 Hello, welcome everyone. Today is Thursday, October 27 of the Arlington Public School meeting. To start out, I'd like to talk about some of the art that we have here. Over to the left, grade three, Stormy C's. The third grade students create Stormy C paintings inspired by many different artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Hokusai, and contemporary marathon artist blogger G. Coradino. Stormy C paintings are a common theme among artists all over the world and across all time periods. Students in third grade observe and discuss various paintings of Stormy C's and discuss how they may have tied into art history. They then learn to use how to use watercolor paint in a unique way to create a soft effect for their own interpretation of Stormy C's. Over here, grade four, paper strip sculptures. The fourth grade students create paper sculptures using strips of paper inspired by the sculptures of Susan Shutan. Shutan is an installation artist who uses tar roofing paper cut into strips to create large abstract sculptures. She uses the roofing paper as a commentary on human carbon footprints and how it would lead behind. The students in fourth grade observe and discuss various installation sculptures of Shutan and how they were created. They were then asked to create their own sculptures that hang in the same way using construction paper strips. Back in the back behind you guys, grade five, personal masks. The fifth grade students create paper masks inspired by the mixed media mask of Teresa White. A contemporary sculptor whose masks and other sculptures portray her own ancestry and connection with the Yupik tribe and Inuit tribe in Alaska. Her masks are very personal to her and have special meaning. The students in fifth grade observe and discuss various masks of white, their personal meaning and how they are created. They are then asked to create their paper and our mixed media masks that portray some kind of personal meaning to them. And over here, so these by the way are, I believe, all Bishop and Hardy students of these. Over here to the right of me, grade two, Frottage creations. The second grade students create Frottage creations inspired by Max Ernst, a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet. Ernst helped to create the surrealist and data styles of art and created a style of art called Frottage, which would use pencils and other drawing media to create a rubbing of a textured surface. The students in second grade observed and discussed Ernst's artwork and how he created his pieces. They discussed what texture means and how it can be incorporated into their own artwork. Then they were asked to create their creature mask with texture using O-Tag paper and make a rubbing of that. They then drew the rest of the creature's body and used plastic textile plates to finish off their Frottage. Okay. And over here, grade one, abstract collage. The first grade students create mixed media abstract collages inspired by various artists including Miriam Kudalus, a contemporary artist from Washington DC. Kudalus works in various media and creates beautiful abstract collages using maps, newspapers, pattern papers and paint. The students in first grade observed and discussed Kudalus's artwork and how she created her pieces. Then they learned about mixed media art and how it refers to artwork that uses more than one art medium or material that are used to create their artwork. First, the students were asked to create their own patterns and many papers to make them more interesting. The next class, the students were asked to create their own mixed media collage using the pattern paper they created the week before. Great. It's always great to see beautiful student work and apologize for butchering some of those names. I'd like to welcome Jason Levy, who is our AA representative and our student's name again is Lucy. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Really appreciate it. Is there any public participation? No. Okay. Okay. So next, why did I do that? Because it's fun. Next item, we're going to meet the Interim Principal at Audison. We've all been very eager to meet her formally. We've heard that she's been doing a fabulous job and some of us have seen that in person and some have just heard it from others. But please, we'd like to welcome Dr. Eileen Woods. Well, she's making her way up. This is the second time in her career that she's been introduced to the school committee. As you all know, she served for two years as the Interim Principal at Dallas. And in between that stay here, she's also been in Wakefield and Brookline. Brookline last year. So welcome and thank you for coming back to Arlington this year. It's really a pleasure to come back to Arlington. So I thank you for welcoming me back. I know that I have joined an exceptional group of educators and a very supportive culture here in Arlington and also at the Audison Middle School. The team of teachers at Audison are talented and dedicated professionals and they are very committed to the middle school students. The students were cod, they're respectful, they're responsible kids and they're supported by wonderful families. It's a diverse community and we will be celebrating and welcoming all of you to the Inside Out Project about the Audison story, which is an art installation on Saturday, October 29th from 11 to 1. At Audison every day, we continue to build a supportive, inclusive community where everyone is welcome. And I want to just highlight a few projects that have gone on with our exceptional students at Audison and teachers. We have really worked hard this year to implement a advisory program. Our students had a wonderful celebration in September of Alley Week, our LGBTQ students, and I want to make sure that you know what wonderful leaders they are at the school. Lots of clubs are starting up, Math Club and Robotics and Engineering Technology. We have a project following our Inside Out Project, which is I AM WALL. We're students are leading that, our peer leaders are leading that. We hope in January to celebrate Martin Luther King and with emphasis on teaching empathy and the kids are going to be talking about standing in my shoes and we have literature to go along with that. I have a lunch group that comes to see me and they talk about today celebrating black history. We have a theme at Audison which is be the best to you, be the best version of yourself, not only for our students but for all of the faculty and staff and so we will be recognizing students at the end of each quarter who exhibit qualities of being the best you. We had a wonderful training yesterday with our peer leaders from a world of difference. We trained 31 more peer leaders and diversity leaders and we have I think trained over 25 so we're looking for the voice of the students in the school as leaders. As a faculty we share best practices and instructional practices. We're working with the department chairs on the high leverage practice of student engagement. And each day we work the norms of collegiality, open honest communication and appreciation for each other. In January we're going to do restorative justice training and actually in November we're going to be doing some diversity training with the faculty and lots of things happening at Audison. I don't want to keep going on and on and take all your time. But happy to be here and it is a really wonderful school to serve. Questions, comments? Yes, Dr. Alice Envy. So welcome. So I just a quick question about the Inside Out celebration. Just for people who are watching at home, is all the public invited? Yes, all the public is invited and we would love to have it. It's going to be outside so we have lots of room. Maybe you could tell a little bit what it is. The Inside Out project was based in the work of JR and Audis who took photographs of people, actually took photographs of people at New York City and the Mexican border. It's to display your community. I think it may have been Germany, it was the LGBTQ community, they had photographs, he took photographs and then you display the photographs on the building in Mexico. They displayed them right at the wall. I do want to recognize the teachers at AudisEN who were the designers of this and also the Arlington Fund for Education has supported this project as well. So it's really telling the story of the wonderful students that we have at AudisEN and we have probably over students coming from 50 different countries. In our peer leader group yesterday we realized that they spoke 13 languages. So it's really a celebration of our diversity and I really thank our teachers for putting this forward last year and it's been wonderfully received by the kids. The kids are really leading it. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Cardin. So on behalf of the Dallin community we're all glad to have you back in Arlington. We know from experience that you're not just a placeholder, you really accomplish things while you're here. So we're glad to have you and look forward to seeing your work throughout the year. Thank you very much. Yes, Mr. Silicon. I'm just saying welcome home. It's good to have you back. Have you run into many of your former Dallin students and what sort of a reception have you given each other? I have gotten a very nice hug and they remembered Be the One, which was a theme over there. And actually a few of the families told me that they still tell them to be the one. So that's great. They've been very welcoming. I can imagine it's nice to have that little welcoming committee to show you the ropes of the school. It is. Yes, you are correct. Yep. Well, we're glad to have you back and I hope you have a great year. You're almost a quarter of the way through already. I know it's going fast. Yeah, going fast, but lots to do. Thank you. Wait, I just have a personal thing to say. So often times parents seek me out to complain about things as you wouldn't be surprised. This year I had several parents seek me out to say how well the process has been at Audison, you know, really to say good things, which as I said, it's not a common thing necessarily, just because people like, you know, not there aren't great things going on, but that's, you know, but it was very notable to see that. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much. So the next item, we're having a special education report. This was actually something we had originally wanted to have a report last spring, and we're delayed. But very, very good reasons. But we're glad that we're finally getting a chance to hear about the issues that special education. Sure. So I brought a few of my friends tonight. But so just to go a little bit over, I guess it'll take a moment to get queued up. One of the slides is introducing folks. So I'll just take the opportunity now. So we have several of our special ed coordinators who are special ed administrators here. And we have Chris Carlson, who's our out of district coordinator. We have Craig Hawes, who is an elementary coordinator who's new this year. Stephanie Griner, who in the past has been a team chairperson, but is the Audison middle school coordinator. And Elizabeth Loge is a new elementary coordinator. And Joyce Schlinger, who has been here as our early childhood coordinator, a preschool director. Lynn Bennett, the high school coordinator was unable to come tonight. And we also have staff who are going to present. And we have Megan Burke, who is a social worker over at Dallin. Joanna Dimmick, that is Dimmick or Dimmick, Dimmick is what I thought, who is our BCBA, who works in several of our schools, but specifically with the program over at Dallin, that Digman, who you know is the principal at Dallin. And then we have Magalie Olander, and Lauren Peterson, who are a social worker and speech and language pathologist at the high school reach program. So now we're ready to go. So again, those were just recognizing part of what we call our special ed leadership team. We also have team chairpersons who are a EA members, but we do find that they are leaders in our special ed program, programming as well. Just an overview of the programming that we have here in the district. So we start as early as three year old. So the monotomy preschool is an integrated preschool program. Under the federal regulations, we are required to start serving students as young as age three when they're identified. But we run an integrated preschool program for students ages three to five, and that combines students who receive special ed services with typical peer role models as well. At the elementary level, we have supported learning centers, which are our, you know, what we will call our special ed programs or sub separate programs. We have them at Bracket, which serves students with intellectual disabilities, Dallin serving students with social emotional needs and Stratton serving students with autism spectrum disorders. Those programs continue through middle and high school. Their names change wasn't here for the history of that name change, but they become compass, which again serves students with intellectual disabilities, reach which serves students with autism spectrum disorders and social cognition, pragmatic needs and summit which serves students with social emotional needs. Just some stats about it. The district we have as of last week when we pulled this data, 873 students receiving special ed services, 742 of those students we serve in district, 108 of them we serve in out of district placements. We also have what's called services only under our child find obligations. We are required to affirmatively find and serve students in the Arlington community who are eligible for special ed services, even if their parents have permanently placed them at private schools. So we do serve 23 students who come in just for services. There's more that are eligible currently 23 students take advantage of that service. Again, as I said, at Anatomy, we have 34 students who are in our special ed program and then 40 typical peers. And then we also serve an additional 21 students through drop-in services. They may be in private preschools, they may be at home, they just come in for individual services and don't have what we call as a seat at the program. And then you can see the totals for the other schools. I put an asterisk next to the ones that have programs. You'll see that those schools tend to have higher special ed populations. Obviously, we've concentrated programs there, so there would be a higher instance of students with disabilities. In our out of district placements, 31 students are served in public day placements, which are known as our special ed collaboratives. We are members of edco and lab collaborative. However, we have students in case collaborative, seem collaborative, possibly valley collaborative. So those are considered public day placements. Another 60 students are served in private day placements, which are the Massachusetts approved private schools. And then 14 students are in residential placements. And then two students we have been served through home hospital, meaning at their home, they're not able to attend school. We have an additional because of some of the group homes in the town, we do serve as programmatic, programmatically responsible for students who are in out of district placements. We don't have a fiscal responsibility for them. Their home district does, but so we have an additional four students in public day placements, three in private day, and then another student special ed in institutional settings. One of the things that I've mentioned in previous meetings is that we this is our year for the coordinated program review that's conducted every six years by the Department of elementary and special secondary education. They're going to review civil rights, English language education and special education. The review consists of two main parts. Last spring, we all participated in what's the self assessment. It's an online assessment, which we review our own records, submit the findings from our record review. We also then go through our policy and procedure upload where we have to for special education. We have 57 criteria that we need to report on. Dr. Chesson has been handling it for civil rights and Carla Bruzzi has been handling it for English language education. They will now be on site in November to do the second part. They'll do an additional record review on site, which is more spot checking of the records, and then they will be visiting our schools. They will be making site visits, not to necessarily observe instruction, but to look at the equity of our instructional spaces, the groupings of students, the size and location of where we deliver services. And then they'll also use that time to interview staff and they'll meet with administrators, teachers, teacher assistance related service providers to interview them to, and that's where they're going to really see, you know, are the policies and procedures that we said we have in place, actually, you know, what we're practicing. They also will interview the CPAC representative sample from the CPAC. Parents who wish to give input can and have been submitting their names. They'll receive a phone interview after the site visit. Any student whose record was reviewed, their families will also receive a survey. Again, just the timeline, they'll be here for the record review, November 15th and 16th, and that's where they'll actually be physically up here, just going through the records. And at that time, they're reviewing special ed and English language learner student records. And then they will be back on site the week after Thanksgiving to conduct their site visits. There'll be three individuals who come and divide up the schools and the visits on those three days. As I mentioned, they'll conduct phone interviews with interested families in December. About two to three months after the visit, we can anticipate a draft report. We will have 10 days to respond to that report and correct any factual inaccuracies. And then they'll issue a final report within four to six months after their visit. If there are findings and we're issued corrective action, we'll have 20 days to submit our corrective action plan. Tonight, what the teachers are here to present about and when we ask about what is the work that special ed has been doing over the last few years since I've been here, we've really started to work on program development. A lot of time was spent developing the programs that we have, maybe six to eight at this point, 10 years ago probably is when it really started. So now it seems that we're at a natural time where we can review the programs, look how the population has shifted or changed. And we have been working with Wadiko Children's Services to do that. Wadiko is based out of Boston. Some people might be familiar. They do have a residential school in New Hampshire and summer program, but they also have consulting services where they work with school-based teams. One of the things that really has been a nice fit with us is that unlike typical consultants where they'll come in, they might interview people, they might make observations and then they'll submit you a list of recommendations and kind of leave. What they really do is they work with our teams so that our teams are doing the assessments of their own programs. Our teams are planning the interventions, they're researching the interventions, planning the implementation. And Wadiko is really facilitating that process. So in that way it's professional development for our staff so that we don't always need Wadiko to help us with that. And Dallin has really gotten to the point where they're at their own self-assessment stage, having worked with them for close to two years now. So I'm going to turn it over to the teams I just wanted to add. We originally started with Dallin, the summit program at Audison, and then Milbrook and Reach at the High School. That was in our first year and now we have the consultants working with all three of the SLCs at elementary. Reach and Summit at Audison and working with all the four programs at the High School. So do you, Dallin, want to start? Or did you want to? You're all going together. Okay, great. So again, my name is Megan Burke. I'm one of the social workers who works over at the Dallin School, specifically with the Supported Learning Center. I'm Magalie Olander, social worker in the Reach, which is the Autism Spectrum program, profile program at high school. And I'm Lauren Peterson, the speech and language pathologist at High School. Joanna Demigas, RBCBA, who works across the district, but will join us kind of when it's up and she is ready. So we have about the next 10 minutes together to talk about our shared experiencing with programming and program development through the WDECO consultation. And just to start a conversation, we understand that this is a pretty brief time period and we'd love to continue the conversation along with anyone who is interested in having it. We, as we think about kind of launching into this conversation, we thought it could be helpful to start with a couple of questions for you, which you do not have to answer. You can just think amongst yourselves of what do you already know about the special education programming in town, how they're structured, supported, resourced, what do the programs do, and what interventions do the programs use, text support is on the way. So specifically, we realize that our SLC students cut across diagnostic criteria and the important functional concern is their inability to access the curricula due to a variety of needs that require some significant support in a substantially separate setting and that can provide a continuum of support. So one of the things that I think is often a misconception is that assist of substantially separate setting may mean that a child doesn't include at all and really we see a majority of our kids including in a range of supports in both the general and special ed settings kind of across our days. And the programming in district, that number was really cool to see how many kids are in district. Yeah. Continue to let the students receive all the specialized support and then have access to the richness that public schools provide. We see that so much at the high school with the different curricula that are available at the different levels and the enrichment stuff, which is nice for our students to access. Oh, we're up. So guys, that is a microphone. It won't actually amplify your voice, but if you could speak into it when you're talking that way, it gets to the TV. Oh, okay. You're on TV. You're on TV. Oh, you do. Cool. All right. So the Wodiko came in and I'll be honest, we were a little hesitant when this started for those of us who have been in district for a couple of years. We've been through a couple of models of consultation and we said, okay, like we'll buy in, but we need to see some action and some change. And I have to say that this was a really empowering process specifically for our two teams. And they introduced the idea of the logic model where we began with an assessment of student needs and then conceptualized some program models, some interventions, and to meet those targeted needs. And then some evaluation. And the Dallin team, I think, is the one team in district that has gotten to that phase. And it was really fascinating to see with fidelity that we were implementing all of these things that we said we were going to be implementing and very exciting. I mean, we certainly had growth areas and areas to move from, but the ability to go through this process and then to realize that this is a process we can continue going through on our own was a really powerful experience. So I'll let the reach team jump in on what the process looked like. Again, just move the microphone. Yeah, excellent. Perfect. So the logic model that Wodiko sort of offers as a frame moves you through a process of identifying needs, figuring out what is already going in, figuring out what the programs are supposed to be putting out, giving back to the students and the community the needs of that community, and then what are the outcomes? What is what's happening? Is it working? And that sort of follows the that circular diagram that Megan just showed, but it's a very organizing and structured way of thinking about the work that we're doing. And it really did prove to be quite helpful at organizing our thinking and structuring our next steps. So as we think about how this was helpful for us, taking one of the biggest focuses we've had is having our program become structure dependent versus person dependent. So God forbid one of us runs off to Hawaii or something like that. Everything is still up and running. And so it was really helpful identifying needs. So we have program specific orientations that have been supported by the district before school starts. So our staff start the year ready to go. We have determined program wide professional development from levels to TAs, to teaching assistants, to BSPs, our behavior support personnel, to our related service providers working with the programs. And we've identified needs around staffing, physical space. We've really learned to prioritize and carve out time for meetings to be able to continue this work within our school days. And so it was helpful to identify what we're currently doing, identify what we want to be doing, and then have some good data to come back to our administrators who are supporting us through this process to help kind of advocate for those resources. And while the steps of the logic model look rather basic and simple, there are many, many other steps along the way within each of those that really, really broke down skills into very small pieces and all the elements of our program. So when we were looking at student needs, we were breaking things down into some of the most minimal, smallest interventions that we're putting in place and was able to give us a really good perspective, even though it's the things that we're doing every single day with all of our students, but to be able to see how much of that impact we're doing and why. I mean, we were consistently asked throughout the process, but why are you doing those? How do you know that those are the right interventions? What are the outcomes that we're seeing? Are they effective and how to do that? And it was a really nice process to help us see all of those small pieces as we look to the big picture. It was, it was fascinating because both the Wadigo Consultant and our Special Ed Administrator at the time, Chris Carlson, came in for two days to evaluate us, and we had to provide artifacts. So it couldn't just be like, oh yeah, no, we're doing that. We had to be able to show them through kind of documentation and meeting with a multiple of, you know, family, students, staff working in the program. So it was, you know, in my 15 years in this career of clinical social work in school settings, the first time somebody's asked me to go through this process. It was a pretty meaningful experience for us. I think one of the most valuable pieces was the staff interviews where we asked staff about their impressions and their knowledge of all of the pieces and the fidelity with which they felt that we were performing those things as opposed to just the artifacts showing it. In the staff impressions, all of us across the board actually were far more critical of ourselves than what the actual facts showed and the actual artifacts were able to say, look, we are actually doing that and we're doing it actually a lot better than we even think that we are. And then I think the outcome of it is it launched just into this year with some really nice data-driven goals of where we want to grow, where we want to learn, where we want to further develop ourselves. And so I think being in slightly different places in this process, it was interesting to come together to think about this talk and just to think about kind of the impact and moving forward and kind of how it affects all of us. Just thinking about the dedicated time and reflection, the time that we got to really think about how our programs are structured, what do we need to move forward and having that time built into our schedule and somebody kind of motivating us to go forward and think about it really specifically. Thinking about our program structure and the needs, the development of short-term and long-term action steps, like they were talking about really starting the year with some really concrete goals and then just keeping being collaborative and consistently reviewing and thinking of it as kind of a working document that we're constantly thinking about this data and moving forward with the progress of the students, the families and obviously the staff and teachers in the schools. And as they were saying, thinking about a programmatic approach first is just like a person-dependent model. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Please come see us anytime. We might. I have a quick question. How did you end up partnering with this organization? Is that, how did that come to you guys? So I've worked with Wadiko for the last 14 years. Originally I started working with them in Boston and then continue the partnership in Reading where I worked. And so in part because of this particular work that they do, I think it really, again, works for the long haul so that we are empowering our staff to continue to look at student populations change and grow, expand, shift a little right of what we used to be doing, maybe shift a little left of what we used to be doing. It gives us a way to respond to the needs versus always saying, oh, we need to create a new program or we need to add more of this. I think one of, I've learned to trust the process through several iterations of working with them because my fear is always like, they're going to come back and they're going to ask for 500 new staff to do X, Y, and Z. And without fail, every time they kind of look at what they're doing and realize by organizing their schedule and their existing resources and whatnot, they're able to tackle, like you said, you realize you're doing a lot more than you think you are and when you're doing it in a targeted way, you're using our resources a little bit more effectively. Yes, Mr. Heiner. This may be for you and maybe for Dr. Boer. You mentioned that we're one of four or five communities that are going to be required to deal with a lot about a district students in the future. Will that impact your programs? So there's a question about the ESSA legislation. Is that what you're referring to? Yes. So we'll find out more what that exactly means. So it's a, the federal law was signed in a year ago, I guess. So it takes effect in December, certain portions of it. The state itself hasn't necessarily figured out exactly how that's going to play out and exactly who's going to have fiscal responsibilities, but things will shift between McKinney-Vento where students were originally covered under the homeless Education Act. Students that were previously awaiting foster care will no longer be considered homeless and they will shift over to the label of foster care, which will have implications under this ESSA legislation. So we'll know more as we get closer to December. The reason I bring this up is it could be burdensome on our budget and things of that nature and affect other programs. And I don't want it to diminish anything. I feel it's important that we meet our obligations, but at the same time the idea of being one of four or five communities in the whole Commonwealth is, am I wrong in saying that? It affects the whole Commonwealth. It's just that in terms of the number of group home beds, we have more than many other communities. The other question I have for you, the Millbrook, the out-of-district placement, the numbers that you have there, does that reflect all the services? Millbrook is a general education program, so I did not reflect them in this special education. Okay, okay. My concern is with all the homes that we do have in town and the burden, my understanding from that program, maybe going down below the high school, did we staff it properly? Am I wrong in that or something? I think we're kind of far out on that decision making. I don't know whether we're at that stage. Well, right now the program is located in the essential school. Right. Yes, and we have, it's a general ed program. Right. And where it will reside down the road is remains to be seen, but for this year they will be there. But part of their charge is assessing, and some of those students after the assessment could become part of your program, as well as general ed. Oh, correct, correct, correct. I guess when I say expanding the age group in some of the homes may be going down, and I'm just concerned that we have the proper staffing and not overburden the existing staffing we have. That's all. We'll be real sensitive to that as we go forward, for sure. Yes, Dr. Sampe. Yeah. I've been trying to think, I really enjoy hearing about how you're changing your looking at the program. You're trying to focus it. And I'm just wondering how we could get more information on these programs, the different ones, and how well we're meeting the children's needs. I don't know if this would be part of, will come out as part of the coordinating program review or? I think you would see that. So when, as I mentioned, they've completed their program evaluation they got to that phase of it. So I think that's the kind of information we'll give us. One of the other products that we have asked teams to create is a handbook. So that reflects when they talked about targeting the needs of students, very specific to their programming. I think we've kind of done the umbrella of, oh, they have emotional impairment. They've qualified under emotional impairment, which is the disability category under the DESE. However, when they really start to look at the student's profile and looking at the evaluation results, the family history, the outside service, really getting a much more nuanced picture of what students present with. And so part of their evaluation, or part of the logic model, really calls for them to do that on a very specific level. So it's saying that our students have anxiety and complex trauma history. This is kind of how we've said students with autism spectrum disorders and those with social cognition and pragmatic needs, because maybe they don't have the disability category of autism, but they do have social and pragmatic needs. So they've really kind of distilled the profile of the student they're servicing. And once they've done that, is when they start to then research, what are the research-based interventions for these particular profiles and needs. So those exist to a degree in their handbooks. I'm wary of putting really hard, defined borders on some of this stuff, because we do need to make sure that we're being individualized and we can't restrict someone just because they don't necessarily fit all of the criteria and whatnot. So we have kind of larger overarching descriptors of the programs on the website. I guess what I'm thinking is just how well are our programs meeting our children's needs. That's kind of the part that I'm really curious about. I guess you'd have to define needs. So I think there's many indicators we look at, and one of the things that they develop in the program models is what are going to be our indicators. You know, simply saying, are they meeting grade level expectation may provide one type of indicator, but they're not necessarily, that doesn't address the host of other issues, that a student with social cognition has, because you know what, they're also looking at how are they engaging in relationships with their peers and adults, and some of that stuff is qualitative, but we're trying to look to make it more quantitative, and that's part of the work that they're doing. So I don't have an answer specifically of where meeting needs yes or where meeting needs no. I think it's a little more nuanced than just a yes or a no. So if you had specific questions, maybe they can answer it. I guess I'm having a hard time. Does it sound like, I know that there are some documentation that you're getting, is one of the questions, is there something that we will see later on, you know, that sort of summary of some of the documentation that you're doing from this process and others? Sure, we can, maybe that's the plan. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Sorry, and then one other thing I'm just trying to put in everyone's heads that as we go forward with rolling the Gibbs out as the new sixth grade only school, I am still concerned that the special education department was the ones who felt the most strongly that it wasn't a good idea, and that there is concern about transition, and I'm not sure if there were concerns beyond that, but I would love you to be thinking and helping us understand what can we do to make it the best possible experience for your students, not just for the general education students. And I'm thinking specifically of transitions as school students come from elementary to Gibbs and then from Gibbs to Otteson, how can we make that better for them? And is it, you know, is there things that we need to be building into this space? Is there, or anywhere, you know, is it additional equipment that we need, or do we need to think about moving people, transitioning people along with a class, you know, so they're basically rolling up with the class. I just, I'd like us to have that as part, as we start the Gibbs process that we have, we always have that idea in mind, so thank you. Mr. Crichton. Thank you, and congratulations on the team. I hear a lot, I'm a Dallin parent, so I hear a lot of good things about the Dallin team and everything that's going on there with the SLC program there. I think what, maybe what Kirstie was looking at is it sounds like this evaluation process is coming up with some things that maybe you might need to do a little bit differently, or things, you know, recommendations for improvements, or things like that. If we could just get a summary of sort of what's been recommended and what's been implemented, or things like that, not at a detailed level. Sure, so I mean, some of the things are, they've already talked about, so in the first iteration of the logic model, they identified that staff need to be trained prior to the start of the school year, so then they created a summer orientation program. So those are the kind of things that come out of it. The other programs, you know, maybe just keep a running summary of that kind of stuff, that would be very helpful. Thanks. And then the only other, just more general comment is, it's actually the same idea with the staff training. The only thing that I've been hearing from parents is there are some new team chairs that have never had that role before, and there's a little bit of a rocky start of the school year, so let's just make sure that they're supported. Mr. Dillon. Your coordinators are right over there. Do you hear that, guys? So I think the sixth grade issue was that there was, but just having one grade, it made it more difficult to follow a student throughout the three years. You know, it could, it was maybe more difficult, more challenging to develop a relationship with a student who was in school for just one year in the sixth grade. They were on an IEP. That was maybe the concern we heard from some people. Specifically, I think some parents, I don't know if they're the same person who have spoken to you, so have spoken to me about this idea of, you know, have you ever considered having the staff kind of loop so that, you know, they're not meeting new staff when they get then to the 7-8 program at Audison. You know, I haven't run that by the teachers. I think they might have some thoughts about, you know, their own relationships with adults and whatnot and the team that they developed at the sixth grade level or at any grade level. I mean, Jason could probably, you know, speak to, you know, the teams that develop at the different grade levels within the clusters. Mr. Lee? It just found over the years continuity of the teams being together for several years. It builds a better relationship and it's better for the students. And I just feel that it's really great to have the same teams for several years instead of changing every single year because that puts more time for teachers where we have to have more meetings and try to gel together when we've already had a previous relationship and work well together. Yeah. Well, I mean, just as a sixth grade model is evolving, I mean, I guess the point I want to make is just to keep us informed of how the special education plan is going to be developed. And, yes. So, yes. I'm going into Kathy because we have a problem. Yeah, so, and at some point, I think, yeah, at some point we should sort of get a report on the sixth grade plan. The other thing, you know, a question that town leadership often asks is, you know, is the percentage or the number of students on IEPs increasing or decreasing over time? I didn't prepare that. Yeah, I know you didn't. I know you didn't. My understanding is, I mean, at least since I've been here, it's relatively consistent, you know. The number, the overall number, hasn't actually creeped up as much as the population itself has creeped up. I don't think so. We could get that. No, I mean, it's a question that often, at budget time, when we visit the other side of the street, there's a question about that. I can tell you that in the last four years at Dow and we have graduated children to less restrictive settings every single year, which has been something we've really enjoyed celebrating. Good for you. Great. Congratulations. I have a big picture question. Where do you see Special Education Arlington going in the next five years or 10 years or whatever? That's a very big picture question. I mean, I think we're investing in our programs, but Thad and I were just talking this morning where I really think special education needs to go. And Laura and I have had these conversations, is really working with General Ed, because you don't change Special Ed by changing Special Ed. You change Special Ed by addressing General Ed. So I would really like to see us looking at multi-tiered systems of support and looking at what we're doing in tier one with those foundational things that all students are getting, so that when we are targeting kids at the second and third tiers of support, that it really is targeted. And that we last year, we asked for additional learning specialist so we could expand co-teaching. I think that is another way to address some of this. Gen Ed's and Special Ed support is by these co-teaching partnerships and co-teaching can take different forms. You know, it can be two teachers in a room all day, changing roles, you know, you're doing this session, and there's different ways to do it. And so I think, you know, with the addition of staff so that we could develop those relationships truly, you know, that's where I would like to see us going. I'd like us to keep us kids in district. I would like to see that, you know, we have the capacity, you know, we've talked about the programs are really strong, but they're also, they have capacity issues. There's, you know, there's finite space for programs, but then there's also, you know, what staff can do with the resources they have. So. Great, thank you. Okay, we have the buffer zone. Do we have, oh yeah. Thanks for coming. Perfect. Reference and report. All right. All right. Bye, Mr. Remy. Remy? Remy? Yeah, hi. Hi, Remy. We've met Mr. Remy before. He is one of our two data specialists, and while they work very collaboratively together, he inherits a lot of the registration. And, you know, we have, just make a few comments before you begin, that, you know, we've really evolved in how we're doing registration in the district, in part by necessity of having buffer zones, in part by just the increasing number of students and needing to be very careful with resources, so the need to be really on top of enrollment numbers during the summer is key to that. And he has led us through new software and, you know, some new processes, and we've really had gone through just really the first year, the full implementation the first year, and we learned some things and probably will make some changes as we go forward. So tonight, he is going to give you an overview of buffer zones, which is a fairly frequent conversation over the summer for us, and it actually goes on all year, really. Yeah, so. So, thanks for having me. Just wanted to start off by recapping some of the data really briefly from last year to get a quick sense of where it's gone from then versus the system we have now. In the 14-15 registration cycle, I'm sorry, the 15-16 registration cycle, we had 114 of our applicants in the buffer zone, and we went over last year how many of them got their assigned, their preferred assigned school, how many of those were in kindergarten, and how many of those were in grades one through five. And looking at the numbers for 16-17, as you all I'm sure are aware of, enrollment has increased throughout the district all around. Same with our buffer zones has gone up to 134 of the applicants being in buffer zones. We do still have the policy in place that siblings are kept together to preserve the family integrity. So, of the 134 in buffer zones, 28 of those had siblings already at the elementary school so they were guaranteed their placement. One interesting thing that we did this time around versus past years is have a window of time for early applicants launching the online software meant that people were able to complete the applications from their homes as soon as the application went live. And for the first week, we were doing our best to make sure that those who completed the application early were getting that preference in early and would get better consideration for the school of their preference in the buffer zone. So, we had 57 of those early applications were in buffer zones. On the first day, we had well over 100 applications come in. 57 of those were in buffer zones and of those 57, 55 of them were kindergarten students. So, just to kind of make sure that number stayed represented, 39 students overall were in K, I'm sorry, in the first through fifth grade. And 95 total students were in kindergarten outside of just those who were early applicants. So, the breakdown is that 91.5% of those kindergarten students did get their preferred school, whether that was because they had a sibling already in the school, they had their applications in early or they just lucked out and got their preference as we went through and made those selections. But I think that's an extremely high percentage and it worked out and did exactly what we wanted it to do. For grades one through five, a little different, 69%. But from last year, that's slightly down from 75%. But considering the higher percentage of kindergarten students, once they're in that school, they'll stay in that school and they'll be less to worry about. And overall, 85% of the students were assigned to their preferred school from the 68.4% last year. And I do think having the early application window had a lot to do with that. And we're gonna talk and see about tweaking the model and finding how we can make it work a little better for all families involved and equal throughout the grade levels. Getting through this last slide, and I apologize, this looks bigger on a computer monitor. Really quick, it's just a breakdown of where those students in buffer zones ended up. So you see across the top, all our elementary schools are represented and which buffer zones those 134 students were in. And you can see a distribution going straight across of those who were in the Bishop bracket zone, how many of them ended up in Bishop, how many ended up in Bracket and so on and so forth. There is a plethora of data gathered through the software from this last registration cycle. And starting in a few weeks, we'll be starting to revisit those conversations and make adjustments for the 17-18 application and see where we can improve and make things better. But a lot of this is available upon request. So if there's anything that was left out of here, please let me know and we can start to put something together for you to dig deeper into the buffer zone report. I love this stuff. This is fascinating. My question is with regard to the last slide, is that you're showing where kids ended up. I mean, I'd like to see which of these kids are the ones who ended up in their second choice and where they wanted to go. Because that's sort of a pattern that interests us as a policy perspective, not just where they ended up but where they asked to go to compare those two. And that is all those metrics are gathered. I didn't want to just hit you with all kinds of graphs and charts and everything, but give me a little time and I can put that together. I love graphs and charts and everything. That's sort of my... Is the only one that does. No, no, I love graphs. You're not alone. Dr. Allison Efty. It's probably good you didn't give them now because Mr. Schlichmay would be drooling over here. In the meantime, I also had some questions. I went back and reviewed what this is actually more for Dr. Bodie to be worked out with you. I looked at our buffer zone policy, J.C., and it talks about a report and it describes the report will include but not be limited to a description of buffer use, open enrollment, and their effectiveness. It should answer questions like are the desired results being achieved and so is this attributable to the buffer zone and open enrollment policy or other factors? Is class size equity improving? Are imbalances smaller? What buffers are being activated by how much and where's the flow between districts? And I think we've got some answers for the last one but I'd like to hear some of the stuff about how class size equity is doing. I mean, and we could just add some of these things. It's partly it's helpful to the public. We still have parents who are not as happy as they could be because they've been put in a buffer zone as opposed to a hard line boundary. And it's helpful to have things to point at that we're doing this because it's good for the school. It's good for the schools, it's good for the students and here's why and here a number is showing and it's why. Well, I had mentioned this I think probably in one of the earlier meetings that it really was quite effective this year, particularly at the kindergarten level. And that's interesting given what high percentage of the number of students they had their first choice. Partly it was luck this summer that we had sort of growth in all the districts that that part played out but we were able to tweak it enough as we were going along that we really, we got down to a point where almost all of our kindergartens at least at the start of the school, that can change as the year goes on and it already has but the range was even narrower before but we have a lot of classes in the 20s, in the low 20s and they were even within I think two or three at one point but what happens is some students leave other students come in. In general I would say that it has been very helpful to class sizes if you recall even not too many years ago we would see some classes at one school, a 28, 31 but in the high 20s and other schools would have 20 in the same grade and there was just that sense of there was an inequity of opportunity if you think that there is a value in smaller classes which I think there's a sort of a unanimous agreement on that so to the extent that we are able to have it's not perfect at all but we're certainly being able to see a little bit closer evenness here and I think actually one of the reasons why the percentage is lower a first choice for grades one through five is attributable to exactly this that what happens is as you have students in a particular grade, students move, students come in so there's a natural unbalancing that goes on so what buffer zones do a little bit is rebalance it and you'll see more of that rebalancing going on and the upper elementary grades and you would see it in the lower so I know that one of the questions that the committee is thinking about and I think we need some more thought about it and is whether it would be advantageous to have bigger buffer zones in certain districts or maybe in general across the district and I think that it may be too early to make that decision we might need another year of data on that but I can say that to the extent that it worked this year and we worked very closely together which is a constant communication about this that I think we achieved the best results we could with some real trying to at the same time give parents their preferred school what is interesting though is that even toward the end of the summer when we'd go back to wait list because we had this all organized by date and so forth when it changed because students do move that we would go back and ask parents if they would like to go back to their preferred school and we didn't do that as many times as summers we did it some before and it was sort of a mix some did, some didn't and then we'd go down to the next person on the list so I don't know if you have any other further questions on that but all in all I think it was done well this year and achieved the goals we wanted to achieve. I think it would be helpful if we had some numbers that would back that up and that that's what I'm wondering about. Standard deviation, what difference is? Interwritten report and not just a presentation. Okay, Mr. Hayner. I'm the other end of the spectrum from Mr. Schlickman. Go to the third slide for me. About halfway down in Hardy-Thompson and it has 14 under Hardy elementary, does that mean there are, can you explain that 14 what it means to me? Okay, so in the Hardy-Thompson zone, 14 of them were assigned to Hardy with the other seven assigned to Thompson. There were 21 applicants total that were in that zone. So if we go all the way down to the bottom of Thompson-Hardy, that would mean nine. Thompson went to Hardy and eight went to Thompson on the last line. Correct. Okay, I guess my next question goes to you, Dr. Bodie. Sometimes the numbers are almost even. Is it when they come in that they're assigned or, I mean, the purpose of this was to try to bring balance to the schools and stuff. And I know it's a difficult game to play with the numbers and stuff, but. The answer is, yes, it is by numbers. And in fact, I remember I was talking about that window. So that window is too wide. And I think that one of the things that we're going to do this year is actually have the online start the same day as walk-in and date stamp everything by day again. Because it was a little difficult, I have to say, when you had so many that all have the same, because we don't differentiate time of the day, only the date. So yes, but then beyond that, everything became very ordered in terms of the date. So I think that would, it's going to be one change that we're going to have this year. Thank you. We had no idea it was going to be so successful, the online process, so we can tweak. Mr. Slipman. Yeah, I mean, the thing that for us, I have no doubt that it went well and that our policy was executed well and that y'all did everything you could to make people happy. I really have faith in the operations of the district. But part of this is a policy question. And the reason why we're asking for this report is not to check up on the operations, because that's your job to make sure it goes well. And we have faith that it is going well. What we're looking for, in essence, is sort of a sense, is our policy right? How is the policy working? What do we need to do to adjust the policy in order to make things better for parents? I mean, if you've got a whole bunch of people clumping up on the first date, it's almost like, you don't want people fighting to be in it 90101 versus 90103, maybe for, within the early process, the people who are first in within a two week window, we could go by lottery in terms of the order of assignment. Something that's upfront and fair that's not encouraging people to have to take a day off from work or to be here at a precise time in order to get the best shot at making a lottery deal. But there are lots of questions that are policy questions. How do we make this work better? Do we expand the zones? Where do we expand the zones? And that really is our domain in terms of setting the policy because we have to go to the community, explain it, face it, get consensus, and come back and vote it. So I think that in terms of a future report and writing, we had all these little zones when we set it up in 2012. The new members weren't here for all the decision of zone A or buffer zone A, buffer zone C. What was H was the one that was the interesting one for us? Where they are within those zones? Where the kids are being assigned and maybe going encountering difficulties within the sort and maybe where we might want to go and tweak the boundaries, especially considering the development that's taking place in the town. Well, I think the policy is working fine. I, given the success this year of trying to keep it fairly even, I couldn't really recommend that you change any of the boundaries yet. Now this, I may have a different, I said something different next year, but right now I wouldn't say that. The process is basically doesn't really, get into the nitty gritty of the process, but that we don't want a time stamp. In fact, that's why we did the online process last year early because we didn't know really how many people would take to online. Well, both. There's also the question of availability and access if the server could handle certain loads of traffic. So just, we didn't want to make it feel like getting in line for concert tickets or getting your new iPhone where you gotta keep. So we did have a pretty long window and then seeing how well it worked, we're gonna make some changes for the upcoming year. And just as an aside, something that I am looking into moving forward, and we've spoken about this as well, is not just what happens once someone applies and gets into the schools, but as they move around post-registration, we'll have a number of students who may be renting in one area, but then buy a home in a buffer zone while now what happens? And are we following up with where that student is versus just leaving them in the school where they were? Should they be adhering to the buffer zone standards at that point? Just kind of figuring those things out. So we'll be keeping a closer eye on those kind of things and seeing how folks move around throughout the district going forward. Yeah, I work closely with a person who does control, choice, and lull, and I know the headaches that he can get from a variety of things. And we put you in a stressful job because anytime you're dealing with a parent where we've got some authority to go and move a child in a buffer zone to an assignment they don't want, that's likely to be a popular thing and you're the face of our district in this. And we want to have your back through the whole process and make the systems work. So even if the parent gets assigned to their second choice school, that they're feeling good about it and feeling good about the process they went through. And I know that your skills are gonna be there, but I want our policy to align with your opportunity to do this as well as possible. Yeah, and I do feel it might not be what folks wanna hear, but at the end of the day we do have curriculum directors working very hard to make sure all the schools are at the same level. So whether you're at Hardy or Thompson, you're getting the same quality of education. So if it keeps the classroom sizes down, let that be the focus and not just a builder. I think something Mr. Remy mentioned and we've talked about is that we might wanna look at in terms of policy is what happens when a student moves. And I don't think we actually have potentially clear cut policies about that. There's a tradition, but maybe not as clear cut policies. Mr. Cardin. Thanks, so three things I'll try to be quick. So there was a perception in the community that there was a race to file this year. So I think we need to, our policy says as long as they apply through early April and you can be flexible on those dates, that's supposed to be a window where they have a few weeks to apply. So I think we need to be very clear in the message that it doesn't matter within those two weeks when you apply, everybody goes in together. So we don't want that race that Paula was talking about unless you wanna change the policy in which you can come to policy for that. I don't think it's quite that way. It was really an ordered process. And before it was that we did it on, people would come in. Excuse me, there were people online saying, I'm trying to register, I can't get in the system. I have to register today because I'm in a buffer zone. So it didn't happen. I'm not sure that perception was, I don't doubt that perception was there. We tried to make it really clear when we sent out the communications. In fact, multiple communications that anybody that registered in that week plus came in that day all had the same equal date. And I don't, we'll continue to message that. It wasn't on the website at that time. Let's make sure we do it this year. The other thing to bring up is, one of the issues with the policy was when the District and Commission was thinking about this was neighborhood cohesion. So one of the trends I see here in East Arlington is sort of becoming this choice area where you've got nine people in the Thompson Hardy District choosing to go to Hardy and 14 people in what used to be the Hardy District choosing to go to Thompson. I mean, not seven people in the Hardy District choosing to go to Thompson. That really wasn't what was intended for it. And that's sort of what's happening. That's just sort of an interesting thing to look at and think about as we evaluate this policy holistically. Yes, it's meeting our needs, but is it worsening this neighborhood cohesion where kids are all going to different elementary schools? Maybe that's not a bad thing. I don't know, but it's sort of an interesting trend that I saw in the data. And then the other, go ahead. Now, I think it's also important to keep in mind that part of this, what we're seeing here also represents students who had siblings already at that school. So it won't, and it's not going to answer that 100%, but there's also part of that that just says defaultly, you have an older brother, older sister, already at Thompson, you're going to Thompson. And the other issue, which is already coming up for this year is the after-school programs and people in the buffer zones don't know what they're supposed to do about applying the after-school programs. So I think we need to make it clear to those programs that they should not be enrolling people or giving them preference on wait lists until buffer zone assignments are made. And that message was given to all of the after-school programs, whether they were our programs or private, that they could not make any decisions about that until the buffer zones. And I think they all adhered to that, maybe not. Not what I'm hearing, but I don't know. That was hearing. Well, it was clearly asked of all of them that that would be what we wanted to see. Great. But we will check up on that a little bit better than this year. Great, thank you. I was very impressed by how equitable the numbers are for this year. I mean, we had kindergarten classes between 22 and 24 across. One of the things I think will be interesting for us is that different schools have different retention rates because some areas of town have a lot more rentals and then others. And to see whether those equitable class sizes now continue to be equitable will be interesting for us to know. Yeah, Mr. Heiner. Real quick. Is there any thought of ever asking parents if they'd be willing to go to another school when they're in the buffer zone or do you just assign? Oh, you mean outside the... If they're not in the buffer zone. If they're not in the buffer zone? No, no. Buffer zone sometimes can be a little contentious because my neighbors are their friends and stuff and you're going to one school and I'm going to another school. I didn't know if that's ever offered. I mean, it throws another thing into the mix. Where that comes in is there's another process open enrollment. Okay. And yes, that does happen. And the most common reason for why people want to do that is that a grandparent or a babysitter is nearby. And it's easier walking. So we deal with that that way. Now I will say that in the policy, and we actually get here to it very consistently, all buffers own decisions are made first because that was a promise we made and then we go to open enrollment. So open enrollment decisions we tell people aren't really made until the summer. Summer more clear, you can do it earlier in the summer but some have to even wait as long as in July. Two words. Thank you. And keeping in mind that it's 100% a moving target. What happened a lot with so many applications coming in very early online is as we went through the summer, oh, as it turns out, I was applying for Arlington but we ended up moving in late July or this and that happened. So more space started to fill out and by the time school started, my projections for class sizes and then the actual class sizes changed quite a bit and things kind of freed up, which worked out but from what we were looking at mid July, late July versus first week of September, there's a bit of fluctuation with those who don't actually attend even though they've completed all the paperwork and applications. Moving target's a good way of describing it, yes, yes. It's a very dynamic process and just the nature of it being dynamic is gonna put, it's not gonna be perfect and you'll never get perfect results because as soon as you've balanced a class, you can have a move and it changes and but I think it was effective and I wanna appreciate, publicly appreciate all the work Remy did because it was a lot, especially when you go through developing a new system, that there was a heavy workload last year on this one. Actually, can I ask a question which is not actually related to buffer zones but when we were given the recent monthly reports, compared to mid September, some schools seem to have had bigger changes than others and I was wondering if that was actual kids moving out of those schools or if that was us catching up and administratively knowing that kids had moved out. More of the ladders, what often happens, this is something I didn't wanna maybe repeatedly message out this year, sometimes parents just forget when they move that they should tell the school system. So what happens in the fall is that we have students on a class list and basically we're balancing this based on this but then the school year starts and the student doesn't show up and then that's when we do some calling that happens at the school level and I think you've done some of that as well. Yeah, per the ESC we have to, there's a 15 day wait to make sure that, okay great, you're not here the first week, is the family just on vacation and hasn't come back yet or are you truant or are you not actually here and just forgot to tell us. So we don't wanna go ahead and say, all right you missed three days, let's give up that spot and see if somebody else wanted to be in that classroom and start rebalancing again. So to be fair and adhere to that policy, we have to wait and wait and wait and then follow up with our attendance deputy and she'll go out, we'll make the calls, I'll send her some list and follow up with those families and oh, yes, yes, we did actually choose this school and that and then. I think what was notable to me is that it was actually three schools were a higher percentage than others and so the question is, are there procedures that we can implement in those schools that maybe other schools with less variation are doing that we could look at see what the successful schools who have less variation are doing and whether that same thing can be done at the schools with a higher variation. We can try, it's tough to say as there's also the consideration of the METCO program and students coming into there, we can definitely look into lots of things where for the 17-18 process, we're welcome to make all kinds of tweaks. One of the bigger ones being with the preschool is going to get the same kind of treatment so we can do better analytics for that as well. So we can keep making this better. Great, thanks. Thanks for coming. Thank you. And I love charts. He loves charts too. Keep them coming. I think many of us like charts. But not all. Well then this is your presentation coming up. Not one. Yes. Okay, yes, the charts by Dr. Tessen of the Park Report. Okay, so before I start, I want to share two things. First of all, as I think we talked about the last time with accountability, the state gave us the results based on park, based on five levels, and in the previous years, we've used four levels. So at the time that we met the last time, we were in the process of translating the five levels into four levels. So the committee got the first draft of the report when we had not finished six, seven, and eight, but I wanted to give you as much as we had. And today you have a hard copy in front of you that has the translations for six, seven, and eight. So if you notice differences, and I'm gonna try to actually point out as much as possible where that's happening so you can see why that becomes important. And also when we get to the elementary charts, I'm gonna try to give you some indication of how well park levels four and five in some cases map to proficient in advance, and in some cases let park levels four and five do not map to proficient in advance. Sometimes they take a little bit more of three up, and sometimes they take a little bit of four down. But overall, we really saw results remain fairly stable despite the new test. So I think everybody went into it knowing that they were good testing the test and with as little stress as possible, and yet we got pretty good results considering that that was the approach that we took. So we're gonna start with English language arts. This is our student growth percentile by grade for English language arts. As you know, our target is 50. You'll notice I'm now putting a post script on the bottom, and that is that depending on whether you talk to the DSAC people at the Department of Education or you talk to the people at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the margin of error in a student growth percentile can be anywhere from 20 to 30 points. So it has a very large margin of error, so I just wanna call that to your attention. So- Excuse me, where's the validity of the report then? Not knocking you again. This is definitely a case of don't shoot the message or message on the results. You look at grade seven, and if you got a, they did great if you got a 30 point. Well, if there's a 30 point discrepancy. So we're saying the 50 is our target. We are shooting for 50. If I see a 46, I'm not gonna, or 49, I'm certainly not gonna panic. If I see a 28, then I'm gonna ask more questions because of the large amount of discrepancy. But if I'm the teacher you're asking that question to, and I look at your footnote, I am asking you why you're asking me the question. I'm not trying to be contentious with you. I mean, that's the state's issue. Dr. Allison, I think it has- Is the margin of error this big this year because of the conversion, or is it always? It's always, from the people that I've talked to it's always been that large. So it must be even bigger though this year because of- Mr. Schliffman hasn't- Yeah, Mr. Schliffman can- Keep it simple. No, the answer really is no. There is inherent error in individual scores, so you shouldn't view an individual scores being discrepent over the course of 20 or 30 points. I mean, I'd say that I'd be looking at it closer to 10 to 15 for an individual kid on the case by case. Base is however, what we're looking here is median scores. So you're looking at a distribution of median scores which is actually remarkably quite tight so that a score below 40 or above 60 is considered to be extreme. Okay, thanks. Ignorance in this, if that margin of error, are you saying that margin, where does that 20 to 30 apply on what you said? Actually, let's- How about it go on? We can take that offline. Yeah, I don't wanna get it wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, just think of it this way, that if you go and ask three people how they're voting in the presidential election, you're likely not to have a large enough sample. If you have, if you ask 300, 500, or 1,000, depending on the variance of the sampled population, you're gonna hit it tightly. And if you take a look at what 538.com does, is they're doing repeated sampling. And by virtue of- I'll wait, I'll wait. Yeah, let's go on. Let's go on, I think. Yeah, sorry, but we were doing so well on this. All the error in individual kids washes out when you group more kids together. Okay. Okay, so for English language arts, you have a new chart here that you haven't seen before because of the translations that we were doing. So this is grade three, English language arts, and it looks at the scores from 2014 to 2016. So the light blue is the 2014% of proficient in advanced. The darker blue is the 2015% of proficient in advanced. The white score is the park percentage for levels four and five. The black score, the black bar is when you take the white, the level four and five scores and you translate them into proficient in advanced. Okay. I have a question. Yeah, the state tells us, okay, based on what their park score is, whether that translates to an MCAS proficient advanced needs improvement or- So in some cases, the different schools have the same similar numbers for the white bar, but different numbers for the black bar. Yeah, so the reason that would happen is say at Bishop, when the white bar is lower than the black bar, in general, they took some of the students who scored at the top of the level three and they moved that up to proficient in advanced. So it depends on how many kids your school had there at the top, how it would fluctuate. Now you're gonna see some charts in a minute where they flip around, so that means that they took some kids at the bottom of four and put them down to needs improvement and they weren't proficient in advanced. The big thing to note about this chart is, for example, for Bishop. In 2014, they had 75% of their students that grade three proficient in advanced. In 2015, they had 83%, and after we do the conversion, in 2016, they had 86%. That's pretty much the same. It's only 3% points. If I look at Brackett, they had 89% in 2014, they had 83% in 2015, and they had 95% in 2016. That's an increase. That number is significantly different that I would say that they had an increase in that year. So if we look across the board, we can see that for the most part, schools either did slightly better or the same than they have done in previous years in grades three in ELA. And considering that this was number one, a brand new test, and also at Bishop, these kids were taking an online test at grade three for the first time. I'm thinking that they look pretty good. Can you hit the next? It doesn't want to see. Oh, there we go. I got it. When we look at grade four ELA, we see the same bars that you saw before. So again, the bars you really want to look at are the light blue, the dark blue, and then the black. So if we look at Bishop, significant increase. And that's the school that took it online. If we look at Brackett, if we look at Dallin, you'll see that there's a slight decline. Hardy, Pierce, stayed about the same. Thompson, again, a slight decline. And then Stratton, a significant increase. So it varies from school to school. And considering that the level of preparation was pretty much the same for most of the schools, I think that this just gives us, you know, the range of results that we would have expected to get. Looking at our student growth percentile, again, in the state did the translation to MCAS so they could create a student growth percentile. And everybody is at close to 50 or above 50, which is our target. When we look at grade five, I'm sorry. Are we concerned though from the 15 to the 16 scores? Are we concerned? In other words, if you look at Thompson. Four. 15 and 16. Yep, grade four. When you say that our target is 50 and 48, I see less of a difference. It was 82.5 is an incredible amount of growth. Yeah, this is. Right, but and then. And then it kind of got to the median again. So for whatever reason, that cohort of students, you know, grew pretty significantly that year. If we look at grade five, again, you're looking mostly at the light blue bar, the bright blue bar, and the black bar. That's the way that you want to take a look at that. And you'll see. In grade five, you'll see that what this shows with the white bar being lower than the black bar. Again, is that some of the level threes were moved up to proficient and advanced. And pretty much this is more even. You see less dramatic change at grade five. And here's the SGPs, again, all above 50. This is a chart we've shown before. The trouble with showing this chart this year is that the state did not release what their percentage of proficient or advanced is and advanced is because of the self-selection of schools taking park or taking MCAS. So it's pretty hard to, so you cannot compare yourself against the state. So the best we can do is look at the percentage of proficient and advanced over time. As you see, so at grade six, we were 87% proficient in advanced in ELA last year and we're 85% this year. Again, new test, that's pretty good. When we go on to grade seven, it was about 85% proficient in advanced in ELA last year and we're 83% this year. Again, new test, and they took it online. The last one, this is what I wanted to show you this chart. This is what when we used just the level fours and fives, which was the additional data that we got, we looked at this data and said, whoa, we have a real problem. But remember, this is before the conversion. And when we do the conversion on the next page, you see that we only go from 94 to 87%. So there was a 10 point difference from when we just looked at the fours and fives and when we did the conversion to proficient in advanced. So that demonstrates how that goes. So we'll move on to math. Again, you're gonna see the same bar charts for elementary that you saw in the past. Again, the light blue, the bright blue and the black are really what we wanna look at. We see that because the white is lower than the black, that some of the level threes at the top were moved up to proficient in advanced. And we see across the board, for the most part, some pretty good increases in each of the elementary schools, either staying the same or slight increase from last year to this year in terms of third grade math. If we look at fourth grade math, you'll see that this is one of the times where the white and the black bar, for the most part, are pretty close together, but this is where the schools are a little bit different and it depends on where the kids were in terms of proficient in advanced. But some of the schools showed an increase. Some of the schools showed about the same and this was where the results that we talked about that we were surprised at and this showed a decline, a pretty significant decline in Dallin. And we are, as I said the last time, looking at other data to try to get a handle on that. If we look at the SGPs, again, for grade four math, you'll see that's why we're questioning Dallin. It's a pretty low SGP for this year and the same thing for Stratton, the rest of them are close to in the 40 to 60 range, which is, and I go by what my DSEC, from a DSEC person, Paula O'Sullivan is our data person for the state. She used to work for DSEC, which is the division in the state that works with schools that are at the lowest levels to try to bring them up and she would tell me that even though our target is 50, that they really don't worry about anybody until they fall below 40. And finally, for grade five, again, this is somewhere where some of the level three is moved up to proficient and advanced. And similarly to what we saw in ELA, scores start to level out when we get to grade five. And we see the same thing happening when we get to middle school, that there's a lot more diversity in scores at six, seven and then when we get to eight, the kids start to level out again. And looking at the SGPs for grade five, again, we see a concern that we're investigating more at Dallin and Thompson and the remaining schools are above 40. Looking at the middle school, again, we can't really compare ourselves at the state but we see that our proficient and advanced in math at sixth grade remain the same from last year. We did see some decline in grade seven, which is one of the reasons why we're going to start using IREDI to try to get a better handle on where those students stand, which IREDI is an online assessment tool that we're piloting at the middle school. And if we look at the math for eighth grade, it's pretty much the same. Now, math for eighth grade is a little harder to discern because now we have two tests before. We used to have just one test. Everybody took the math test at grade eight and now in grade eight, the large percentage of our students take the algebra one test and then the other students take the grade eight test. And pretty much what you'd expect, students who take algebra one are generally students who do pretty well in math and their percentage proficient or advanced is higher than the students that take the regular eighth grade math class because those are students that tend to be a little more challenged in math. So looking on to grade 10, in grade 10, the level of proficient and advanced in math is just slightly down from last year, but the state also went slightly down so the difference between ourselves and the state is about the same. That's the only way we can compare because MCAS is now still the same in 10th grade. So looking at science, now science remained the same. Everybody took MCAS, whether they were at grades five, eight or 10. We see that we're still significantly better than the state at grade five in science, even widening the gap this year compared to last year. We saw a significant increase in the proficient and advanced scores at grade eight in science. And considering that we have two teachers that were recognized in science and technology as being the best in the country, I think that we definitely see a result of that. And I'm sorry that the labels are on here, but we pretty much stayed the same in our percentage of proficient and advanced at science in grade 10, and you see that we still have our difference from the state. We're pretty much staying the same. Last time there was a question about PPI, so I wanted to just answer Ms. Stark's question from the last time. And Ms. Schlichman gave me a really nice way to explain this, so I'm gonna take this one on the road. So this is PPI over time for the high school. There was a question the last time about weren't we concerned about how the PPI at the high school, the cumulative PPI, seemed to be going down. So I wanted to show you the PPI, which is an accountability measure for all students and high-need students at the high school from 2013 to 2016. And you'll see that it pretty much has remained stable for all students, with the exception of the 2014 school year. And then it went up for 2014, 2015 for high-needs group, but then it went back down. So I wanna show you what that does with all students. So remember, 2013 is 71, 2014 is 104, 2015 is 71, and 2016 is 79. So this is a weighted average. So the second boat line down there, you'll see, shows you how you would calculate it. So you would take your FY16 number, multiply it by four, your FY15 number, multiply it by three, your FY14 number, multiply it by two, and your FY13 number, you'd add all those calculations up in divide by 10, and that would give you your cumulative weighted average for PPI. So what does that mean? Well, in 2016, we were taking the number 79 and multiplying it by four, the number 71 and multiplying it by three, that big number that you just saw, the 104 and multiplying it by two, and then 71, and then adding that up, and then dividing it by 10. In 2015, we were taking the 104 and multiplying it by three. So that inflated that calculation, and the same thing would have happened for 2014. That would have then been multiplied by four. So that's why even though the numbers are pretty much stable, because of the weighted average, and a number of times you multiply that one high year by whatever number, whether it be four, three, two, or one, is going to make that cumulative PPI look like it's shifting when in fact it's pretty much staying the same. That was a new question. Define PPI for the public. It's made up of the scores you get for closing the achievement gap, the scores you get for student growth percentiles, the points you get for that, and you get bonus points if you take the percentage of your students at advanced up more than 10%, and you get bonus points if you take the percentage of your students down more than 10%. So that's a good question. It was almost like we planned it. So if we look at our MCAS scores over time, if we look at what we can get bonus points for, the bonus points are, especially at the bottom level, are to decrease the percentage of students at the failing level by 10%. Well, in 2016, we had 1% of our students. So the ability to do that is very, very small, and we have almost consistently had 70% of our students and above score at the advanced level. So to raise that by 10% is quite a bit. The same thing happens in math. You see that very small percentage. So when we look at this, it becomes more and more difficult as that percentage gets higher in order to get those bonus points. And when I looked back, many years it was because we did not, the years that were in the 70s is because we did not get our bonus points. And so I think that explains it. The other question that came up the last time was about the percenta ranking of the high school. And the question was, why when we see other types of ranking, US News and Report, Boston Magazine, is the high school rated higher? Well, that's because they use a full picture. They don't just use one measure. So when those folks do their ratings, they use things like AP scores and the percentage of students that take AP classes. And the comparison between the results we get and the per pupil spending that we do, there's like 12 or 13 factors that they take into consideration. So when you take a fuller picture of the high school, that's why they come out. And this measure that we saw last time strictly goes by one measure. And that's by this measure. Mr. Slipman? Yeah, there's very little, the challenge of high school is all over the state is there's very little differentiation. In that, if you're taking the MCAS, a far greater percentage of students are scoring proficient in advance on the high school tests than there are in grades three through eight. And the measure that they're using to calculate your PPI is an index that tops out at the lowest proficient score of 240. So basically, if you're proficient or above, you get a hundred points. And so if you're moving kids way past that point, if you have a lot of kids in the advanced category, it's not gonna boost your numbers. So this gets kind of muddy and high performing districts are disadvantaged in terms of the extra credit points. For high school, we do get better ratings because they also include graduation rate, drop out, drop out retention, bonus points for bringing kids back in, a couple of other factors, but it's kind of muddy at the high school level. I don't think that the, 75 is the target under the system. We're not striving for a hundred. Everybody's striving at 75. And you're only gonna hit a hundred if you're hitting a bunch of extra credit points. So everybody should be smiling at 75. And 75 is a bit of a challenge always. So that's why you do see a lot of schools that fall like 72 or 73 and they get bumped down to level two. It's right in the center of that distribution. So I'm never worried about a difference between level one or level two. And there's a lot of mud in the high school percentile ranks. And in fact, if you're thinking about the variance in this, and there's a lot more variance this year than before, is because you basically have three classes of schools this year. In grades three through eight. One, you've got a bunch of schools that switched to park in 2015. And it's their second year of park. Then you've got the schools that were a member of, which were at MCAS last year and moved to park this year. And then you've got, and that's about a quarter of the school statewide. And then you've got a quarter of the school statewide that stayed with MCAS. So that of the schools that are being rated within the system, 75% took the test they took the year before and 25% didn't. And we were in that didn't group. And that's why we were held harmless on accountability measures with regard to performance. Because if 25% of the schools are taking a different test in 2016 than in 2015, and the other 75% are taking the same test, chances are the schools that switched tests this year would be disadvantaged. And that's gonna show up in your scores. And of course, sometimes strange things happen. Lowell's growth measures on ELA went way up this year. We were also a switched school. So maybe there's something we're doing aligns more to park than to MCAS. I don't know, but we didn't have experience with park. Arlington didn't have experience with park. It was a new experience. And there was a lot of good teaching and learning, but not very much thinking about what the test is gonna look like in prepping kids for tests, which is sort of the standard anxiety driven teaching technique that precedes the test. But the point I wanna make though is that our scores were pretty much the same that they were in the previous year without a ton of test prep and without a lot of anxiety. I wanna compliment our teaching stuff. I think it was a great environment this year. And I really thought that the teachers in Arlington went at this in a very positive manner in my attitude towards looking at the results this year is, okay, that's nice. Move on. And let's just teach the children well and be done with this because I'm not worried about any of our schools. There's no warning signs. We're a high performing district. We switch tests. That's nice. Go teach. Mr. Thimen. So given the fact that there was less test prep than there has been in the past, is that gonna be the norm going forward? Well, you know, every teacher as much as we work together as colleagues also closes their door, you know. And so this year we told people that really we're trying out the test and don't do a lot of test prep. And I think the vast majority of people listened and went with that. I think there were some people that didn't and I think that that's always gonna be the case. I think that when we look at PARC, it's very aligned and MCAS 2.0 appears to be going in the same direction, very aligned with the Common Core. That's what our writing and reading programs look like. That's what our math programs look like. And it clearly, our students did not suffer from not concentrating on test prep. So I would say we'll just keep a course. Yes, Mr. Hener. And I don't know, with regard to test prep, I see test prep being how to take a test, how to use, if it's a new instrument and things of that nature. I'd be very, if that's where we are, that's right, I just wanna make that clear. We're not teaching to the test that the test should be an evaluation of the curriculum. Because the format has changed, how to do a test, lowering the anxiety of test taking, I think that's great. But I just wanna make that clear to the public that we're not testing. I have to say that I feel historically Arlington does fairly well in lowering anxiety around test taking. That doesn't mean that every single teacher, maybe doesn't create anxiety, but I think that we do a pretty good job at not focusing overly on the test. No one's gonna be able to prep for the test in 2017 because it'll be the first year of MKS2O and nobody knows what it is. Even the state. Yeah, maybe you can explain, maybe you can explain for people watching what test prep has entailed, what is it? Well, it depends. There's everything from practicing the released questions. So this is spectrum, so on a continuum. So there may be a teacher who makes a choice that they're gonna review every released question with their students and they're going to focus on, now see, try that, oh no, no, no, this is how you answer that kind of question. Here's how you know it's that kind of question. So very similar to if you've ever had a student that takes the SAT prep class. All the way to the other end of the spectrum, just give it a try. Here's what the questions look like. This is the keys on the keyboard or this is what the paper's gonna look like. You're gonna do math, here's some of the math questions, but not a lot of focus on that. So we did, I think, across the district, enough test prep so that kids could feel comfortable going in there and feel comfortable that it was similar, if not exactly the same as the curriculum that we cover in the classroom and we showed you results last year that more kids responded, for the most part. It looked like what they were doing in the classroom. Dr. Alice Nampy. What are we thinking for this year in terms of electronic testing? Dr. Bordi has already, and I have already discussed this, and she's already had to give the answer to the state. So what's gonna happen is grades six through eight will do online testing, just like they did last year. The Bishop School will do online testing just like they did last year. The Pierce School will do online testing grades three, four, and five, and the other five elementary schools will do online testing for grade four, which was the expectation that came down from the state. In order to be prepared for that, we purchased Chromebooks for all of the elementary schools that are not Thompson. Thompson's one to one, so those kids get to use devices all the time. We purchased enough Chromebooks for all the fourth graders at each of the other elementary schools, and those schools are working with them. They've had them for two or three weeks now. So grades four and five, even though three, four, and five are all working with them, even though four won't be the only grade that will take it online at some of the schools. Bishop teachers were just as happy to do it, and as a matter of fact, when we introduced iReady, which was the new assessment tool that we're using at Bishop, grades four and five, they were like, as long as it's online, we'll do it. So their experience with online testing was so positive that as long as it was online, they were willing to sign up for something else, so I thought that really speaks well to their positive experience. Thank you. So I know that last year we said we were just going to test this test, right, and we were not going to stress too much about it, and what I'd be interested in hearing from teachers what their perspective was, because we heard a lot from teachers earlier about what their worries were, and so it'd be really interesting to hear sort of, okay, some of those worries were realized and others were not, and just have a better sense. You don't have to answer this necessarily now if you don't know the full thing, but you can if you want. Yeah. Out of the 10 years, I thought this was the best test. It was so much less anxiety because when the students realized how shorter the test was, time-wise, they were more willing to put more effort and not be worried about it at all. We did practice before, and the kids learned how to use the keys, and because we were one-to-one iPad in sixth grade, the kids were very comfortable with the process, and for my cluster, it ran very smoothly, and I would, I think, online testing is the best over paper. Good. I mean, I'd also be interested in hearing more about sort of how the park went and how MKS 2.0 is in terms of the content, from teachers at some point. I actually do have data for you that will bring one of the future meetings that from the teacher survey that just came back from park, and will certainly do the same survey for MKS 2.0. Great, awesome. Yes, Mr. Hennig. The state going forward with online testing for the entire state eventually, are they putting the money in the infrastructure for the western part of the state? Do you know? I know that there have been grants available, and money's available for the state for those districts that don't have robust Wi-Fi. We have been in contact with them to talk to them about whether we would be eligible or not. We have pretty robust Wi-Fi compared to. I guess my concern is, until that is done, until the state is all on electronic, we're not gonna have the benefit that was promised to us. Well, you had to get a waiver if you did not want to test grade four online this year. Even the western part? The entire state. So is the timing? I guess where I'm coming from is the, one of the benefits of this was for us to get the data much quicker because it would be online and would be processed. If this still is lacking, we're gonna be still in the, talking this at this time of the year. I know that the grade four, the state sent out something saying their expectation was the grade four would be online, and you had to apply for a waiver, no matter where you were next year. Would we be getting the grade four test results, say, in July? Well, they haven't said it. That was the intent when PARC came out. That's where I'm coming from. I'm not trying to belabor and knock us, thank you. One question is, is the timeout for the rollout for technology the same as it was last year? I think we were all supposed to be using technology completely by 2019, was that right? Yeah, so is that the same? They're rolling it out every year. So it's grade four this year, grade two grades next year, I thought three and six. So that timing is the same, they haven't changed anything. Yeah, no, they haven't, no. It's a very strange rollout. You look at it and you go like, why would you do it that way? But they have, I don't wanna misspeak the grades, but it's one grade this year, two additional grades next year, two additional, and then I think it's everybody the year after that. Okay. Dr. Allison? Once, I would hope, once they rolled out a cohort to electronic, they would stick with it afterwards. Yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, so. They add additional grades. Right. I'm probably misspeakable. So it's probably if it's fourth this year, then it's probably fifth and something next year, and then. When I said additional grades, it was additional grades, not instead of. Thank you. Okay, so superintendent's report. Dr. Rody? Thank you. Let me just give you a quick update on where we are with the projects. Stratton, we're moving along quite well. We're right on schedule, and we did a lot of work this last week in the design and colors, and that's now been decided. And one of the changes, I think it'll be a very positive one, is moving in stratton to uniform flooring that's going to be similar in care that we have at Thompson, not similar in pattern, but similar in care. So that was a great turn of events, I think, that'll make things better. And it'll make it very bright to have all the same, except the cafeteria will be slightly different. So Stratton is going along just fine, and going on to Thompson, the very good news, of course, is that Tom meeting overwhelmingly voted for moving forward with the Thompson edition. The exception of five people. Except for five people. Don't dwell on that. Don't let it go. Don't complain. But it was great overwhelming support. And so we are really poised because of the work we've done to be ready to move forward right away. The contract for the contractor has been awarded to a company called GTC. So that's moving forward. They're working with our owner's project manager and architects. Probably by the next meeting, I can give you a bit more of a timeline and where we are on that. Gibbs, quite a bit of work has been going on there. I sent out an email to all parents. I think I sent you a copy of that, where we are in terms of setting the priorities. And I will get that on the website. I'm not sure if we put the, Karen, did we put the priorities of the guiding principles for Gibbs? I'm not sure we did. All right, let me get those and get them up on the website. But essentially, through these forms that we've had with the teachers, with parents and eating and some suggestions from Thompson parents, the guiding principles for the Gibbs has been determined. And I talked a little bit about that last time as well, but I do, we can get it up on the website, which we do have for the Gibbs project. And one thing I discovered when I was at Thompson is that not everybody knows we have that. So we're going to get that into a quick link. So I don't think we have it quite there yet, but it's- It needs to be hard to find on the website. Well, it's layered. And that's how the website was set up so we could have some organization to it. But as a result, sometimes you have to go through multiple steps to get there, which I will mention is going to administration to facilities and then you go directly to the different school projects. So what I, in fact, just received today were more forms to fill out for the architects in terms of really being able to think about all the needs that we would have in terms of programmatic needs, the size of the classrooms, adjacencies and so forth. So actually just before I came in here, I sent it off to all of the curriculum people, people that are in those particular areas of expertise to have them start working on them. So that's going along quite well. The other part about Gibbs is that there will be some draft drawings from the work that's going on currently that people will be able to see in December. I don't have a date yet, but it probably will have a date, certainly by the November 10th meeting, I think. We'll have a date set for that. And it'll be chance to ask questions, get comments because if there's any tweaks that need to be made, then that has to be done in a very short time frame so that by January we're ready to move forward. The high school, in your packet, you have a list of what were all the dates for documents that need to go to MSBA as part of this module. And all of them, the dates have been met and all of the deliverables. We are meeting with them and we'll be having some enrollment meetings over the next, you know, we had one today, we'll have another one, we're all looking at data. And one of the things that we will talk about later is unlike elementary schools, the design number of high school has a little bit less of an impact on what the size of the school is. Because at the high school level, your educational program also determines spaces that you have in the school. And so that's why that part of it is so key. So for example, you know, if you want to have a, you can have different kinds of makerspaces. You can have, they call clean makerspaces, which are more computer driven. You could have that space, that's part of your curriculum. You could have more of an industrial arts, wood shop type of makerspace. So it's really looking deeply at what the programming is going to be and the teachers are working on that, we're all working on that. And I will be able to share with you some of that documentation probably in the next month. But there'll even be more of intensity on that piece of it as we go into the spring, in which case we have, when we get the designer, they will have an educational planner and we will be reaching out to the community, to parents and having more forms about their thoughts on this. So it's quite a process once we are able to get into the feasibility stage. So that's basically where we are. We're moving along quite well. Do you want to remind people when we expect to get into the feasibility stage? Well, I think the earliest, the first place we invite, I don't want to presume, but we're moving along quite well. I think the earliest probably would be at their January meeting. The board meets once a month. And you have to have, you know, we're fine with all our documentation. We're right on there. So that could be a possible date. Mr. Cardin? So some of the members of the building committee are wondering when they're gonna have their first meeting. And I was also wondering why the committee hadn't been announced yet. Well, it's part of all the documentation. MSB will let us know when we can release that information. And we will, as soon as we are given the green light to do that. So. Yeah, I mean Belmont had had multiple meetings before the end of the feasibility period. They were involved in reviewing all of the documents that were submitted. Just doesn't make sense. It's just all, you know, at least getting, at least having a meeting so they can get to know each other. I don't see why we're waiting off, waiting for that. The town manager and I have talked about having a meeting formed sometime this fall to talk about the process. When we interviewed people this summer, we were pretty clear that while we had to form the committee then, probably the work of it wouldn't really be starting until we got into feasibility. I can't comment on what the process Belmont underwent, but I have specifically asked that question. And I'll eventually have the green light to do it. You asked whether they could have a committee meeting? Oh no, no, no. The committee's a publicize all of the documents and the... Right. Yeah, that's different. That's different, yeah. Publicize the committee too. I haven't been able to... Well, I guess if you have a meeting, then you're publicizing who's on that meeting since these meetings are open in public. It's a public, right. It's a public meeting. It's a public meeting. And as soon as the document hits the table, it becomes a public document. So we can't yet release the list of people who are on that. Well, I mean, I can file a information request tomorrow and get that information, all of that information. So it's a little bit silly. I'm fine with putting out there, but I'm just following the guidelines. I will ask now. We had one last certification done on the committee list and I will ask our liaison project manager tomorrow and see if we can do that. But I specifically asked about the other documents and the answer is no. I think what they want to do is to get you through the enrollment piece first. And I think Belmont is almost five months ahead of us in the process because they were one of the first. And so that's not surprising that they have a lot of that on the website right now. So moving on. So the enrollment class size, you have, these are, I want to just stress that that's why we don't date them October one, but it's dated October 14th. Where we are with our enrollment and to our conversation earlier, I think you can start to see whether there's been some changes and particularly the kindergarten is obvious. Before I think we were all 22 to 24. And now it's widening, it's not widening up, but it is widening down because if you look at the number, we are 36, no, it's at 32 less than we were in early September. And that's exactly to what we were talking about is that you go through and you compare your class list to whether students are actually going to be in your school. So that's always happens. And that's exactly why the state doesn't go with these September one numbers or whatever your start date is. So we'll have, what happens now and is happening is that these numbers all go to the state, they look at, to see where there's, you might have the same student, it could still adjust, usually it's only a couple at this stage, but it'll adjust to see, well, it turns out that you have this student with this acid number, but they have the same one in Taunton. So where is the student? And that's what happens. Yes, Dr. Allison, happy. I'm wondering if we have looked historically at retention from grade five to grade six on an individual student level and if we could be doing that going forward, I'm wondering if as we change the model of the middle school and stuff, I'm suspecting that whereas in the past, we've had a certain number of students go out, I suspect more of them are going to be staying in and I'd like us to be able to be tracking that because I think it would be a good thing as we build our budgets to use to advocate for the funds that we need to educate these students. And I think it's good to look at on an individual student level, not just the whole, you know, how many, what was the cohort here, what was there, knowing that there's gonna be ins and outs. I'm not sure what you mean by individual because we have retention rates between every grade. Right, but that's just looking at the lump, you know, how many students are there in grade five and then how many students show up? Oh, you mean, because there's move-ins and then there's people who don't. Yeah, there's no, I see what you're saying. And I'd like to know, and I think we've got a better handle on student enrollment and data and stuff now with the new data people and stuff in central registration. I think we're at the point where we can start doing some of these more nuanced. It's more nuanced than we can, yeah. And I just think it'd be good to start tracking and then as the Gibbs opens, you know, if we see, oh, look, all of a sudden we're. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Hinner. Looking at the totals down below, we've been talking about adding space modulars or addition to Hardy and you look over at Brackett. Does Brackett allow for that growth? Brackett is, the number here says Hardy's 451, Brackett is 461, so. Bigger building. Well, we talk about a bigger building. I mean, is this something that, is it gonna allow for the potential growth going forward? Or is this something we have to anticipate in the future? Well, if you look at Brackett, you'll see that you have four classes at fifth grade. Right. So if that class of four goes out and you have a class of four come in, we're at parity. The problem is the following year. When you'll have a fifth grade with three, if the three goes out and four comes in, we're down one. So next year Brackett will be fine. I'm thinking father in the future. I'm just, we go to the town, we've done Thompson. We're already starting to talk about Hardy. We need to look at the big plan going forward. I look back at Dallin, the total numbers are still low, but I look at the third grade at Dallin has the same amount of students, three classes, that's four classes over at Brackett. We both have 77. I mean, space is at a premium. I'm just, I guess when I'm asking, I should have asked it better. We need to look at the whole system as a whole, where we're going to have this growth and if it continues. Right now the town seems to be focusing and we seem to be focusing on just East Dallington. I don't know whether this, we talk about a wave going up forward to the other part of town. It looks like it may happen. That's all. I'm not asking for an answer or a solution right now. I'm not talking about right now. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. But we will, and we are. So I just wanted to, the point I made earlier, which is that it was very notable that three of the schools had very different numbers, September 16th and October 14th. And just to look at what is there a way that we can create a process that we can get that information earlier, when we're making decisions about buffer zones and so forth. We're working on that. Really the, there's two ways. One is that parents really need to understand how important it is to notify us. And I'm gonna ask the building principals to make sure they message that out. I think that's the best place to come rather than centrally. That's one issue. Another is that it definitely did improve this summer. We have our elementary secretaries now full time. And so we're better, because what could have happened in the past if the secretary wasn't there, that somebody might have left a voicemail, but it might have been heard for a while. So we have a little bit better communication potential there than we did have. Other than people letting us know, it's really hard to get that earlier unless we have those two things happening. We could have better messaging in June potentially. Better messaging in June. And some parents are great. They'll tell the school that we're thinking and moving. I just wanna let you know, I'll let you know in July. And they do. In fact, the vast majority of parents do that. And I just think that when people get in and moving, sometimes it happens quickly. Sometimes it just doesn't even cross their minds in the summer. So they're not at the school and they don't think about it. All right, and then actually, Rob, you're gonna talk about the kindergarten TAs. Sure, so there's just a list of all the TAs for kindergarten and what their FTEs are and which schools have full-time and where the full-time kindergarten TAs are. Yeah. What they total FTE and cost is. So I mean, there's really not too much to say. There's one clarification, I think. I was doing this earlier and was just putting some notes on a few of the without identifying people. The retirees could probably work more than 0.5, but they are just 0.5. They could not work full-time because of the hour restriction. But they potentially could probably work more than between 0.5 and under full-time. So just to clarify that. Mr. Erks. I think what would be more useful would be to know which classes I could care less who they are and how much they make. More important is I don't understand why at Thompson and Hardy, which have the highest class sizes, don't all have 1.0 TAs when all of their classes are 23 and 24. So it seems really haphazard where some schools have half-time TAs for their classes, like Bishop are all half-time and they have 23 and 24 and yet Thompson has some full-time and some half-time. Why? I would rather know, oh, this class of 24 at Bishop has a full-time or a half-time. Like I wanna know where they are and why. Like how are we making this decision? Okay, well- Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all. What, how we've allocated these. Well, take the examples of Hardy and Thompson. Let me back up further. One of the things that the principals really tried to do is to schedule specials out of classroom art, music, PE in the afternoon and for kindergarten. And the reason why is that they know they have a TA in the morning and we want the teaching assistant to be there during the literacy block. So actually having a TA in the afternoon obviously would be desirable if we, but if when I've talked to the principals of both schools having two half-time can work quite well in terms of sharing between classrooms. So sometimes, why this is not a perfect system is sometimes you could have a decision made in early August based on the numbers then and they shift. And that can happen and it does happen. So we try to be very careful we wait as long as we can, but on the other hand, while we often look for our teaching assistants in August, given the job market today, we might wanna start earlier, but August is usually the time we would particularly do it. So we make decisions then and they may not pan out, but then we've already hired the person. So that's why our data, that's why the data is so important. I would say that we've done, I'm not uncomfortable with the way we have it this year. It may be that what we will find is, again, you also don't know the chemistries or the needs of a particular class and what can happen, and it does happen during the school year, principal will say this particular class really needs to have more support and then we ask the teaching assistant they're able to do it. So that will happen also. Asher, that was my question. Is this entirely based on, or the initial assignments based on class sizes or is it also based on the perceived need of that class? In terms of agency? Well, it's also believed on a perceived need and sort of one of the things, for example, at Thompson, that's probably the school where we have the largest percentage of students that do not have preschool experience. So when students don't have preschool experience, they're coming in with different needs because they've never been in a school model. They may have been in daycare, that's different than actually being in a preschool. So I will say that number's going down, but it's still the case. So if your numbers are getting a little bit higher there and you also have a higher ELL population, so those are factors that go into the discussions. Clearly we don't know who the kindergarten students are. We've done screening, but that doesn't really tell us a lot. I will also say though that sometimes we do know who the students are and they may be students that are coming from the preschool and we already know where they're going to be and the preschool tells us that it's really important and it may even be in the IEP. So it's a fairly complex decision making and believe me, if principals didn't feel what they had right now is adequate, I would hear about it for sure. Also if students are coming from the preschool in their IEP with the need for a one-to-one, that's another TA, that's a separate person. There are also some principals who, at least during the first few weeks of school, tapped into their own budget to pay some of their TAs to stay the whole day for just for the early school year transitions and then have sort of backed off on that as the students get more accustomed to school. Right. And that's something we need to look at too of whether that does make sense, but it does happen in some schools. I guess. All right, and really not much else other than to remind you on Saturday and love is the inside out. I don't know if you've gone by Addison to see all of the. Do we know the rain prediction? It's supposed to be bad. It's supposed to be bad, that's powerful. On Saturday? Is there any chance that we will? Oh, it's supposed to be sunny. Is it? It's sunny. Oh, let's not worry about the weather. Okay, so in the case of really awful weather, would we reschedule or? I'm not sure what we do. Have a tent. Can't just throw up. Can't easily. Say you can't have a tent. Okay, so we think there's good weather. I don't know the answer. Okay, good, good. And then the AYCC gala on November 17th, again, this reminder about that event. Yes. And you know, you can, I think you can come and get tickets at night, but you can certainly go on AYCC website, get tickets. Now, the thing I want, it might be a lure for everybody. The guest speaker is David Axelrod. Anyway, that's it, thanks. And it's a reminder, we had had a regularly scheduled school committee meeting. We are not having that meeting because of the AYCC benefit, which means that our earlier meeting in November is going to be longer than usual. And so just as a warning. Are we starting it early? Well, actually, we might want to raise that question. And I defer to the feelings of the committee, whether we want to start earlier or we want to start our normal time and just potentially go later after 10 o'clock. Yeah, Mr. Heiner. I would defer to those that have a regular working schedule. Yeah, I would. So I am amenable to their needs. Any strong feelings on that matter? As long as we can get on the calendar, we just, you know. Right, I mean, Paul, I think have to come the farthest. Dr. Allison Ampe. It's very difficult for me to get here before 6.30. Difficult to get here before 6.30, okay. And Mr. Schliffman, I know that's a case for you as well. Anything else? Keep it there. So let's keep it at 6.30 and there's a chance, probably a very good chance that we'll have to move, extend it past the 10 o'clock just because we're sort of doing two meetings in one on that day. And there's no meeting on the 17th. And there's no meeting on the 17th, right. Right. That's cool. Do you have anything else? Anything else? Nope, okay. Okay, so the Mass Delegate Assembly, this is my fault. Let me just explain my fault. I knew that we had to vote on this in October. I didn't realize that the date for having to vote on this and to send it over to MASC was earlier than the second meeting. And so what I have done, and I take full responsibility of this, is that I have submitted Mr. Schliffman as our delegate with Mr. Hayner as our backup. So moved. Second. So I've already done this, but I want to make sure that I tell you that and that we, I guess we make it official. So all those in favor of being okay with what I already did. Hi. Hi, okay. It's unanimous. Great. Thank you for your understanding on that. Paul is the delegate. The Paul is the delegate. Mr. Hayner is the... I seconded. He made the motion. I'll try it, I'll try it. From what I understand, Paul and Mr. Schliffman and Mr. Hayner are both going to be there. I'm actually going to be there for part of it, but not for the whole thing. I don't know if anyone else is planning on attending. Okay. It's tricky because it's the middle of the week, I think, to get away. And Dr. Bodie, I know is going to be there for part of it, but not for all of it as well. Okay. Good. Moving on to consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted in one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant number 17060 dated 10, 13, 2016. Total amount $777,323. Approval of minutes, school committee regular minutes, 10, 13, 2016. So moved. Okay. So we need second that? Second. Okay, seconded by Mr. Schliffman. All in favor? Aye. And I opposed or okay. Okay. Policy to review as we discussed the last meeting, this is sort of going to be a standard thing on us to make it easier to find policies in the Nova system. But as I understand, we have no policies to resort. Not tonight. Right, not tonight. Okay. Moving on to subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements. Budget, Dr. Alice Nampy. Budget, budget in your packet, you'll have, so budget met on Tuesday and we came up with a draft budget calendar which is in your packet and it's basically last year's calendar with adjustments made for this year's timing. The few things that we've changed, we added hearing from the AEA as an official item under the priorities last year. My recollection is that we did hear from the AEA but it was kind of they spoke during public participation or something. And we, the budget subcommittee felt that it was a reasonable thing to actually have them on the schedule and on the agenda. So we don't know which day they'll be in. Dr. Bodie will work out the details. We sketched in some dates for when you'll receive various things and when we'll meet with FNCOM. Other than that, it's a calendar. Great. And oh, the one thing that you should know, Dr. Bodie already sent everyone an email about this but we've received information about the end of year report. And because of the personnel situation and the staffing over the summer, we're going to ask that if people have any questions about this report that they email the questions to Dr. Bodie by the November 3rd deadline and then they'll be answered at the following meeting. Just those questions. It's not clear we'll have someone who's ready to answer questions on the fly. So look at the report and if you have questions about it, email them and they'll go to the person who created the report for this year because it's not Ms. Johnson. Mr. Heiner. Just to differentiate, we're talking about the end of the year report, not the monthly report. Right, no, this is the end of the report. Not the what, sorry? This is for the end of the year. The monthly financial report. Oh, not the monthly report. No, not the monthly report. This is about the end of the report. Right, right, the one that we just received. Yeah, right. That's going to the state. Right, thank you. And the other thing that we discussed, I'll talk about the other stuff later. So that's the calendar. Any questions, comments on the calendar? No, okay. So the other thing we discussed was it's the budget subcommittees feeling that we should again do a needs-based budget as we did last year, which was new last year. And Dr. Bode was in accordance with that when I talked to her a week before and then when we talked to, thank you. But one of the things that came up in our discussion is kind of, what are the questions behind our needs-based budget? And what's the questions that the principals are supposed to be thinking about as they create their budget? Some ideas that came up as we discussed it were, is this item necessary for closing the achievement cap? Can we justify this request to the taxpayers and how or why? Will students suffer if we don't have this? But I thought I'd like to hear from the rest of you about what your ideas are. And you can either say now or you could send an email or come to an ex-budget subcommittee meeting. It's not, I just thought this is, it's actually, it's a good thing to be thinking about. And I think the achievement cap is good because it relates back to the goals. But I wonder if there's other things sort of related to this and sort of not. In last year's budget items, when we did the needs, the unfunded, I mean, some of the unfunded stuff, we put them, we indicated that they fell, if they fell into one of four buckets because we had a lot of things that fell into these four buckets. And those buckets were enrollment growth, high need students, essential curriculum, and unfunded mandates. And so another thing that we're gonna wanna be thinking about as we go forward is, do these buckets still fit? Should we change any of the buckets? Or what we're trying to do is communicate our budgetary needs and what our requirements are for the schools to people outside and do it in a way that gets the information across. And I felt that this having these four buckets indication was something that was actually really helpful when you sat down with people and said, this is why we need this. And seeing this is why we have so many of these, we're having so much enrollment growth and this is driving so many of these things. But maybe we have other ideas this year. So, okay. One reaction I have is with that, I would like to see what is it that we would be able to do that we're not doing now programmatically, kind of spelled out. So if we had more staff, we could do a better job in social emotional responding to the social emotional needs of our students. If we had more staff, we would have smaller classes. If we had, kind of like, it feels like to me, rather than just put that information out there in the book that ends up going to town meeting into the public, we'd sort of have a why statement. Why is this, what will this allow the town of Arlington to do differently than it's doing now? What would we be doing better than what we're doing now? Because some people take a look at that and they say, Arlington schools are highly rated, the test scores are strong, the students do well, most students, many, many students go on to post-secondary studies. I don't know why this is, you're just showing me this. So I think there should be context. What is gonna be different and better about our schools if we were able to do all these things? Okay. And I haven't thought about what the buckets are yet, but I think you get the idea. That's a helpful big picture idea. Yeah, it's a big picture, yeah. And the bucket thing is kind of separate. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I think we need to give the public a sense of where we're treading water and where we're increasing programs in response often to either changes in our needs. So for example, social-emotional issues become a much greater concern, those are needs that have changed, or in response to new state mandates that we have to follow. But there are other places where we've increased things, but we're just treading water. Say, if we add a bunch of new students, we have to add more math coaches, more literature questions, literacy courses and stuff to just tread water, right? So to have a better sense of, we can't satisfy these requests to even tread water, or we can't satisfy these requests to meet the needs that we feel have changed. Okay, yeah. So that to me is kind of a different, that's a different way of communicating things, and I think that could be useful as we go forward and we're talking about the budget to have something which kind of captures that. Right. The other thing I'd say is that going forward in this year might not be the year to do it, it just might be too short of time, but we are potentially looking in the future at greater increase in spending on education by the state if this millionaire's tax passes. I mean, these are all ifs, ifs, ifs and not right away, but five years down the line, we might have more money for education. We have a population that is increasingly interested in education, wants to see certain things in our school system. What would those things cost? Were we to get those windfalls later on? I mean, and again, it's very speculative, but to have a better sense of what those things might cost. Okay, yeah. So if anyone else has any thoughts afterwards, just send them via, I guess to me via Karen or something, or come to their next budget, so come in. Thank you. Great. Okay, so community relations, Ms. Starks. Let's see, we met last Friday and we talked about the dashboard, which is probably coming in the new year. It looks good. There were just a couple of pages and things that we still want to pull together so we don't have to have like big under construction signs up there, but so we're looking forward to that. We talked a little bit more about later start times at the middle school and high school and kind of how that's going and what's going on with that and kind of what our role might be. It looks like there are going to be four negotiations, which I know are not this year, but our next year, that this year there's gonna be a lot of focus on doing a lot of the research beforehand and that start times might be included in that and we just kind of made sure that if there is any kind of research that goes on that some people on the right negotiation team might be invited to be part of that research. It's not necessarily negotiations, but we wanna make sure that we are also invited into helping to do that research. Right, do you wanna talk more about this committee? So as I understand there are teachers who are going to be talking about, just studying these issues and talking about them. Well, we have been discussing this issue, that there are a number of issues out there that we might wanna start doing some research and thinking about this year in anticipation of next year so that everything is not scrunched into one year. And so we're working on that and we'll probably, probably by the, we're not thinking of really beginning until after the first of the year or something like that. And so then the question becomes who on the school committee is potentially interested in being on that committee? Mr. Heiner? Well, what we should do is the negotiations committee. Yeah, so let's look at the, let's look at who's on the negotiations. So one of the things is that this year's negotiations committee, the sort of people signed up for it, sort of knew they wouldn't have a lot of work to do in a way. So let's look at who's on there and let's also ask people to just think about the role and see who might wanna be. Right, right. And I think once they know what kind of things they're looking at researching that Dr. Bode will bring that here and then people can kind of decide. We also talked about forums. If we wanted to have any forums and kind of what was going on, we know that in November that the vision 2020 is sponsoring the most likely to succeed video. And we don't wanna like over. And then because the curriculum, the common core stuff didn't end up on the ballot. We didn't feel like we needed to have a forum educating anybody before that. So we're kind of looking into a couple of ideas in kind of like maybe I would guess I would call it late winter and then maybe one in kind of middle of spring. And we're kind of throwing around some ideas there. And the other thing we threw around and I guess I just kind of wanna bring it back here as well is thinking about possibly having some kind of school committee open office hours kind of in a public place. Even if it was just an hour a month or I don't know, every other week. But if we each shared it, no one has to be there very long, but it'd be kind of like, come meet a school committee member and ask them a question. And I mean, it can be in a public place like kickstand or a Dunkin' Donuts or something like that. And just so that, I don't know, I feel like we know our groups of friends maybe and acquaintances for those of us out of the schools, not maybe not so many people that we talk to in the schools. And I think that we wanna make sure that people feel like we're reachable. Yes, our addresses and phone numbers and emails are online, but if people wanna put a face with that and really wanna have a conversation about something that there doesn't seem to be a time for that and we're thinking. And so I just wanted to know what people thought about that because that was something that Jennifer and I had been throwing around and we brought it up again this year. The state reps do that. They, sometimes they just sit there and there's nobody there. They drink their coffee. Sometimes they'll have two or three people waiting. I think it's a good idea. I mean, if we did it even just once a month, literally it would be like we would each have to do it one month, you know, in the months that we meet. It would almost be fun to have two of us there so we could have a conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in that way, worst case, if no one shows up, at least you have somebody to have coffee with, you know? Dr. Ozanepi. So I like the idea. I do remember I asked something similar to that when we were going through the whole governance thing. And for whatever reason, Nancy Walser didn't think it was a good idea, like it was a bad idea. And I never, I- I can check with her. Well, just that was what I understood she to say, but I didn't understand the why. I totally didn't understand it. And no, and I'm not saying, I think we can just do it. Yeah, yeah. It was just, try it. Yeah. Yeah. So we, perhaps- Did the budget for us to have coffee and don't? We might have to buy our own coffee. Why doesn't community relations come up with a schedule, possible schedule? Yeah. So we'll take that on then. We'll see if we can come up with a schedule. Probably start in the beginning of the year. Just, yeah, so that we can actually plan it. And then we don't have to ask, do we, the place that we're gonna do it. No, they don't have to ask. The only thing is wherever we do it, it should be consistent. So in other words, if we're gonna publicize this, we don't wanna move it from- Right, right, right, right. Where you want it, where I want it, where Jeff wants it. Okay, all right. I don't know, I'd say moving it around town wouldn't be a bad thing. So they can't find it? Publicize it. Well, no, so that- So people- It is not always in the same name. From the heights go to different coffee shops than people in New Zealand did, for example, yeah. Dr. Allison Empy. I did something like this for one of my campaigns. And I did actually ask people, but I can tell you that all the restaurant, okay, to the restaurant owners were incredibly welcoming. And oh, sure, and the other one was kind of confused, but yeah. Yeah, I did too, I didn't ask though. Yeah, I asked and they were fine with it. I can tell you, kickstand was totally fine with it. I would ask, as you do a schedule, it would be easier if it's like loose, you know, it doesn't have to be you on a certain day. It's just, I mean- You can volunteer. You don't have a schedule, but if you have to swap, instead of advertising, it's gonna be- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be two school co-members. We'll be here exactly, and we'll try to get all the sign up. Okay, all right, so we'll, in our next meeting, we'll try to see if we can pull that together, great. That's it. District Accountability Curriculum Instruction Assessment. Oh, no report. Okay. Facilities. I have no report. We really haven't found, there has been a need to meet. It feels like all the stuff is happening and we're getting good reports. Nothing happening in facilities. There's nothing happening. Anybody that needs it's happening. Nothing happening in the old thing. I need to give you something later. Oh, okay. We have enough duct tape to make it through the year. Yeah, that's, yeah, we do, we do. Plenty of duct tape, plenty of good investment. Policies and procedures, Mr. Hanford. We met on the October 20th and looked at the MASC suggested policy on student activity fees. We agreed on several changes and additions. I'll be sending the revised policy to Council for comment. We also looked at several other policies and we'll be asking questions to Council to respond to questions that we had in them. It is my hope that we will have a policy for first reading at the next meeting, hopefully. Next meeting, maybe not. Next meeting is November 9th. We have to look at it then at 5.30 p.m. in this room. Okay. Thank you. School Enrollment Task Force. Is there anything to report that we have one meeting? Is there, actually, is there another meeting scheduled? Or is it? I think there is another meeting scheduled. I think there was another one. When is the next? It's Monday the 7th of November. December? Okay. December, isn't it? December. Okay, is there another meeting? Is that a town hall? It's here. It's here. Okay. Okay, Warrant Committee. Everyone get paid again. If I may? Yes, Mr. Haney. I'd like to make a motion and ask somebody to second it for purpose of discussion to establish a short-term committee to review and come up with a legal contract. Our contract with Council, Stoneman Channel and Miller expired on June 30th this year and we're already into a new one. You were in the pile of papers today. There's a letter that was sent to Dr. Bodie and I've already talked to Dr. Bodie about this. They were writing in anticipation of the renewal of the contract. Some of us have talked about it. I'm not suggesting we're not getting our bucks worth but I think for us to do diligence is to look over it. I have figures from the past. This letter here gives a brief outline of what they're looking at. It's an increase of the retainer by $10,000 per year for the work that they're going to be doing and stuff. So I would ask the committee to consider this. So is the motion to form a subcommittee? Is that a motion? A subcommittee short-term and one time to just look at this material and report back to the committee in recommendation for to agree to a contract. The second. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. Slickman. Discussion on the motion? Yes, Mr. Cardin. So it says approved on here. Does it mean it was already approved? That was just for payment. It had nothing to do with the issue. I'm sorry, Dr. Boy, I should have let you. I'm not afraid. It was your signature. Just for payment. We did not go back to them. Just to understand, so I was part of the original legal services subcommittee. You're not suggesting a big deep dive trying to look at changing counsel or something? No, I'm not, that's not what I'm suggesting. I have, counsel Bryant has been sending us, sending me monthly reports on my request of what has been retained or what has not been retained. I'll have those available if anybody wants to look at it. In the third sheet of this letter was a list of areas that they are recommending to cover under retainer and not retainer. If we're happy with that, if the people that I think special education receives a lot of their services and the other parts, we need to be clear on what we're getting, that's all. It's kind of contract review. Right, my suggestion is it would probably be one, no more than two meetings. Okay, so just for clarity, we're talking about a fairly short committee, one or two meetings. Right, and then come back to the committee. And the motion is for a committee of three, two? Anybody that wants? Okay, so I guess why does, if people are interested in being on such a committee, why don't we send, we can probably make that motion next week, next time we meet, send the interest to Karen, myself, and look at a sense of who's interested in being on such a committee. So. Okay, so let's vote on the motion, though. Right, so all in favor of the motion to have a temporary subcommittee to review the legal contract with Council. Contact with Council Stolman Channel and Ramilla. Yeah, okay, in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes. On the topic of warrants. Yes. The modernizing municipal finance and government act was passed earlier this year. And one of the things that will permit us to do is designate any one of our members to approve vendor warrants. I'd like to ask the policy committee to take a look at this. Obviously vendor warrants aren't an issue during the school year when we're meeting every couple of weeks, but it certainly is an issue in the summer. Yep. And there's sort of a squishy question of whether or not it's one specific member or allowing just one member as authorized by the committee to sign it. So it'll be a little research to this. But I think this is something we should avail ourselves on certainly during the summer time because it's often hard to get a quorum of four members to sign the warrant. All right, so motion to send to refer to policy committee to look at the municipal modernization act that permits a single member to sign a warrant. Yes. Okay, any discussion on the motion? Seconded by Mr. Hayner. Discussion on the motion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, it's unanimous. Great, liaison reports. Yes, Mr. Hayner. Permits on building committee. Matt, Dr. Bordi covered all the things that they have done. The next meeting will be on November 1st at the newly renovated community safety building. I attended an OPEC meeting morning. I'm sorry, I don't have the date, but Matt Coleman, our math director, gave an excellent presentation regarding program and courses offered to middle school students and answered parent questions. And last night, Dr. Susan, I attended a medical meeting in Boston. It's an annual meeting with parents and the superintendent. I also attended a stipend committee meeting with Mr. Spiegel, and I think there's a couple more coming up. I'll have to review the stipends. Anything else? Yes, Mr. Susan. On Tuesday, I participated in a forum with former representative Marty Walls. Walls, not Walsh. Right, right. The question, too. I debated the no aside. She did the yes. There was a write up in the Metro West Daily News, which is one of the sponsors along with Regis College. Great. Any other liaison reports? Any announcements? Yes, Mr. Haynor. Allington Rotary will be having a dedication on November 6th at 1 p.m. for Flags for Heroes on the front lawn of the Allington High School. All are invited. At 1 p.m. We've already mentioned the Inside Out, which is on Saturday, and then the AYCC. I just wanna point out the high schools having their play, Peter and the Starcatcher, next weekend, and what, Peter and the Starcatcher? Who's having it? High school. Yes, and I'm gonna add a little maternal pride. My son is the star of it. So I am particularly excited about that show. And that's next weekend? That's next weekend. Any other announcements? Well, just one, could have a superintendent's coffee just for people to come and talk. I'd send the email out. But just a reminder, it's November 14th, and it was from 7.30 to nine in the teacher's calf of this building. And do you want parents to send questions beforehand if they have it? No, well, they don't have to. They don't have to. If they want to, sure. It requires data that I might not be able to answer it on the spot, but I could get back to them. Great. Future agenda items. Yes, Mr. Heiner. My regular one, like a financial report. Dr. Boddy. Right, the monthly financial report. It's supposed to be on November 10th. Yeah, November 10th is on the. Thank you. Art tentative agenda, which is not yet up. Anything else? Future agenda items. Halloween is Monday. Nope. Halloween is Monday. Great. Okay, executive session. We're going to go into executive session. So you conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with effect through collective bargaining or litigation in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. Voted to approve the following executive meeting session minutes, April 30th, 2015, October 22nd, 2015, November 19th, 2015, January 28th, 2016, March 24th, 2016, May 26th, 2016 and October 13th, 2016. Can I just read this part again? Well then. Chairman. So we need to vote a roll call to go into executive session. Sir Cardin. Yes. Is that okay? Do we need a motion first? Are we returning? We are not returning from executive session. Yes. And I'm sorry. Awesome. You're saying yes. I'm sorry. I didn't, anyone meant to make a motion to. I'll make a motion. Okay, so Mr. Slick is making a motion. Dr. Islampi is seconding it to go into executive session and we'll do the roll call now. Yes. Mr. Cardin, Dr. Islampi. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.