 Friday night edition of the Arlington School Committee. We are very excited to be here with Dr. Elizabeth Holman. As we wait for Dr. Allison Ampey, I am going to do my best friend in the remote meeting script before we actually do a more appropriate welcome. Good evening, good evening. This open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's Executive Order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such Governor's Office to suspend the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as a reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will not feature public comment for this meeting. The Arlington School Committee is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendee participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you. A lot of people want to get in touch with me right now and that take care enough to screen share your computer anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available in the Novus agenda dashboard and we recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless I note otherwise. So there if there were a vote taken in this meeting it would be conducted by a roll call vote. I don't anticipate any. So before we get started I'm going to make sure that we take attendance. I believe Dr. Allison Ampe will be joining us momentarily. So but let's make sure that everybody can hear me and hear each other. So Ms. Exton here. Mr. Carden is coming. Dr. Allison Ampe. Hi I'm here. Mr. Thielman. Here. Mr. Shlickman. Good evening. Mr. Hayner. Yes. And Mr. Carden can you hear us and can we hear you? Yes. Sorry. Yes. Thanks. No worries. We're good. You just missed my my remote meeting performance. So we are here this evening with Dr. Elizabeth Holman who is a finalist for the position of Superintendent of Arlington Public Schools. For those of you who are joining us for the first time from the community we welcome you. The Arlington School Committee is a seven-member committee. We are elected by the voters to three-year terms. We broadly look at budget, policy, and we hire and evaluate the superintendent. In June of 2019 our current superintendent Dr. Kathleen Bodie told the committee that it was in her intention to retire at the end of the 2020-2021 school year so that will be this summer. In the fall of 2019 the school committee formed a search process committee chaired by school committee member Paul Shlickman, had other members as well. From that search process committee they formed a search screening committee that had 15 members plus two alternates, three members of the school committee as well as teachers, parents, members of the community, administrators. And that screening committee worked through the applications for this position when they were posted this fall and they interviewed, they did the first round interviews and they brought forward two finalists to the school committee for the position. And so we are in the process right now. You know this week we've had a chance to meet with Dr. Holman. She met with students and teachers and central office administrators, curriculum leaders. She met with the town manager, she met with the current superintendent Dr. Bodie, and we solicited a lot of feedback from those stakeholder groups. And this evening is our opportunity as a committee to ask her our questions and to sort of do our for our interview with her. So let me talk a little bit about how tonight's going to work and then I'm excited to give Dr. Holman an opportunity to introduce herself to us. I mean we most of us have seen you, I think all of us have seen you, but just you know so that those who are watching at home can can hear a little bit about you. But the plan for tonight is that we are going to give each member about 10 minutes to ask questions. I will give my cues on the five minute and the one minute mark. And we will go in order, the same order that we decided last week. And then we'll take a five minute screen break, which was a really good idea of Mr. Haners. I think we'll do it forever and ever. And we can call it the hane or break. So we'll take a quick break and then we will I will give everybody another five minutes to ask any follow-up questions or just additional questions and then give Dr. Holman an opportunity to ask us any questions that she may have of us. So Dr. Holman would you like to introduce yourself or just tell us a little bit about where you're at in this process or you know what whatever you'd like to share with us at this point. Definitely thank you. It's very nice to be here and I want to thank everybody on the committee and everybody in the community for your time on a Friday night. I know that this is what everybody wants to be doing on a Friday night. And so I hope that we can keep everybody riveted by our conversation tonight as the committee in the community probably knows from my materials or if you were able to join us on Tuesday evening. I'm originally from the Midwest. I'll start by telling you a little bit about who I am. Some of the experiences that I think make me an excellent fit for our to be a leader in Arlington. I grew up in classrooms. I come from a family that's deeply dedicated to education as a path to opportunity. Some of that's because I come from a family that's not from substantial means. My mom raised my sister and I on her own. My grandfather was the county garbage collector. I worked my way through college with a job working and coaching at the local ice arena which in coupled with my mom being a teacher is probably why I decided to go into education. I realized early in my career as a teacher that I loved working with students all day and I still do but also that I loved analyzing and thinking about teaching as a craft and thinking about how school systems are designed. After six years of leadership in Waltham I'm currently the assistant superintendent there. I believe I'm ready to lead Arlington for reasons that are really tied to some of the central experiences that I've been able to have while I've been in Waltham. First I've been given several opportunities to lead some of the operational work in the district especially over the past year. I led the successful reopening efforts of Waltham schools. We built a flexible plan that allows us to move in and out of remote learning and hybrid learning without needing to hire more staff without needing to retool schedules without needing to disrupt students experiences with school. Our plan prioritized involvement and communication with the community and we had a subcommittee that was explicitly dedicated to that effort. I've been centrally involved in our district's COVID response process. I continue to collaborate with school and city officials on our day-to-day responses to COVID cases. Our district has had over 70 cumulative in the in the school system over the course of the past few months. So I really understand the challenges that public schools are facing this year and what some of that recovery is going to require. Second I have a strong track record as an instructional leader that and I'm laser focused on equity. I've really done a lot of work to try and progress our current system, our school system into a place of achieving more equitable outcomes for kids and we've made some pretty big impact on that. We've closed achievement gaps for students of color, students on IEPs and our English learners. We revised structures that were denying access to rigorous coursework for some of our students. We've more than doubled since I started in Waltham the percentage of educators of color in the district over the past five years and we've revised a lot of curriculum to include opportunities for all students to see themselves reflected in texts and also to have an opportunity to have exposure to the perspectives of others. And finally I have a lot of experience bringing communities together around fairly large changes, common purpose, significant projects like designing a new high school. I played a role in the development of an interdisciplinary and very project-based learning plan for our new high school in Waltham. I'm a member of the High School Building Committee. I've served on committees and collaborated with our architects throughout the past five years. I've collaborated with school committee members as well on initiatives that are tied to lowering the dropout rate for English learners. We had school committee members on our reopening team and I've collaborated with families and city counselors to expand access to free and available Wi-Fi and I've collaborated with colleagues to implement and expand a dual language program in Waltham that started five years ago. It's now in its fifth year. It's a dual language immersion program in Spanish and one of the most wonderful things that I think our school systems have that I've been happy to collaborate on. So those are just a few of the experiences I have as a leader that I think make me a really strong fit for Arlington based on everything I've learned and the amazing conversations I got to have with all of your students and your teachers this past Tuesday. I had a wonderful day getting to know Arlington and had a lot of things that I already believed were true of Arlington reinforced in my conversations with various stakeholders across the town and I think that these experiences demonstrate a commitment to progressive and innovative practice that's sort of the cornerstone of my approach as a leader. So I'm looking forward to sharing more examples or digging more deeply into those and I can't wait to hear your questions. Great thank you so much Dr. Holman. So just before we turn to Ms. Exton's questions I just you know wanted to let the community know that most members of this committee have attended multiple sessions with with Dr. Holman and have gotten a lot of feedback and I've talked to you know references and had conversations and so what we're working on tonight and what is actually a fairly limited amount of time for all of us to be together and for us each individually to ask our questions is that we're working both individually and collectively to sort of build out the picture that we have of Dr. Holman as a potential superintendent for our schools and so if we don't touch on something or ask about something in a question this evening it doesn't mean that that's something that's that is not personally important to us or that we believe is important to our school system right now we're working on filling in the gaps and the places where we need more information or we need to better understand something that maybe we've heard before or that we've read or we've thought about so I just wanted to make sure that people who are listening are clear about where we're at in this process we've had a lot of I mean we've had you know a relatively long period of time to to think about and research and so we're in a place right now where we're going to be looking for you know we're asking pretty specific questions for specific reasons that are probably deeply personal to all of us so um that being said Ms. Ecksten go ahead good evening Dr. Holman welcome um what are some ways that you have or you would prepare for collective bargaining how have you tried to make the process or how would you make try to make the process a vehicle for making school a better place for students and teachers sure um so I when we I was given the opportunity last year as we first shut down to begin the process of engaging with our union presidents and thinking about what our collective bargaining process might look like now we did not have an MOA or MOU for the spring but we knew that we were going to probably need one for the fall we were going to need to come around the table and collaborate with our teachers union in order to figure out what our approach was going to be I will say in terms of like the larger collective bargaining process when a when a union contract is up and you need to now negotiate a new three-year contract some of the things that we've done that have that are things that I would want to keep doing is to first ask around the administrative table and the school committee like what are some of the things that we think are really important to uphold what are some of the things that we might want to pursue in this collective bargaining process getting that input from administrators has been helpful to us as administrators because we've been able to think about what we might need around professional learning from educators what we might need in terms of time in the contract what maybe isn't working because it's not giving us enough time to either do professional learning with teachers or provide what we need to provide for students and so coming up together with the administrative team asking them a lot of questions about what they may want to see on the table bring some of that to you and then getting your input from subcommittees or from the whole committee on what you might be interested in also bringing to the table is an important part of that process as well in our building of the MOA for the fall semester as a component of reopening we needed to build out a new MOA in addition to the existing teacher contract some we've had a very collaborative process for that with our union presidents and them with their representatives at each of the buildings and we really came to the table and we chose sections that we thought we might need to write out together we sort of articulated that we knew we were going to need a section around sort of safe building safety measures facility safety measures we knew we were going to need a section around like time on learning and expectations for teaching we knew we were going to need a section related to bringing teachers back into the building and thinking through what that phase in was going to look like we took a phased in approach to bringing our students back that has gotten halted a couple of times by an increase in cases but we also had sort of a phased in approach with teachers so we needed to articulate what that was going to look like so we wrote out what our big bullets were for that process and then we went and drafted it and we put comments in there it was a fully open document and then we came back to the table several several times to talk through where we were with each one of those categories I appreciated that process because it allowed us to see what others were thinking as we were drafting and then come back and talk through what the process was I will say I would need to work very closely with the HR administrator around issues of collective bargaining because going through the entire process at the beginning of a bargaining process isn't something that I've been deeply invested or deeply involved with I haven't been at the bargaining table before as part of the contract bargaining process but I've done the the negotiations surrounding the MOU for the reopening and I've also been involved in we have an appendix associated with educator evaluation in WALFAM that really articulates the parameters of educator evaluation in our contract and I am part of a subcommittee to look at that every year with our two union presidents and we have renegotiated that component of the teacher contract because we wanted to include elements around goal setting that were going to allow teachers to really bring their their you know ideas and their things they wanted to try that were new into the goal setting process and we revamped that about a year ago so those are some of my experiences with collective bargaining and I think I would also want to work very closely with our HR administrator to do a lot of that work too. Great thank you. Can you give an example or two of experiences working with educators who resisted your recommendations particularly veteran educators who were skeptical about your plans? Sure so I've had this happen a couple of times in one instance where an educator was placed on a directed growth plan and in another where at the end of the process they ended up relocating to another school in the system that stayed in the school system and I think one of the first things that I do so when you see that an educator is resistant to things like feedback it is imperative that you're getting into that classroom on a regular basis so that you've maybe seen something that you want to see shift you've had the follow-up conversation with the educator you've been explicit it's very this is a very important piece and something that I look for when there's something like an appeal that comes to me as the assistant superintendent if there's an appeal of a rating that would come to me so you need to look and see that there's been really explicit steps laid out that you expect to see in that educators practice the next time you were to visit the classroom and then we also have an expectation that if that's something that that you were expecting to see shift if you've raised a concern as a component of an observation that you're back in that classroom within a month and I think that that could be a month or two months but that's something that I've always done if I've set an expectation that I expect to see this the next time I'm present one example would be I had an educator who was not consistently stating the objectives or posting the objectives for students at the start of a lesson and I think that's a really important component of teaching and so when I wasn't seeing that it was very explicit that I need to see that the next time I come into the classroom came back within a month still didn't see that as a consistent practice I wrote that up again I said this needs to be something that is present the next time I visit we also had some conversations about how the lesson time was structured it was very small young students and there was an extended period of time where there wasn't a lot of movement or sort of chunking of the lesson in the class and so we talked about that I was back within about a month and really looking very explicitly for those things and that's where you know the scripting out of the lesson and marking all of the time stamps on the lesson this is something we do out of habit now but at the time it wasn't part of our practice and really having very concrete data to sort of demonstrate here's what we were looking for here's where I very explicitly stated it and here's what I'm not what I'm not seeing yet that's sort of how to evaluate it if it's not happening the way you expect it to but that's something that I think you know I didn't do with that educator until there was a relationship that existed with that educator and I was we were able to sort of talk through what we were expecting to see in that instance that educator ended up on a direct growth plan and ultimately ended up leaving the district but there have been other instances where at least initially I haven't had a lot of reflection from a veteran educator but over time there was a little bit more reflection and some of that comes from those explicit steps followed by an immediate follow-up and often what I've had happen far more often the example I just gave is that when you come back with that immediate follow-up and when you are actually like you say you're going to follow up and then you actually do you'll see the shift in practice I've rarely with actionable feedback not seen an adjustment happen and I've done a lot of coaching of our directors and our principals through instances where they might have had concerns and how to write that feedback and how to be very actionable about it and how to make sure that they follow up so that we don't end up in a place where we're on a direct growth plan or potentially having an educator leave. Thank you just to follow up on that heavy you talked a lot about things that you brought to Waltham and did you have any experience where educators were sort of resistant to a program that you wanted to introduce or a new way of collecting data or something a little more like programmatic? Sure I would say there are I would first of all I would say I don't think I brought anything to Waltham besides you know myself and a little bit of a spirit of innovation I think a lot of the things that we've done have come from the things that were already going on and some of the priorities that Waltham articulated and I will say that I think you know let me think of an experience that encountered quite a bit of resistance one of the bigger things that encountered a lot of resistance was actually pretty operational and that it was we shifted the grade books over from one system to another when I was in my initial role and that was a pretty big shift in practice this is something I actually would have done a little differently if I could do it over again and when teachers had they they as they on boarded on the in the fall they had to shift into a whole new grade book system and we needed to make sure we set training time aside but we weren't able to do that until after the school year had started we tried to do a lot of it ahead of when the school year started but it was optional because we didn't have the funds to be able to pay for that so doing that again I would definitely think a little bit further ahead about that that was maybe in my second year as an administrator there and make sure that the funds were set aside to do the training ahead of time so that that didn't sort of land on educators at the very start I think that was a pretty big point of resistance we did sort of retool things it was a better system and so I think that that helped but teachers really needed the opportunity to dig into it ahead of when the actual school year started and they needed to build out their grade books you might hear my son or my dog this is the watching hour we like to call it at our house sorry back on the list no worries um mr. Theoman hi dr. Holman uh thanks for being here tonight um so my question is I want to get some clarification about where you think um you're you've got you've got some strengths and a lot of knowledge and a lot of comfort for the position of superintendent and where do you think you have to grow you alluded to something earlier you mentioned that collective bargaining would be a new experience for you you've been involved in the developing development of the MOA for the teachers for this year to return to work under COVID-19 but I'd like to know kind of as you look at Arlington as you look at the superintendency in Arlington where do you think wow I got this I got that I know how to do it I'm very comfortable in where do you think like well I'm gonna need I got a lot to learn and I'm gonna and I've got to learn these these new things that are new to me and how do you plan to go about learning thank you mr. Theoman that's a great question um I would say my uh my bigger strengths are going to be around instructional leadership um I feel comfortable leading leaders I feel comfortable leading principals I feel very comfortable leading teachers I've done a lot of professional development in Waltham I feel comfortable leading change and involving community members in that process I you know I've done a lot of gathering information from all corners of the community I've done a lot of being out in the community while I've been in Waltham I feel comfortable getting to know members of the community involving students in processes like really gathering student voice incorporating that into instructional work that we want to do those are probably my biggest areas of strength and comfort I would say what I've what's been a learning curve for me as an administrator um has been uh around like first hiring was and then I feel like that's something that's become much much more comfortable for me I've had the opportunity to do some hiring searches for administrators over the past couple of years uh things like collective bargaining things related to HR investigations incidents I've had some experiences with those sorts of things I had the opportunity last year to lead a couple of investigations into staff situations that we needed to know more about one around student data security where we had some concerns one I've led some of those appeals processes but I haven't done a lot of investigations around like incidences that might require discipline and so I would need to work closely with HR for instances like that and I would also say I'm getting to know governance in Massachusetts um and I you know when I first arrived in Waltham I had never presented at a school committee meeting and I had never experienced the work that happens with the city side I needed to learn what all of those governance structures were so I would need to work with the town manager and collaborate with the town manager a lot to understand what all of those governance processes are I've learned a lot over the past six years being a leader um and you know I've I've run school committee meetings when the superintendent is not able to be there but that is an area that I am still learning town meetings are definitely would be a brand new thing for me that's not something I've ever experienced because I've been in a sitting city setting as an administrator how meeting is a good experience to have in Massachusetts it's not something that happens in the midwest either like ever no they don't know I know no this is different this is New England uh so okay thank you thank you for that um let me ask you about um how you have in the course of your career gone up the actual kind of as much as you can share the the process of of of making change and I and let me let me try to give you context so you understand where I'm coming from um Arlington spends about $7,000 less for people than Waltham something like that I people online can correct me but it's somewhere around there um and people know the numbers better than I do would correct me but it's about $7,000 less that means in Arlington you're going to have fewer resources per pupil than you have in Waltham and to make change to get things done my judgment other people may have a different opinion but in my judgment to make to get things done you gotta there's gotta be intentional follow-up um there and follow through there's gotta be kind of drive by the superintendent to make sure certain things are done you're the one operationalizing the change um it's not really something you can delegate in a district that is this thinly administered and I wondered um if you've thought about how you've done that in your career and if you've thought about that at all definitely um any change often requires a lot of resources and or a restructuring of how you're thinking about the resources that you do have at your disposal so a couple of thoughts one is that you can catalyze change through um through application to opportunities such as competitive grants and that's one of the bigger things that we've done in Waltham some of the things that some of the biggest changes we've done have actually been because we have gotten very substantial grants so one example of that would be uh we have a program at the high school that sort of operates as our it's like a protected little lab space it's called the changemaker academy we have that because we got a $300,000 grant through the bar foundation um several years ago and we said we want to make some pretty substantial changes to our programming at the high school in preparation for our new high school and that and we need sort of a space that we can wrap our wrap some resources around protect and experiment with some new approaches and then hopefully grow this into the larger high school now i would say there were things about that initiative that i very much learned that i applied differently the next time we had to do something similar but that what that allowed us to do was start to build some systems that we then were going to need to incorporate into our existing budgets so it gave us some momentum over the course of three years and then we had to think over the course of those three years how are we going to integrate the things that we've now built out into what exists in the current budget so an example is we built restorative justice practices high school and a relationship with Suffolk University which we are now thinking about how to fund in the existing budget next year we've also done this with large grants from the Nellie Mae Foundation that are now sustained in the existing budget because we reallocated resources because we got some momentum around a project and then we were able to sort of shift resources accordingly i didn't give you more than one example but i think we're out of time no i what do i have for time you've got four and a half minutes oh okay so sorry so i'm giving you a q on the five and then on the one all right thank you for sorry friends yep so you're doing great so let me explain the last half of that go ahead go ahead dr homie once um so once we had the another example would be the Nellie Mae grant that was actually also a $300,000 grant over 18 months we used it to give teachers a lot of graduate credits around this idea of teacher leadership we pulled in an outside consultant they worked with uh that person worked with our teachers and then we i retooled the pd budget for this year because the grant expired to make sure that what they had said we needed to implement in the new pd plan was something that would be funded and so we took a number of things out of the professional development budget we actually cut the professional development budget last year because we had to be due to covid um and so we but we were able to find some efficiencies because one of the core elements of the pd plan that those teachers wrote was that the teachers were going to lead the professional learning and so we're paying them for their planning time we're paying them for um some of the resources that they need to lead that and today was our first day of launch of some of the teacher-led professional learning and it was one of the best days i've had in a week or eight because we guys a lot watched the teachers lead it and we're able to fund it because we wrapped it into the budget but we got that momentum from the competitive grant process all right thank you i'm i think i got about two minutes maybe um just could you explain i i think the wall fan project i so uh dr christie allison ampie and i are on the building committee here in arlington and um we're about to put our first deal up and you know by the time we have a new superintendent of schools uh the a large part of the the first part of the project will be will be moving well along um just explain your role in the building committee and explain kind of what you've learned and how you think you can contribute when you if you come to arlington um and um you know what your role in the building committee isn't what you can contribute that's what i want to know first so as the assistant superintendent i'm primarily the instructional voice on the school on the school building committee um and i've been on the uh in a schematic design process i was in the sort of building design committee that talked about how to make sure that the building matched the educational plan that we had set out uh so i did a lot of work thinking through things like adjacencies uh the committee i was on actually also talked a lot about restrooms and making sure that those were inclusive of all the students and we talked about locker rooms and making those inclusive of all the students um and that was all quite new to me those were conversations i was used to having in my former roles uh and then on the building committee itself i am a voting member i listened to the um the presentations that we get from our project manager and from the architects i was present for all of the schematic design meetings which is sort of the most intensive component of that i would want to go back and sort of educate myself about what the process has looked like in arlington i particularly more complex because in wall fan we're building the high school on its own site uh a lot of the challenges we had with our building project was associated with the fact that we were having trouble citing the high school whereas some of the challenges that arlington is having or could have is because it's happening on the exact same site so that's not something i have as much experience with but i imagine that that will require a lot of coordination and collaboration with the high school administration to make sure that that process and whatever those phases are as you're moving students through the building um and away from sort of construction areas is going to have a little bit of messiness associated with it and so i would need to understand what each of those phases are in a lot more detail work with the project manager to understand what the implications are going to be um and what the potential disruptions would be for learning so that we can minimize that thank you thank you very much dr holman mr hainer good evening dr holman the social and emotional state of students versus their academic achievement is a major problem in education at all levels today as a superintendent what would you want to know and what would you want to do to deal with this issue so i think about social emotional learning in a lot of ways and i think i'll start to answer this and then if i don't actually answer your question please do probe this a little bit i think social and emotional learning happens in the context of instruction when instruction is really well designed and i see social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching is pretty intimately tied to one another i think that you risk if you separate them you risk um sort of turning social emotional work into sort of character education which can be kind of problematic because it um it can sort of pigeonhole certain groups of students into some assumptions about who they are and what kind of character they need to build social emotional learning is different from that because it helps uh it helps students um build sort of their emotional awareness so i just sat in on an scl lesson with a third grade class yesterday and the students were talking about naming their emotions and they were they were first asked to sort of they had this color dot thing in front of them and they were asked to say you know what emotion are you feeling and why today and so several students um sort of unmuted their mics talked about what they were feeling and why they read a book together and this was the counselor coming into the classroom and the teacher was present there uh and so that's an example of scl that's set aside in the curriculum and i think that that is important i think that particularly at a very young age it's important that this was a virtual lesson too by the way they were doing all of this via google meets um this is i think it's important that that time be set aside and that it'd be very clear within the time that students have in the day that there is this 15 to 30 minute block where they're practicing conversations about emotion what i liked about what i saw the other day was that the teacher was present because what that allows is for the teacher to bring those conversations back in with the students as they're engaging with one another socially so it takes that emotional component and allows the teacher to integrate it into moments of social interaction between the students in this setting we are losing a lot of the social interaction opportunity that we have with kids and i think that the implications of that when we come back to school are going to be pretty extreme and so one of the things i would want to sort of work with leaders on is what are the social opportunities that students missed out on and developmentally at your level what are the really sort of formative things that students need to be developing so developmentally what social interactions that they missed out on that might now need to be something we're watching for and intervening with and embedding throughout the curriculum so there's the SEL component that's set aside in the curriculum and then there's the SEL component that's woven in throughout the day and that requires developing teachers' abilities to understand how interaction with content can embed social emotional learning opportunities so i think about it in those two ways and i think that both of those have implications for instructional time and for how we sort of come back from COVID when this is over just a brief disclosure you have a kindergarten teacher on this committee and a former elementary fourth fifth and sixth grade teacher i see the SEL as an integral part of the elementary curriculum going on in developing the child for some reason and maybe i'm prejudiced it seems to get lost in the secondary level because maybe because of the demand of academics and stuff you just indicated with coming back from COVID this is going to be an issue at all levels do you see this becoming an integral part of the secondary part as well i i think it should be anyway and so we assess social emotional skill with our students from grades three through 12 we also do it in the younger grades it's just that we don't actually survey those kids we do it a little bit more qualitatively in the classroom and so we do this at all levels and what we see at the middle level in particular is that that's where students really begin to demonstrate social struggle not always not always some of that emotional struggle they're often pretty able to name what they're feeling at the middle level and that actually starts to struggle at the high school level but at the middle level we start to see students emotions being impacted by their social interaction and so you know and i think i see a lot of districts and schools that have at the middle level sort of a home room at the high school level and advisory sometimes that is eight minutes long and i think that you know it's worth exploring that being slightly longer a period of time or exploring more of a once a week advisory opportunity for students to have a tighter knit group that has more opportunity to dig into topics one of the things we did at our high school when covid hit was we implemented a longer advisory period in the middle of the day because and it's every day and we wanted to make sure we did that because we wanted to make sure that we were having an opportunity to do circles with students to really understand how they were doing to give them an opportunity to deeply connect with a small group of students and a homeroom teacher and they get uh the high school teachers get a slide deck that guides them through the advisory topics for that week at the beginning of every week that's developed by one of our assistant principals who used to be a counselor has degree in counseling and that has been a wonderful thing that has come out of this it's something we've learned has really sort of helped the students grab hold of school um and you know i think it's had its it's had its it's had its bumps because teachers weren't used to necessarily doing that they weren't used to doing it every single day but the students are signaling to us particularly at the ninth grade level where they haven't our ninth graders haven't been into school yet that that's helping them build a connection to school thank you uh the cost about a district placement for special needs students has a dramatic impact on the budget how would you address it so i would need to know a lot about what the programs are for students with special needs in the district and what the resources are to support them particularly students with severe special needs in wealth and we have several different programs for students with severe special needs and they all have their different names one is specific to autism one is specific to students who have disabilities that are heavily medical one is specific to students who have disabilities that are heavily cognitive and the way in which those programs are structured the spaces that they inhabit the supplies that they have to deal with particularly heavily um students with disabilities that are heavily medically related uh the staffing available in those programs can have a pretty big impact on you know the families feeling like they're very connected to that program like that program's meeting students needs and on requests for out of district placements we've brought out of district placements and this is not to my credit this is definitely to the credit of our administrator people personnel but we've brought out of district placements down significantly in wall fan since i started there in part because of a very intensive focus on the quality of the programming that's there on building relationships with the families who are in those substantially separate programs and in covid we had a whole committee that was specifically dedicated to substantially separate programming for special education to make sure that we could keep our students with us uh through the crisis full-time in school having ability and access ability to access the programs and the teachers that that they needed thank you um so dr homen i'm gonna i'm gonna give you the opportunity to pick one area where arlington has accurate reliable and accessible data to inform a decision so you get to pick one space um and that's not to say that we don't have accurate reliable or available data in many areas but i'm gonna let you get the trifecta of those three things in one space um what what would it be and why as accurate accurate reliable and accessible accessible all the things so i'm using the word accessible in terms of you know multiple stakeholders can understand what the data is how it was collected and and you know and that it's it's accessible for people in terms of understanding what it means or what it looks like at least okay um the answer that i have in mind is not the one i want to give you but i'm not sure that i'm not sure that i know enough or have enough access to be able to give you a better one so um i would say i mean i've looked through some of the public data surrounding the budget um some of what you have available with regards to the high school project and i've looked at the desi profile yeah so i mean i'm sorry you you can do it if you were sitting at your desk in waltham and somebody like the fairy came down and said dr homen you get to have really great accessible accurate and reliable data about some area in waltham to you know move forward whatever initiatives you wanted to move forward which which area would you want that again if i were in arlington yeah it doesn't have to be specific to arlington i'm not trying to i'm not trying to find out if you know about what our data looks like here i'm curious about where as you think through decisions that you need to make where would be an area where you're particularly um where you're particularly looking for really solid um accurate and reliable data got it that was helpful thank you sorry sorry came out jane it came out like like you were asking where where where do we have accurate reliable data and accessible data got it well we got there eventually i think i finally asked a clear question should we i think i think you're asking where should we have it right um yeah absolutely it it would depend on the decision i'm trying to make to some extent but i think that really importantly every decision needs to come back to what's best for kids and so that's going to mean that the data that needs to be fairly readily available all the time um i'm going to say this and it's going to be specific to instructional decisions but like if it were hiring decision i might need different data but if it was any kind of instructional decision around a change we wanted to make an adjustment we wanted to make i think that there are a few areas that i would want to look first would be at some of the achievement data that exists that the state has i do think that that is those are important metrics um i actually think that some of the metrics they've most recently added to the things that they use for accountability are particularly important surrounding language growth for English learners is not part of the accountability formula attendance and chronic absenteeism is part of the accountability formula which one of the things i did notice about Arlington was that there was a decline in chronic there was an actually an increase in chronic absenteeism this past year across the board which in grades three to eight which is something we've been challenged by in Waltham as well so i do i do think that that data is valid reliable accurate and important and that is one of the things that guides some of the work that might happen with a leadership team in the summer but it is not complete and so another piece of accurate reliable accessible information surrounds what you might see in teacher practice and that involves being out in classrooms and talking to students that's very qualitative but i think that it you know it gives you a pretty accurate picture of what's going on when you can visit thousands of classrooms over the course of a year and that's something that i really do strive to do in partnership with principals it's reliable and that if you if you're around a lot of students and if you are not if you're if you're not selective about going to certain types of classrooms but you really try to get into all sorts of classrooms you can get a fairly good picture of what's going on across the board and it's accessible because we're at schools so being in classrooms is another data point i also think that you know the it's hard to have a lot of data around teacher practice you can gather it from your evaluation system but even that's not always the best place because it's not it's an evaluation system and so it has you know its own biases associated with it but i think you know surveys i do find surveys really important i think that asking for feedback from educators asking for feedback from students about what's happening in the classroom that's fairly metric is important to do because and to do that routinely so that you have the opportunity to come together with your leadership team dig into achievement data dig into that survey data and triangulate those things with what you're actually seeing happen in the classroom is what allows you to make plans and decisions around what you need to focus on next i do think assessment classroom level assessments and having the ability to get to dig into at the district level how students are performing on assessments throughout the year is also very important i would want to know what assessment system the district is using what the sort of data transparency approach of that system is we've taken a pretty heavy data transparency approach in waltham over the past few years but that took us some time to get going because there's some anxiety that comes along with my students are taking this assessment that's part of our curriculum and every my colleagues in the district can see how they perform there needs to be some trust built up in order for that to feel like something that's comfortable so that we can come together in data meetings with teachers or with administrators to look at so i'm not sure if that's answering your question but start maybe absolutely no i'm looking to sort of see how you think about how data informs our decisions where you know where things are important and what things are important to you and where you know where you would go looking for that so that's it's really helpful the other question i had was looking toward the FY23 budget which would be the first one that you would develop right you mostly be administering under someone else's budget in the first year which you know happens everywhere but but let's say you know we're looking ahead to the FY23 budget let's make some assumptions that enrollment has you know returned after COVID times and and you know you're still required to stop to enrollment obviously let's assume that there's less than we need because there always is here um how would you what would be the guiding principles as you worked with with stakeholders and the school committee in developing that budget well some of those guiding principles would probably need to come from all of you as well as from the commit from the community and the you know the strategic plan if there were to be a strategic plan in that first year that were developed so those priorities i think really are what need to drive a budget there some of the things that i think are an important part of the process is first to get a sense from the school committee about what the budget priorities are that's something we always start with in Waltham we have a budget workshop we hear from the committee you know based on what happened last year based on you know some of the ongoing initiatives what are the core priorities over the past few years in Waltham we've had several that have sort of been revisited and we've slowly grown towards incorporating those and some just have not been we've not been able to incorporate it because there never is enough and so that's a start to that and then from there looking at having each school and each sort of cost center come in and like present to the senior leadership team i think that it's important that all these decisions be made collectively what it is that they believe they need in their area or for their school as well as where they believe that there might be efficiencies to allow for those things to be incorporated into the budget that's something we always ask if you're making an ask you need to talk also about where you might have room in order to be able to fund the ask that you're bringing to the table i also think that an important component that is not something i have seen done in my work in Waltham yet but is something that i would like to incorporate into that is asking stakeholders more broadly not just administrators what they think might need to be incorporated into the budget you don't want to throw that open too wide but i think it is important to sort of ask students what do you need out of your education what do you think should be priorities as a component of your education asking teachers you know what do you need to support you and what could you even do without one of our union presidents said to us last year you know i'm pretty sure if you asked teachers what they would want support on and what they thought that they might not need as much support on that we previously funded they would be able to answer some of those questions as well we always asked principals to involve their instructional leadership teams and their teams at their schools in bringing their budget proposals forward so having the senior leadership team here from each person who controls a cost center about what they would want to incorporate into the budget is an important part of that process and then being able to regularly update those people who have brought those really thoughtful proposals together about where you're at in the process as i work i would work with all of you to determine what needs to be included and eliminated from that is also an important key point so i think that one of the things we've improved upon over the past year is we've incorporated a really transparent digital system that allows the people who have put proposals in as a component of the budget process to see what's still there in the budget and what has been eliminated so that they can plan accordingly for the following year thank you um mr carton great thank you uh so dr homin you may have seen in the focus group report that there were some issues that emerged around special education in arlington and um you know that partly might be just the audience for the focus groups um it's sort of a something that it depends who you talk to but assuming that there are some issues in the community regarding special education what would be your approach to sort of figure out what those issues were and and and and how to deal with them there's a limited amount of data that sort of could get at that i mean maybe you know the number of appeals to the state or the number of rejections and ieps but it's probably not something that that's you know a typical data driven decision so what what sort of sort of would you be your process to examine what might be going on and and trying to try to fix it that's a great question so the first people i imagine i would end up having access to our members of the senior leadership team and i would want all of their input as well as principals input on what special education programming looks like what some of the challenges have been i would definitely want to talk to the principals about uh exactly what programming is looks like how inclusion happens when inclusion happens when service grid services happen at their schools to get a sense of one of there are a couple things i would be looking for there one is what programs are at each school are there different programs at each school or the different approaches at each school how are ips written at each school who writes the ips at each school like how are how are liaisons determined what's the staffing level at each school compared to what's the number of students on ips at each school what's the profile of students with ips in this school and in the district as a whole like is it um are most students on full inclusion models are most students on uh or there is there a significant number of students who are in substantially separate programs if out of district is relatively high then i would assume that no there might not be as many examples of students who are in a substantially separate program but you know looking at that by school and thinking through how is programming consistent across the schools versus how is it not that would be one of the key questions i would be driving at in conversations with principals i think that some you know and it also of course it depends like you said on the audience for the focus groups um what some of the questions were that were asked during the focus groups but when there are concerns about things like this sometimes that has to do with inconsistency of implementation inconsistency of development of an ips or in how goals are written so i would also want to dig into ips see how they're written look with um look with the team and with principals as well and with the person who's leading special education or people who are leading special education and talk through like how how what does this process look like how do parents enter into it um another question i would have is what is the evaluation system like um how are students referred for evaluation how does that happen at each school is that consistent um and then you know what is the process of engaging families throughout the evaluation process and how clear is that evaluation process uh to parents both from cpaq and from the district so those are some of the first things i think i would ask and want to know more about great thank you um so shifting a little bit to a different topic i'm going to give you a sort of a real hypothetical uh it's a real question that are linked in facing but i don't have all the details and it won't be one that you'll you'll be dealing with because we have to deal with it before you or before the next sprint arrives but due to the pandemic to make scheduling easier at the high school many classes were shifted to be home heterogeneous and and within those classes students have the option to earn honors rather than being in a separate honors class um and responding to questions about this the high school principal indicated that heterogeneous grouping is used in several area high schools like the well-publicized honors for everyone initiative in Cambridge um and it's something recommended by nyask the accrediting committee so we need to decide whether to keep these uh going forward or whether we should revert back to having honors and college prep levels uh or the the Cambridge model is actually a little bit different it's honors for everyone it's not having an honors option within the class so what what is your general thoughts let's start you know sort of walk walk you through the process you would do to um you would use to resolve this issue but first what is your sort of general thoughts to heterogeneous versus honors classes at a high school level okay great question and this happened to us as well we ended up in a situation where we needed to collapse classes across levels we have in a wall fan when we did this and some of that was just to gain efficiency within the schedule and be able to do it without meeting to higher extra staff I mean I imagine that's where a lot of schools who had to consider something like this were at when they did it um for us we did not collapse at the high school in uh so we had four levels we had C2 college prep two college prep one honors an AP we collapsed college prep one and two and then we still have honors and AP for our in-person hybrid students and but in our remote academy we had to collapse across all those levels in our that changemaker academy thing that I was describing to you we have earned honors for our students so all of the student they're heterogeneously group we have earned honors in that academy and I will say this and then then give my exact answer to your question in that academy we have absolute participation we have not lost our any of our students they've they've been fully engaged we haven't had we haven't had attendance issues they've been doing their projects I actually was a panelist on their performance for one of their projects just this week and so that's powerful and that's information that you know is is really important for us to have as we think about what the future of levels are at our high school and we're currently in the process of working with educators to think through what it means that we collapse levels this year to some extent and what that could mean for next year and moving forward and we've already begun the process of asking teachers about this beginning to ask students about this and thinking through what it would mean for us to not have those levels in the same way that we previously did pre-pandemic in next year's schedule where we are you know I can't say where we're going to land because we haven't landed anywhere yet on that but what is important is that we have surveyed the staff about this and gotten their input and you know they've got all sorts of feelings about this and we're sort of relatively split on it because I think what teachers want to know is that the resources are going to be there to back up a shift that's a pretty major pedagogical shift for a high school educator who is used to having students sort of you know grouped by by I don't like this phrase by ability because it's not true now our students are capable of I do believe honestly honors level work when they have the opportunity to engage with it and students are also heavily more engaged when they are challenged there's a strong correlation between feeling challenged and being engaged with school and I think that sometimes what leveling can do is can is give a signal to students that they are not you know they can't be challenged in the same way that their peers can be challenged and that that has identity implications that has you know implications for a student's ability to engage with school and it can be a disengager so telling students you belong in this lower level can disengage them from school because they're not being you know told that they can be challenged so I do see challenges surrounding the idea of leveling I also see benefits associated with some forms of leveling depending on how you define it so I think it's important that as we have this conversation and it's a very collective one and it's sort of a social one at the moment that we think about how students are distributed across levels that you think about what it is realistic to ask educators to do in a single year in the middle of a pandemic with regards to shifting their practice but you know it's also very problematic to be in a position where you have collapsed levels and now you're saying to a student who might be in an honors level course that you're going to split those back out it would almost be like demoting a student and now into a lower level than the one that they were in the previous year which doesn't make a lot of sense so depending on how it has played out at the high school you all will have some pretty hefty decisions to make in partnership with Superintendent and the high school principal I imagine there are some real benefits to things like honors for all that have come out and you know been heavily researched if you are going to have levels I do think it's important that students be involved in that conversation that they have the ability and opportunity to shift at any point that they never be locked in to a particular pathway and sequence those are some of the adjustments we've made in Waltham to mathematics because it was locking students into a sequence and that you're really looking deeply at how are students assigned to a level if they are how are they recommended for a level and is that disproportionately distributed across populations because if so that's an equity challenge and it's something that needs to be looked at if you're going to maintain leveling great you answered most of my follow-up of questions but just just to clarify if if you determine that it's an equity issue or an educational quality issue how much of that really is something that you you you want to get parental and school committee input or do you just want to communicate the reasons for an administrative decision speaking from the experience that I had with our delevelling of middle school mathematics that needs to be a community conversation because it requires you know when we did this with middle school math and I'll describe a little bit of what we did we had students leveled at seventh grade and eighth grade we eliminated that and now they are only leveled at ninth grade and I think that one of the things we want to look at is ninth grade and you know is that the point at which to level students or is it later when they can be part more part of that discussion that conversation is something that I think is really important to have with families because it's you know get digging into that data with several parents was a really formative discussion it helped everybody sort of come together in their understanding of what the impact of leveling or not leveling could be and people needed to talk about what they were worried the impact of not leveling would be too and educators needed to hear those concerns and really think about what does that mean for my practice and how I work with students who are ready for the next level ready for the next standard ready for the next challenge associated with this content because I've got to be really ready to differentiate that in a new way in a heterogeneous class great thank you very much Dr. Allison Ampe thank you I'm actually I'd like to continue Mr. Cardin's conversation topic just to say what do you see as the implications for building support in terms of tutoring or additional supports for these students if you don't you know if if you're either doing honors for all or unleveling and I'm part of where I'm coming from is right now my understanding with mathematics is if you can't handle the honors level the next if a child is having issues handling an honors level the step is for them to move down to the A level and I won't go into all my thoughts on that but just if you're going to try and have all the students do honors you need to have some backfill in terms of support right so this is a it's a system-wide conversation around intervention and how you accelerate students or otherwise struggling and so I think there are actually some really interesting lessons that can be learned from approaches that might have been taken at the elementary or at the middle school level for this but if you collapse levels into at a high school in any way whether it's two levels down to one or all three levels down to one or however you do it what you will open up are some is some level of efficiency so long as you're not in a situation where you're needing to cut staff because of budgetary constraints particularly if you have an efficient schedule where all of the core courses meet for the same number of periods and so I think what's important that you do in a situation like that is look at the schedule to determine if there's any way to incorporate flexible intervention periods that ideally there are a couple of different ways you could look at it you could say you know I'm going to tie another period to this class that is only for students who might need additional support or intervention but then you need to think about what's opposite that for the students who aren't in that situation of needing that extra help you can have a totally separate course but that's staffed by math teachers for example that is you know of course that students can maybe move in and out of and into another elective depending on their performance in class and to do that you'd have to have a pretty flexible approach to thinking about how students might move in and out of electives so you'd have to really take a look at that it would also depend if you have so in our schedule for example we have four period blocks and two period blocks and so you could turn a two period block into an intervention block if you've had a lengthy conversation with staff about what intervention means and you know who gets into intervention blocks and why and when and under what circumstances and what instruction looks like in an intervention space at our middle school levels we've built in a class called math lab and ELA lab and it's a class in addition to their core class and I think that it's not perfect it has its flaws but one of the things that's nice about it is that it allows the teachers who teach the lab class to reinforce the curriculum in the core class and what's not nice about it is that it's not very flexible so that's one of the things we're thinking about now we just incorporated that not too long ago and now we're thinking about how can we make this a more flexible thing that students aren't locked into for an entire year at the elementary level flexible intervention is a lot easier to schedule and imagine and implement and I think that what's hard about when kids get into the secondary level is that we haven't thought really creatively about how we do that flexible intervention as a component of the schedule and it's also hard to retool schedules because it's tied to credits it's tied to hours and time on learning but there are there are creative solutions to it depending on how your your schedule is structured and you you know just saying tutoring like just adding on time can be problematic too especially for students who want to engage in extracurriculars because that can deny access to extracurriculars for students who have to take a bus home um or like then can't stay after school or can't get that extra help from teachers so you can't always make it extra you really got to think about how you build these things into the the core of the schedule. Great thank you um so let me pop to one of the questions I was thinking of asking one of the things that we've identified as a strong priority in Arlington is increase the diversity of our staff to better represent our student body if we were to hire you you yourself would not be a change to what is already here um what specific action texts action steps would you take a superintendent to support and further this goal both in creating connections to our diverse populations and in increasing the diversity of ourselves. So this is something that's been very much on the minds of of on our minds as well and Waltham and something that I am pretty deeply committed to I think that um there are several things that you can do to really adjust your hiring process such that you're making sure that you incorporate diverse candidates in a more inclusive way so there are a couple of ways to do that one is to make sure that those um educators who you do have who are educators of color who are passionate about this work are included in hiring committees and so you know early in Waltham in my tenure there was a committee that formed at the high school they were the equity team they really wanted to get their heads around how do we create a more diverse staff at the high school and they said we need to be included on hiring committees and they so there was always a member of the equity team on a hiring committee and we also now have at the high school an affinity group for educators of color and we invite one of them to be on the on hiring committees that team has gotten bigger with time because we've added more and more educators of color it's particularly tricky when you're early in this process and you don't have a whole lot of educators of color who you can integrate into those hiring committees but it's a demonstration to candidates when you have a diverse hiring committee that you are committed to diversity of staff in your district and that's a recruitment tool even if you don't end up hiring that candidate that's something that they will go and say in whatever district they're currently in or talk to other people about and so the other thing that's really important is the rigorousness of the process itself blind resume reviews have gone a long way to helping us diversify the candidates we even bring in for an interview and by blind I mean you block out their name and it's like reading an anonymous resume and that you know it's it seems like a silly minor thing to just block out a name but it actually has had an impact on who we bring to the front as people who we want to interview and so I think that doing blind resume reviews with committees is another way to go about this really pointedly having questions in your interview protocol that pertain to issues of race anti-racism how you enact that in your practice is important having a performance task is really important and having students be part of that performance task is important so having teachers do a demo lesson that students watch and are involved in and then rate the candidates on when you have a rigorous process again people leave and say this is a this is a community that you know is they mean business they have diverse people on their hiring committees they have diverse students in their school and you're more likely to attract talent that is more diverse it's also important to have short range and long range plans for how you're going to diversify your staff the short range ones involved getting involved with mdpe partnerships for diversity in education and their hiring fairs getting involved with hiring fairs at colleges that have a more diverse student population and more diverse particularly in their college of educations building out relationships with those universities that attract student teachers to your district can be a great way to attract leaders of teachers of color into the district teachers of color will be more attracted to the district when there are leaders of color in the district and that is an area where Arlington has made some progress and so that is a great first step as well and then long range really great pipeline projects are an awesome way to get students inspired and excited about teaching in your district and particularly for students of color so having opportunities that are specifically set aside for students of color to be interested in education and learn about education as a field is a great way to sort of set up a system where you're diversifying if you have a lot of paraprofessionals in your district sometimes paraprofessionals can be a more diverse cross-section of people and so having like licensure routes and in your partnerships with universities you can build these out where you're sort of promoting and prompting paraprofessionals if you want to become a teacher you know here's this route and we have this set aside for paraprofessionals of color and we really want you to go get licensed and then come be a teacher with us that can be another way to do it too great thank you very much thank you oh is morgan how much do i have anytime okay sorry i talked too much mr schlickman thank you i'd like to focus a question on how school committees are supposed to team with their superintendents the education reform act of 1993 significantly changed the ground rules for public school governance how do you view the massachusetts model compared to other states and what would a good meeting look like a good school committee meeting yeah okay um so i don't have a lot of experience with school boards in other states um as as an administrator because i wasn't an administrator when i was in those other states i would say that a good school committee meeting looks like a meeting that's primarily run by the chair of the school committee um and that asks the ask questions of the leadership team ask questions of me provides input on the important things that are the you know things that the school committee governs the budget policies and you know my evaluation and the hiring of superintendent things like that are sort of your key roles and so i would look for input on those key things from members of the school committee however the school committee is also a form for the community to come and you know voice what it is that they think is important and want to see change and so i would also hope that there would be a partnership between myself and the school committee as superintendent where there is a flow of information to some extent so for example um our current superintendent and this is something that i'm learning from him and seeing from him provides the school committee with a update every week that just sort of says here are some of the major things we're thinking about here are some of the things that we're working on right now a lot of it's been focused on COVID and the reopening he provides a little data dashboard of here's how many cases we've had come in this week here are some of the things that we're hearing i'm hearing from families in exchange the expectation i think is that we would like to he would like to hear from the school committee when there are major areas of concern that are coming directly to you as a school committee member whether through forwarding that to us or through you know asking questions of superintendent when there's something that's not clear or when there's something that's been coming to you from members of the community and i i see that as a partnership i also believe that it's important to include members of school committee and school-based initiatives we have included members of our school committee in the readings that we do with the leadership team in major initiatives that are particularly tied to areas of concern for the school committee so i mentioned in my opening statement an initiative to decrease the dropout rate at our high school we're building an alternative program for students that will allow them to go to school at night and allow them to access school more flexibly according to their work schedules that initiative is very important one that requires input from multiple stakeholders and so we do have a school committee member on the committee that is putting together that programming and so you know i think my that's what my experience has been is to be inclusive of the school committee and fairly transparent and upfront with school committee about some of the things that we're thinking about and also to gather feedback from all of you about the directions that we're hoping to take and you know understanding that we're not all going to all always going to have the same opinion about things but that i want that dialogue to exist i know that you've talked to our town manager what are your thoughts about the structure of how our town is governed um i really enjoyed my meeting with your town manager in part because he talked a lot about the collaborative approach that has been taken particularly to coven and bringing the team together on a daily basis to talk through what the town's coven response has been that kind of collaborative approach is the kind of collaborative approach that i would like to take and like to see in any town so you know the town structure itself i mean the town has a lot of the same departments a lot of the same areas that our city has and i would hope to build collaborative relationships with other members of the team that works with the town manager and you know get to know them and i also appreciated that you know on the capital improvement process there is a deep um desire for town departments to work together into the development of a capital improvement plan i think that one of the things i didn't say when we were talking about the budget was that the budget is not just for the schools the budget is also a component of the plan for the entire town and so it's important that there be um some understanding of what some of the major priorities are in the town and what you know to what extent the schools are involved in that or need to maybe keep that in mind as they're building their own budget too if i can uh extend the question a little who's our appropriating authority you're appropriating authority are you looking for a name because if you're looking for a name i don't know where do we get our money from uh well you get that would assume you would get a lot of money from taxes as well as from the state so you would get state aid chapter 78 um as well as from locally who votes to give us money locally who votes to give the school department money i am not sure if that is happens something that happens at a town meeting or if that is the select board or if that comes directly from the town manager okay thank you uh in discussing supports and programs in your initial interview you said you would want some degree of cohesiveness and collectiveness around what our theory of action is what's the origin of your theory of action well so the origin of a theory of so the origin of our theory of action in wall fam comes from our strategic plan which was built around values that were collectively defined by a large committee that convened when our superintendent originally came on back in 2015 so we actually have a strategic plan that's about to expire so i think a theory of action comes from a large group of stakeholders that is representative of everyone in the town coming together and talking about what is it that we want to see in a graduate that comes from our schools what do we value in education what are the most important things that are part of our system already that we want to uphold or things that we want to bring in you list those out you narrow them down you come down to a few uh and that also is part of a conversation around looking at data together looking at budget even uh allocations together not like digging into the entire budget book but looking at what some of the major components of the budget are with that full committee and then having that full committee land on a few major priorities then the theory of action i talked about in my initial um interview is sort of a statement that comes out of that that drives the work of the school system for that year so we build our theory of action that we're sort of been working with for the past couple of years and we tweak it a little bit each year around what we see as compelling in the data that year as a leadership team and by leadership team i mean our admins our teachers teacher leaders are you know our coaches they all look together at you know what is it that's coming out here that we really need to think about and how do we think we're going to have an impact on that in this one year and then you use that theory of action to sort of drive the work you do over the course of that year it needs to be attached to the larger values that are articulated and priorities articulated in a strategic plan but it might be more focused for that single year i'm just sort of curious how data analysis in structuring a need statement ties to a theory of action so um i mean i think it has to be grounded in where you're seeing progress towards benchmarks that you've articulated you wanted to hit so one of the things that we've talked about and wealth and a lot is what do we what do we consider the closing of an achievement gap first of all it doesn't look like you know numbers for some students coming down while numbers for other students go up it looks like all all students achieving but some students accelerating their achievement and so if you know what we do is we look at the data and say where did we see that happen and what happened in that place and as one example we had a school that was really heavily focused on developing an inclusion model that was more cohesive and coherent for all the educators involved and so they built inclusion classrooms in and they pulled some students who were previously in a sub separate program into more inclusive classrooms throughout the course of the year they did that over the course of the year with the theory that this is going to have a positive impact on the outcomes for students on ips and here's the professional development we're going to do to enact that we did in fact see that result and so they built that theory of action of if we do these things here's the result we want will we get it and they did okay thank you very much all right so we've done our first round of interviews our first round of questions and so as we did last night we're going to take a five minute screen break i'm going to turn off my camera and get up and walk around and i find that it's a little bit easier to really you know pay attention to this important conversation so i will set my timer for five minutes and i will see you all then all right welcome back um so now i want to give everybody an opportunity to either ask follow-up questions to other pieces that were asked i you guys know the drill it's your five minutes uh make account uh miss exton thanks uh when you um think about hiring what are some of the things that you consider um in making a hire or in working with principals to make their hires at their schools and how much autonomy should a principal have in hiring the people that they want um so in thinking about hiring one of the um i sometimes teach um at the you know local universities and i talk to incoming teachers and one of the things i will always tell them when they say what's the most important thing i need to know when i'm going to get a job is that i i always want a reflective educator and so i want somebody to demonstrate in the hiring process that they are able to be reflective about where their areas of growth might be what their areas of strength might be um and the the hiring process should be built to uncover that in the educator especially in the hiring well also in the hiring of administrators that that's something that i would really look for and i also think that when it comes to the hiring at the building level that it is important that principals have a lot of sort of control over that process but that that also be a collaborative process that there's a clear set of expectations around who's included in a hiring committee that wherever possible students are included in hiring processes as well i think that's not as it's not as easy to do with the youngest kids but if you're doing a demo lesson then it does include them and their feedback and so you know i believe in you know schools having the opportunity principals having the opportunity to really drive that process but also having some common expectations around what the components of that process should be thank you all right shifting gears quite a bit um all right now i've lost my question um can you sorry um you've talked a little bit about the strategic plan in wallfam what are some of the things that were considered when planning and executing that strategic plan um and if you can talk a little bit about your participation in the process and execution sure so i've been more involved in the the execution part because when the initial committee was convened i was on it initially and then i had a baby and went on maternity leave for about six weeks um and so i wasn't part of the full development of the process but then we came together as a senior leadership team once the group had sort of narrowed down the major priorities and we sat together and built out the benchmarks and then thought about the implementation of that plan i think that it has served as a goalpost and as a north star but that we have sort of and that the major core priorities are things that we're still driving towards that some of the benchmarks we set are things that we've shifted from and that we instead are looking at different benchmarks now than we maybe thought we were before so one example is um equitable education for all students was a big part of the plan uh having an SEL curriculum in place was part of that process the way we said we would measure that was tied to data that we never really implemented and collected but we did start doing some of the work that we've done around um serving students about their social emotional learning and so that's the metric so i think it has to be a little bit flexible and that you have to understand that you set benchmarks according to the data you have accessible to you at the time and it's possible that those things shift over time but that that those guiding priorities need to be something that you pursue for an extended period because you can't you know you're not going to turn things over in a year you need a good five six years to begin to see the results of some of the changes that you're trying to implement um and you need to be able to sort of say well we're not going in that exact direction that we saw in the strategic plan but for this year we're going to really focus on these couple priorities and maybe set these benchmarks and so you're constantly revisiting that with the school committee with the community which with the administrators as well and how does how does the sort of budget or ensuring resources play into that so if you say you're going to one of the big things we said that we were going to prioritize was making sure that we had that we were diversifying our teacher workforce and thinking about retention and so we set aside additional funds in PD which are now not there in order to ensure that we had the resources that we needed to for for retention that meant that we had to take some of those some available funds from another area where we saw some efficiencies and so it does drive the budget I think it should drive the budget and I think that that's part of the conversation like if there is a strategic plan the early conversation with all of you would be what are the key priorities for this year how are those aligned with the strategic plan what are key areas that are important for us to sort of protect in the budget process to make sure that we locate efficiencies to protect that or that we have you know whatever we need to be able to enact those those processes sorry my family members walking around the room I got a little distracted thank you Mr. Dillman thanks very much the job of the superintendent often comes down to leading a group of principles and department heads who are very talented sometimes very independent minded very smart a lot of experience and I and in order to move the district forward you have to connect with that team lead that team drive that team and move that team in the in the direction you think the district should go so my question to you is you've observed three different superintendents in wall fam I'd like to know what you've thought about in terms of how you're gonna first connect with this team and how you're gonna gain their respect and lead them so in those transitions I've been the consistent person in the superintendent's office and through that have gotten to really know our principal core and be very connected with that group and I've been the supervisor of our directors and so I've gotten to think a lot about how do we incorporate the directors into the work that's happening in the schools how do we make sure that that team is co-hearing and developing plans together this is one of the things I really enjoy doing a lot and I will say this I've not been a principal and you know there are a lot of things that experience you know if you ever talk to any leader and they tell you that they don't have insecurities they're either lying or they're a poor leader so this is this is an area of mine where I'm very aware that I did not teach for very long and I also have not been a principal but what I do have is a lot of experience leading people whose job I've never had when I came to Waltham I was leading network technicians system specialists technology teachers and library librarians I had never done any of those jobs and I was able to lead that group together and enact a whole lot of very swift change in three years because I found the leaders that I needed to advise me and I practiced a lot of listening and a lot of empathy and consideration of you know what is your job like in order to lead people whose job you've never had you need to be willing to get into the weeds with them not to micromanage but to deeply understand what their day-to-day work is like and that's some of the work that I've done with the principals I have evaluated the principals on certain standards and worked with them to improve their practice in those areas and one of the things that we've really thought a lot about is how do we make sure that the departments and the buildings are working together towards an instructional goal and instructional vision and we've done several things for that that I think have really helped that team cohere one is that the directors are deeply embedded in particular schools they will like be on an ilt for a school that has a priority that's particularly linked to their disciplinary area for example we just onboarded a new assistant director of special education she's working with a school whose specific focus is on special education as an example and so she's on teams at that school she's embedded in the work of that school I work at the beginning of the year in an institute with all of the leaders to in school-based teams define what is it that we want to work on as a school-based team let's dig into the data let's see where we see opportunities let's see where we see challenges and let's build a plan out from there based on the problems of practice that we have and then I visit the school with the principal and you know what this looks like could be a little bit different in Arlington and with the directors and we walk around and then we talk about what do we see so that we can calibrate around what the expectation is so that you know I can hear how they're thinking about what they're seeing in the classroom and they can hear how I'm thinking about what I'm seeing in the classroom and the director can weigh in with their content area expertise and you know we do multiple rounds of that throughout the year and that helps us come together around what our expectations are it helps build consistency so I think that you know that's how I think about leading principles it's a couple of the ways got it I got one minute I got less than a minute so I want to ask one question it's a it's a generational question so I've we've hired I've hired a lot of millennials in my in my career and learned a lot from them you would be if you were superintendent of schools in Arlington you would be one of the first superintendents from the millennial generation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and I'm wondering what that might bring to this job what that you you grew up after no child left behind you graduated a high school after no child left behind we've never had uh someone in leadership that has I don't think can you just what does that mean in taking on this role interesting I can't believe I was just called a millennial but I I know that technically I am uh I'm married to a Gen Xer so I don't identify this super millennial I just heard you call like my sister is a millennial okay all right all right okay I think you are a millennial regardless I am I technically am so okay fine I'll own it um I think uh huh I'll own it all the millennials say that to me in meetings I'll own it there's your proof that I actually am so just I mean I don't know I just thought about that question I I think I don't know if it has anything to do with being a millennial all right but I but I do think that something that's unique about me is that I have young children and it's it's not as common for a superintendent to have a young family what that has meant for me in my leadership is that I am you know I I think a lot about things like balance even as I don't always live out what balance looks like and I think about how to model that for the team um and I have to make sure that I have time that is somewhat blocked out for my family while I'm also pursuing um you know things that I have deep passions and that are tied to my work or tied to hobbies or whatever um and some ways that I do that is through really being very efficient with my time and making sure that when I am at work I'm at 110 percent that I'm taking that means that I'm taking care of myself um and that I am making time for things like exercise and making time for things like being with my children and making time for things like sleep but it also means that I'm constantly on and this is something that the millennial generation is fairly used to right we're very used to having things ping um in the background now I grew up with a car phone in my mom's car so you know I'm not really used to having a cell phone and this is something that came into my life very much in adulthood um but it is you know something I've grown up with growing technologies and I've you know grown up with a growing sense of um deep investment in my work and I have had to think a lot about in COVID even you know where where are the boundaries of that how do I build a team around me that I know that I can hand something off to and trust and I've had the benefit of working with three superintendents who have needed to do that with me and that's what's giving me given me some of the experiences that I have had um and so I would want to make sure that I did that with our team um and that I also modeled for them what it looks like to have some degree of balance while also understanding that I need to drop everything to take an emergency phone call like that's just the reality of the job uh so those are some ways I think about maybe me being a little bit different as a millennial superintendent okay the thought came to my mind randomly thank you you handled the question that was an interesting question thank you yeah I just came to mind I'm probably should have thought through all right thank you very much thank you Mr. Hainer you never asked me those questions Dr. Holman one of the benefits of being an educator is uh experiencing some wonderful moments when all of a sudden you learn something from a child you have any experience like that that you might be able to share as a teacher as parents we all have those but I'm thinking as a teacher definitely um wow so we've learned from our kids in Waltham that we learned from our kids in Waltham that our curriculum was deeply colonialized which is part of why we undertook some of the um some of the efforts we have and we also learned that they can build curriculum um and are exceptionally good at thinking through how to design their own projects um I've learned wow I'm trying to think of like the best examples of this um I've learned from some of our youngest students that they are exceptionally capable of talking about how they feel about certain experiences that they have in their education so as an example I was in a classroom this was last year when we were all able to walk into classrooms and sat down to talk with a student about a math problem that he was doing and he said he he said not that he was struggling with the math problem but he told me about the strategy that he was trying to use and told me why he was trying to use that strategy and told me why he struggles with that strategy over this other strategy that would be easier for him but the teacher told him he needed to challenge himself so he's trying to use this one I was like oh wow what that sort of shows is that students really can from a very this student was in first grade so they're very capable of sort of metacognition around their learning and thinking when they're given the language to use to do that um and that moment in particular really showed me that some of the work we've been doing around helping students talk about being metastrategic thinking was totally worthwhile but also that they really are deep thinkers about their own learning from a very young age and the implications of that for me as a parent were pretty significant because it prompted me to go home and talk to my daughter about things like that but that we need to be really explicit about teaching them the strategies to persevere through a challenge from a very young age is that's also what that instance reinforced our high school students your high school students the ones I talked to on Tuesday are exceptionally passionate about the things that they want to see in their education and the ways they want to be involved they asked some awesome questions about hiring process and how students could be involved in the hiring process that were really inspirational and so you know kids are brilliant people who can change the world and I think that that we stand to learn a lot from them as adults they're often more ready for some of the difficult conversations than we are to around like race identity gender identity sexual orientation a lot of kids are just ready to jump right into that these days in ways that make adults uncomfortable they don't have our inhibitions thank god if you could go back in time is there any one or two things that you would change oh dear about what my career trajectory work I've done you pick it um let's see I I don't know that I would have pursued the exact kind of doctorate that I got to be perfectly honest because I went and got an academic PhD and if I had gotten an Edd I might have known I might have known the answer to Mr. Slitchman's question and if I you know the PhD prepared me in a lot of really interesting ways for deep data analysis for the I did a mixed methods doctorate my research was mixed methods so I got to do qualitative and quantitative analysis that was great but then I became an administrator which was not my original plan I wasn't planning on going back to k-12 but I needed to be back in classrooms and that's why I ended up back as an administrator and so if I had that to do over again I might have chosen a different program thank you um so I'm a I'm a parent of four school age children uh in public school in Arlington and and your kids yet are not in in k-12 schools um so I'm curious about what kind of conversations you've had with parents and caregivers in Waltham that have helped inform you about the experience of being a public school parent and what you've learned from them and how that's influenced the work that you do there sure um when the pandemic hit this was one of the things that um was both most rewarding and most challenging about engagement with families so uh an example I had that comes immediately to mind was we had a family parent who emailed me and we were going back and forth on something that was actually not related to um remote learning but I said hey how is it going um with you know with your child at school they had participated in an initiative previous years and that's what we were emailing about and I said how is it going with remote learning he said well actually can you get on a zoom meeting um and so I sat down with him and his wife after the kids went to bed talked to them about what their experience had been and he talked about uh the frustration that the kids had with the screen time the frustration that they were feeling with needing to then like try to navigate typing in one window being on in this window he talked about what the teachers sort of approaches had been and what some of their strategies had been and he had had a conversation with the teacher and I just sort of sat and listened and processed what some of the challenges were and one of the biggest ones was consistency of messaging um and it hadn't occurred to me at that moment how just how bombarded until that moment just how bombarded families were um with with messages from teachers messages from the district we were sending out one almost every single day they were kind of long um the you know we had told the teachers you know get in touch with families make sure you have all your students we had told the teachers the same thing the principals and the teachers the same thing and so families were inundated and and he really helped me think through what the communication strategy would be over the course of the um closure in the spring the superintendent started forwarding parents to me when the concern or question had anything to do with remote learning typically the superintendent wouldn't always do that with these the superintendent wouldn't always do that with the assistant superintendent but he did and that gave me the opportunity to really get to know a lot of families it was part of how we wrapped some of them into the reopening strategy I've also had families and parents on some of my strategic planning committees and I've always found their input to be invaluable because it helps us think about how like if we switch to Chromebooks or if we build this STEAM program what are your feelings about that for the education of your children and how does that change what your life is like at home if it's a Chromebook and you don't have consistent access to Wi-Fi what are some things we can do to adjust that you have to have that perspective at the table I learned a lot about being a parent from parents of school age children and I've also um we've retooled entire approaches to things because of the input that we've gotten from parents great thank you um so can you talk to me a little bit I'm glad that you were able to talk about that with relationship to COVID because it actually makes my next question seem more um on point so I'm grateful for you making me look good so my question is when you uh when you think about a time you know in the future when uh when Pfizer and Moderna save us all and get us a vaccine and and we bring kids back to school what keeps you up at night about thinking about the remediation work that's going to need to happen come time when we can have kids back in school full time what what are you the most worried about and I know that you said that you you prioritize sleep so maybe nothing keeps you up at night but what do you think about when you think about the work that's going to need to happen in all all schools all districts um when we come back to a place where we can have kids in school full time I have plenty of things to keep me up at night even if I do try to go to bed at a reasonable hour um honestly uh literacy learning for our youngest kids who are in about first grade in kindergarten right now is is the thing that I am particularly concerned about because that is so interactive like phonics learning learning how to read is deeply um relational and it's deeply interactive so that's one big thing the mental health of our students who are about great uh age 13 to 15 or 16 I'm particularly concerned about that because they they have not had the same opportunity as some of our older adolescent students to connect um in sort of more mature ways or more like uh that some of them can go like be part of their sports teams right now the older students but students who are ages about 13 to 15 are in a really formative spot this could be coming from the fact that I was an eighth grade teacher and I understand the impact of the social interactions day to day at school and also the team the depression that can come with that we just did a suicide prevention training at our high school because we're really concerned about this um and we invited our middle school parents to be part of the parent night that was associated with that I so those are the two big things I think that's what I'm most concerned about thank you and thank you for being specific um who's after me mr carton hi thank you so at my uh five minutes for each night up giving candidates a chance to respond to some of the concerns that have been raised about them so might be a little uncomfortable but beyond strategic leadership a superintendent deals with significant day-to-day operational issues ranging from something like dealing with a teacher who is screen-shared a naked picture to his class to something like dealing with the first cases of covid and mass like back in march one concern about your candidacy is that without surveying as a building principal and with limited time as an assistant superintendent your experience with such decisions may be limited and this may hinder your performance can you talk about how you would address those concerns perhaps through highlighting the nature of your roles or maybe how you would expect to make such decisions and sharpen your skills in this area should you become superintendent sure so I think one thing to know about the year that we had an interim superintendent is that during that year he was also our HR administrator and he stepped into the the superintendency and we did not have an HR administrator so during that year he and I were both the superintendent the assistant superintendent and the HR administrator and that gave me a lot of opportunities to to sometimes handle situations and he would give me those opportunities and so when there is a critical situation at one of the schools for example I have had moments where I've collaborated with one of the principals around one instance was student getting their hands on a substance that they shouldn't have had and that being like a particularly huge concern and crisis for that family and so talking with the principal in an immediate sense because they either couldn't get all of the superintendent or weren't sure how to handle the situation the the key piece is partnership with the principal where the situation is happening in order to get a clear picture of everything surrounding that situation doing an immediate round if necessary of interviews and investigations it's important that if required in one of the examples that you just mentioned that you put somebody on and paid administratively while you investigate the situation and you know you start I believe I would work closely with the HR administrator and I'm very glad that you have a full-time one available in in Arlington but that you work with that individual to say who are the first people we need to talk to what are the questions we need to ask in an immediate sense and then from there are there additional people that we need to talk to we had a situation in Waltham this past I don't know I think it was like as we were coming into the fall where somebody exposed themselves on a camera and we had to go investigate that on a technical end who was in the meeting who was who was you know who had access to the meeting was were they internal to us were they given access by somebody else and I've had to be part of those investigations from a technical standpoint from my previous role as the administrator of educational technologies sometimes we needed to go in and really look at like who had access to what who was given access to what so I do have some experience with those things not as much as a principal who's been doing that for years as a superintendent who's been doing those sorts of things for years but I understand the steps that are necessary I know I need to work very closely with the principal who might be better acquainted with the situation in order to fully understand it and that you know there are actions that have to be taken to remove people from a situation that might be dangerous for others immediately while you get the rest of the details and that there are regulations around the actions that you need to take and how quickly you need to take them according to the contract or according to law great thank you Dr. Allison Ampe again I kind of follow up on Lynn so I know you talked about the concerns about building principal life and building principal experience in and few years of teaching but I'm wondering can you discuss the teaching experience you had at the college level how is high teaching at a high school level the same same or different and I say that as the mother of a sophomore in college now so I've seen I'm going through yeah I taught at the college level I've taught freshman uh writing class which is almost like teaching high school seniors they just barely at college um and I really very much enjoyed that I did that while I was at the University of Michigan um in that that was not so different from teaching high school seniors except that uh you know I was at an elite institution and so I had a lot of the students who had really excelled um when they were in high school and they were at now at the University of Michigan they were also very international and so one of the bigger differences teaching college students is that I've had a lot of international students in my college level classrooms I think what's also you know different about working with college students compared to students who are in a k-12 setting is simply that they're adults and so they are their responsibility they need to take is sort of fully on them and so when you need to sort of work on an intervention you need to work out a plan directly with the student when you're doing that with an eighth grader you have to do that with the student and also in conversation with the family um and in conversation with your other colleagues around you one of the reasons I wanted to come back into k-12 education was because um it it's it's a little more isolating you don't have the same you don't have a team around you um in the same way at the higher level that you do at the higher education level as you do um when you're in a k-12 setting where you have like your colleagues who also know the student um you know you might you you're partnering with the family it's a more collective and sort of wrap around the student approach um I think that's a flaw of higher education to be honest I think that the best universities find a way to do that a little bit better well thank you um and then have you had any issues in waltham and I don't know of any specific I'm not trying to to pull something specific up that have just blown up in your face um where you were the point person and all the blame was being dumped on you and what happened I mean what when I say what happened it's kind of what's the situation but also what was the response from the community how did you what did you do to respond and to deal with it sure um I think the best example would be some of the work we did around math most recently where we revised some of the pathways because we had three parents on that committee who were very unhappy with the decision uh they wrote lengthy letters to the school committee that were read out loud during public session that can be really hard to hear when it's a critique of your direct work um it was not a critique that we were not expecting because I had sat in so the approach that we took to this was we were sort of on a trajectory that was pretty quick like we started the work in November we were meant we meant to do that work through um April and we were going to present to the school committee in April and we only had a certain number of meetings and we had to dial way back um and have some lengthy conversations with these families because they were very concerned about the direction that this was going um and you know we had some really contentious meetings with the full committee the full committee had one direction they wanted to go and we needed to take that to school committee but it did mean that uh we were deeply criticized me and the math director who were leading that work by the three members of that committee who were concerned about it as well as by other members of the committee before that we adjusted seventh grade without a committee and the flashback we got from that action because it was the middle school principals and myself and the math director made sort of a unilateral decision and it was the best decision to make and it was not met very well by the community and there were a lot of letters that went to school committee about that decision that then came back up in the letters that went to school committee um and were read out loud before our presentation and so the way we handled that was to say here here is what the committee's proposal is in addition to this feedback you have all of this other feedback and input from other members of the committee here's why we believe this is best here's what we want to move forward with we want your support we have the support of all members of the school committee except for one um you know we we pushed through it and we pushed forward through it uh knowing you know having the conviction of both the committee and the fact that we had made the right decision um at heart and when you're in a leadership position you are not going to have consensus every time you need to make a difficult decision and you're going to get you know raked over the coals sometimes for decisions that might not be in line with what other people believe should have happened and that's happened to us a few times and you know I'm used to that I think we've also had been had that happened just recently with regards to our reopening process because we made a decision that's fairly unpopular with regards to bringing more students back in because of our numbers and COVID and Waltham and are getting a lot of negative feedback about that right this minute that we're going to have to deal with that's not directed right at me the math thing was um but it's something we'll have to work through okay thank you mr. Schuchman thank you uh in 2019 Waltham's mean grade 10 ELA student growth percentile was 33.2 just very quickly why do you think that happened and what did you do about it the in 2019 the grades three to eight the grade 10 grade 10 ELA student growth percentile the mean was 33.2 which is the kind of an extreme score so I'd like to know why do you think that happened and what did you do about it uh one of the biggest things we've done about it is retool the entire high school curriculum in ELA um that's that was actually one of the big impetuses for some of the revision of the ELA curriculum that we have just undertaken in the past year so the new ELA curriculum is only now being implemented um I think that we attributed some of that uh low growth at the high school ELA um in the high school ELA scores with the fact that a lot of our students weren't connecting well with the high school ELA curriculum because our growth and our performance in grades six through eight ELA had been strong in previous years um when you said that and said three through eight I was like that's not right because that's not what our scores are three to eight um in grade 10 yes they have been suffering and so the curriculum retooling was the our major response to that and we're we'll look forward to see if that had an impact okay and my last question for the night is I believe our experience as a child in the public schools is the foundation of our work as educators can you reflect back to how your school experience as a child influences who you are as an educator today absolutely so I grew up in a relatively rural um school system and I did not I had peers who looked a lot like me and talked a lot like me and I had a teacher my senior year of high school who was also at the university that was about 15 miles away from the town where I lived and she she revamped the entire AP ELA curriculum and we didn't read a single text that entire senior year except for one that was by written by a white man and she required us to like all the other texts were people of color they talked about issues of gender identity they were either authored by people of color protagonist there were people of color written by women and that year blew my world right open because she required us to think and talk about topics that none of our teachers had ever required us to think and talk about in a public school system so reflecting back on the rest of my public school experience it was very limited and relatively myopic but I had some amazing teachers who I really connected with in those schools and so when I had that teacher I was well positioned to challenge my own perceptions and prejudices um and she probably that that one teacher was probably the reason why when I went on to college I became an English teacher I keep in touch with her we still talk she lives in Colorado she was uh I did some research with her when I was working on my doctorate and you know we've remained connected to this day she's written a lot on like revising grading processes and we talk a lot about that too and so I think my public school education was one that didn't always challenge me to think in different ways about people who you know I didn't have a lot of contact or experience with but I probably am an educator who's committed to equity because she got me started thinking in new ways about things that I've never been asked to think about before thank you very much all right um so thank you Dr. Homan for taking all of our questions um for such a long period of time um it was it was great to hear your your thoughts on some of the things that I know that we have all been ruminating on um for a few weeks now um so I wanted to give you a chance at this point to um ask questions of us I you know I guess I'll use my this is still a school committee meeting um in a public meeting so I'll use my um responsibilities as chair to delegate um but I'm happy to hear from my fellow members if you would like to answer on a specific question but I'm curious if you have any questions for us sure I would like to know what all of you perceive to be some of the major strengths of the school system as it is currently um in existence and being led and you know what are the things that you're particularly proud of in the school system that you would highlight Mr. Hader I think the quality of education that we're able to provide at a minimal cost especially in this area is a reflection of the quality of the educators that we have in the middle of all the all the administrators and stuff I'm really proud of that Dr. Lampy I think we've been able to achieve equity across the town which 10 years ago didn't exist as much now when new parents come to town and ask where should I live what's the best school people pretty much say for the elementary schools it doesn't matter you know go where even find a house um and that I don't think would have been the same answer 10 12 years ago Mr. Thielman you know we've had stability of leadership for 13 years and that has allowed for consistency in the delivery of curriculum you know instruction across the district it's um and that's been a huge plus I think I think lots of school districts have had lots of turnover in leadership it has not been the case in Arlington um the other thing other thing I would say is that and I agree with what Bill and Percy said I would also add that you know we have responded creatively as creatively and as quickly as we can to enrollment growth in our town we've added a sixth grade school which is unique we have the seventh and eighth grade at the Addison Middle School and we're in the process of building high school so the the town and the town it has passed an override uh two years ago now I guess it is we've uh passed a debt exclusion by 76 77 of the voters so there's a lot of support in the community for education and a lot of belief in education in this time I think I would echo what Mr. Thielman said that you know this is a this is a school department and a school committee that's committed to really collaborative work um I think we have stronger relationships uh with the town side then um perhaps some other districts might um and that we maybe didn't have you know 15 10 15 years ago um and I think that allows us to really participate in conversations around um municipal finance and decisions that are made at um you know on the town on the town side um I think that the schools have become a larger participant and we have a stronger voice now and um that's thanks to uh you know Dr. Bodie's leadership um we have a very strong CFO who represents us very well across multiple boards where you know he is sharing about our um financial situation and um so I think you know we're really we're really fortunate um that we work collaboratively with a lot of other a lot of other groups and then you know I I'm um as a as a parent um you know the people who I interact with the most every day and who interact with my my kids are are their teachers right and we just have extraordinary teachers who are flexible and um engaged and empathetic and you know teach our kids to grow in new and different ways every day um and so that's something that as a school committee I'm proud member I'm proud of but I'm I'm deeply proud of it as a parent and as somebody who's chosen to raise her family here um Mr. Schiffman. Thank you and I think the uh my colleagues on the school committee are a strength I have run for reelection because I genuinely enjoy being with them and working with them and we all work together well uh I think the climate in the district uh in the schools is excellent we have great teachers it's a supportive environment we're a high performing district without being as high pressure as our neighbors to the west and I think that we've got some really great things happening in terms of arts and some real creative thinking among our students so you know there there are a lot of really benefits to having a child in the public schools here in Ireland. Um the other question I wanted to ask you is actually uh it's playing from Ms. Morgan's question it's like the same question I wanted to know what the biggest concern you all have moving into next year is assuming that we are fully entering back into school I was curious what some of the recovery concerns you all have from COVID-19 might be. Mr. Hayner? I think you addressed it a little bit earlier uh finding out where the students are emotionally first uh in my mind is important because you're not going to get the academic going until we know where they are um and and providing the best environment for the faculty and the students that we can and the expectations I'm saying this as a grandparent watching a senior in high school right now missing her senior year uh understanding where kids are and not putting a lot of pressure on them at the same time making it a an environment for everybody to have success. Mr. Cardin? Yes I agree with Mr. Hayner about the pressure I mean I don't want us to be looking to catch up in a year or even two years um you know it's going to be a long process to make up the loss the learning loss we need to focus first on the social emotional figure out where the kids are so we can adjust the curriculum appropriately we can't suddenly start teaching uh you know third grade material to second graders who haven't you know learned second grade so we need to see where they are and adjust accordingly but I also don't want to rush into um remediating everything right away because it's going to be a long process and it should be a long process. Mr. Schickman? I really have a lot of faith in the teachers and administrators in this district to address the the issues with curriculum assessment and the social emotional when when kids are coming back to the district and I think that by the time we hit September we'll be back fully in operation. The thing that worries me in my role as a school committee member is that our increases in chapter 78 have been driven by the increases of enrollment uh because the uh minimum net school spending is capped so that when the enrollment increases uh you require more chapter 78 to fill that gap even though by formula we might not be entitled to that money because we're a relatively wealthy district in terms of property value and and income uh so with the decline in enrollment this year which has been experienced statewide we don't have that driving factor and my worry is in terms of having the the financial ability to provide what we need to do in the following fiscal year that we would have been able to do under normal circumstances. We're relatively funded this year because the uh the funding is based on the previous year's October 1 count but this year's October 1 count is down so that's going to have a significant impact on the resources we're going to have when kids come back who were withheld this year. Mr. McDowman. You know my colleagues have touched on a lot of the things um you know I don't I don't know what's going to happen uh at the top of the government in this country in terms of funding for education and I'm not sure what you know kind of direction we're going to get from the state. I think school districts are going to still be figuring out on their own how to reopen and how to address deficits and uh in learning uh and I also um you know we've heard many many times from many people that you know we'll be able to open the schools again in the spring or we'll be so I'm not I'm not quite sure how widely um you know I think there's going to be angst and and concern about a full reopening in the fall. I think we've got a um structure a process uh that gets us there that's my personal opinion. I think we've got to find a way to open but there will be pushback in the community and among lots of people and so that has to be there's a skill set there to guide that discussion towards opening in my opinion um and uh I think together as a community as a school district we're going to have to be creative probably on our own to come up with ways to um to fill lots of gaps social emotional needs I think lots of kids have been you know in addicts and basements studying um they haven't been out as much uh they've got to get reacquainted with what it's like to be in a school on a regular basis and then there's going to be deep learning gaps and I think the superintendent and uh the superintendent's team have to get together identify those gaps and prioritize which ones we can resolve and over what what timeline. Thank you um it's uh almost nine o'clock on a friday evening so I will stop asking you questions I have more but we can be done. All right well we really appreciate you spending this time with us we appreciate um you taking time to meet with so many stakeholders on tuesday I know that um you'll be meeting with um members of the finance committee and other uh town employees on monday afternoon um so um it's it's really important to this committee that we have a process for making this decision that involves you know so many of the groups that we that we work with and relationships that are really important um for us personally but also for the students who we are all here to serve so um we we do very much appreciate your commitment to participating in this process that we've lined up it's um you know it's zoom is it's kind of weird it's a weird way uh to go about doing this but um but you know this is it's it's all really important and it's nice that we've had an opportunity to have a conversation with you and uh so thank you so much for being here um I know that some of us will see you again on monday afternoon um and to everybody else I'm not going to forget that we have to actually adjourn this meeting I also see Mr. Hainer has a question yes sir no just a statement I think we're signing a bad precedent break finishing before nine o'clock for miss Morgan I just want to put that out there it's fair before the vote this time so it isn't left to just Paul and I to stall the vote no move to adjourn second um miss exton yes mr cardin yes Allison ampey yes mr Tillman yes mr schickman okay sure yeah sure yeah mr Hainer absolutely and I am also yes thank you so much dr homan thank you dr homan thank you have a good night