 Adam, I'm sure you want to be on camera. It's up to you. It's up to you. You're probably already out. Good evening. This is June 26. My name is Bill Handa, Chairman of the Allington School Committee. Tonight's meeting, I'd like to begin. I'd ask for a moment of silence. Last week, our athletic director, Melissa Dukalecki, and his daughter passed away. And the prior week, Sammy Aldahari, Spanish teacher in Allington High School since 2007, and Vasity soccer coach at Lexington High School also passed away. Thank you. At this time, we are going to have a brief discussion from the superintendent regarding the chain of command. Dr. Bode? This issue is with respect to what happens if I'm not in district in terms of who would be contacted and in charge if I'm away out of the office. And the chain of command will be, of course, Laura Chesson, who is the assistant superintendent followed by Rob Spiegel, who is our HR officer, and then followed by Diane Johnson, who is CFO. And this information will be conveyed to and has already been conveyed to the time manager and the chief of police. Yeah, I just have a question. So when you're out last, I sort of heard through the grapevine that you were away, but we didn't get an official notice. Will we be getting official notices now when you're out? I can't. The past practice has been, as I let the chair know. But I certainly have no problem letting the committee know. I know on the board of Selectman, there's sort of an automatic message that gets sent out. Adam sends it out when he goes away for the weekend. So as the chair, I would ask the superintendent just to notify all the members of the board and the other people that you normally do. Do any of the other members have a question at this time regarding this? Just to clarify, in this order of sequence, whoever the job falls to will have your authority to act in any incident that takes place. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Right now, we'll have public participation. Ms. Hansen? Hi, good evening, everybody. My name is Linda Hansen. I'm the president of the Arlington Education Association. And I just want to make some brief remarks about the ongoing conversation we've been having about the park versus MCAS decision that's in front of you this evening. So I want to start out by saying that I've appreciated the thoughtful manner in which the school committee and the administration have gone about deliberating on this issue. The district is being asked to make a choice between two options, neither of which is entirely satisfactory. I think it's safe to say no one will be completely happy with either outcome. That said, the committee is charged with researching, deliberating, and making a decision based on the information available at this time. As president of the AEA, I feel it is my job to share what I'm hearing from teachers about this issue. As this discussion got underway and earnest a few weeks ago, the first thing I did was to put out a four-question survey to teachers with a brief recap of the information currently known about the two testing systems that has been shared to date. I received 110 responses, or approximately 28% of the total teaching staff. The results were that 63% of teachers who responded felt we should continue the regular MCAS schedule next year. 38% feel we should do some combination of PARC either for all grades or just grades three to eight. Grade 10, of course, will continue to take the MCAS in under all scenarios. So nearly two to one teachers opted to continue with MCAS next year, but it was also clear that many teachers think going with PARC would have its advantages. In reading over their comments, one of the most frequently cited reasons was the stress teachers are feeling as a result of the accumulation of new mandates and initiatives over the past two years with no time to catch their breath. As you well know, we've been bombarded with state initiatives, including the new Common Core State Standards, which Arlington teachers are excited about but feel the need for additional time to more fully implement. A new comprehensive educator evaluation system that requires goal setting, evidence collection, follow up meetings and written responses, district determined measures which you've been hearing about or the selection of common assessments that will be used to measure both student growth and a teacher's ability to help students attain that growth and the new gold kindergarten assessments as well as a graduate level course in sheltered English immersion for every content area teacher. When you look at how all of this adds up for an individual teacher, I think you can begin to understand where the stress is coming from. Veteran teachers and newer teachers alike are feeling the strain of so many changes in such a short amount of time. I think teachers are beginning to understand that this is the new normal, but many teachers have expressed that the pressure and stress they are feeling right now is taking a toll on their work as educators and it's having an impact on the learning environment in the classroom. I think many of the 63% of teachers who wanna stick with MCAS are looking for a chance to consolidate their understandings of the multiple new mandates before taking on yet another big shift. These teachers are also asking for more time to focus on meeting the new standards, the teaching part, before they begin to shift their focus to meeting the demands of the new assessment system, the testing part. Overall, Arlington has fared better than many other districts with the implementation of the recent state mandates by taking advantage of opportunities to slow things down. We didn't sign on to race to the top and that allowed us an additional year to implement the new educator evaluation system, a year that we put to good use. By turning down the $60,000 carat in federal education funding, we saved ourselves some major turmoil. Talked to any of the race to the top districts about what their first year was like under the new evaluation system. It wasn't pretty. Similarly, Arlington was assigned to cohort two for retail that helped us get organized to comply with this mandate within the district in a way that many other districts have envied. It gave us time to plan thoughtfully and get more voices in on the conversation. I think the main question you will need to answer tonight is whether or not the whole harmless carrot the state is holding out is enough of an incentive to warrant piling on one more new thing right now. Even if we technically can muster the IT support hardware acquisition and teacher training to implement Park next year, the question in my mind ultimately comes down to should we do it? No matter what you decide, we can and should put the year to good use getting ready for a future where online assessments are likely to be the norm. No matter what decision is made about next year's assessments, we need to ensure that we are getting our technology up to speed and introducing all teachers and students to the park at least via the practice tests. We can do this with or without committing to the full park online assessment. Local districts are struggling to regain some control in the debate around how much testing we need, what kind of testing gives us the information we need and how we can better streamline the testing regimen in a way that puts the role of testing in its proper place. Unlike all of the other recent mandates, this decision comes with options. I'm very interested in opening up the conversation to teachers. I fear that any decision you make tonight will be made with limited teacher input and I think this is unfortunate. I've shared the results of a survey given out during the last week of school that 28% of Arlington teachers took the time to complete. That's a beginning, but it's not enough. I think it is in the district's best interest to make sure that educators' voices are heard in this important decision. After all, they are the instructional experts that will prepare our children academically and emotionally to get through whatever assessments the district and state mandate. The more buy-in we have at the outset, the better the ensuing plan will go, whatever the final decision is. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Steinitz? I'm Rebecca Steinitz. I'm an Arlington parent. I wanna thank the committee and the superintendent and assistant superintendent for the thoughtful care with which you have approached this important decision. Obviously I'm talking about the same thing as Linda. And for your willingness to listen to diverse points of view. I'm not going to discuss technical issues this evening. Whatever we think now about test quality, technology, test preparation, time away from instruction, stress, cost, et cetera. The fact is that on all those fronts, however we move forward, there will be glitches and eventually most things will mostly work out. In the end, whatever test we use and however we administer it, Arlington students will do better than most and not as well as some. I want to talk instead about the big picture. I'm an educator in the trenches. I work in schools where the difference between a 222 and a 218 on the 10th grade MCAS can be the difference between a future and no future. Preliminary MCAS data came out on Monday and I can already tell you that our focus on writing is paying off with our students, most of whom are from Lawrence, under state control, only about one 10th of a point be behind below state averages on open response and long comp. But we need to drill down on the key ideas and details and craft and structure reading standards to figure out how best to address our weaknesses. Next Wednesday, I'm meeting with a team of teachers to align DDM rubrics. In other words, I take assessments and state mandates very seriously. And yet sometimes I stop and I ask myself, what are we doing? Did any of us really go into education because we wanted to give kids tests? I don't think so. I think you all, like me, are involved in education because you want to see kids learn and grow in the best possible way. Is assessment part of that learning and growing? Absolutely. Is piling more and more tests onto our children the best possible way? I don't think so. Arlington students take quizzes, unit tests, PSATs, and AP exams, that's in school. They do choose to take out AP exams. They do DDMs, which are sometimes integrated into classroom and or common assessments, but sometimes aren't, as we saw two weeks ago. If they are ELL students, they take access. If they are in kindergarten, they will now be taking the GOLD assessment. And soon they will be taking standardized tests in grades one and two as well. Once they hit third grade, they take MCAS and they may eventually take PARC. We can split hairs on whether PARC means more testing sessions, it does, or potentially fewer testing hours. You can look at it that way for sure. But there is no doubt that we are just seeing the beginning of the additional testing that PARC will entail. Their original plan included optional formative assessments and a recent update spoke about diagnostic assessments and speaking and listening assessments. And honestly, we know that if those tests are there, districts will administer them. But is this really the way we want to go? Does the Arlington community want a testing-oriented educational environment? Do we think it's acceptable that the state keeps throwing new assessment mandates at us without our input? Massachusetts is a state that takes its decision-making seriously and is not afraid to reconsider. Look at casinos. Six months ago, they seemed like a done deal. Now they're back on the ballot. A month ago, the message from DESI, I guess we're supposed to call it DOE, DESI, whatever it is, was that districts should switch to PARC next year. The title of their PowerPoint on the subject is Why PARC in 2015. Now that districts are not falling into line for a variety of reasons, from technology to philosophy, Mitchell Chester is changing his tune and saying they want a 50-50 split between PARC and MCAS. And this is just one in a series of indicators. If this was ever a predetermined situation, it isn't anymore. I'm not asking you to make a protest vote. I'm asking you to vote for what you think is the right path for our children. Your decision is for next year, but it also has implications for where we, as a state and a community, go in the future. I know you take the responsibility of that decision very seriously, and I appreciate your attention. Thank you. Thank you. I want to apologize that I neglected to mention that Mr. Pierce is not with us tonight because of a prior commitment, also to mention and welcome Siobhan Foley, the AEA representative. And I also, three things, I'll base this on my age and forgetfulness, that tonight, the Allington School Committee is making its first attempt to go paperless thanks to Adam Kowalski. He's a systems analyst for the town of Allington. He's over here assisting us, and we are, first stage of piloting this, we each, several of us have iPads, some of us have our own computer, and it's a first step in going there. So if we have to stop for a technical glitch, please bear with us. At this time, we're gonna move on School Committee discussion on PARC. At this time, I would ask Ms. Dr. Allison Ampe to make a motion for the purpose of discussion. Okay. The Curriculum Instruction Assessment and Accountability Committee met on Monday. Our goal was to gather information to forward to the rest of the School Committee to help make sure that we had all of the information that we needed to make our decision. At the same time, it was suggested that our discussions on the full School Committee floor are usually more productive if we have a motion which we are speaking for or against. So our decision was to make a motion to put on the floor, however the Subcommittee did not take a position on this motion. So the motion that we voted to present to the entire School Committee was to move that the School Committee adopt the Superintendent's recommendation to implement the PARC online test in 2014-15 for grades three to eight. Is there a second? Second. Okay, discussion at this time. All questions or whatever? Sure. So I've been struggling with this for a while and I have to tell you that my vote tonight will be based not on any protest, not on any attitude I have towards standardized tests which I support with qualifications or based on whether we should go towards a computerized test which I think we should or whether we need a new assessment which I think we do given that we have common core but that I'll make a decision based on whether it makes sense to move early for early adoption so that we figure out all the problems that we might encounter a year earlier or whether it makes sense to wait in order to learn, let that has to figure out its kinks and figure out what the political followed is going to be. I'm very cognizant that it seems to be a shifting political landscape and that we're gonna have a new governor in the fall and that things, while it's likely that we're going to go towards PARC it just might be the case that things are different. So just to let you know, my vote is very much about not a protest vote but whether it makes sense to do it now, early or wait a year. Ms. Starks, I didn't know if anyone has any further questions or wants to make a statement prior to it. I think it's funny, until I heard Ms. Hansen's comments, I was actually as well leaning towards PARC and this is the problem is that I feel like I hear one thing and I'm that way and then I hear something else and I wanna go the other way. I know that the information and I wanna thank all, I wanna thank CIA, I wanna thank Dr. Cheson, I wanna thank everybody for all of the information they have given us over the past week. I know I was a particular pain in the patoot about wanting to make sure that the money was there, understanding the money and but I feel like that's my job. So and I think we do, I think we have the funding. I think that given the scheduling that there's enough leeway, I feel like we have enough hardware, we have the bandwidth, I don't question our ability to pull it off. I have to say that as a teacher myself, I can totally see the need to just have a year to breathe and yeah, MCAS is not a joy to administer and it's a pain of itself but it's something that people already know and so they kind of feel like, oh, that isn't anything different or anything new. So I think that it is a hard decision but I also feel like the administration also hopefully has taken a lot of this into consideration. I'm still not sure how I'm gonna vote. Yes. There are a couple of things that have swayed my opinion on this and because I do this for a living during the day, I have another school district where I've seen the dual administration of the park and the MCAS and I've seen the reaction of students on both sides and administrators and I think that we're running into a situation here where we're getting wrapped up in a lot of things that don't relate to the actual decision at hand. The decision at hand is do we do the MCAS paper version which is an obsolete test that we're very familiar with and we have all sorts of MCAS prep worksheets as mentioned by the student petition. It's very nice, we have all the MCAS worksheets and we're prepping for MCAS and we're doing all the MCAS things because we know how to do well on the MCAS or go to this electronic park version which is a more authentic assessment. It's less multiple choice, less rote, more connected to the standards in where we're trying to go and that's my observation of the two different tests. If we are worried about the amount of time we're dealing with testing, we have a current test where we're spending a lot of time not only just administering the test but prepping for it. Some people are objecting to the fact that we can't prep for park and maybe that's a good thing that we'll be spending more time doing authentic teaching and not prepping for a test we don't know how to prep for. And as that is sort of a result that we don't know how to prep for the park so we're not gonna spend a lot of time prepping for the park. We're gonna be spending a lot of time teaching to the common core frameworks. I think that's a good thing and the fact is that we will be held harmless so there's no penalty for not doing as well as we thought we would on the MCAS. There's a lot of pressure tied to the MCAS. A lot of the pressure to do on the test will be removed if we are an early park adapter. If park moves forward, we will be a year ahead of everybody else in terms of aligning ourselves to a new style of more authentic assessments which I think is also a good thing. Some people have talked about protest votes about not liking Pearson, not liking park, not liking Mitchell Chester and I don't particularly like Mitchell Chester either. But I don't think that my feelings for Mitchell Chester or Pearson or testing industries or charter schools or corporatization of education really comes to play in this question because okay, Pearson's gonna get money for park tests but measured progress is gonna get money for MCAS tests and UPS is gonna make a lot of money in shipping this obsolete paper back and forth. We're gonna test something. The park is more authentic. It's a test that we're not gonna be spending a lot of time prepping for. It is less high stakes for a K to A teacher because it's a new test than the high pressure of the test we know. So I think it will relieve some of the pressure off the classroom teacher. The superintendent has made the argument that being on the electronic version will relieve a lot of pressure from the administrators in the district who are responsible for test security for the paper tests which will not be the burden of running the online assessment. It's a move forward and this is what the administration is asking us to do. We are paying them on one level to go and make recommendations. I think the recommendation is well thought out. I think the recommendation of the administration has a couple of caveats on it. They are coming to us promising that we have the technology to do this. I don't wanna question on how many devices we have or what we'll have next year. If they're saying we are capable of doing that I will take them at their word and hold them accountable if that is or is not the case. So I'm not gonna pass that judgment. I'm not gonna go and exceed their evaluation of the technology. I think it's really important for us to move forward and to go with the recommendation of our senior administration which is making this based on what they think are the best interests of the district. And I'm fully prepared to support the recommendation of the superintendent on this motion. I'm like my colleagues, Ms. Stark and Mr. Schlickman. I'm not looking at this from my. Yeah, you have to speak a little louder. What's, I'm not sure. The mic doesn't amplify in the room, so you'll have to speak. It should amplify for the room too, some of the time. No, it does some of the time. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm talking as loud as I can but I gotta think too. I'm like my colleagues, Ms. Stark and Mr. Schlickman. I'm not looking at this with my professional hat on. I'm looking at this as a parent and I'm putting myself in the shoes of all of the other parents who are sitting at home wondering what we're going to be doing next year. Except that they're not wondering. A lot of them don't actually know that this is even on the table at this point. And that's actually part of what bothers me. I'm concerned that I have questions of how ready our students feel to be taking a computer, all of our students, and I'm looking, I've looked at each grade individually and thought about what, how have they come up through our schools? What were the technology resources as they came up through our schools? And I'm questioning how ready they feel to be taking what is for them a high stakes test because they don't get a different score because we're not accountable or not. They get a score. They get the same score that they'll, I mean, or A score just as they will get if we take the MCAS and that's where I'm coming from. And that's what's making me lean towards taking the MCAS this year. And at the same time, I wanna see us prep entirely so that we are fully ready just as we would have if we had been taking part. And I wanna see us training our students on keyboarding. I wanna see us training them on computer-based tests so that they'll have, if we do the test next year, they're not gonna have a full year of study. They're gonna have from September until March maybe to do this. And that's including Christmas break and February break. I want to see them have over a year of knowing that computer-based tests are coming and feeling like they're ready and their parents also feeling like they can go, oh yeah, I know that my kids had this and that. Whereas I'm looking at my older daughter's history in school and she didn't have computers hardly at all for all of her elementary school. She had no access to iPads. It's because we've been rolling this stuff out very recently that gives me pause. Something else that makes me sway towards taking MCAS is that for this same cohort, the kids who will be in eighth grade next year and also seventh grade, they will be required to take MCAS as their graduation requirement. If I'm going on what Ms. Hansen said at the curriculum instruction and accountability meeting, that it's through the year 2018 that kids are taking MCAS. And so they're just gonna be taking a computer test and then they're going back to MCAS. And that just feels a little off. So for these reasons and many more, I will be voting at this point, I am leaning towards voting to take, or voting against our motion that we made. And hoping that we will take the paper-based MCAS, even if it is an obsolete test, but giving us another year of solid growth data in all of our cohorts and the same year to take a breather to get ready for the new wave and to feel that everyone is ready equally. I get to go. This has been one of the most thoughtful conversations we've had at this table in a long, long time. So this has been a couple of good weeks of a lot of thought and deliberation about an important topic. No matter what happens with this vote, the Arlington Public School System is gonna be fine. Whether we have MCAS or PARC, we're not gonna be a level four district. We're not gonna have a receiver. We're not gonna have a turnaround school in this district. We're not gonna have a pilot school. I mean, this district is gonna be fine either way. My inclination, and this is after a lot of thought and discussion with some people in the room and people in Boston that I know that are in the public school system. I'm leaning towards voting for the PARC test, but I also wanna talk about an alternative thought. And here's why. First of all, we have moved, we've made a very nice adjustment in this district. Based on what I hear, I don't work in this district, I work in the city, and so I'm not in the schools here every day talking to teachers. But from what I see, we've made a nice move, nice adjustment, we migrated nicely to the common core. I'm sure there's 450 educators in the district. I'm sure that in some places, in some classrooms, we've struggled. But for the most part, we've made a nice move to the common core. In the MCAS, and I know that some of the questions in the MCAS and some of the parts of the MCAS are aligned with the common core, I know that. But this test is aligned, very aligned with the common core. It's aligned with the common core both from a curriculum perspective and from a pedagogy perspective. And there's been an effort, at least that's been described to me, to us, that we are trying to change pedagogy, to respond to the reality of the common core. So I think taking the park could help keep the ball moving in terms of our migration in Arlington to the common core. I think online testing is the reality. If 15 years ago, when Massachusetts said we're gonna have an MCAS test, pretty soon every single state in the nation had some sort of a standardized test. It's not gonna be too long. I don't know, two, three, four, five years where everybody's gonna have online testing across this country. It's just the reality. I think this gives us a chance to test it out. I think it gives us a chance to get all the kinks out of the system. I think it gives us a chance to learn. Now, we could all be wrong. And the Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could vote in six months, eight months, a year, whenever they wanna vote and do their own test, opt out of park, go to a smarter balance. I don't know, Mitchell Chester could start a new company and all of a sudden we're gonna do business with that company. I really don't know. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, I will tell you, there is a lot of unknown in this. There's admittedly a lot of unknown in this. But I'm comfortable with this decision, in part because my tenancy and my 12 years on this board has been that we hire a superintendent and assistant superintendent to do all this research and then we check it. We check it, we critique it, we take a look at it, we push back. I mean, the committee has been over the past couple of months working on goals and we added goals to Dr. Bodie's expectations for the coming year. We've added goals that you probably didn't always like but we had a majority vote so you had to accept them. So I think that, but we kinda hired these folks to do this research and make a recommendation and I don't see anything unsound in the research. I don't see anything unsound or biased or impractical or unrealistic. So I'm inclined to accept it. Now having said that, if the committee is divided and open to an alternative, one thing I have thought about and I talked about with the superintendent last night and she was lukewarm, right, you were lukewarm. So I, and that is that, and I'm not sure I wanna do this but I just wanna throw this idea out. So before we get into making motions, nobody, and that is we could delay a vote until the fall and we could ask the superintendent to have the dialogue that Linda talked about with faculty in the teacher training days, the teacher days in August and maybe early in September, which I realize is a busy time but that could be an alternative if there's an interest in that kind of an approach. If there isn't, there isn't, we take a vote up or down and we deal with it or the chips fall. So that's what I'm thinking. And you know, look, I have to say, I respect, everybody's opinion on all this. There are lots of people that have done a lot of research on this. When I first got a phone call from Becca, I, you know, my thinking was, you know, I had one thought and then I did more research and, you know, but I'm gonna go back to the beginning of what I said. Arlington, Massachusetts, the Arlington Public Schools, the students, the vast majority of the students in the Arlington Public Schools and this district is gonna be fine no matter what we do. Arlington is not gonna be a level three, a level four, a level five district. It's just not, we're not in that category. Nobody pays it, I sit on a couple, on a statewide committee, nobody pays attention to Arlington. They really don't. They think we're a nice district and we produce nice kids, but the committee, I sit on, we talk about Lawrence and New Bedford and other districts. We do not talk about Arlington. Was that, that's best I could do. I'd like to thank all my members. Like Miss Stark, I come in with feeling, I know exactly where I'm going. I still think I know where I'm going, but the different questions. Going through some of the documents, and again, I wanna thank both you and for your information out there and all the additional information that I've got this past couple of days, but they created more questions to me. I'm an elementary preparation and I agree Dr. Cheson, Dr. Bodhi are our experts, but we also have educators on the board that sometimes test them in their background and stuff. Special education has been a strong part of my profession as well, and going through the adaptations, several of the groups will be excluded from the test, cannot be part of the test if they have severe handicaps visual, an example for one. I assume if we go forward, Park will have that adaptation the following year. One of the things that stuck to me, just really stuck out to me, was that the children will not be able to use graphic organizers, and that's an integral part of our writing program. They have been, I mean, it's an automatic thing. When I substitute today, and there's a writing assignment, that the elementary children, third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade, they're right there. It's an automatic thing. They pull it out, they start going with it. I don't understand the rationale, but they're not gonna be there. So part of this training, as Dr. Ampey was talking about during this year and this gearing up, is making this transition. I don't know if the other tests that Mr. Thielman talked about have the same limitation, but if they do, there must be an educational rationale for it. We need to, we have to unlearn or redirect our children in that writing approach, because it is an integral part. It's an automatic thing when they start organizing their thoughts. That sticks there. To, I expect our teachers and I expect our administrators to be preparing that, but it then becomes an application right away instead of doing that actual practicing. I do trust that we have the infrastructure. I am really surprised, because at the meeting the other night, the subcommittee meeting, hearing the districts around us that aren't prepared. And I feel really good about Arlington, because I always felt we were the poorest kid in the family of educators around here or programs. And thanks to what's happening in the past couple of years, we're not only equal to, we're better than some. I still think the, as far as being held harmless by the Department of Education, if we do this, I don't think that is sufficient. As Mr. Thielman says, will this be the definitive test in the following year? High probability, yes, but it may not. Will it mean another year of waiting to find out what the new one's gonna be? We, as a system, have done well by waiting. Several people have said it. We did not do Race to the Top. We did not rush into the teacher evaluation. Collectively with the teachers and the administration, I thought we were average. Every place I go, we are the star. Other systems are struggling through that. The benefits, in my mind, do not outweigh the negatives. We talk about stress on our children. Most of that stress is on the adult's perception of what children do. But we then part that stress that we have on our own kids. How'd you do on the test? Which test are you gonna? The other question, a major question I ask, is that the following year, if it doesn't implement it, there'll be a, we're only practicing this for three to eight, correct? And the following year, would the test be for all grades? If they implement it statewide? It'll still be three to eight. There's uncertainty about what would happen with the ninth and eleventh grade. I would, my recommendation at this point is we would not do anything with ninth, eleventh. I think that- I meant for the following year when the state acts on the implement it. I don't think that they're gonna go nine and 11 the next year, either. This discussion of PARC is a three through eight decision. I understand that. I'm just considering concern with, we practice with the eighth grade and then they either don't get it, as it makes sense the way you said it. The practice is for not for them. Thank you. I'm gonna now ask Dr. Bodie and if Dr. Chesson wants to speak on this before we go any further for a vote. The answer is yes. Yes, we would. I didn't know if you wanted to add anything. First of all, I wanna agree with Mr. Stelman. We're gonna be fine. This district will do well. In fact, I actually don't personally think that we're gonna have that many issues with the PARC test. One of the things that came out in our pilot in the interviews with the students themselves as well as what our teachers saw is that the students did not see things on PARC that they had not seen in their classrooms. So what we are doing in our classrooms in terms of adjusting to the common, adapting and adjusting our curriculums to the common core and also making pedagogical changes. These are real and we are moving forward with that. And I was very gratified to see that that was their experience. I think that our issue with moving forward with this is actually an extension of the teaching and learning as well is that it would be an opportunity to see what the results would be, which I think would be very positive as a result of the changes we have been making over the last few years. Our experience with the pilot was actually somewhat of a surprise and I think that that is what in part informs our recommendation is that we did not find that the students were particularly stressed about it. In fact, a number of parents will talk about how stressed students get for MCAS and we do see that even with students who are taking the MCAS the whole day. You know, the anxiety and the pressure builds through sitting in a testing situation for as many as six hours and some of our students do that. With the park it is a time test and why you would think a time test would add stress in some ways it can alleviate it as well. The survey of the teachers that actually piloted the park assessment, they had a different view of the park assessment after they actually piloted it and Dr. Chessing can talk a little bit more about that and in fact, you have received some emails from some of those teachers over the last week and relaying their experience with that. I understand the issue of all the mandates. We have been, I think, all districts sort of reeling from this been one thing after another after another and in fact, it's in part because we have been doing that that I also see the opportunity to do this is one way to sort of turn the stress down because of the conditions under which we would be taking the test this year. That we would not have that stress that you are needing to perform at a level which affects our accountability. It is true that all students would receive a score, they would still receive an SGP, that all is true but I also think teachers feel very stressed about the performance of all their students in relationship to the express district goals. We have district goals about PPI, we have district goals about SGPs and for people watching, these are performance indexes and also growth percentiles and so that stress does exist there. A vote against PARC is not a statement about the whole gestalt of assessments. Assessments are part of how we operate in this state and certainly in this country in many respects whether it's from the assessments we have in the lower grades to SATs and PSATs and GREs and AP tests, this is how we measure what progress our students make in content areas and critical thinking skills and to some extent and certainly in writing and communication skills as well. This is the reality of our educational system and it's not unlike actually the reality of educational system throughout the whole world. In fact, in some ways in the United States we have a system where there are many opportunities for success and not have the pressure of having to have a single test which absolutely determines your future. As we, from our point of view, we really have a lot of confidence in our students. We have confidence in our teachers that our students are doing well and I think that the PARC is an opportunity to take a look at that a little bit more deeply before I think that this is going to be something that is going to be adopted and mandated the following year. Would we still do well the following year if we did MCAS this year? I think we would. We would certainly continue all the work that we're doing with an eye that this is going to be assessed in a year. What I think that we would not have the opportunity about is to take a look in actual time how in a sense we're doing, we wouldn't. We wouldn't have that opportunity. Mr. Schlickman said it is a very different kind of test than MCAS and it is really a paradigm shift. Is it the best that it's going to be? It is not. Those of you that were around when MCAS started, it was a lousy test but it got better over time and while it's supposed to be fully aligned with the Common Core, it is not really completely fully aligned and it doesn't certainly offer the shifts in terms of assessment that the park has the potential to do and actually is doing some up right now. So I think it would be a great opportunity for us to have the experience. I don't think that any of us that are been pouring over this decision in any way want to stress our teachers more or our students. I don't, the training that we would have for teachers this year would be very, it would not be extensive. It would be really, when we trained the teachers that administered the park this year, it was really about 20 minutes and pretty much the same thing with our students. Probably teachers will have, the students have an opportunity to take a practice test this year but what the preparation for the park is is what we're doing every day in our classrooms and that is the focus and that will remain the focus of the work that we do. I will say one other thing in terms of, we had about a quarter of the teachers respond but I will also let you know that this is not just the decision of, this is in superintendent myself. We had worked, we've had many, many discussions with administrators, all the materials you have, they've had. We've looked at this, we've had long discussions and we even had a vote of the administrators in terms of where they stood on this issue and it wasn't unanimous. There are people that would prefer to stay with MCAS but it was a two to one. Two, twice as many of the administrators would prefer to do this next year as well and just to have the experience of going forward. That's about all I want to say right now but I know that Laura you'd like to say a couple things. I think the first thing I want to say is thank you for everybody's careful consideration. I know from the questions that I got that everybody was reading the documents that we sent out and I appreciate the coaching and how, well if you gave me this information this way I might understand it better so that was great. We as a district consistently believe in the use of formative assessment and so I want to have us think of this opportunity as a formative assessment in the sense that if we take PARC in the spring we will have a formative assessment to give us information on not only are we covering the right topics but also are we using the right pedagogical techniques. Very often I remember sitting down with other math teachers when I taught middle school math and we would look at the standard and we would all look at a standard and say yes we all teach that standard and then we'd start to have a discussion about what you ask your students to do to demonstrate that they have met that standard and what I ask and very often there was a strong disconnect between what I might ask and what another teacher might ask. So by using the PARC as a formative assessment we'll begin to get an inkling as to whether our understanding of the common core state standards and the pedagogical techniques that support that are the same as whether those that create the assessment are the same. Now ours may be better and we may get information and we may say they're wrong but it will be a formative assessment process as all formative assessment processes are that will inform teaching and learning within the district. I think most of you have talked about that you feel comfortable that if we say that we have the technological capabilities of doing this that you are holding us to that. There were some questions that were raised about devices and I think that we've answered that. They've been questions raised about the technology staff and while we do have this technology staff I think that you got a number of emails from teachers who procted it who said that really the level of technology support that was not really what we expected it to be and certainly what not what they expected it to be. There's been some questions about student facilitation with technology and again I wanna point to one of the fifth grade teachers who was a proctor who basically said that her students did pretty well and in that school that school probably had the least amount of technology of any school in the district and her fifth graders would have been just new to the cycle of technology being introduced to the elementary schools and yet they were seemed very comfortable with taking the test. And I also wanna point out that we're bringing students that would be coming into third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade that were students that we've seen over the last two years being kindergarten students who are writing using iPads and first grade students who are writing programs with Scratch Junior and second grade students and third grade students who have been using technology yes maybe only for a couple years but rather intensively within the classroom our teachers have really adopted it well. So I guess the final thing I wanna say is I think we would be able to go back to something Mr. Schlickman said. I think we would be able to focus on teaching and learning and really teaching the common core and wearing less about absolutely preparing for the test although we would certainly prepare our students and get them through a practice test and again I wanna go back to the proctor who said her experience with the practice test and her experience proctoring and seeing what she saw when she actually gave the test were not the same that it gave her a world of information that she did not have before. They would be able to focus on teaching the common core because they would not have that requirement of accountability right over their heads and while I believe that Arlington students do very well we also have a district where there is a district goal about 75 PPI and 51 SGP. Accountability is important enough to this committee and to this district that they have set that as a district goal. Therefore we have to see that as one of our paramount things that we need to answer to at the end of the year to be able to focus on teaching and not to have to worry about focusing on teaching at the same time as meeting that goal and to really allow teachers to focus on the common core and to take the information from this test to let them know as the formative assessment how they're doing I think would be the right way to go. That's all unless there's questions. Before I ask my questions anyone else have any questions? Questions, comments? Go ahead. So actually I have to say that I've been changing my mind a little bit. I came in here expecting to vote no and I'm actually now thinking that it might make sense to wait until October and because one of the main reasons I might vote no is in respect of teachers who seem who are telling us that they're overwhelmed and that they need a break and they just need a year to sort of catch their breath but it's very possible that in October that they might have a different feeling that if there's a lot of communication that goes on that there just might be a sense that oh okay this is okay we can handle this. This is be better for us. And I'm actually now inclined. I know that motion hasn't been made so we'd have to make that motion but I'm sort of leaning more in that direction. Don't make it yet. Oh. Quick question. Go ahead. I actually talked about this today as a possibility and it would be actually talking about stress. It would add a lot of stress to wait until October to make a decision on this because there's a lot of work that can be done this summer. In fact just yesterday I received an email from the Department of Education about webinars that are going to happen in July. There will be a lot of videos and training that could be prepared and ready to be done and I'm not sure that we'd want to make all those efforts with an uncertainty about where we're going to go for next year. So in some ways, first of all, even if we wait until October and you decide to go to park, there's no guarantee as you know that we would do that. And if we had to decide in October, we are really going to be scrambling to do a lot of the preparatory work that could be done this summer. One of the things that we did talk about that would be a consideration is that if you vote, if you were to vote tonight to do the park, you do have an opportunity between now and October to change by school whether it would be a paper and pencil test and while it would be my recommendation that we do it digitally. If we, as we went through the summer, as we discussed it with principals, as we discussed it with staff, as we looked at from every possible angle, if there was a school that absolutely positively it was felt was not prepared, that would still be an option on the table. I don't think it's an option that we would want exercise. It's not an option I would recommend exercising but it would still be an option left open. So if there's some option that would be left open that would possibly reduce the stress, that would be the option because we would still do all the training, we would still do all the videos, we would still, because the vast majority of the district would be I think going to digital because the schools where we did digital are ready to go digital again. They felt so strongly positive about that. Couple of things. Number one, as a teacher, when they say you tell me I'm not gonna be held accountable to something, this test tests the common core. We're teaching the common core so we're holding our teachers accountable for the common core, whether we use the park or whatever. So I don't want it to go out there that we're not holding our teachers accountable and the teachers know this. As far as the testing aspect of it, one of the major focuses is to go digital. So I don't think we should be considering postponing with the idea that we have an option to go paper, my opinion. I guess I didn't frame it as a question. That issue, and it may seem small but to me it's a very big one because I thought writing was a very integral part and expressing oneself. Is there an intent of making this transition from graphic organizers or not? Can I? I was just gonna say, we can both, we can both. We both know that. The use of graphic, first of all, students get scrap paper and they can create their own graphic organizers. The prepared graphic organizers are only allowed on both the MCAS and, not in park, but on the MCAS for those students whose IEP specifically states that they are allowed to use a graphic organizer. All other students may not use a graphic organizer, a prepared one. Any student can take a piece of paper and make a graphic organizer. In park as well, they can use scratch paper and they can make a graphic organizer. I saw an inconsistency there and I called up and granted, Desi doesn't, you don't always get the most intelligent person giving you an answer but it was that and that's my shot at them. But this person didn't even hesitate. When I said, if I was a proctor should I, would I be required to stop the child? He said yes. That's one person, I understand that. I proctored the exam, I will say it that. My other question is, last year, this year, this past year, when we involved in the pilot, were there children excluded because of disabilities and stuff in classrooms because the test was not capable? There was no student that sat out on the exam. As a matter of fact, in one of the proctors emails to you, she talks about the fact that the review markers that they're allowed to use and the ability to type was actually a benefit to her special education students and that was reported by both the students and the small group test administrators. Last question, why do we need lead teachers in this? I saw that listed and I'm trying to understand, if we're training all our teachers to administer the test, and we have IT support, why are we doing this? We recommended that because that's the model we used for the new teacher evaluation program and also with baseline edge and so it's a model that the district has adopted well where there's one teacher that receives, everybody receives training, but one person becomes the go-to person. Do I think that's necessary? I have to admit, Mr. Hainor, I don't believe that it is, but it is a model that we used before and it's one that teachers are comfortable with and I wanted to offer teachers as much support so they feel comfortable as possible. I guess I'm trying to understand, I understand in the examples you gave, but if a group of us administering the test and Mr. Thelman's the lead teacher, I can't go to him in the middle of the test. No, it's in preparation in case you have any questions in preparation. And what will the stipend be or is that something that has to be negotiated? We'd have to negotiate that. Again, this is to try to make the teachers feel as comfortable as possible. We'll go around again, guys. Okay, I just wanted to clarify something that Dr. Cheson says. I respect the thinking and what the administration has been saying, but to say that when we're talking about holding harmless, that's on a district level, that's a district in the state relationship. That hasn't been reflected. We haven't taken any position on what our school committee position is on holding harmless or not. And so the idea that the teacher specifically is under more or less stress because of trial park being held harmless or MCAS not, I think that's reaching beyond where what decisions we've made. Now, I can see many reasons why next year's, if we went to a different test, why next year's results are going to be very difficult to interpret whenever we make a change. But I just wanted to clarify that I would certainly hope that our teachers are not feeling stressed about things, but that the hold harmless is really at the district and state level. And we have not had a conversation here about how that relates. Cool. Well, so a couple of points is the school committee could hold the district harmless, I'm thinking a little bit out loud by waiving goals 1.4 and 1.5, which are... We just haven't... We haven't done that. I mean, that takes a little bit of conversation rather than do it on the fly, but that's the PPI goal and the SGP goal. Yes. And that may be worth, that's a good conversation to have. I think we should have that conversation. I think you make a very good point. You're 100% right. That we have not, they're held harmless. The district is by the state, but we haven't done anything about it. So I think it's a conversation we should have. I don't know if we could prepare to make a vote on that tonight. No. But I think we should talk about it. The point about communication with the staff is in the memo that we have from Dr. Cheson, the Dr. Cheson and Dr. Bodie that was in the packet, the online packet that I'm reading now on my screen. I'm flipping through. Going through our technology. I am so cool. Are you? Let's see. Adam is smiling. Yeah, I'm so cool. I can't find the damn thing, so we're there. Oh, okay, yeah. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Cheson. Thank you, Dr. Ampey. I mean, part communication plan talks about communication to staff and it talks about rationale for the superintendent's recommendations by 630, training plan, information gather from desi. So there's a lot of points of contact here. And, you know, so I feel there's communication. Now, I tip to the point made earlier by the leadership of the teachers union. The, you know, I think what people want is a dialogue rather than just this is what we're gonna do, this is how we're gonna do it. So I just, my counsel would be that try to make it as much of a dialogue as possible. That would be my, I think what people are asking for. There's a number of meetings that are mentioned there that are similar to what I did this year where I went to school districts in, I'm sorry, schools across the district and talked to them about district-determined measures and gave people really an opportunity to answer, to ask questions and give feedback on district-determined measures and their feelings about that, as well as the teacher evaluation system because we were about three-quarters of way through the teacher evaluation system and I would expect it would be the same way. Your point is well taken. Thank you. A similar point Dr. Allison Ampe mentioned this earlier about the communication to parents. So we've seen examples across the state of some districts that have done a fabulous job sort of really rolling things out to parents and parents can come in and take practice tests and are given presentations and have them ask questions. That isn't something we've done yet. That's certainly something we can do in the beginning of next year. If we have a little over a year we have even more time to do something like that but it seems like it's absolutely essential to not leave parents in the dark because I think right now they really don't know what's going on. That's the second page of the communication plan was regarding communication to parents and I would have to say that from my perspective and perhaps it was blindsided and I apologize is that until we voted on whether we were going to do the test or not to have a number of communications seemed to be a little premature. So the communication plan is on page 30. They're all there 143 pages in this. Yeah I haven't seen it. So we read 143 pages of stuff. Okay you did. Yeah well I read as much as I could. All right. Any further discussion questions are we ready to vote. Mr. Fitzgerald are we going to do this electronically. Oh boy. How do we do that. How do we do. Adam would you. Can we put up on a screen or something. No no no it shows it. I've got it on my screen right now. Right. It's not on my computer but on this thing. I'm not sure. Just a second. Whoa whoa. Time out. Well let's just take Dr. Ampey. Point of order. Yes. Is it illegal to do a vote. We will take it out loud as well. Okay. We'll do it both ways. I don't have it Adam. I don't have it Adam. Okay I got it on my machine Adam and I'm the only one I guess. No he has it on his machine. Oh she has it. I have it on this thing but not on this. Yeah I don't have it. I don't have it on mine either. Oh here wait now I've got it. I'm just coming up. Oh wait a minute. I don't want to do this. I want to keep up with everybody. I just showed up. Try it. Oh I have it on both. Just refresh your screen. Refresh your screen. This is like. I'm sorry. Wait a minute. Yeah please Adam. Come on you can do it. Ladies and gentlemen in the audience. The home audience. What we're trying to do is to bring up the motion on our tablets or our computers. Again as I mentioned earlier we're going through all the pluses and minuses of the program. This is our first electronic vote. And so when all the members have this on their screen we'll do it but we will also vote allowed too. This will not be a silent vote. It'll be both a computer vote and an oral vote taken. We can lock up their iPads. OK thank you. Most of the home audience has seen the town meeting do it but the town meeting members have little clickers. They don't give us all computers. The long I'll stretch this out. The long term goal whether it'll happen during the following year is that all the documents that we have had on our computers tonight will be visible to people at home and you will be able to go online and address them on your own tablets or other devices. Just check this out. Hang on a second. I can't do that now. When also let me add one more. We will have a live screen as well. But I can't do it now. No we're still in the pilot phase. That's why. No we will say the votes right. But the the. Come up to the table. We I need the home audience to hear you as well. You got it. I'm sorry would you repeat what you just said. I'm good man. I was a long time member of the school committee. And I do have to say I'm really impressed by the quality and the compassion and passion of the debate. It's a great you're a great school committee and a great administration. Thank you. I just have problems sitting here and not having the same materials that you do at this moment. And I know you're piloting it. But the question is that every piece of paper that you're looking at I'm entitled to look at too. I agree. And the in the past just a second. In the past we would put a package off to the side. And I apologize for that tonight. In the future it will always be there. It will be made available in hard or soft copy. Thank you. I apologize. All right. So do all the members have a piece. Yes. You all have. So I would like to repeat twice. Excuse me. Adam I need you to add something to this employment park for grades three through eight. Is it three through eight for the school year 2014-2015. And do we need to do anything to refresh ours? I'm not touching this. Don't touch it. Don't break the idea. OK. So it's going to disappear and come back. Still there. Still there. Do we need to hear it? Don't touch anything. Did it refresh? Let's see. You want us to hear it. We shall refresh. Do you want us to exit out? Exit out. Just exit out. You won't let me. Oh, there. Mine came back with, it just says for grad. Dot dot dot. Yeah, it's what mine says. You get it for grad? You got nothing. You broke it. You broke it again. Oh, here it is. Did you get the whole thing? No, it says just grad dot dot dot. All right, it's got a text. OK. It's got a text. I wanted to know as you. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Let me repeat it. Move that the school committee adopt the superintendent's recommendation to implement park for grades three through eight for the school year 2014-15. If you vote for it, it's for it or against it. Do your vote, and then we'll take it orally. Has everyone done it electronically? So do we have to press confirm? Yes. Yes. OK. All those who are voting for the implementation, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. No. I'm going to call for a roll call vote. All those for? Why? Bill? Well, you've got it? Not yours. You didn't vote. I didn't confirm. I have passed three to two. There it goes. No, it didn't. So the vote was three to three. It's a tie. It fails. OK. Moving on to the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want to? Well, I mean, I don't know. I had anticipated this might happen. And so you just feel that even trying to have a conversation in September and revisiting this in September is not worth it. It's a game. Yeah. Well, one I don't know. There's the complication of it may be a move point. It may not be possible. They're negotiating the contracts this summer. Having said that, they're probably going to try to have more people take it. It's just whether we spend the time preparing the information and training videos and all of that this summer. Rather do it when you're not in the pressure of a school year and just to have that preparation. I don't know. I think we'd rather know what the course was for the year rather than have a change in course in October. OK. As a school committee member, even if it's not October, yeah, I welcome the chance to revisit again. Our first meeting. OK. Anyone can do that. Yeah. Anyone can read that. So if Mr. Steeleman would like to offer the motion. I wrote something. So I'll just pass it on. We can talk about it. It's on paper. It's not on e-suggestion. You want the motion tonight? Yeah. I'm inclined to support it. Let me just read what I wrote. And then so move that the Arlington School Committee adopt the following motion regarding the standardized test the district will adopt during the 2014-15 school year by no other than September 15, September 15, 2014. The superintendent is directed to engage all faculty in a collaborative dialogue on the impact the proposed PARC test trial could have on teaching and learning throughout the district. This process may include time during the back to back teacher days in August and early September building meetings. Following the process, the superintendent, accompanied by department heads and principals, is asked to make a presentation at the September 18, 2014 school committee meeting on the effects of the full PARC trial on the Arlington Public Schools. At that meeting, the superintendent will make a final recommendation on whether the Arlington Public Schools will implement the PARC test in grades three through eight in the 2014-15 school year or remain with MCAS. And so that would allow us to take a vote on. Is there a second? Second. OK, cool. Then so the only thing I would add is that would allow us to take a vote on September 18. But I mean, we could anyway, but I think it's. Well, I mean, Kevin, yeah. Any further discussion? Yeah. Sure. You know, we could take a vote anyway, but I think that it's worthwhile because there's some of the argument was clouded. And I think that if we have a different set of information on September 15, we might make a different decision. I guess I'm curious how strongly the administration is against sort of tabling this decision till the fall. Is it 80% against 100% against 50-50 sort of a better sense of how difficult this would be? We don't have to give a decision on June 30 unless we want to lock it in. To lock in a guarantee. So the decision actually is not due until October 1. Let me explain the teacher days. I think it sounds like there's more time than there may be there. Oh, no, it's not. It would not be a full immersion into the park information, though we could send all the documents out to people. We could even, over the summer, if they chose to read it. But by contract, we actually only have the two mornings, which would be for about three hours. On the first day, besides the opening, which we could not necessarily have or have it be an introduction to park, most of that time is all department meetings and curriculum meetings. It's a time for literacy updates by grade level, math updates, science updates, that all the work that's done over the summer is brought back to the colleagues on that first day. The second day, which again is only the morning, those are building meetings in which we go through a lot of information, a number of training discussions, for example, on FERPA in terms of confidentiality. We're going to have more emphasis on that training this year. There's safety issues. There's just a whole range. The litany is quite long. So that is a day we couldn't really skimp on very much, but we could give up some of the curriculum time, I suppose, on the first day. In terms of other meeting times, there's really not too much in the way of meeting times before the 18th. There are, there's a building, there's a, I have to go a little counter, there's a building meeting. So there's not a lot of time to do this. It would have to be voluntary coming for discussion because there's not a lot of built in time to do that kind of extensive dialogue. Now, it's not to say that we couldn't do some of it and defer the decision to later, but on the other hand, we would probably not do a lot of preparation this summer just because of the uncertainty of use of time, the efficiency of time. Okay. I had two things. First, I'm hoping that even though we voted against the online test for now, that you will continue all the preparations full force to get everything up to speed in terms of devices and figuring out training for students and working that into next year's schedule. But I'm asked, I would ask the superintendent, how would you like us to vote on this motion? For, I mean, looking for guidance. Could you move the hot scene? Honestly, there's not much more that we would be able to give you on the 18th of September in terms of a full presentation, then you really have received, you really have received quite a bit of information and our best recommendation. I certainly could give you feedback in terms of how some of those meetings went. And that's, you're not going, it's not that much time between the start of the school year and September 18th is only roughly two weeks. And that's all that would be available to have. We could have some voluntary meetings for people to come in some forums with teachers. We could do that and see what. So you're not in favor of us passing this motion? I think it would depend on what, what I heard, I only heard one person who voted against it based on lack of communication to teachers. The other concerns were, or partially, even partially towards that. The other concerns were raised, it will not change those issues. So I guess it would depend on whether or not that communication with teachers would be sufficient enough to change someone's vote. Because if it wouldn't be. I mean, things are changing, right? So we're getting districts who are voting against it or in favor of it and there's a lot of, meaning that the landscape is changing each month. So it might be different in the fall. Right, but I'm not sure what other pieces of information because. Not information that we know today. There just might be a much, there's a bigger conversation going on in the state that might have more information that's presented around the state that we don't have now. You can certainly defer a decision. I think that it hampers our preparation over the summer. Though, quite honestly, if you're gonna go with MCAS, we're not gonna do anything anyway. Not anything, but we have a lot to do. It's just we won't be putting our focus there. If you want to defer a decision until the fall, that is something that can be done. And then at that point, we would have to do some, yeah, some real catch up at that point. I don't know what more information will be available. I do know that there is a seminar, I should say a conference call late July for, in fact, it was advertised for districts who have chosen Park and those who might still consider doing Park to participate in that. And I've already forwarded it to all administrators to see if they would like to join in that conference call. So there's certainly gonna be more information that comes out, whether that information is enough to have us make a change one way or the other, it remains to be seen. But we don't have to make a decision until October one. And in fact, if we turn nothing into the state, we're automatically MCAS. Right, right. Ms. Starks, I'm sorry. I'll be voting against the motion. Ms. Starks. I just, I feel like I don't think that we need this motion. I think that in September, we can absolutely talk about it again and decide if we want to not, I mean, I don't know exactly how we move forward now anyway. So given that the motion failed, do we automatically send to the state that we're going with MCAS? Or are we gonna wait? No, not still. So we're gonna wait anyway, right? We're just not getting checked off the guarantee. That's what we basically gave up tonight. Right, so I mean, I feel like I'm perfectly happy to take it up again and see what happens in September, but I don't know, like she said, I don't think that teachers are gonna have much of a change or have much more information. I don't think we're gonna gather much more information on this end. Well, tonight you voted to not support moving into a guaranteed park online. So we're going to do nothing in terms of responding to the state. So actually, it has to come up again at the table because we do have to have a vote of the school committee for a particular assessment. And if you don't take it up and we have no vote, then we just automatically go into MCAS. So the motion isn't necessary. It's not really necessary. Well, I'll withdraw it, yeah. Okay, I'll do it in a second. We'll draw it. Well, it's all right. Does it have to be second? You just made it go away. So are we ready to move on? We are. Thank you. At this time, we are going to unfunded mandate letter to Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Ms. Starks, would you like to speak to this? Yes, so several school committees across the state have signed, have voted and signed and sent off this letter. I know you have a copy of the letter. I'm just going to read it. It's fairly brief. It is to go to, who does this go to? Goes to the desi. Well, no, actually it goes to Resolutions Committee of MASC. Okay, and MASC, right. That's what we're trying to do is make sure that MASC gets it on their list of things to do. So it says whereas it is the duty of the school committee to set policies for the education of the children in our community and whereas the number of documents that require action by local school districts in response to externally imposed mandates and regulations has increased dramatically without a clear positive impact on student learning. And whereas many of the required actions constitute an unfunded mandate. And whereas educators in our community and state, including the MASS have expressed concern about the difficulty carrying out their responsibilities due to this right as in tide of state mandates requiring educators to respond first to bureaucratic requirements rather than classroom instruction. Therefore, we call on the state board of elementary and secondary education and the legislature to refrain from adding new mandates, including new tests and other initiatives and to revisit the mandates already imposed on districts with a view to reducing interference with classroom instruction, thus allowing educators to do their work. It would be signed by our chair with all of our names listed underneath. That was a motion, correct? So I would like to move that we approve sending this and having Bill sign it. Second. Just a quick question to our resident expert. Paul, how do we get this on the red? Do we just by send it to the resolutions subcommittee and it's put on? Yeah, what's happened is that if one school committee goes and asks to do this, it gets to the resolution subcommittee. If five or more from at least two districts do this, it automatically goes on the agenda. So having others already submitted, it's already before the resolution subcommittee and as a member of the resolution subcommittee, I will tell you that this is something that we would almost certainly take favorable action on and forward to the general assembly. So the other thing we'll need to do is to ensure that we have a delicate voting in the delegate assembly in November. I intend, we'll just may discuss that on going. But not only going, we have to elect the delegate to the delegate assembly and ensure that they participate in the assembly. And I would ask you to remind the chair and the rest of the committee to do that. Any further discussion on this letter? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. Mr. Hainer, are you planning on attending? Yes, I do. I move that Mr. Hainer be our delegate to the delegate assembly. Second. Aye. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? My wife. Thank you. Can you tell me what it is again? It's the MASC conference. In the packet that you got with all the stuff for the conference, one of the forms is a request to notify them of who the delegate will be for the delegate assembly. And that notification is there. You just ship it off to MASC that we voted Mr. Hainer to be our delegate. And they will be waiting for him in November. Has any other member sitting here tonight given any consideration of attending in November? Just a question. Is this a three-day conference overnight? Yes. Okay, yeah, I definitely can't. I understand, okay. The reason I'm asking for it is in our consent agenda tonight. We're approving the early. If you register early, it saves the district at least $100. So, okay. Moving on to the consent agenda at this time, all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so request. In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant number 14181 dated June 12, 2014 in the amount of $1,226,983.42. Approval of MACS end of year reduced rate conference for school committee members. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Moving on to subcommittee liaison reports, policies and procedure. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, so these are the second readings of the policies, the new background check and model core policy presented by the MASC. We've adopted those and I move approval of both. Second. Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Anything further from policy? No. Okay. Ms. Stocks budget? Nothing to report at this time. Mr. Schlickman, community relations. Okay, I have a couple of motions that I emailed out earlier. As was entered into, as we discussed at the last meeting there was a letter from Nishio Tokuni High School in Nagaoka Co requesting a relation, a sister relationship with Arlington High School. Given the political turmoil in City Hall in Nagaoka Co, this is really our only mechanism for preserving the relationship at this time and Sue Schaeffler and Kerry Dunn have both stated that they recommend that we formalize a relationship between our two high schools. And so that I'd like to offer a motion to authorize the principle of Arlington High School to enter into a sister school relationship with Nishio Tokuni High School in Naga Co, Japan. Second. Any discussion? I have just one question. Yes. Is there any financial consideration in if there were it would come before us? Thank you. Anything further? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, second motion. Because of the political situation in Nagaoka Co and I know that the superintendent is a potential visitor to Nagaoka Co has seen a bit more of this and some of the correspondence that you've received over the past week detailing what's happening politically in Nagaoka Co. There are two news article and an opinion piece from the newspapers in Japan. I think that there's a considerable feeling on our side that the mayor's unilateral decision immediately after returning from Arlington to suspend the student exchange program on the city side without consulting us, without talking about this to us while we were here, without engaging us of what he was intending to do is most unfortunate and it certainly impacts the sister city relationship and that we've been requested by our friends in Japan to send a letter from the school committee itself directly to the mayor and to the general assembly and the Nagaoka Co school committee stating that we would like them to restore the relationship within the K-9 city system and with city hall. So a letter to direct the secretary to send a letter to the officials stating that we would like them to restore the exchange program as previously run is my motion. For a second? Second. Any discussion? Oh, just a question. Would we see the wording of the letter first before? Yeah, we can circulate it before it's sent. Obviously, we don't have a meeting until scheduled till September, which would make it sort of useless, but we can circulate the language for approval. And then we can communicate to K-9 if there's something. And I can assist. Well, we can't communicate back. We can communicate to... The letter should, I would ask Mr. Shilkman to send it to Ms. Fitzgerald. Ms. Fitzgerald will... Well, I'd send it to... Let Ms. Fitzgerald do it to keep it... Yeah. To send it to us. If there is any concern, send it back to Ms. Fitzgerald. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, then I'm... Okay, yes. I would assume any letter that was written would convey our deep disappointment in losing the relationship and all of that. Yes. Do you have a sense of, is it rationale for this? There are political considerations. It's petty, it's... I don't want to editorialize on Nagaoka-kyo politics, but I would say it's petty and in tribal. There's some petty jealousies on within the mayor's inner circles. And it's most unfortunate that this is coming up, but this was the decision of the mayor. Now, one of the things that we're hoping is that there's an election in Nagaoka-kyo in January. And given the outrage in the community, there may be a new mayor next year and things might become sunny and warm again. But as of right now, it certainly is a mess over on that side. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman, I'm sorry, Mr. Thielman, facilities. No report. Okay. I have no report on the special stage. As the chair, I'd like to report to the community that there was a discussion the other night at the selectments meeting regarding parking space and off-street parking. I would like to express my gratitude that they will be designating an area between, on Mass Avenue, between the two streets that enter into the high school area as, and I hesitate to use the word, they will be designated working with the selectments office and Dr. Bodie, there will be some sort of way to identify these cars and they will be allowed to park there during school hours and during school, the school year. We are also looking at the back space behind the high school to do some clearing and provide additional parking. It is projected next year with the current parking that we have, we will probably have a deficit of 80 parking spaces with permanent staff and staff that comes in and out of the high school throughout the day. We also have town staff as well working in this building. So like everywhere else in Arlington, parking is a premium, more so at our school here. So I just wanted to report that out to the committee. At this time, we do not have a need for an executive session or do we? I don't believe so. Okay, so we'll pass on that. Any further business? I want to entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Not debatable. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Too late. Right on time, Bill. Thank you. 810.