisions to the foundation budget rates in where the chapter 70 budget didn't have a formula did not keep up with the the needs and the inflation over time. So the Student Opportunity Act was originally supposed to infuse $1.4 billion in new spending for education in the state over a space, a seven year period and I'm certain that phasing has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Student Opportunity Act also requires that we come up with this this evident evidence based plan that we've drafted in is here for your review. And we have to show how the district would intend to use the incremental increased funds that was being provided by the act. So interestingly enough, what I spoke earlier about the reasoning of why we didn't know what form to fill out was that we desperately bifurcated the process into using two different templates, because about 35 districts was getting the majority of the funding, as I indicated in the memo to you. Arlington was originally supposed to fill out the long form, because we were anticipating over $1.5 million of incremental increase in state aid. But however, due to the pandemic that that number did change when the budget was actually approved to about 590,000, which was a big difference from the 2 million that we were originally projected to get. So a plan that drafted that you see that we drafted includes the initiatives that this committee in the school administration has already discussed throughout the fiscal 21 budget process. All the initiatives that you see in this plan was approved and and was included in the school committee approved budget for fiscal 21. The initiatives in this plan that we've listed out does meet the $590,000 that we needed to at least identify. And we also surpass that amount in this drafted plan. I just wanted to note that I did update the memo and the plan and it was updated the novice, which is different than the one slightly than the one that you got earlier. Because the one thing that was not included was a certification statement about the certifying that the engagement with stakeholders. So I would like to let you know that we did engage the stakeholders. And because we can certify that throughout the process, there was engagements with this school committee, district administration, a union representation with their proposals being heard throughout the budget process, as well as principles. Coming to this committee as well as consulting with their school site councils. So I would say definitely that this plan was developed with the input of stakeholders. Once again, sorry that we're getting this plan to you at this point in time that gives you a limited amount of time to prove the SOA plan. But hopefully this committee can take on the motion that was stated in the memo and approve this SOA plan in order for us to certify that the school committee voted to approve this plan prior to us submitting this to meet the required deadline of legislation. At this time, we can open it up to any questions. But I'll yield to the chair for that. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Mason or Dr. Bodie on the SOA plan. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to support the plan. I'm not going to be able to support the plan. Probably because we just got it today and probably because they don't believe we went through the proper process and developing the plan. There is a deadline tomorrow. We do have to, we can submit the plan without certifying that the school committee has approved it. And it can be amended later with our, with our certification when we do approve it, or if we change it with, with the amendments. So that's what we're going to do for the process to develop this plan is not sufficient. You know, I do think that a lot of the stuff in there is good and that may end up being what we decide should be in the plan, but I do think that we should put some effort into developing the plan. There are specific call outs to meet with special education parents and ELL parents, which we haven't done. I just think I realized that, you know, we aren't getting the funding that we anticipated we would be getting for this. So that doesn't allow us to switch to the short form and have a much lighter plan than than we were expecting. But I would like to see us, you know, deliberate deliberately go through the process of developing an actual plan as outlined in the legislation. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to ask in and then Mr. Schlichman. Mr. Curtin sort of helped clarify some of this, but I guess, I'm still trying to understand. So, this, this is for this current school year. Are we getting the 500,000. At some point that they already give that to us. Sorry, I'm still trying to sort of understand how this is all. If I can answer that. Yes, please. So the funds that 590,000 that we've already received. Not it was an incremental increase to the, the state aid amount that was provided to the town. So fortunately, that we already have a formula with the town. It's not used to fund the schools in our winter. It doesn't necessarily correlate to the amount that they would get increased from the chapter 70 formula or any other adjustment to the legislation, which we're seeing with the student opportunity act. So, if, if you recall, our actual increase of the budget was like over $4 million that we got. The original purpose of these funds was due to the change of the student opportunity acts was making was that we were going to get $2 million over what we got in the from the prior chapter 70 state aid amount. And we with getting those additional funds. The communities had to identify how they would plan to use those funds, and we had a process in which we went through to a campaign for a, an override that would address and increase our budget over a multi-year period. And part of that process did engage the, the community, and it did some of the part of the work but this happened actually after we did that process. So this would call out for us to do a little bit more, more work towards that. So this, I guess I'm trying to understand it. So this form that we're supposed to approve is for, for last this current year that's happening. Yes. So, yes. Okay. FY 21, the current one that we're living in. And it wasn't submitted in the spring because of COVID and the budget was up in the air and the state budget wasn't approved in the spring. Right. It was actually approved at, you know, after we were well into the fall really. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify it, Mr. Cardin. I actually did meet with the CPAC last year when this was originally due I understand your point that this is now later, but when this was originally due in the spring, I had already met with them in the winter for the special ed feedback portion. thought were important. I could go back to the minutes. I'd have to look them up, but we did discuss this on an agenda. Mr. Schuchman. Let me call Bovine excrement on all of this. Not directed at Arlington, but directed at the state. What has happened is, is they passed the Student Opportunity Act and said to communities who were getting significantly more money in Chapter 78 that was targeted by student demographics that they had to go and fill out a long form. And even though the communities that only got a minimal amount of Chapter 70 increases filled out the short form. Yes, we got a larger Chapter 70 allocation and the initial appropriation. The additional Chapter 70 money was not a part of the Student Opportunity Act funding. The additional Chapter 70 we got was a direct result of an increase in student enrollment above the amount that would trigger the cap on minimum local contributions. So the state really didn't give us anything under the Student Opportunity Act, but yet the state is coming along and saying, because we gave you all this extra money, we're gonna make you jump through all these hoops, fill out these reports, dot all these I's, cross all these T's. And as far as I'm concerned, whatever we put on paper, which is accurate because we did make these increases in our spending, no thanks to the state. We should just approve this thing, send it off to the state and be done with this nonsense. I would also favor having a conversation with our two state reps and our state senator about the silly requirements under this act where we really didn't get any additional funding, yet we have to go and do all this additional state compliance. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm voting yes on this and I wanna be done with this. Mr. Gellman. I feel the same as Mr. Slickman does but my language is not as creative and colorful as his. I feel like the idea that we need to have as much dialogue, have more dialogue and conversations about closing the academic achievement gap and continue to do that work is very important and obviously we can always do more and do better but I'm not sure this particular motion is the place where we are gonna solve the problems that are the challenges that we face like many districts face. So I would support what Mr. Slickman said and that is that we dispose of this and that certainly we have to keep and continue to address all of the questions that are part of the SOA which is looking at academic achievement gap for students of color looking to English learners and students with disabilities. So that's my position on this. I'm gonna, when the motion's made, I'm gonna vote favorably. Anybody else? Any more comments? All right, does somebody wanna make? Oh, Dr. Boddy, go ahead, sorry. I'm just like, I don't think it really is I won't say it's a formality but it was very important to us and make sure that we, since we really didn't get the money that we didn't have to fill out the long form which is a very long process I might add. So we can, I just want this committee to know we can submit this tomorrow and amend it later or go back and bring this up in another school committee but we will submit this unless you see that there's any particular data that you don't remember from last year but these were all positions that we include the FY21 budget, which were there for the intent of the money that we really didn't get. So, and I'm not sure we're going to get any money in FY22, it's hard to say, yeah, we haven't gotten the governance budget. Mr. Shepman. Recognizing the fact that we're accountable to the voters and taxpayers of the town of Arlington and to our appropriating authority of the Arlington town meeting, who were the ones who provided the lion's share of the funding that enabled us to make these improvements and that I don't want to see this again. I moved that the Arlington school committee approved the included student opportunity act plan for submission to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I'll take the motion. Discussion? Ms. Ekston. I'm going to abstain from this since all of this seems to have been done before I was on the committee. Any more comments, questions? Okay, so motion by Mr. Shepman, second by Mr. Thielman, Ms. Ekston. Abstain, Mr. Cardin. No. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Shepman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. And I am also yes. All right, is that all you needed, Mr. Mason, from us? Correct, for this section, yes. Okay, and I will say just so that the rest of the committee knows, I didn't know that this was coming until the end of the day yesterday either. So definitely these are the kind of things we want to have a chance to look at and read, especially if it requires some kind of motion for approval from us. All right, the FY22 budget priorities discussion, this is something that we do as part of our budgeting process. I was looking back earlier today at the presentations that we got from the elementary and secondary principles back in December. It felt like kind of a lifetime ago, honestly. So I think that the intent of this, and Dr. Allison Ampe, you may be able to speak to this being chair of the budget some committee, but it is partially for us to provide our thoughts and input into what is prioritized as part of the FY22 budget. Dr. Bodie, did you want to give any or Mr. Mason any sort of overall thoughts on the FY22 budget? I mean, it's all up in the air right now. So it's hard to have really, so I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but do you want to give any kind of preamble to this discussion? Let me actually, could we conflate a little bit the two agenda items because it does relate to this? I don't, Mr. Mason, could you talk a little bit about the town budget allocation? I think normally we'd be voting on that tonight. Yes, so I can provide you a little bit of information. It's really a simple one sentence thing is that that we do not have a number for you this evening. And that is because that after speaking with Sandy Pooler, deputy town manager, who's been working with the town manager, Adam, on trying to determine a number, they feel that there are still questions about the number that would be provided for the school committee to approve. And they believe that further discussion needs to happen between the school committee and the long range planning committee. They do feel confident that a discussion can be had after the governor's budget is released, which would be on January 27th, 2021. And at that point they would feel that they would have a better idea of the funding scenario that's provided from the governor's budget. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Dr. Allison Ampe, is there anything you want to share as we talk about this from subcommittee perspective? Okay, so I guess we'll go ahead. Go ahead. Yes, we can hear you. I can't talk right now. Okay, I asked Mr. Cardin to speak to the budget number a bit if you wanted to. Great, go ahead, Mr. Cardin. Yeah, I think Mr. Mason just updated us on the most recent information. We did have discussions at long range planning about what that number should be. There wasn't a final decision. There are two things that were open were the enrollment growth because we're not predicting any growth. We always get the growth a year after it happens and so we didn't have any growth, we had negative growth. So they agreed not to take any money away because we had a negative number, but they're not gonna give us any money because we didn't get any growth. So the proposal is to put some money, maybe the same million dollars that was in there for the growth that we were expecting to have which was probably too high to begin with, but some number would be set aside in a reserve fund in case we do get unexpected growth in the fall. So that's still open as to what that reserve fund will look like and when we'll be able to access it and how, but that would only happen if we got more than the 287 students that we lost back. And then the separate issue is we agreed in the spring to cut the number in our budget because of the fiscal uncertainty and the likelihood of state aid cuts. And the amount that we cut was from the 600,000 enhancement funding that was part of the five, the four year plan and the override. So the four year plan had 600,000 in the first year, 602nd year, 800,000 in each of the third and fourth years for enhancements under our five year plan. And we basically lost 460,000 of that last spring. So the question is, I think everybody has agreed that we will get that money at some point, but the question is whether it'll be next year a spread out over two years, saved for the third year or where that money will come in. Adam is releasing his budget tomorrow, I think. And so I think there's gonna be some sort of suggestion in there about how he might wanna handle that, but he hasn't communicated that to anybody as far as I know. So that's where we are. Great, thank you. So are there, do people have thoughts, priorities, suggestions, things that are important to them as we look at the budget? Yeah, we should probably go in order. Let's go in order. Ms. Extin. Thanks. So I mean, I guess my first priority is that we can maintain what we currently have. Beyond that, I think going into next year, maintaining as small class sizes as are possible. So at all of the levels, there were reserved teachers requested and I think maintaining or increasing the learning community at the OMS is important, particularly next year after this sort of uneven school year, maintaining smaller class sizes, allowing teachers to develop relationships with students, meeting the needs of learners that may be struggling after the challenges that we've had. I think we've had this plan for Vice-Principles sort of rolling out and that keeps changing. I see a lot of value in having Vice-Principles. They support classroom instruction, they allow administrators to hold on to meetings and with staff that can get interrupted, they support principals and educational leadership. So I think in terms of really lifting the overall teaching that's happening in schools, I think that Vice-Principles are something that we should continue to consider. I've asked myself a lot about what's gonna have a bigger impact on student learning in terms of what elementary principals requested. Vice-Principles, a reading coordinator, more reading coaches. So I would look to the administration and their requests in sort of giving us more guidance with that. And then thinking a lot about the social-emotional needs of our students going forward. So thinking about the social workers at the Gibbs and OMS. And I know that the high school was thinking a lot about that as well. So those are my thoughts right now. Mr. Carded. Thanks. So I agree with Ms. Exton on most of her priorities except for the principals. I do think we need to continue adding assistant principals but I don't think we can do it all in one year. So both from a budget perspective and from a quality of hiring. So I would recommend that we find which of the elementary schools has the greatest need and add if they wanna go towards full-time assistant principals add to that one school. The two half times that we have, I think at Dallin with an SLC program could definitely go up to full-time. Not sure it's quite needed at hearty yet, but that kind of detail is for the administration but I don't think we can find all the positions this year. My priorities instead are as Ms. Exton said, class size, keeping them as low as they are or in some cases lowering them. And then all the support for remedial needs, the instructional support specialists, the reading tutors, the social workers and all of those other positions that were identified at the various levels. So that's my prioritization. And I'd like to put the remedial needs first and then the administratively needs to the extent that it's funding available. Thanks. Dr. Allison Ampey, should I come back to you? Yes. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Thank you. So I agree with Ms. Exton's comments about reserve teachers and Mr. Cardin's comments about reserve teachers, that's obviously a high priority. I am a believer in the assistant principals and I do believe the committee should be supportive of the request of the principals. The hardest thing sometimes in running an organization is complex as a school or certainly a school district is execution, is getting things done. Operations is making sure that there's responses to needs of parents, to making sure that teachers are supported. You never have enough people sometimes to bring cohesion to a school with 400 or 500 students and we lack enough, I think administrative support in those schools and I think that could put us in dangerous situations at times. And so I think the fact that our principals thought deeply about the need for assistant principals and ranked them number two says a lot about what they see from the vantage point of their schools, operating their schools. I mean, I think every principal would want more teachers, would want smaller class sizes, more reading specialists, all the good things they need in a school, I'm sure of that. But they ranked after reserved teachers, principals as their second priority and that's from the point of view of the people running our schools, our elementary schools in LA every day. And so I have to respect that. I can't substitute my judgment for theirs and I will tell you when I was earlier in my career even on the school committee, I would be the person that would advocate for fewer administrators and then I got into administrative position myself and had to run the school and organization and I appreciate the need for this kind of administrative support. So I would be supportive of it. I realized it's not the whole committee's position but that is my position. And I'm struck by how convinced and unified the principals themselves were and how much they prioritize this need. And I'm reluctant to substitute my judgment for theirs because they're running these schools every single day and they're in them every day and they know what the needs are of their students and their teachers. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, thank you. I think that Mr. Thielman makes an excellent argument on behalf of the assistant principals. The administrative workload to run a much larger building than we started out with 10, 15 years ago is considerable and we do need to lighten the load if we're going to be able to retract and retain principals in the district. How we move forward on that this year, I don't know. I mean, there's so many things that we don't know at this point with the budget. The two things that are at the top of my mind, one are social workers in that we are going to have a lot of social emotional needs coming back and the discussion of social workers over the past month in which it turns out that they are almost exclusively dealing with special ed students leads me to believe that we need to beef up our game in that area. The second thing is that the unknown we have on our enrollment side is how many students who would have come to kindergarten for this fiscal year are going to come to kindergarten in next fiscal year. So I would wanna make sure that we have enough money set aside for an extraordinarily large kindergarten next year and make sure the resources and the space and the materials for a successful kindergarten are in place for next year for one that's gonna be considerably larger than we're used to having. We're gonna have a bubble coming through next year is my guess. So those are my priorities meeting kindergarten needs and getting through the social emotional needs of kids coming back from the pandemic and making sure we have enough social workers to do the job. Mr. Heiner. 20 plus years out of the classroom. I'm still looking at the world as a teacher and value all the things that teachers need. If I could write a blight, if I had a blight check I'd get every one of the things that all my fellow members have just mentioned. I think Mr. Schluckman said it, we're in a unique position. We need to be able to support the mental health of not only our students but our teachers and administrators going forward or whatever that takes. We're in a position right now that we don't know how much money we're gonna get. So maybe this question should be put on an agenda item in another two weeks when maybe the money gets a little bit better. Thank you. So I wanna talk about two years ago when we tried to hire it was either two or 2.5 FTEs of assistant principals and we're unable to do so. So I, given that I anticipate our FY22 budget is not what we might hope for it to be I do not want, I'm fine with doing some of the assistant principals for next year. I'm not okay with doing it at the level that at three and a half FTEs. First of all, I think it's unrealistic to hire those people within one year. I don't think that we're gonna get the best people. And we didn't, two years ago, we tried to get one for the Thompson. We didn't get anybody. We ended up hiring a social worker sort of in that spot which is fine. Nobody said to have a social worker but we still never got that position as an assistant principal. So we still don't have somebody. So I just wanna be realistic given that, I don't think we're gonna have a ton of money to spend. Then I wanna make sure that we put in the budget a realistic FTE number for vice-prins or for assistant principals and don't try to do the whole kit and caboodle this year and then find out in August that, oh, we couldn't do it so we don't have these people but we have this money that's allocated. So I wanna be really realistic about it. And I don't think that a full wholesale bring everybody to 1.0 is reasonable or realistic but I'm fine with doing some of it. I think that social workers are probably my number one especially six through eight but also nine, 12 and K five. Class sizes need to be kept as small as possible. So I want to provide both Dr. Bodie and Dr. Holman Dr. Bodie until the middle of the summer and then Dr. Holman in the late summer the flexibility to have reserved teacher positions that can be deployed as things shift and move. I think Mr. Thielman's comment earlier about families looking to see what's going to happen and whether our schools are going to open for kids full time either this spring or in September is a real consideration and I wanna make sure that our superintendent has the option to deploy teachers to make sure that we don't get into a really tricky situation someplace. And then I also wanna make sure that we can reasonably settle our contracts that are up this year in whatever way our negotiating teams end up sorting those out. So those are my priorities. All right, any other feedback? Yep, Dr. Allison Ampey, go ahead. Thank you, sorry. So I echo much of what has been said by everyone. I think my main goal is to bring to have a plan to make our schools the vibrant learning communities that we want them to be post pandemic, post disruption starting in the fall and also to address any learning gaps that have occurred over this time. I agree with lower class sizes. I wonder if adding extra classroom aids if we are in situations where we can't decrease class sizes past a certain point because of space constraints if that's helpful. I agree with the idea that we need to be messaging what we're going to be doing. We need to be doing that now so that because families are going to be planning for next year and they're gonna be making their decisions soon. And then I agree we need support for our teachers and that we'll need support for mental health and stuff such as social workers and counselors. But the other thing that I haven't heard mentioned is whether we want to be doing anything special specifically to address the learning gaps which have occurred. Things such as extended day summer programs education programs, tutors, online resources, things like that. I feel like we would benefit from maybe a two year approach to trying to get all the kids back up to where they should be. And I'm hoping that we'd be able to get some idea about what that would be and to see that reflected in the budget. And then I also agree that we need to be thinking about our negotiations that are ongoing and that we want to do the best job with those that we can. That's all. Great, thank you. Any other follow-up from anybody? Okay, and then so we will not be voting tonight on an FY22 town budget allocation because we don't have a number. But I think it's nice to see that on the agenda just because you know that in a different year we would have been doing that likely. Okay, the next item on the agenda is prioritization of teacher vaccinations, Mr. Heiner. Thank you. The governor and everyone else seems to have a priority of getting kids back into school full time. I think it would be most important for this committee to seek help with the MASC and other organizations to lobby the governor to get Jesse and everything to move the teachers up in priority for vaccination. They are on tier two. I'm on tier two by virtue of my age. I think I'll be honest with you. I think teachers should be on a higher priority to get them back and feel comfortable. So I'd like to open for discussion and possibly a motion to request the chair seek MASC or it's a lobby for us going forward. Thank you. Discussion, Mr. Cardin. So I mean, I think they are pretty high in the order now they're on second level of phase two and hopefully we'll be getting enough supplies that they can proceed with both the first level and the second level around the same time. But that's sort of where I would direct our efforts is not necessarily changing their priority order because that requires the advisory committee and other work to go on but encouraging them to move into both the two top tiers in phase two at the same time so that our school nurses can be vaccinating our teachers while our health department is organizing clinics for the elderly. Mr. Schiffman. I thank Mr. Hainer for bringing this up. I think that communicating to our representatives and our senator and the governor and to MASC and also to other school committees through the MASC listserv or other means possible would be a good thing to do with a message that's basically I don't know if the message is to facilitate moving up in the tiers but to urge a timely and expedited allocation of vaccine as well as the mechanism for providing it to our teachers. So where we are in the priorities is one thing is will we be able to get that in the arms of our teachers on a reasonable and on a reasonable basis? I don't want our teachers jumping through hoops. I'd like to see something like we did this week with first responders and making it easy for it to happen. So I would, and I'm crafting a motion in my head as we're moving forward. I move that the Arlington School Committee, to direct the chair to communicate to our elected state representatives, our state senator, the governor and to MASC our desire for providing vaccinations for our profession, for our school-based staff as soon as possible and providing support for the logistics of accomplishing the vaccinations. Second. Discussion. Okey-doke. Ms. Eckstein, let's vote. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schluckman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. And I'm going to abstain from this one. Not that I don't support it. All right. That's because we're making you work. You know, the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. Dr. Bodie. On mute. What's on the agenda as always is the update on the high school. And really the update this time is something everybody can see, which is the work that's going on. We have a bird's-eye view on the sixth floor. We also have, we also have noise of the construction, but it is going along very well. It is on time. You can see the steel going up. I think one of the things that was a big surprise to us is how quickly they put in the staircases the other day. And what you're already seeing is the east part of the steam lane being enclosed. The idea was to get the building as closed as soon as possible so that the interior work can begin in a more protected environment. So it's going along quite well. The subcommittee work that this part of the work that has to be done again is moving forward. We had, we have now moved to monthly meetings for the, for the building committee for the foreseeable future anyway. And continuously, I compliment to Dr. Allison Ampe and Amy Spear who keeps the communication continuing to be updated. And so there's going to be some new information on the website very soon. And I do remind people that if you would like to have the notification sent to you, you can go on the building website. Hsbuilding.org, all right. So anyway, that's really all there is at the moment. I hope to have you have more update from the subcommittees maybe the next time we meet. And that's all I have for the superintendent report. Great. 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, excuse me, separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the event will be, the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Mr. Heiner contacted me earlier about the minutes from the December 17th meeting. So let's pull those and then we can administratively change them and I think approve them tonight. So I'm going to pull those if I'm allowed to do that. I don't know. All right, great. So vote approval of warrant 21140, check date 122920. Can I get a motion on the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Ms. Ekston. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. So yes. And for the minutes, Ms. Fitzgerald, I believe the December 17th meeting, Mr. Heiner's name is missing from the attendees list. So if we can make that change administratively, that would be great. And then we can approve the minutes separately. If anybody, does anybody have a problem with that? No. Okay. So I need a motion to approve the minutes from the regular meeting December 10th and December 17th with the change to the December 17th, 2020 meeting. So moved as amended. Great. And you seconded Mr. Thielman. Thank you. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. Subcommittee and liaison reports budget. Dr. Allison Ampe. We met, I'm getting my meetings confused. We met before long range plan and we'll meet again over, we met discussing things that would come up at long range plan and we will be meeting over the next couple of weeks in preparation for the meeting on the fifth. And also to start, continue the budget process. Community relations. Mr. Heiner. We had our first scheduled meeting last Saturday and Mr. Thielman and I didn't have a lot of people come out but a couple came in and occupied us for a good hour, some good discussions that were reflected in tonight's meeting. They will continue on a weekly basis for the next 20 weeks. CIA, Mr. Cardin. Yes. So as we discussed, we met yesterday to go over the student learning time report and new regulations. We'll be meeting again probably not until after our next meeting to go over, to go back with the human rights commission on the issues they raised over the summer, one of which we had told them we're doing the climate survey and I understand we'll be getting results of the climate survey at our next meeting. So we can discuss that further in subcommittee after the next meeting if that is confirmed. So I was gonna talk about that on the future agenda items but that's something that I have on the agenda for the meeting in two weeks time are the panorama survey results. So if there's any reason that that's not gonna happen then somebody needs to let me know. All right, facilities, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy, Mr. Schiffman. Yeah, we're gonna need to schedule meeting. Dr. McNeil sent an email to me saying that we need to look at our restraint policy to comply with current guidelines based on the tiered focus monitoring review. And we also wanna take a look at the Native American imagery. So when I get the background information over the policy changes and some availability of the student, I'll poll the rest of the subcommittee for a meeting. And Mr. Schiffman, just a clarification on that. I think the piece we did the, we did the seal, it's the land use piece, right? Isn't it, it's that? Yes, yes, yes. I don't wanna talk the whole thing out but the policy statements surrounding her presentation which are definitely going to the land use discussion. Great, thank you. Arlington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. We'll meet next on February 2nd. I think Dr. Boody summarized earlier. Great, liaison reports, announcements, future agenda items, Mr. Schiffman. Just on the announcements or the comments with regard to the building, the high school building, somebody's been posting some drone shots of the high school building on Facebook. And I just wanna say that, yes, I agree that the progress being made right now in the high school project is astounding. And I wanna thank the folks who were involved with the project for their diligent work. Great, so liaison reports, announcements, future agenda items, Mr. Thielman. I don't have a question and maybe I lost the plot here. We had a, there was a survey that went on to parents at some point in November. And I don't believe we ever got the results back and discussed them. Correct, so that's the panorama survey that the department mentioned and I also mentioned. And my understanding is that a representative of the superintendent, likely Dr. McNeil, but I don't wanna put him on the spot too much and we'll be sharing that with us at our next meeting. Panorama, okay. We can call it whatever. It's climate survey, call lots of different things, yeah. Sure enough, thank you. Dr. McNeil, does that line up with your expectation? So there are some things that we're working with panorama, they're coming in and they're doing a presentation to all the administrators in order to talk about the dashboard and the results. So I am looking to have that presentation on the first meeting in February. We also are planning on sending out the student survey around that time, February 1st in February as well. So I'm sorry, February 1st, I said that twice. I didn't mean to say that, but February 1st we're planning on sending out the student survey and have the students respond to that. So we are planning, I would like to have that presentation on the first meeting of February for school committee. Well, the challenge, so what you're saying is is that you're not gonna be ready for January 28th. My calendar might be wrong, but I don't see a, maybe I haven't even put these in, that's possible. All right, okay, so whatever, we must have a meeting in February. I just don't have it on my calendar, which is fine. I can check with Karen for the dates for the- February 11th, February 11th, February 11th. So if that's okay with the committee, I would definitely request that. However, if you, again, it's up to you if you would like it on January 28th, I could probably try to do that, but I just feel that we will be very prepared on February 11th to give you the results. Okay, I think my concern is just that the data is getting older and older by the day. And we did this survey when I, you know, I think back to our December meeting and that feels like a lifetime ago to me. So I'm disappointed that we have not gotten any readout from it to date. So I mean, if it's not ready for the 28th, it's not ready and we'll do it on the 11th. But I, my personal opinion is that I'm disappointed that we haven't seen anything from it. And I think that it gets older and staler by the day. So that's the answer to your question, Mr. Thielman, February 11th. All right, anybody else? Okay, executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union, if which held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect, collective bargaining may also be conducted. I get a motion. So moved. So moved, specifying that it's with the AEA, the negotiation is, the discussion is about the negotiation with the AEA. Thank you. So a motion by Mr. Heyner, second by Mr. Cardin for executive session, Ms. Exton. Oh, and we are going to adjourn from executive session. We will not be coming back. Ms. Exton. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Heyner. Yes. And I am also yes. All right, thank you to everybody else. Well,