 Welcome to the regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, September 26th, 2019, absent or arriving late tonight are Jane Morgan who is at a parent night, Jeff Thielman who is stuck in some traffic, Dr. Bodie is in Naga-Okakyo, Japan with a delegation celebrating our sister-city relationship, the 35th anniversary of our sister-city relationship. So we have a bit of a light agenda. We'll start with public comment. Is there anyone here for public comment? No. All right. So we'll move right ahead to the overview of school counseling and introduction of new counselors led by our director of counseling, Sarah Bird. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. We are thrilled to be here. We're representing the counseling department for the wonderful Arlington Public Schools and I will just show off my t-shirt from the start because it's intentionally worn. Does someone want to read it out loud for us? School not guidance counselor. Oh yeah. Do you know anything about that? No. That's what we're here to share with you. So my name is Sarah Bird and I'm the director of school counseling and social emotional learning for Arlington Public Schools. And many times throughout the past few years I've noticed we at this circle but also many other tables in the district will talk about guidance counseling, school counseling, social work, psychology, all in these different garbled terms and not necessarily have a shared understanding on what the specifics are. So I thought we would kick off the year with a bit of an introduction on school counselors and what our roles are in the district. When I was certified and I guarantee when all three of us were certified in counseling we all received our licenses in guidance counseling. But over the years the profession has actually moved away from the historical title of guidance and they've moved towards something called school counseling. What I've shared with you on the files and I'm not going to quote them or anything but there's a beautiful article that was just in the Boston Globe and it says my guidance counselor never did that. And it really helps to outline the shift that the profession has seen. Even in Massachusetts if you have somebody who's certified now they are now certified as school counselors. There's no longer the terminology of guidance counselor. So we are moving towards that embracing it as our national professional organization has done as well and we're not so much rebranding but just coming back to be really true to our roots of what it is that we do for kids and for the community. So I encourage you to take a look at that article take a look at the professional organization and standards. I'll speak more about them in a bit but I wanted to introduce our lead counselor so they could share a little bit more with you about the mission of school counselors. So I'm Kathy Hirsch and I'm one of two lead counselors at Arlington High School and I cover the side of social emotional wellness and Danielle Rikowski knew this year as the lead counselor for college and career planning but I've been here for 17 years as a school counselor. And we started on the same day 17 years ago together. Here we are. And we I can speak for both of us I think really love and enjoy our job and the opportunity we've had over the years for our department to evolve and grow to the adjusting needs of students in the world. So when we this year were charged with rewriting our mission statement and vision we all met together as a department at the beginning of the school year and broken to small breakout groups sort of rotated through sharing ideas of what we do and what we think is important to emphasize. And we were coming up with long list we we cover a lot of ground with the students transitioning into high school everything that happens while they're here and then the next step transition after high school. And after some work we were able to come up with a mission statement that we felt covered that broad range of duties that we that we perform and also a vision that was very brief that we think really says it all whole student all students. So our emphasis is working with each student meeting them where they are identifying their individual needs goals and helping to support their growth in all areas throughout high school as a whole student before they enter the world. And I'm just going to read the middle school statement I'm just going to represent them. So counselors provide a nurturing environment that supports the growth of students into socially responsible independent and collaborative community participants. Counselors prepare lifelong learners for the world by helping to promote intellectual curiosity and develop cultural proficiency and healthy relationships. Counselors work with students parents faculty and the community to advance social emotional skills develop resilience and foster the mental and physical well-being of the whole student. Their vision in a quick wrap up is supporting well-being growth and resilience. For high school we have like Kathy said revamped our statement. The AHS school counseling department fosters overall wellness academic and career success and life skill development. We collaborate in empowering students to reach their fullest potential. We support the social emotional well-being of students through building healthy and diverse relationships and setting personalized goals. We promote the development of self-advocacy skills including the ability to access supports counseling academic help and self-awareness around the areas of strength and weakness. The department focuses on developing lifelong learners resiliency and intellectual curiosity as the whole student prepares for an ever-changing global community. Some important things to just highlight is just that as a team you know we collaborate with administrators, teachers, staff. We have weekly student support team meetings. We connect with social workers outside of school agencies with families, parents. So broadly as a department we connect within and outside of school. One of our strengths is we have a very experienced staff. We've been here for a very long time. We were very fortunate enough to have a new counselor added to our group of five or now six. So we have extra supports. We also use Naviance in depth. So for curriculum nine through 12, support self-exploration and planning. We go over learning styles, career exploration, we do a personality profiler, we do our post-secondary planning, college research all within that system. So we have a nine through 12 comprehensive curriculum that goes along with the Massachusetts model. Did you know that? I'm going to interrupt for a second. Did you know that we have a comprehensive school counseling framework replete with standards and lessons and so on? It's not something that many people know about. So thank you for bringing that up Danielle. And one other thing to point out, we have our caseload. We break down by alphabet and so we follow the students for four years. So we actually get to know them and for the most part we have their siblings. So we get to know the families and we are able to connect with them throughout their whole high school experience from transition. Like Kathy said, all the way through graduation and planning for after graduation. We also partner with different agencies and folks in the community and I think it's a nice coincidence that Karen Kretzky and Cindy Bouvier here today who we work with through the Arlington Health and Safety Coalition. We've worked with Cindy for many years on initiatives in the district as well. So we feel fortunate to work in a town and a school district that really supports the health and wellness of students and is open to new initiatives over time. So we thank everyone for that. There are a couple of other documents as well in the files that give you a bit more information about the qualifications of school counselors. Also a little known fact is that school counselors are one of the few people in schools that must have their master's degree as well as multiple hours and different modes of internship before they are allowed to even practice as a school counselor. That's not the case with many other folks. I can think of nurses and maybe specialists like OTMPT and so on. But all of our school counselors are highly qualified because of that and then in order to have your professional license you have to have 60 plus graduate credit hours plus continuing education and PDPs. So again highly qualified staff are working with our students and not only that but you said 17 years. So not the first rodeo. Currently in Arlington we have the role of school counselor at the middle school, the Gibbs, the Ottison and the high school. There are a couple of different types of licensure and certification at the state level. In Arlington we have both school counselors and school adjustment counselors also known as school social workers within the school counseling department. All of our counselors at the high school are certified as school counselors. At Ottison and Gibbs there is a mix of school counseling and school adjustment counseling. Believe it or not as much as there are similarities there are also differences between those training routes. And sometimes folks don't really know what those differences are. I like how Danielle explained that we work within the four walls with our students but we also collaborate with outside partners in the community. And there is a lot more training on the school counselor licensure side in terms of how to deliver that comprehensive counseling program thinking proactively. How do we get all of this information out to all the students and really universally support kids at that tier one level. Your school adjustment counselors have a little less of the programmatic development and delivery and more of the interfacing with case management and folks in the community. So they're both valid and valuable skill sets for Arlington. But it's also great to know that for us in the role of school counselor we have a couple of different certifications serving in that job title. The rest of those slides will help give you some information if you want to learn more about it. As Danielle also said we are now officially in the district for our school counselors at caseloads of 250 students to one counselor or better. This is the first time since I've been here and I believe the first time in a long time that we've been able to be a fully staffed counseling department. So that's something we want to celebrate. And it also gives us the chance to start branching out and no longer dealing with just crises and individual kids as they come through the office but actually start to do more of that preventative whole school work which is really exciting for us. I wanted to take a second. We have our two lovely lead counselors who are here to say hello but everybody else also sends their best. I'm really happy it was my second year with Gibbs. And I'm going to tell you I'm the other school counselor at the Gibbs. And stay here if you see me around the building. Stop in a second. I have my second stem. I'm sorry I can't make it tonight. I've been here six years and you can use it finally out of the track where I was in the spring. And I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Hi, Carolyn Lichter. I'm one of the school counselors here. I've been here for over 10 years. Before that I was at the opposite of the school for two years. And I'm really enjoying working with high school students. I love the community of being here. I went to Boston University and studied business management. And realized that I really wanted to be a helping profession. So I went back to school. And here I am as the counselor. And I'm very happy to be continuing to work here. And I'm very fortunate that this school comes around. And I'm super excited to be back in the halls. And it was a film between the everybody as you know. And it was nice to have one year in the building. And I remember so fondly. And it was great to be back in the community where I grew up. So if you see me around the community or any events, please feel free to say hello. I'm really excited to get to work with community. Hi, my name is Ann Benson. I am a high school counselor here at Edmonton High School. And I'm so thrilled to be here. I am in my second year here as a school counselor. So thank you for understanding the need for more staff here. One of my favorite things about working here is having an opportunity to work with adolescents. My prior professional experience is working in higher education. I worked at Boston University for almost 15 years in admissions and academic advising. And I was hoping I would be able to make a shift to work in high school. And I feel so fortunate to work here. And I'm really looking forward to another great year here. So thank you so much for making this opportunity possible for me. I'm Nancy Segel. I'm one of the school counselors here at Audison. I work with the 8th grade and I also advise the QSA. Hi, I'm Laura Key, a grade school counselor. I also live in Edmonton and have a 5th grader and a 11th grader in ETS. Hi, I'm Brian Christie. I'm a school counselor here at Audison for a 7th grade. Last name, L-I-Q-Z. It's my 3rd grade here at Audison. Before this, I worked during family therapy and I was in college. Hi, I'm Amy Bistran. I'm the other 7th grade school counselor. This is my 5th year here at Audison. And I have a one-year-old at home. Do you maybe just want to add anything? So I just want to ask, if folks have any questions, I believe this was the last thing I wanted to leave you with was we have now a monthly school counseling newsletter that we're putting out internally to staff and school committee to help increase awareness about the department, about the depth and breadth of what we can do, and to hopefully increase efficacy with how other folks choose to interface with us. So with that, folks have any questions? Go ahead, Mr. Haynor. First off, I'd like to thank you. Your enthusiasm is contagious and it's really wonderful. I'm really excited. Did I miss it? Is your program at the elementary level as well? So we don't have traditional school counseling at the elementary level. We have school social workers at the elementary level who do provide, they have a mixed role. They provide the school counseling, prevention and whole school support as well as servicing students who require special education services. Are the ratios similar? That I actually don't know about. I know that we have, the ratios are not as similar because for many of our buildings, there's only one school social worker and we know our buildings are much larger than 250, right? Thank you. Ms. Seuss? Just a similar question and then actually a complaint. So the similar question is just to tell me how the middle school level looks in terms of the adjustment counselors or what we think of as school counselors and versus, I mean our social workers versus counselors. So how many at Audison and Gibbs and the high school are there social workers? Sure, so for our department, we have four school counselors that are serving in the role as a school counselor like we've been discussing and their route to certification is through school adjustment counseling. So their certification is as a school social worker and they're serving in the role of school counselor and I believe all but one and maybe all of them at this point also have their LMHC or LCSW. So everyone wears both hats you're saying? No, okay. That's the best way. You know if you have like a bachelor's of science? Oh no, I just wanted the numbers. In terms of the numbers? Yeah, how many at each school? So there are four school counselors at the Audison, two at Gibbs and then six at the high school. For social workers? Social workers is outside of this department. So I know at the high school we have two social workers that are connected to the counselors, Andrea Rossi and Jessica Clow and they do work with us in terms of small groups, tiered supports, making referrals and so on. But that's a high school specific model where they're connected to the department but they're not school counselors in the sense of this job title and set of roles. So can I clarify that? So we do have some of our counselors both at the high school and middle school have dual licensure in school counseling and school adjustment counseling. There's a couple, I don't know exactly how many. But in addition to the school social workers that Sarah just mentioned who are at the high school that are connected to the counseling department, we also have school social workers at the high school and the middle school who are connected to the special education department and provide special education and social work services that are required under IEPs. I just know we've increased these numbers and so I just, I don't really, I don't have a picture of what it looks like anymore. So here's my complaint. So there are many other, there are many other individuals throughout the district from pre-K through 12 that do hold the social work licensure from the state or LICSW or LCSW or LMHC serving in a myriad of roles. And then I was just speaking about these folks but yes, thank you, Rob, for helping to clarify. So last year, my son was a senior applying to colleges when they added a school counselor and he was on the edge and so he had a really nice, wonderful relationship with his school counselor, knew him really well, could have written him a great recommendation. September 1st, he may no longer see that person. I mean, he can go to see her, but she could not write his letter. So he had this great relationship. So I know that we're going to encounter this again. We're adding students, a lot of students at the high school. I hope that doesn't happen again. That was incredibly disruptive for the families who went through that. And so I would hope that if you're close to the college application process, if you're a senior or even a junior, that you guys sort of get grandfathered in with the current person and then you make the adjustments later. It was very disruptive for that family. Yeah, you definitely were not the only family that had that experience last year. We actually spent a lot of time working on that intentionally last year. It was many months of discussion throughout the department, checking in with many other districts within our middle sex region and trying to make sure we made the most ethical decision for the students because they were our first priority. And being that the caseloads for our counselors, especially the seniors, when you have to put together all of their process for application and so on, they were quite high numbers. That's why we added the additional counselor. And so we hummed and hawed about do we or don't we disrupt who owns the students officially? And it came down pretty unanimously that the decision was when we needed to in the best interest of the students make sure that they were on a reduced caseload that they were moved over to a new counselor if they needed to move. We also made switches to minimize the alphabetic split but that we wanted them to have greater access to their counselor not necessarily the longest relationship. And then we dedicated a number of months of time in meetings where counselors partnered up and started working on where there had been handoffs. So letters weren't written in isolation not having known that family or that student. They worked really hard as professionals to collaborate and share notes but they also gave out surveys to students, surveys to families and to staff to make sure that their support of that student was really robust. We hope in the future to be able to do a bit of a phased in approach but I can tell you and the counselors will echo it. Having a part-time counselor is a very poor idea. So even though our enrollment may suggest there's only a necessity for a part-time counselor which was the case when we added our sixth counselor to the group we make the case for and continue to push for adding a whole full-time counselor because then that person's here every day of the week. In terms of accessibility for students they don't schedule when they need support and so those were a number of the things that went into our decision. It didn't work for our family and we just basically flew blind. We just had to do everything on our own because basically the person that we knew really well and that our kid knew very well was not available to them anymore. So we're open to suggestions too if there's other things that you've lived that you said this would have been helpful. If you get to senior year you can stay with the same person you've had for three years. At least, at the very least that you shouldn't be forced to transition to a new person the first day of senior year. Thank you. First of all I love the video and I hope that it gets posted someplace so we can see it without the glare of the lights. I think the community would enjoy meeting the counselors as well. I agree so we should get the two of you on tape too. Can't see. So my question is we've reached the 250 to one. Yes. So life is good, life is happy. We are a board that takes action and so whenever we have a presentation I sort of look for actionable items. Is there something we should know or be thinking about going forward? Beautiful, thank you for that. I would love for you to read the article on what it is that guidance counselors used to do and what it is that school counselors now do and become familiar with the Massachusetts Mass Model of Counseling. It is based on the National ASCA the American School Counselor Association. They have a beautiful well put together robust comprehensive school counseling program that goes from K through 12. We currently in the district are able to implement bits and pieces of that in promising pockets. But we are now fully staffed to the place where we can start to branch out and think about how can we actually reach out to more kids quicker more proactively. A small example is what's been happening with seminars. So now that we have some flexibility in the schedule with Dr. Janger and we have enough counselors with smaller case loads we've been talking about and trying to figure out how do we schedule seminars in for students that counselors are no longer pulling them from classes or directed studies but rather it's scheduled as a part of their day and this way counselors aren't missing kids and trying to chase them down. So that's a very small example that's helping us move towards greater access to kids giving them more proactive support. Anything, we're not yet at the point where we have tangible systemic asks staffing asks, curricular asks but just knowing what it is that school counselors can and should be doing that's way beyond dealing with crises and calling therapists and applying to colleges. They'd love to be out doing skills and techniques for kids that are building preventative skills and helping to bring down our wire BS mental health data points and things like that and we're finally at the place where we can begin to do that. So to learn about that model to think about how Arlington can embrace it and then to have our back would be beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I've got a few for you as well. So you mentioned that you have a school counseling framework and you also just mentioned this mass model of counseling. Yes. Are these like documents or things that we can look at or you can present at some point? Absolutely, yeah. SchoolCounselor.org, I'll send links and get them out to you all. The Massachusetts model is based off of the national model. So they are aligned, it's just been tailored to Massachusetts. Massachusetts is one of the few states that doesn't actually require or have accountability measures around school counselors implementing a model. So we are unique in that and that's part of why Massachusetts adopted their own but there is a new fourth edition for school counseling model nationally and since the mass model aligns with that we follow as best as we can both of those models as they apply to us. There are tones of information on them. I will start to get them your way. This was my intention was hope to develop some knowledge and hunger to learn more. Yeah, I think there is interest and obviously social and emotional wellness and the school counselor role in developing that I think we need to develop resources we want to because in society in general and Arlington as well it's still a big issue. So stress and anxiety and it causes special education issues and lots of stuff that we still need to do a lot of work. That's why we agreed to create your position to begin with was to help to try to tackle some of that and pay some attention to it. So to the extent that you are, what your plan is for the next few years if you have that together or if you can get that together whether it's adopting the mass model or certain aspects that you want to highlight that would be great if you could come back later in the year with that kind of presentation and then with the budget we can see if we can report that or not. So that would be great. The other question, so I'm still a little bit confused about this school adjustment counselor, school counselor split. So if the school counselors have a very big role and do lots of different things but is everybody qualified to do the sort of social work type aspect of the job where a student is having a crisis or a student is having bullying issues or all that kind of stuff. So everybody is qualified to do that. That's not just the adjustment counselors. Correct. So the adjustment counselor is, how is your education different, training different? Sure, so there will be perhaps more family and cultural family systems, group therapy, modalities of counseling. Those are often explored a bit more in depth because social workers and adjustment counselors often run small groups, work within family units, partner out into the community. So they will have more in depth training on that. When you're going through the school counseling track, you definitely get modalities of counseling but it's much more brief, solution-focused, student-focused therapeutic techniques because the maximum that you're seeing a student is for a period or a session. And there's definitely information on that all of these pathways deal with threat assessment, crisis, safety, harm and so on. But there's definitely more in-depth clinical skills explored just because of the dynamics of whose school adjustment counselors can work with. There's less of a focus in that stream of training on the seminar model, on the instructional for a whole class or a whole group prevention model. It's not absent. Neither are absent a skill set. They're just focused a little bit more on one or the other based on the traditional mechanisms of the role. So traditionally, school counselors are in schools and they're able to deliver seminars and preventative information and education, psycho-ed and things and create safe environments. The social... Sorry, I have so many acronyms in my head. The school adjustment counselors are often asked to go out to courts and to Department of Transitional Assistance and work with all the different agencies to support families. So they have some more background and experience in that. So I think you said we have a mix of those two at the middle school. We do. But we don't at the high school? At the high school, Andrea Razzi and Jess Clow are school adjustment counselors as well as LCSWs. And so they're at the high school, the roles are split up a bit more. So we have our two social workers are not working on college applications, they're not working on that process, post-secondary planning and things like that, setting up schedules. They're focused more so on meeting with the students and their families running small groups and things. But they're not part of your department? They're part of our school counseling department. Okay. But they do not hold the traditional role of a school counselor who's working on the applications and so on. Okay. They adhere a bit more strictly to the school social work, really working on more of the tier two, tier three supports. Yeah. Okay. I'm so glad you're asking these questions because I think we all have mixed understandings of it and then every district has their own iteration of how they invite folks into those roles, regardless of their training background. So I think it's just helpful to know that there are many different options and we use them in many different ways. Okay. So the last thing was the preventative whole school work. Again, as you start to develop that, it would be great to come back and present, this is what we're doing at Stratton, this is what we're doing at Audison, just so we can promote that to the community and hear what's going on. Absolutely. Thank you all so much. Anybody else have any other questions? Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy and Danielle. All right. So next we have the review of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Does this work with that? The clicker should work. Sure. Okay. Definite maybe. What? Definite maybe. And why don't you introduce yourselves in your role? The opportunity to come speak with you. I'm Karen Koretzky. I'm the director of the Arlington Youth Health and Safety Coalition. And I'm Cindy Buvia. Nice to see you all. I am officially a retired person, but I still work here and a day a week. And I also help out. I work with the coalition and I have done the Youth Risk Behavior Survey for many, many years, over 20 years. And so I'm still involved with that. And I also work with some of the physical education and wellness people in town. So, off we go. I hope you've each received a copy of this report. I'm not going to read every slide verbatim. So don't fear not. I'm going to just highlight relevant things. On this slide, I just wanted to give you some detailed information about respondents. Arlington High School had a total of 907 students. And this gives you some breakdown about their ethnicity and their grade level, male-female. You can look at that later. Other gender. OMS had a total of 729 students. And somehow we skipped GIBS. But GIBS had a total of 417 students. So as you can see, that's a really successful and comprehensive data collection. We were participants in the Middlesex League collection of the YRBS. And I, again, give you the history of the Middlesex League. But I think the most important thing to point out is we talk about comparisons to other districts. We're looking at Arlington, Burlington, Belmont, Lexington, Melrose, Stonem, Redding, Wakefield, Watertown, Wilmington, Winchester, and Wuburn. So those are the towns that are participants in the Middlesex League. What is the YRBS? I'm not going to go over that. You're probably familiar with it. But I want you to understand that it was developed in 1990. So it has a long history. It's been a long, successful data collection. And its main purpose is to develop, I mean, is to examine the health behaviors among our student population. I'm happy to go over a little bit of the history of that. Prior in the 1990s and forward to 2017, we always did this on pen and paper. So in 2017, we joined this Middlesex League. And now we're compared with just surrounding communities. We used to be compared with the entire state. And then we started our own. So we had our own data for just Ellington. This Middlesex League now gives us data for just Ellington and also gives us data that compares us to surrounding communities. And in 2017, we started on doing it electronically with the high school. And this past year was the first time we did it electronically with the middle school and the Gibbs. It should also be noted, too, that the report that we received from the Middlesex League, which was compiled by the John Snow Institute, does not only give us comparisons to neighboring communities in the district, but national averages and state averages. So it's a nice assessment. So this is a graph that talks about the lifetime use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs among high school students in the Middlesex League. It's really a synopsis before I break down into some of the categories and give you some more details. But the big three across the district are alcohol at an average of 55.9%. So 56% vapes at the level of 40.1% and marijuana at 33.4%. So probably no big surprises there. Those numbers, alcohol has remained consistent, but vapes, of course, that category is a new and emerging thing that surprised us. So now let's talk a little in detail about the results that I thought were notable from alcohol use. 58% report ever drinking alcohol, which is the same as 2017. So that shows you that there hasn't been much of a cultural or community shift among the student population. There was a decline in the percent of Arlington High School students who currently drink from 27.9% in 2017 to 24.5% in 2019. So that's positive. We're seeing a slight reduction in the number of students who currently drink. There was also a decline in the percent of students who binge drink. It went from 16% in 2017 to 11.6% in 2019. That's a very positive reduction also. Middle school students are less likely to drink alcohol than Arlington Middle School students who are less likely to drink alcohol than their Middlesex League counterparts. So Arlington was at 12.8% compared to 13.1%. So that's a slight reduction or a slight difference. So my conclusions are that alcohol rates have decreased, but current use is still reported by 25% of the population and what I find alarming is half of those who drink binge drink. So we've got a 12% report of binge drinking. We're going to continue to educate parents and students and create policies and procedures to help reduce access and use. And we can talk about that more if you have any questions at the end. I wanted to give, for those of you that respond well to imagery, a map. So that is in your handout. So you can see how Arlington fares compared to other areas in the district in the Middlesex League. And now we'll take a closer look at marijuana. So there is an increase in rates of lifetime and current use of marijuana at Arlington High School. Students that have used in 2019 were 35%, and that was a jump from 32% in 2017. If I was to go back further and look at data prior to 2017, we've seen an inching up since legalization and access has become more available. Students reporting current use was 21.5%. So that's a slight increase from 20.4% in 2017. And Arlington High School marijuana use is slightly higher than the district averages of lifetime use. Arlington High... So the district averages of lifetime use, 33.4%, okay. So Arlington High's district average of lifetime use was 33.4%, and for current use it was 20.7%. Middle school students are 2.9% less likely than other district students to use marijuana. Arlington students fared best in the district for having the lowest 4.4% of students who tried marijuana before the age of 13. So that's pretty cool. That tells us that our prevention outreach that we're doing early on is very positive. And that's where I'm gonna take a little sidestep and say, you know, the Arlington Youth and Health Safety Coalition has historically been funded by a federal grant. And the federal grant had very specific restrictions. It specified that the education and prevention outreach was to be extended to middle school and high school students only. I've always seen an opportunity to even start conversations about healthy versus non-healthy behavior, maybe with fifth graders, you know, to start a little younger. And the more I see coming back from data collection, the more I see that you have young students, fifth and, well, sixth and seventh graders reporting high incidents or feelings of stress, anxiety, depression, and really, really low substance use. So to me, I always say that that's a sweet spot. If we can talk to them at that age about prevention and about how they can manage these feelings of discomfort without turning to substance use, that is where we're gonna help healthy outcomes here in the community. Over half of Arlington High students see little to no risk for harm when it comes to using marijuana once or twice a week. So 34.6% said there was a little risk. 29, 21.9% said there's no risk. That's alarming because we know that with legalization, again, they're getting a message that legal means safe. And we know that marijuana use is not safe for the developing brain. So that, there's no question about that. What an adult does is a different issue, but when the brain is still developing, it's not a healthy thing. So my conclusions are legalization and dispensaries are sending mixed messages to our youth. Ease of access, which means vaping, enables consumption of THC in school and secretively. Enhancing the education of middle school students before use is a goal. And conversations about perception of harm would be really important. Next, we're gonna go on to other drugs. Most prevalent in Arlington is non-prescribed or improperly used Rx medicine at 3.8%. But still use less than district at 5.7%. So Arlington is faring really well. Our kids are not abusing prescription meds at the same levels as our neighboring communities, which is great. However, there was an increase in the percent of students. So 17.2% of Arlington high students reported that they were offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property. So that 17.2% this year jumped from 13.5 in 2017. And Arlington fared worse in the region at 13.6%, but better than the Commonwealth at 20.1%, and the state 19.8%. I talked to Chief Larrity about this, and she knows that this is an issue and is gonna take a look at what the police department can do to see why this perception is there. In Arlington high, only 2% have ever used cocaine. 1.1% have used heroin, and 1.7 reported using inhalants. So those are very low numbers, and that's very reassuring. 74.6% see themselves at risk if they use an Rx drug not prescribed to them. So three-quarters of them know that it's not a healthy thing to do. And yet, you know, there's still some that are doing it. So conclusions are illicit drug use and use rates, excuse me, are very, very low. But the availability of Rx drugs on campus is increasing, and we need to address that. The next slide is a breakdown of drug use among school districts. I'll let you look at that in your free time. The next slide is about tobacco, nicotine, and vapes. That is the topic du jour. AHS rates of lifetime cigarette use remains at 11.6, which was the same in 2017. However, AHS rates of current use of e-cigarettes rose significantly from 8.3% in 2017 to 22.6% in 2019. The number of Arlington high students who report they've ever vaped is 37.7%, and the ones that report vaping on school property is 8.8%. 42.7% see themselves at moderate risk for harming themselves using vapes. 38.5 see a great risk, and yet they still do it. Middle school students, oh, and 53.4% of students who use tobacco and nicotine products did not try to quit in the last 12 months. So even though 42.7 see themselves at moderate risk for harming themselves, they're still not trying to quit. Middle school students who tried cigarettes were at a rate of 1.9%, middle school students who had ever used a vape were 7.4%, and those who currently use vapes are 3.5%. And anecdotally, that's what I'm hearing from students who know other students, that they're seeing an alarming number of middle school students using these products, and that is very concerning. I'm very proud of a group I lead here at Arlington High. We have our student activists in the 84 Club, and they engage in research in peer support group to help change the climate in school. They create posters, they go to conferences, they lobby at Kickbutts Day, and one of their recommendations at the end of their research project last year was that we create a vaping cessation program for teens off school grounds where they can come and get support. And we're launching that next week. Thursday it's going to take place at Robbins Library, and it's going to be every Thursday and open to anybody who is concerned either about their own vaping use or a peer or friends' vaping use. And I'm going to be facilitating that, so I'm looking forward to that. It's also notable to mention that Arlington High School and Audison Middle School, we don't suspend students for a first violation of vaping. We believe that school is a protective factor and that use of vaping anything is a red flag. It's indicating that the student is choosing to do something that's risky behavior. So rather than get them out of school and punish them, we have them meet with me or a clinician from AYCC and engage in two motivational interview sessions in which we look at their use in a non-judgmental way and see how we might help them if they want to move on and try to quit smoking. And if there's more serious issues, we're then able to make a recommendation to a clinician at AYCC. Maybe they'll seek some counseling, because again, maybe this is a red flag of something else. So I'm really proud of Arlington High and Audison for coming up with that policy. You know, a lot of schools are still having the zero tolerance, let's kick them out. And we don't have that attitude. I think it's important to also know that despite our good intentions and our efforts, we're fighting against social media and how influencers are sort of promoting the use of vaping products as trendy and safe. So, you know, it's a hard battle to win. Here's a chart that indicates tobacco and vaping use in the middle sex league. And at this point, I'll hand it over to Cindy. And then I guess if you have any questions, we can go over them at the end. I will tell you that for the past 25 years, we've been so proud of bringing the tobacco levels down so much and that happened over years of work. And now you've seen what's happened, the explosion of the vaping issue in the past two, three years. It's out of control and there's all these dangers. And so it took a long time to find out that smoking was definitely so bad for you and for people to internalize that and to stop. And then you have this situation that is in front of us. So it's not an easy situation right now. So I'm here to talk a little bit more about the personal safety and I think that, so am I going to go this way? This way. Okay. I think that for the most part, the personal safety is positive and that most things have decreased, almost all, but one has decreased. Although I'm going to say with that, I think we still have some concerns and that as much as the percentage has decreased and we are below the middle sex league in this. We still have quite a few students that have their property stolen or damaged on school property and we also have a pretty significant amount of students that say they have been physically abused by a parent or adult in their home. So those are still at 14%. When you think about 900 people, you really have to go to, okay, that's maybe 120 to 130 students that are saying that. So I think that that's significant. So as much as only 4.7, students say that they drank and drove at the same time, which is a decrease. We still probably have about 70 students who said that they've driven in the past two years after smoking marijuana within two hours. So I think that is significant if 70 students are out there driving after having smoked marijuana. The one increase from 2017 that I can see is the texting while driving. I think that's the one area of increase. So as a conclusion and very positive at our middle school, 84% of them actually said that they wear a helmet, except for the two that I drove by this morning. 84% of them said that they wear a helmet when they bike ride. I saw these two coming down MassM. I went, they're not part of the 84%. So that's all positive. And the coalition, which Karen is involved with, launched a drug driving unit in Driver's Ed to help to raise awareness. You can ask her about that later. And I think through dean meetings, high school meetings, RC, social-emotional learning, I'm hoping that some of these numbers do decrease even more and the numbers of people decrease even more in the future. So I would say the responsive classroom and other social-emotional programs as they come up. Oh, thank you. Okay. So we're on to violence. Bullied on school property. There's a slight increase with that. 12.8% of our students, so up about a percent from 2017, say that they were bullied on school property. Bullied electronically. High school students say they're not bullied electronically at a very much lower rate than the middle school students. And 11.1% of high school students said that they were in a physical fight, which is a decrease from what it was before. These are very different than what the middle school is saying. They're all a little bit higher. 14% at the middle school say that they have been bullied on school property. 30% say they've been bullied through social media or electronically. 31% said that they've been in a physical fight. So I'm not quite sure what they're considering. Maybe we need to look at the question and word it maybe to make sure it's a physical fight. And 14.3% said that they carried a weapon. I'm sort of wondering, you know, I think we need to delve into this a little bit more to see exactly what they're considering a weapon. Even though we did state it on the question, but we need to look into that a little bit farther. Conclusion, Allington had the lowest rates in the district for being in a physical fight. I guess that's a positive. We still think that a lot of kids are getting into tussles with each other. As far as the violence prevention goes, we're doing it in the facts department in the middle school. We're doing violence prevention in the health in seventh and eighth grade and also in the ninth grade here at the high school. We have a program, a new program being planned on violence prevention with the police and advisory. So there are a lot of things going on. As far as sexual, thank you Karen, as far as sexual health goes, the percentage of Allington high school students has dropped that said that they are actually have ever had sexual intercourse compared to 2017 and also having use of drugs or alcohol prior to having sexual intercourse has also decreased a little bit. So the percent of students who did not use a condom, that to me is something that we may want to discuss going forward. I think we need to look at the percent of students who did not use a condom during sexual intercourse rose to 37.1%. And it's one of the highest in the district despite 77% reporting having learned about birth control methods. So they're being taught about birth control but they're not actually using the condoms. And because we've had a number of SGDs and STIs in the district as well, I think that's a little bit concerning and maybe it's time to talk about access once again, access to these barriers. So because I've been involved in this for so many years, it's not like this is new information, but I think that with time things change. And so maybe we would have to have some kind of school committee policy and I had a conversation with Sue Franke, the director of nursing about this as well and she said she's willing to come to speak with you or talk with any of you about this situation and also maybe we'll take it to a wellness committee this fall to talk a little bit about it. One of the things that Sue said, she works in a college clinic also and I guess across the state, rates of gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise. So that's an issue too. It is. The condom is a barrier that protects one against some of those things. Okay, 36.7% of high school students said they received something electronically of sexual nature. It's neutral compared to what they said last time. 8.7% of students were sexually active, did not use any method of pregnancy during intercourse, that's a little concerning. But 50% of middle school students who were sexually active because that number is small, that's only 2.3% of middle school students did not use a condom as well. So I guess when we look at conclusions to this, sexual activity is lower than the average for the region. It's lower as far as Arlington is concerned, access to condoms at the high school students, I think we need to take a look at that. I think we need to take a look at that. Especially as a barrier method as well. Let's see, the next slide is on nutrition. I'm sure you all want to hear how many fruits and vegetables the kids have. I doubt it. But we will use that information, we will share it with food services, and we will also talk about it in our health classes as well. One thing that was rather high, even though it's a neutral, is the number of sodas that kids are drinking. I don't know, I see kids with water bottles and so on and so forth, but kids are still drinking soda. So that is something that is concerning, and we don't sell any in the high school, that's for sure, or the middle school. A positive note, 5.8% of our students are at the obesity level that we, about six or seven years ago, were the lowest in the state for obesity levels, because our nutrition was at a height. And 10.2% of our students, so about 90 students say they don't eat breakfast in the morning. And to me, that's probably not as alarming because maybe they grab a bar and throw it in their backpack or something like that, as how many students actually do not get, 72% of our high school students did not get eight hours sleep. And we all know, okay, well maybe next year with the late start, that's going to change, we'll see. But I think that's more alarming than any of the other stats. A positive note, Ellington had the lowest rate of concussions. Yes, in the district. So that's a positive note for sure. Again, through health in seven and eight and nine and the family and consumer science department, mindfulness electives that we have in high school, social emotional learning, and hopefully through parent forums, some of these stats will change as well. Especially the screen time because 40% of our students said that they are on for more than three hours a day. So hopefully through parent forums, and student attendance, and discussions in classrooms, that will improve. Okay, so we have one last slide, and that is our mental health slide. And we have our mental health expert here. Thank you, perfect. So this is the most alarming piece to me, but this is not news to anybody. The very first line on this slide is that 82.6% of our high school students report feeling like they were under an overwhelming amount of stress. And Ellington fared the worst in this category in the middle sex league. That warrants our attention and further discussion. And there's no documents here, but we'll quickly look at the recent research where when high school students are reporting their levels of stress, it's not arbitrary, it's not hyperbole. If you actually look at their bodies and how they're experiencing the stress as compared to when everybody in this room was experiencing stress as a teenager, the impact biologically on them, psychologically on them is significantly higher than what your average middle age adult feels or being really stressed in this day and age. So it's worth looking at because it's pretty intense, their experience. It's not just their perception. And yet, they have a lot of healthy skills. So the second item is that they have healthy activities. Most of our students have healthy activities. Jumping down to the bottom line, you'll see almost 83% of our students have somebody that they can talk to who's a parent or an adult family member about things that are important. And that's something to see those protective factors in place. In terms of thinking about suicidality, 11% of our students reported wanting a serious thought. That's an odd phrasing. But they reported having a thought of suicide, which was a decrease from 14%, which is a very promising move in just two years. 15.3% of students report wanting to do something to injure themselves. So non-suicidal self-injury, from having thoughts of suicide, those are students who are, if you were to, you'd hear this in the Youth Mental Health First Aid class, right? When students are trying to injure themselves, their intention is to achieve some sort of relief from the overwhelming feelings that they're experiencing. That's not an intention to end your life. It's very different from suicidality, so it's important to understand that those two questions are very different in what they're assessing. 25.7% of our high school students report feeling hopeless or sad every day for over two weeks in a row. That's not diagnostic, but it's the beginning of the diagnostic criteria for depression, and so it's an easy way of getting a sense of roughly how many of our kids are feeling so lousy that they could warrant a conversation about their mental health. And so a quarter of our kids, you know, every class, a quarter of our kids feeling depressed or hopeless or sad, that's a lot. It's definitely a lot. And in our schools, 61.3% of our students report that they have an adult in the school that they can speak with. I think we can do better. I know we can do better, and I know that that's a number that Dr. Bodie has mentioned before and wondering why is it that only a little over half of our kids feel like they have somebody in the building, especially in the high school, to have that. So that's part of why we're doing the Youth Mental Health First Aid is to increase the skills that our teachers and our adults have to establish those relationships and the advisory is working towards that too. So, and this is where Karen was mentioning earlier too, how can we engage in more productive conversations about stress? How can we help students develop their own frustration, tolerance, being able to deal with uncomfortable situations, find some skills, move their way through it, and get rid of those overwhelming feelings. And obviously we need to continue to promote resources for suicide prevention and destigmatized mental health. We have trained over 300 and I think 350 staff in Arlington and the Youth Mental Health First Aid, but we are not done. We want to continue to work on that and there's definitely a lot of work around how do we destigmatize conversations around it even when we're talking about how to best meet kids' needs but they're feeling hopeless and sad. What can we do as teachers to create safe spaces for them? And this is just a visual representation of the suicidal ideation among high school students. And you'll see it, although it looks like the numbers increased, they're looking at the population that reported that they were feeling suicidal if you start at the bottom, right? So they seriously considered attempting and then if you move up to the next level they actually had a plan about it versus those who attempt it and then those that resulted in an injury because of an attempt that they took. And at our middle school similar trends regarding stress and feelings of being overwhelmed in school demands. 32.7% of our middle schoolers report that they were overwhelmed and that the school demands were the biggest source of their stress. Other sources that weren't quite far behind were keeping up with their school work, having their busy schedules, having the study things that you don't understand. And this is on par with some national trends too. There was a recent book that just came out called Permission to Feel by Dr. Mark Brackett where he talks about the emotional intelligence of youth across the nation and what they're reporting as their number one causes of stress are nationally being reported as well. 15% of our middle school students report having a serious thought of suicide and believe it or not this is actually lower than percentage in the middle sex league. 15% is still pretty high if we're thinking about our middle school students. Those are our 13 year olds that are thinking about killing themselves. That's pretty intense. And 8.6% of them actually made a plan for it which increases their risk for likelihood to take action and likelihood to have some type of injury from that. So we need to continue to talk about this and early and often destigmatize it. So in conclusion substance use continues to be a major problem among high school and middle school students with alcohol being the most reported use substance in use. In this age group high rates of underage drinking and binge drinking were reported. Similarly students have displayed considerable high rates of marijuana use, prescription drug abuse, smoking and most notably an increase in the use of e-cigarettes and vaping products and these numbers are consistent with national trends. Tobacco use, traditional tobacco seems to have declined. A high percentage of students in the league engage in behaviors that potentially increase the risk of unintentional injuries. So we talked about texting and driving and those smoking went under the influence of marijuana. The percentage of middle sex league students engaging in risky sexual behavior is noticeably high with concerning number of students having early sexual encounters and reporting use of illicit drugs or alcohol before sexual encounter. And we also notice that a considerably high number of students in the middle sex league have reported problems with mental health including having frequent feelings of sadness as well as thoughts of suicide. With increasing rates of suicide across the nation this is of course a major concern and with noting worth noting 1 in 4 high school students so 26.5% in the middle sex league region reported they felt sad or hopeless almost every day. So do you have any questions? Sure we do. Let's start with Mr. Heiner. Thank you for all your work and it's very informative. I'm really concerned on that slide you shared with us on the personal safety. The 14% reporting physical abuse at home and this may go to you it may go to we may not have the answer right now what are our protocols in place when a child talks about abuse at home? So all of the school employees all town employees are mandated reporters 51As are the forms that you complete when you hear any reports of any type of neglect or abuse all of our staff have just recently actually undergone their annual required training and so all staff have had the opportunity to ask questions talk to their supervisors about it as well but they're very well versed in what they need to look for what kinds of questions they need to ask and then how they report it if I may just follow it up how well do our students know that they have access to this communication I mean is that part of the regular curriculum where we tell kids that if you don't feel safe tell a teacher tell the nurse tell somebody I think I was a teacher for 28 years I demanded reporting and we all took that very very seriously what child did do it but I often wondered we didn't have anything to tell the kids before it happens in a proactive way not a reactive way I'm sure school systems whatever but I'm sure that if a child goes really serious and a child gets killed or something like that that system is going to do something but that's a reactive thing and I think it's very important for children to know we keep saying it's a safe place but when you're not safe anywhere you can still talk to us as you said talking to the different people and stuff like that so I'd just like to share that with you I'm not asking you to that's a great question that number concerns me when you did the thank you for doing the numbers quickly 40% to come out and it also is concerning that only 61% of the students are talking to an adult in the building that part too one goes for the other thank you I have a couple questions if what I'm curious about it's really nice having the data across the middle sex league but I'm wondering are you using the data in any ways for example if you look at what was your slide 13 is tobacco use and vaping in the middle sex league if you can go back to that it's a graph one yeah so if you look at Belmont on that for whatever reason they have 25% less than the US average for vaping and apparently no tobacco use which is wonderful and if this is real what are they doing can we do the same thing and the same thing is true on the slide which 120 the mental health where you talk about that our students were faring the worst in terms of overwhelming stress what are the schools what does the data look like for the other schools where is it better what are they doing differently and can't we just borrow their idea and I'm just wondering what are we doing in terms of trying to seek out information like that I think that's a great question and that's exactly how we approach this when we get these results we look at the red flags that are here you know figure out who we need to work with on specific things like again the guidance counselors were talking about our partnership I would turn to Sarah we would plan out something that has to do with addressing the mental health issues the vaping and tobacco probably would fall within my work and so that again would be something that I would look at one of the reasons could be that Belmont didn't have anything in the tobacco category is because tobacco has been such a it's not even used anymore that when some of the communities were developing their surveys they like we for example had seven questions pertaining to tobacco Cindy and I winnowed it down to three I think some communities Belmont might have just cut them all they must have been like nobody smoking cigarettes here at all anymore so that's what that graph may have indicated I'd have to look so that's the question is it a real difference right it feels like you've got it sounds like we've got some things where some districts are doing better than others at certain things can't we look across districts and find out what are they doing differently and then try and import it yes one of the things that I started about a year ago is I started going to these regional coalition leader meetings and cluster grant meetings and I some of them I'm sort of a part of their work and then some of them I just go and I'm finding that to be a great resource because I can then email a group of 15 16 coalition directors and say how do you address this how do you address that and recreating the wheel doesn't always have to take place you can take some very effective strategies that they've implemented and use them in your community so sure just along the lines Dr. McNeil and I were at a conference today and we're going to be returning tomorrow talking about multi tiered systems of supports and specifically looking at social emotional learning and behavioral health mental health data Mthuin is a district that's similar in size to us and they have done some really great work through there it started with their high school school counseling department their guidance department where they look at on the wire BS these are the major reasons that kids are struggling this is what they're reporting are their number one issues so they said let's pilot some basic universal screeners like let's look at their anxiety and their their depression not diagnosing it but just how much is it inhibiting their life at school and if we're noticing huge trends let's push out and do a whole community plan to teach them better skills on mindfulness breathing biofeedback different things how do you actually understand ways that work on helping you bring down your stress levels and managing it right and then for students for whom that was insufficient how do we have some smaller groups that are about anxiety and maybe some CBT skills cognitive behavioral therapy different things and then from those what are the kids that need something else let's refer them to AYCC let's get them connected to a social worker so they've then branched out and now they're doing these screeners with many of their high schoolers if not all of them you very quickly find out who's got moderate to severe levels of anxiety and depression and how can we within the school get into their classrooms and their spaces preventatively to start bringing down that feeling of overwhelm and stress and so part of what I've been doing is talking with my colleagues and saying what are your data points say has it been working has it been effective what were the pitfalls you ran into how can I learn from them so that we don't hit the same issues and so I don't know if Rod had other things about that too but it's promising we're learning about it right now and by the end of the day tomorrow we'll be able to come back with some with some more tangible things that would apply to our length into okay hi so I remember in previous years we actually saw the questions and we saw them compared to previous years and it was really helpful and I think especially with mental health issues there's some information that's presented as middle-sec league it's not clear what's going on with our length in specific and so I think it would be really helpful to see that and that back then there were some really good news about substance use and then some alarming increases over several years on mental health issues it seems like it's leveled up but it'd just be interesting to see it it was also helpful to see there was a breakdown by gender I mean it really just presented a fuller picture of the data that I thought was helpful and yeah it'd be great to see it we've got to hold that together because Sarah is telling me we found some glaring errors in the report that we got from our evaluators so that's why you don't want to pass it on but I agree I think that's a great way to look at it and we do look at it that way it was hard to sort of from some of these slides in it then I have a suggestion so when my daughter is in middle school she had some friends and crises some of which there was like a discussion to her counselor and they really reached out but there was at least one incident to something I learned years later of dating violence where no one told anybody right and so I've heard other districts do sort of this anonymous reporting type of thing where you can just drop a note saying I'm concerned about this friend anonymously and then there can be some sort of very subtle reaching out to see what's going on I'd hope you wouldn't get to me false things but so as far as I know there is no anonymous reporting that happens like a suggestion box or some kind of box where people would drop things in as far as I know there isn't anything like that we do talk about some of the resources and some of the health classes and the family consumer science classes we do talk about some of the resources within the building that people can go to that friends can go to it doesn't have to be the person that's being violated or the violence is happening against it can be friends of that person it seems like sometimes kids of that age don't always trust adults around them but they're worried about their friend and they want to have a way to give that worry but they don't really it's such an awkward age and I'd heard that that was done in other districts and as we know people who are victims of those kind of attacks feel shame and then they don't report for that reason so I think that's a great suggestion you know to do that my previous district had a text-to-tip process and that was really great and that was through the coalition though so we might be able to figure out a way to do something similar that's great I think those kind of text-to-tips are great because they're anonymous they provide that yeah thank you for that sorry Mr. Thielman you know you were right Cindy when you said that there was a lot of success in the anti-tobacco work over a long period of time so it seems to me some of those strategies that the state used and that the district used could be applied since they worked to vaping maybe even as soda use and I'm wondering if you've kind of the the service this community of people that counseling and mental health community have kind of taken a look back at all the work that was done in the anti-tobacco efforts and all the campaign you know the classes the education and kind of said well why don't we just take some of the things we used back then and apply it to vaping and to some of the other issues here I think that if you look back you say to yourself like throughout those years how did things progress I think that you can look at the tobacco tax that was first added that went to schools to do tobacco education it went to signs on buses it went to signs on on the on the television to tell you how dangerous it was and I actually think that somebody at the state house taking the lead with this coming right out and saying like quickly you know this vaping is new in the last how many years 2017 so this is new since 2017 so I think they're coming out right now saying this is it this is how dangerous it is this is why it is dangerous there are carcinogens in it we're not sure whether it's from the black market from the regular market right now but there are a lot of dangers so I feel like they're coming out with messages anyway but what's hard and this is what the students have even admitted tobacco had characteristics that were easy to point out like you're going to smell your hair is going to smell your skin is going to wrinkle your teeth will turn yellow it's very obvious when someone is smoking a cigarette whereas vaping smells very lovely they're concealed easily so it's very hard to get young people to realize that they're harmful because young people don't respond to oh you're going to get sick because they think they're never going to get old so scare tactics don't work but if you can stigmatize the product like we did with cigarettes and say you're going to smell your teeth are going to be yellow nobody's going to be around you that is what resonates with them is we're trying to have a culture shift here in the school and raise awareness of the fact that these products aren't regulated that these young people are being treated as guinea pigs for a very greedy industry that has no regard for their health and that is a message that's resonating with some of them thank you something to add Cindy also to talk about the early education that we have at our elementary schools like the great body shop I think part of this is like early intervention when you get to high school and you get to middle school I think that it can be a little bit more difficult but we are doing a lot at the elementary level in order to and it's part of our curriculum in order to educate students about the harms of nicotine so the new curriculum the curriculum is being taught in the lower grades does not have as much on the tobacco it has a lot on the and different topics but in the fourth grade we really start to delve into tobacco education and use of vaping and we have transformed that curriculum and those units into vaping more especially at the sixth grade level as well so the great body shop is a curriculum that you all are aware of that we use at the fourth grade level the fifth grade level the sixth grade level that's where we are starting to change the curriculum to talk more about vaping the poster contest that you have seen that have come our way those are all on vaping at this point and I also like to have Sarah talk about the youth mental health training that many of our staff have been a part of because as we look at the mental health epidemic we want to be able to you know train our staff to be able to understand like what you know signs of trauma and being able to distinguish that from like typical adolescent development typical adolescent development exactly that's the language yeah we were actually talking about being able to open up a training start opening them up towards the community so other people can have the same language that the school staff have now it's a beautiful full day training that goes quite in depth into typical adolescent development what to expect how to not pathologize our students that a lot of what they're going through is typical adolescents it's growing pains socially emotionally internally as you develop those skills intrapersonally and interpersonally and so it does a nice job at also really preparing educators to walk out understanding the bounds and the scope of what they can best do to help young people even if they're not responding to a young person on school campus maybe they're at the library and they see somebody or maybe they're on the soccer field and they see somebody how can they respond because it really prepares you to respond everywhere not just in your work setting and they their reviews have always been really really highly rating the course saying I feel much more comfortable asking questions about self-harming suicidality I feel much more comfortable recognizing that this is typical anxiety and I don't need to pathologize a student or say that they're sick or they're broken or something's wrong with them I know how to support them so that they can feel seen and heard and then connect them to self-help strategies or to a professional in the building or somebody out in the community and also we have a trauma course that we offer the staff as well in order to respond to and be able to recognize and respond in a victim of trauma so we've done a lot of things I think our focus and I think Sarah also talked about this in our presentation that we're trying to be proactive and not be so reactive and so the two things that Cindy and Sarah just spoke about are evidence of those type of programs that we're trying to integrate more into our instruction within the district Mr. Haynes, do you have a point to send this? Just real quick what you just talking about other communities and stuff as a parent I think this would be a great tool to give the parents to understand their adolescence adolescence is a unique group of people that people have written books about you should lock them up for about three years and let them out when they become adults and stuff but I mean for parents to understand that because parents I think can create more anxiety in the child and my child has got you read one psych book and you've got every pathology in the world for our first psych 101 so that might be something if we could do offer to parents a help kit. One of the things that the coalition started in the last two years is we started with the parent advisory board and that parent advisory board in turn has been rolling out this parent to parent education evening called navigating the teen years in which there's data from the YRBS pulled and discussed and there's some scenarios five or six different difficult scenarios presented to this group of people and they're asked to come up with strategies and share philosophy and strategies about how they would manage specific situations. One of the things I also wanted to say is you know talking about building resiliency in youth when I have the opportunity to talk with young people one of the things that always surprises me is how much relief they get when they understand that a hallmark of the teen brain is this impulsivity and curiosity and that making decisions that maybe weren't the best choice once or twice in your life doesn't make you a bad person. It's a natural way for a teenager to act and once they understand that they have this innate impulsivity and that it's within their control to whether they're going to act upon something or not suddenly they just feel so relieved. It's like wow okay I can do this better next time. I even had one middle schooler who was vaping in a public space in the school and when I explained this to him because he said someone handed him the vape and I said how did you feel when the person handed you the vape and he said I felt frightened and curious all at the same time and I said that's exactly how a teenager would probably feel so he said I'm not a bad kid no you're not a bad kid so I think that kind of education and outreach to fortify the student's own sense of self to fortify the parent's communication with their child to fortify the teacher communication with the student I think that's what coalition work does and that's why I love being a part of it it's just it's a great way of joining people for a common good so back at the start of this we had a slide on binge drinking and I'd like to know what the definition within the context of the survey was for binge drinking it was it five or more? I thought it was I could look it up but it's I mean if you're going to talk to us about binge drinking right we need to know what we're talking about so I have a question so let me just look it up for you I have the questions as they were asked of the students five or more drinks of alcohol in a row if they were male within a couple of hours on at least one day during the 30 days before the survey okay is there a sense of how much that's repeated or sense of do it once I don't want to do that again I mean seriously if this is a repeated behavior versus a one time oh my god kind of thing this is really sort of different and I think the approach we need to take is different because if it's happening repeatedly I think the question is why would you do something that is so unpleasant at the end so there were two questions one was the reported current binge drinking current binge drinking four more drinks if you're female and five or more drinks if you're male on at least one day during the past within a couple of hours on at least one day during the past 30 days and then we ask the question did you have ten or more as the largest number of drinks in a row within a couple of hours during the past 30 days and obviously that percentile was very low but with four or five drinks being male or female was higher and we hear from our students it's not scientific but the majority of our students for years have reported that that's the way the American teenager consumes alcohol and you walk through the parks where they gather and you see you know courts of flavored vodka and things like that so it seems to be the way the American way I've heard from students exchange students who are just flabbergasted and say we don't do this in Europe what's wrong with these kids you know so probably a more permissive attitude towards alcohol in Europe so it is not this forbidden fruit that they're going to go and over indulge in I don't know I don't know but we can we can ask the middle six league about the question so you're asking do they repeat this behavior how often the thing is you do report oh my god I did that versus I do that regularly there are two different things I mean it's sort of like condom use is if you're being more regular in your activity and you're not using it versus if you've done it once and didn't expect to that repeated nature really becomes becomes why not that you should do it at any time but to repeat that kind of behavior and on the vaping do we know how they're accessing the equipment and yes so most commonly they're getting it from older siblings or friends friends older brothers or sisters or getting it from the internet there was a lot of kids a group of kids that figured out that they could use the lockers at Whole Foods and get on order them on Amazon and then get them delivered there and just pick them up and nobody would even know no packages were coming home they're very ingenious young people can we talk to Whole Foods that has since stopped in fact the Amazon Primite is not even selling jewels on their website anymore so yeah another report I heard is that students were going to neighboring communities where there were vape shops and people were more lax you know they never buy anything illicit in their own community they don't want to bump into a neighbor or anything like that so they go over the line to other communities where the store owners are a little more lax and they buy the materials there and we have some entrepreneurs who buy in bulk and then go to the middle schoolers and say hey you want to buy this from me and so there's an entrepreneurial spirit among some of them too which is unfortunate I'm just wondering if there's any public policy implications we have as a town or is a collection of communities that might help yeah well we we were one of the first communities to not allow flavored products to be sold you have to be over 21 to purchase any vapes and of course now with Governor Baker's law all vaping materials are supposed to be pulled off store shelves so one would hope that that will stop some of the newer users my concern is about the students who have been engaging in this behavior for so long that are addicted and really need help so that's what we're trying to address Miss Morgan I was just looking through this am I right to assume that in this set of slides of data that AMS Arlington Middle School MS and OMS are all the same groups or they're subgroups it seems like they're referred to sometimes they're AMS students which I assume means Arlington Middle School so they were all grouped yes I apologize so I had an intern working with me who did some of she typed some of these up so yes I thought I tried to get them all consistent so but whenever we're talking about middle students middle school students, AMS students they're one point I think on the mental health middle school side it talks about OMS students but is that actually that's Audison is it just Audison students or Audison and Gibbs it would be just gosh I don't know the actually I do know because all middle school all the data yeah we're together so anything that and so Gibbs was lumped in with as a middle school school okay and you guys don't have any insight into teasing those out we do actually the comprehensive report that they sent us did give us a breakdown so we can look at that and that that is where I saw again that usage rates were like 0.2% had ever tried marijuana but again we had this 30% reporting stress anxiety and depression so that's where you have you know substance use experimentation but still very high mental health issues but the middle school the middle school aggregate questions are different than the high school questions yes so because so Audison students or middle school students reporting school demands and expectations of the source of the most negative stress we don't have a corollary to the to the AHS question about being under an overwhelming stress I can pull it okay I just was like I'm curious like comparing like same questions and different I to be honest with you I think I was trying to pull something together that would be very simple and easy to go over in 20 minutes but if anybody wants a copy of the full report honestly you know I'm glad to forward it to you and it will be made public on a link soon I think in past years we have gotten the full report if you could send it to Karen to distribute I teach statistics so I'm like oh yes this is good all my stuff yeah that's good because statistics are a challenge for me so I appreciate that yeah thank you so much thank you so so my couple of things so we did have a glitch at the Gibbs this year because it was a new school last year it was a new school the principal didn't understand the process we're sending it out the opt out notice did not go out hopefully that will be fixed but hopefully you know you all will remember if there's ever a principal transition at either Audison or Gibbs or at the high school that that process has to be remembered and done absolutely the other issue though is that some of the concern particularly was the sexual health questions for sixth graders and I understand that the league decided the group decided a few years ago to expand it to the sixth grade but there definitely was some parental concern with those questions you know not being appropriate for sixth graders so I guess I would ask that you go back to the group and looking at the statistics we don't have the breakdown but if there's only one or two kids at the sixth grade that are sexually active is it really worth asking all those questions and making parents uncomfortable and possibly popping up the opt out rate with parents so there's something to consider and then all of this information is very valuable and I think parents it would be helpful if parents had some sort of communication about this is what we're learning this is you know what we're doing about it this is what you know why we're doing this survey to begin with so if you could think about I know resources are always stretched thin but if you could think about an appropriate parental communication about this I think that would be great I think there was an explanation in the letter to parents as to why we do this and how we use the data and how it how it serves the students as far as the sexuality questions I know that the sixth graders were only asked three opposed to high school they become less graphic the younger the child is and again in some ways those are very important because that's where we get the information that yes there's a small fraction of students having intercourse but yet that small fragment 50% of them are not using any protection it's kind of important information I know that it makes some parents uncomfortable to have a sixth grader ask questions about sexual intercourse but my response to that is the American Academy of Pediatrics indicates that a child's first exposure unintentional exposure to pornography is at nine years old so while parents may think their children aren't exposed to any of these thoughts the reality is probably they are unintentionally and it's really important in some ways to have conversations using proper language and you know medical terminology rather than you know stuff they're going to see or stumble across it's going to make them uncomfortable and confront and conflate their minds but a random survey that's coming up is what I think parents were concerned about and I think part of the direction we were mentioning earlier we're going to have to start going in is also having conversations about consent right so are our young students because what I have encountered in previous districts too is the question about there's nothing in those questions about whether or not that sexual activity is consensual there's nothing in there about whether or not it's something that is okay for a young person and there's also no language about do you know what consent is have you ever been taught how to say no has anyone ever violated that and we don't ask those questions to be fair at the high school either and that's absolutely a part that we hold responsibility for and that we have to introduce into it so I think it's a direction that might help to frame some of those questions at the younger level as being more developmentally appropriate and can empower parents to understand this is the intention as to why we're asking it here's a conversation you can have with your kids to also talk about consent and talk about what these questions are asking so just to your piece too the number of questions at the high school is much greater than the number of questions at the middle school okay because you were asking about the relationships to the data two more things one is that your own data said that kids were not hearing about condom use as much as some of the other districts so just to think about that it was about 50% and some of the other districts were higher much higher numbers no no sorry condom use condom use that's what it looked like so you were talking about unprotected sex and it seems like the data saying that kids aren't hearing about it at the middle school or high school I can't remember which it's one of those one of those line graphs oh you're looking at an image yeah it was an image but then I wanted just to ask you I don't it says high school 51.7 some of the other districts are you know in 80s 70s so just and I know the great body shop has been under taught compared to intentions in the past so that might be part of what's going on that has I would say that we didn't any place we use the great body shop has not and students are thinking about the present have been taught in school in Arlington in Arlington we do teach it in middle school and high school at the Audison and at the high school I'm just saying that students are reporting that they're they're not getting enough instruction on that compared to other districts something to watch out for my other question though is a big picture question so when I mentioned these numbers to my kids their response is always oh nobody tells the truth in those surveys they just lie so I was wondering and I know that's not true I know there's been studies of studies that people actually do report I just wonder if you could talk to that issue first of all you need to know that we do walk around the buildings while the surveys are being given and if there is a classroom that's a little bit off or not in total control we will take those and put those aside I know that Colleen and Karen have read through many of the surveys and can see when there's some type of something's off something's off in this classroom but due to the consistency over the years and that is the biggest part you know that it's a valid survey so kids are answering it anonymously they say that but we know for the most part it is a valid survey yeah the evaluators are you know they sort of know this and all the nuance in it and they know when to toss out and when it's you know not relevant and I think that's true I think students often for their own discomfort say I didn't answer it correctly but again if you even look at our data compared to other regions we're pretty much all in the same numbers nothing's like really skewed so yeah I think that they do I think a lot of them do answer honestly one of the things we did this year that I was really pleased about is we created a document we looked at the survey and then they were given a link to a document that listed all resources and they were broken down by categories so mental health addiction sexuality because we felt like these surveys can sometimes be evocative they can kind of bring up some issues and make some people uncomfortable so we thought it was in a way of showing our and respect for their maturity and giving us this information we wanted to provide them with some resources that might give them some support and we'd like to continue doing that because I think that I feel personally that that's necessary that you may be opening some wounds and it's not fair to not provide resources and support and the counselors are in school and their resources and support but it may those wounds might open when they get home and all in all I think Arlington I have a few categories that we can hone in on and try to figure out what's going on but you know in conclusion I just think that we looked our numbers were really good and definitely improved in many categories so I think that that's really encouraging okay one last point from Dr. Allison I'm bringing things down I just one of the numbers that stood out to me in the whole presentation was the one that in the middle school 8.6% had made a plan for suicide and that to me is just incredibly scary because it's like beyond into a clear danger zone I'm just hoping I'm looking forward to seeing the full survey I don't remember all the there is some additional information that's sought out about are these people you know are they aware of the resources are they trying to access you know just you know are we figuring out what else we can do for these kids it's one of the primary reasons that we have the signs of suicide in place at the middle school and Sandy Hook promise if you're not familiar with Sandy Hook's promise it's a foundation that was created after the tragedy at Sandy Hook to help build and bolster community resources specifically within schools around helping with early identification and supporting students mental health development and wellness not just reactionary and so the signs of suicide is it's a great program it's evidence based all of our kids get exposure to it just this week they actually rolled out the first of the Sandy Hook programs which is the it starts with hello week and so you saw all the middle school counselors the big positivity wall starts to build community and so on and so the other nice benefit of being fully staffed at the counseling now is that we're able to not just do one lesson of signs of suicide but we're able to expand it and do fuller and deeper programming the nice piece about signs of suicide as well as that after the program all students are fill out a quick exit ticket that talks about I need to talk to somebody either about myself or about somebody that I know or somebody I'm worried about and there's rapid turnaround all the counselors clear their schedules they deliver the curriculum in a way that they're available to respond to an influx of need that comes from those students and they're all trained to act acknowledge care and tell and all the students are trained in ways to see and identify signs of suicide and depression in their peers and their families and to be able to acknowledge it tell them I care about you and now we gotta go tell somebody who can help us so I think there's always room for growth on that but it makes me feel reassured that we know there's a need there and we're meeting it directly with specific language and programming that's great to hear about thank you thank you oh boy I think Arlington is so lucky to have all these invested adults in the community you know now with our school resource officer who's going to make published relationships with students in the middle school you just never know what adult is going to connect with a student maybe having some issues so I just I think it's you know I'm in and out of schools all the time I have relationships with kids we all do so I think that it's a really very positive thing sure now that you handed me the data some other promising news 13% of our young people in middle school are currently taking medicine receiving treatment for behavioral health mental health condition or emotional problems so we don't know that that 13% covers that 8.6% but the fact that 13% of our kids at least a few of them are bound to be covered by that and it's promising to have the latter number be larger than the former so well thank you all very much for all this remember to leave a little bit more time I think it's an important one thank you I guess we'll need to know the next steps about distributing this information to parents and things so maybe so our next step our first step is always with the school committee and then our next step is with students and parents great thank you thank you alright so now we move on to this 2019 2020 department smart goals by Dr McNeil so the goals that I'm about to share with you are the smart goals that actually go under the district goals that we talked about in the spring and they're pretty much focused on the curriculum and instruction piece of it so you'll look you'll see in the next slide that I'm going to share with you that they pretty much cover goal objective 1.1 1.2 and 2.1 and I also kind of hinted to a lot of these district goals that we've set for this year when I spoke about the various summer activities that we that took place in the realm of professional and I started going through like every last one of them because there's quite a few and I'm just going to highlight some ones that I also spoke about this summer and then I'll try to make sure that I'm covering ones that at the elementary level and the secondary level so here's goal objective 1.1 is pretty much focused on curriculum and instruction and I won't read it because it's stated there and I did thank you Dr. Seuss for pointing out the fact that in my original PowerPoint that I shared with you in Novus had the prior language in there and so I've updated the language in this version so hopefully that made it to Novus. Did you send us the updated one? I think you have it. I think you have it. It's goal objective 1.1 where I updated the language and so you'll see it right there in front of you and again it's pretty much talking about the curricula and the curriculum that we've chosen and in some of the areas it's new curriculum, new resources and so I'll just highlight those areas where we've introduced new resources or curriculum. So just going to slide 5 I want to highlight that in grade 3 for this year 1920 year the teachers will implement the Lucy Calkins readers workshop units of study building a reader reading life and character study which will add to the two that were introduced last year and so the introduction of these Lucy Calkins units of study in third grade helped to align our reading instruction from grades 1 through 5. In slide 6 again looking at the reading, the ELA where we introduced the book club unit and this was piloted last year and this will now be adopted in all 5th grade classrooms across the district and again this helps with the alignment of reading instruction from grades 1 through 5. I'm going to jump now to slide 9 and we're looking at science and at the kindergarten level we're making sure that we're introducing the new tools of the mine lessons for science and that will help to align our science instruction with the current tools of the mine curriculum that's currently in kindergarten and then also a goal in slide 5 where we'll be using common assessments and the common assessments will allow us to track progress of how students are responding to instruction and give us an opportunity to evaluate our tools of the mine curriculum, our science lessons that we're introducing to align with the tools of the mine curriculum in kindergarten. And then looking at the secondary level in slide 10 we're looking at the computer science last year we had a multi-age computer science course at the middle school level and this year we are going to work over the summer to have distinct computer science curriculum for sixth, seventh and eighth grade and that was being introduced this year at the middle school level and I also want to point out that if you look at the slide you'll see the rationale for each one of the goals which will provide you kind of the thinking that went into why this goal was selected. Looking at slide 13 staying at the secondary level looking at the history and social studies that department has really looked at reimagining the research skills and the research paper that secondary students are required to do especially at the high school level there in the process this is actually a two-year goal that they started last year and they've collected data from students teachers and now they're implementing and updating their instruction to look at specific research skills. Teachers will provide students with the opportunity to practice that skill as well as to be assessed and give them feedback on progress in that skill four times during the year through a common research performance task before the end of the year. So we're looking at how we're teaching research and how we're assessing it at the secondary level. Going jumping to slide 15 secondary science looking at the middle school level over the last two years we've updated the science resource that we use for instruction in grades six and seven that are now fully implemented and this year the eighth grade resource and the textbook series that we're using is consistent it's called iScience in sixth, seventh and eighth but the eighth grade is piloting various lessons out of the iScience textbook and we also have the electronic version as well so that students can now access at home without carrying home the heavy textbooks and their book bags. Looking at SEL in slide 19 and this really goes to goal objective 1.2 where we're looking at our social emotional learning instruction and linking it to our cultural competency instruction and so right now as you know Sarah was here earlier but she's at her department is looking at how SEL instruction and practice is being implemented in grades pre-k to second grade and we're doing it this in chunks so right now we're looking at pre-k to second and the next year we'll be looking at it through third through fifth grade at the elementary level but we're looking to make sure that there's consistency and coherence in the various instructional explicit instruction and curriculum that are being implemented in those particular grades so we're doing a lot of gathering of data and trying to make sure that we're mapping it out to see whether there's an overlap and how it's linking to direct instruction and making sure that it's being embedded in the way that's being applied in the classroom and we're jumping to goal 2.1 we're continuing our focus on cultural literacy this year we're going to continue to have our full day professional development day on November 1 which will provide six hours of training for teachers on that particular day we don't have students that will be in attendance let me jump to that there it is right there so this year with that feedback we're going to have a conference style format where we're using staff Arlington staff and also recruited outside facilitators to come in and give various workshops that are going to address the various cultural identifiers that our students as our students identify as and so our focus is to provide teachers with concrete strategies and practices that they can go into their classroom the very next day and implement and the ultimate goal is to make sure that we're providing a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students and then in order to meet the ten hours of instruction that we've required for all of our staff building administrators throughout the year will also have other opportunities for staff to have professional development that will add to the six hours that we're providing on November 1st so that's just an overview and a highlight of some of the smart goals that we've written to go along with the district goals that include action steps and a way to assess our progress and I also want to make sure that I'm highlighting that they do fit the smart goal format that they're specific and strategic they're measurable they're action oriented they're rigorous, realistic and results focused and they're timed and tracked so I'm going to open it up to questions Mr. Heiner first of thank you I really appreciate that really nice. Under goal objective 1.2 the second line the SEL instruction that includes an awareness of cultural bias on the follow-up the social and emotional learning you've got that the SEL part covered really well where would the cultural bias aspect come into it in these here is there a plan to make that an integral part of the curriculum of the K2 pre-K2 so like what we're trying to do well with that I specifically focused on the SEL skills what we believe is that we have to provide this foundation of the five competencies of social emotional learning and there's a big connection to cultural competence so like building relationships having empathy things of that nature that we require that in a culturally responsive environment those are the skills we want the students to have and they also link to our vision of student as learner and global citizen to provide that basis of social emotional learning and make sure we're hitting those five competencies that can lead us into those type of culturally responsive instruction I appreciate that and you've got far more knowledge than I have in this thing my concern when we originally were dealing with the issues of cultural bias talking about implementing it in our goals a couple of years ago my concern it was that we could fold it into the SEL which I have no problem with as long as it's addressed you're telling me this will be addressed going forward I will accept that well all staff so I'm saying like that specifically is dealing with the SEL piece of it but all staff if you saw that the cultural literacy and the ten hours of instruction that we're providing for all staff I guess it's not so much the staff that I'm concerned with I think the work being done with the staff is good and it's on the right track getting it into the curriculum part as well like I said before in my presentation the feedback that I've gotten from staff from prior training is that we want to focus more on those strategies and practices that they can implement into their classroom so that's a big focus this year for our professional development day and with the other parts of that ten hours of instruction that we're mandating that all staff go through throughout the district so it's not just we're focusing on SEL we're also focusing on cultural competency but we're doing that through the professional development this you know we can't we try to write goals that are specific we can't write too many goals because then we'll be all over the place so we try to deal with the various like the cultural competency and the SEL in different ways so that we are able to be strategic and specific and we're not trying to overburden staff so we're trying to look we're trying to make sure that we're doing this in a very strategic manner so that teachers don't feel overwhelmed Thank you Anybody else? Dr. Alice Nappy Hi, thank you for sharing this with us My question may verge into something that really it's sort of related but it it's sort of a question I think it's a question of the district goals when I read the list of things that are being done I felt like I was seeing a lot of approaches or initiatives some new, some have been going on for a while but what I wasn't finding were metrics that were being measured and then did it achieve what we're trying to achieve with this Can you give me an example? For the project based learning and again this may belong to a different presentation but it's kind of why are we doing it and I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing it it's sort of why are we doing it what's the measure of success and is it student engagement is it deeper knowledge of something is it more independent learning but how are we telling if what we're the reason that we're doing it is we're getting the we're getting information another one is the I don't know DIBLS, D-I-B-E-L-S DIBLS Again probably for a different presentation is why are we doing it but the goals all about making sure the teachers all understand how they teach it but there's nothing about is it achieving the results that are the reason that we started doing it in the first place and that's really what I'm curious about DIBLS is an assessment so I want to I just want to distinguish what you're saying right there DIBLS, Acadian phoneme segmentation is an assessment so they're doing that they're implementing that in first grade so they're going to use the results in order to inform their instruction so this is the first year that we'll have it in place so when you talk about a metrics I think that at the end when we look at and get feedback from teachers to see how it has informed their instruction throughout the year we will be having those type of discussions so I think that what probably needs to happen and I've done this is I've scheduled the curriculum leaders and the coaches to come in throughout the year and then that's where we can have more substantive conversations about the specifics on each one of the goals I didn't want to do that tonight because we have so many goals I can't go into everyone last one of them I just felt like there should be it seemed to me that in some of the goals there should be it should be getting to the point of getting metrics that look at is the approach working and I didn't really feel that when I was looking at it so that is my feedback to you about this and again I realize that some of this may correctly belong in a different presentation but anyway Miss Seuss actually I may be wrong with this I think Dibbles is actually a great example because what I understand but as I said I might be wrong is that the reason we're introducing it is that we hope to pick up breathing issues earlier that we were not able to pick up with our previous assessment so then we have a nice here's a problem here's the strategy we're using to try to solve it success looks like we have now picked up some reading issues among students that we were not able to pick up before so we just sort of are able to identify problems earlier than we were and that's a nice sort of smart that's part of it but that's not the whole end we do have a battery of assessments that we give to first graders as part of our formal assessment periods however we are starting to really assess or evaluate the information that we're getting so I think Dibbles was we selected Dibbles because we've done some work around phonemic awareness and we're saying that's a piece of information that we weren't getting so we were working with if there's an issue that we might not have picked up before because we weren't doing that kind of assessment does that seem right? go ahead Mary so the reading questions in the district works with students in first grade amongst other grades traditionally we've relied really heavily on the DRA the developmental reading assessment and so it gives you a really good measure in terms of a leveled reader for students but it doesn't really give you a good measure of the skills that go into reading that then allow you to intervene in a more impactful way with students so Dibbles actually gives us a really quick dipstick on a regular basis in terms of monitoring phonological awareness letter sound ID, nonsense word decoding so different aspects of reading that are really important on a foundational level that allows us to intervene in a more impactful way than we were able to before we just had a general level for students and now we have a better sense of what the deficits might be and how to intervene more effectively with them so I think that was the reason why we're moving more towards Dibbles than other measures so again we're talking about information that we weren't getting before so we're evaluating and I think that the work that we've done around the data bank which is a data collection tool has really focused our conversation about okay this is the data that we're collecting but is this what we want to put into the data bank to give access to teachers that are just really going to inform their instruction and so that's where I think these conversations have come in and also our work with Melissa Orkin who was coming in and worked as a consultant within the district. I think Dr. Allison Ambe's point stress would be helpful to see in the goals what we're trying to do what we think success looks like and that actually seemed like a really good example where we could do that with just restructuring the language around how we were writing those goals I want to say I'm you know goals are always frustrating because as a snapshot of what we're doing in the district I think these do a really nice job but as a outward facing document where we say here's what we hope to accomplish over the years or you know here's where our energy is focused here's our goals I think it sort of obscures that it's hard to see that through the choice. I think that we have to have a conversation about what information you're trying to get out of the goal because doing this absent like a presentation you're not going to get everything that you want to learn about all the actions and the things that we're doing from this particular language that we have in the smart goal that's going to take like I said before us having people come in throughout the year to give a progress on the goal and then that's where you can say okay here's an example of where it's worked and this is the feedback that we've gotten because I think that the goals that we're writing is just like you said is going to let you know like what direction we're heading in but in order to give them more comprehensive information maybe you can write down the questions that you would like to have answered and provide them with me. I can give you a specific thing so that I mentioned last time so I continue to feel and other people might not feel similarly that saying something like we are trying to align with the standards is you know feels like we are to present as a goal because that feels like that should be a given or baseline or something that's not you know our vision of that as a district you know for all we're trying to do is align with the standards we're not you know that's not a great vision for our district but it is but I mean obviously we're spending time doing that so as a document of how our staff spending their time you know the fact that a lot of times we're trying to align ourselves with the standards is an important document of how we're spending our time but as a vision of what we want Arlington to become it just doesn't you know feels pretty low. Well like I said if you write down questions that you would like to have answered when those individuals come in I can make sure that those questions are being addressed but if you look at the language role it says teachers will implement the new devils, Acadians, phonemes, segmentation, fluency and nonsense word fluency assessments in 2019 and 2020 the new assessment is a nationally normed assessment that will provide additional information not available using the current assessments that teachers have been using to target their reading instruction. Teachers will follow the administration guidelines of devils, Acadians. So I think that it's letting you know right now we selected this because it's a nationally normed assessment and it's giving us additional information. So maybe you can write down some specific questions that will help to give us guidance as to how we can change the language in order to fit what you're looking for because to say that globally it doesn't really give me exactly what you think is missing. And it also would be helpful like after you look at the document that if you do have questions if you do put them in writing I can take it back to the literacy team and we can work to construct the language and change the language if needed. So I guess what I also would like to see is you know I see the words implement and roll out and produce and which is good but I also want to see so we're at the so I'm very interested in what we're doing with devils in first grade. I guess for me just starting a new assessment isn't a goal. Like what I want to see is and I don't know these things at the end of first grade or second grade I am not an expert so I don't know when it gets real with reading but at the end of first grade we have we currently have 80 percent of kids reading at benchmark we expect to be able to get to 90 percent or 85 percent. I don't know I could look I can look at this and I can't evaluate I have no capacity to evaluate really on on any of these goals right so if I look at secondary SEL high school collaborative problem solving they're going to do a roll out of collaborative problem solving training okay so we're going to do the training but then what are we hoping to achieve is the next time these the people come in to talk to us about the survey that they talked to us about tonight and I assume is in two years time are we going to see fewer kids being bringing weapons to school and like getting into fights I mean I don't know but that would be great if that's what if we you know if we could see that is that what is that are those that are these the these are the levers right what what we have here are the levers that are being pulled which is great but I don't understand and this is partially me but it's partially lacking here what needle we're moving does that make sense like I see the levers being pulled I see the roll outs in the implementation and the really really important work but I don't understand how it correlates to the needle we're trying to move what what are we trying to push like we need more kids to read right I presume otherwise we're not doing this right so we we want more kids to read I don't know when they need to be they supposed to be reading by the end of grade are we interested in their ELA MCAS scores in third grade I don't I don't know and so it makes it really hard to feel connected to the the work because the work is here the work is being done we I just don't get what we're what what what results we're trying to achieve does that make sense a little bit like it sounds like you want a greater context for why the goal was written you want to say like here's the benchmark this is where we're starting at and this is why we're writing the goal and this is what we're looking to achieve after the goal after this particular action has been in place right and I know that it's not going to happen in a year right I mean we're not going to see you're not going to do a roll out of collaborative problem-solving training and all of a sudden we're going to drop and we you know what I mean like so I get that it's not these are not like these are our big levers that are being pulled and they don't get you know it might not happen in a year but I guess yes that's that's what I for me would be really helpful well I think that part of part of the goal sometimes is just the implementation of that particular program so for at the high school level getting the getting all the staff trained in collaborative problem solving is the goal for this year and I think that moving forward then we can start talking about how it's going to impact what that whether the results are going to be okay I have an advantage being an educator so you know if you're implementing I sort of get a sense of why you're doing it the issue I have in this context is who's your audience and why are you telling us this so that if if you're coming to the committee I mean we're making global decisions we're making budgetary decisions we're making strategic decisions where we we have the big big levers you have the implementation level what levers what is the purpose of having this conversation with us to the point is does it circle back to something that for us is actionable is there going to be some decision or something we need to think about in a month, three months budget season whenever that is going to tie to this or are we just saying okay we're changing the assessment this is how we're doing it we expect to have it done by June or by November everybody be trained and everybody's happy and life goes on why why do we want to know about this and what would be the desired outcome so think about it as a lesson plan at the end of the lesson what do you want us to know and what do you want us to do and I'd say that tightening it to the point where we're walking out the door taking something away is really the beneficial step if we want to get into the weeds I think we should do that in subcommittee so again I mean I think it would be helpful if you could put some of these questions into writing so that I can take them back and give them to the curriculum leaders and we can use these as focus questions so what I hear you saying is that you want to know why the goals are created the greater context you want to know where we're starting with here's the reason why here's the data we've collected that led us to select this goal and then this is the outcomes that we're looking for and to raise it to a tiered level here's a document of what we're doing life goes on this is what it's important for us to talk about and say at a meeting and for us to respond to and think about and take away and have in our heads and our hearts a month, two months, three months six months down the road because at some point we may need to make a decision or we may need to be listening to something coming from the community and those are the things that as a committee are the most important to us thank you so I think as a general thought for when people come before the committee to talk about these goals I think you can tell them in advance we don't need to have a specific we don't have to send questions for each one but specifically I think what would be helpful is what is the data set that promoted or that prompted the group to pick this goal and where do you want to be at the end of a year or three years or five years so I mean I think and sometimes in all sorts of organizations school districts school individual schools companies, nonprofits you think in terms of measurable outcomes over a multi-year period that's part of the problem that we have in our own ten is that it's really hard to have a really anything at the end of the year other than the teachers did the workshop where the students started using the new materials so I think it's kind of like what would be helpful to us is where do you want the students to be where are they now data wise and where do you want the students to be X number of years from now and I'm not even sure how you I'm not sure what number of years you guys are going to be but I think that's the best way to approach any presentation of the committee on these goals I think that would be helpful to everybody here so I want to actually congratulate you for putting all this together I mean I think we often hear from the curriculum leaders and their individual presentations what they've done during the year what they're working on so it's nice to see it all in one document like this this is a good information for us to have talking about so it goes back to the discussion we had with the five year plan and what the goals were going to be for what are we going to do with all this money how are we going to show that we use the money wisely we still don't really have that I mean so we did talk about third grade reading level and actually DIBLS the DIBLS ties really well into that because that was the one goal that we did put in the five year plan and presumably the DIBLS will help with that right so that's all tied together some of this other stuff probably has other stuff some of it might not some of it might just be a small curriculum change that really you know just we're keeping up with the standards we have to keep up with the standards we don't really necessarily predict an outcome change but we have to keep up with the standards and you're showing us that you're keeping up with the standards which is good but that's not as important as sort of the bigger strategic goals of improving reading level for grade three or improving our science knowledge you know by the sixth grade MCAS or whatever it is whatever those big goals are so this is good for a step but I think you're hearing that there's probably a little bit more work that needs to be done as far as these more outcome multi-year based goals as an administration not just as a yearly thing it's a lot more work and a more culture change but it's something I think we want a direction we would like to head into maybe working with CIA subcommittee on that more but this is certainly a good start anything else alright great so we were going to have a facility update but Mr. Mason is not feeling well so that's in Novus I don't know that we need to have him go over it if anybody had any questions we can ask him next time the next item then would be enrollment projections Mr. Hayner had asked me to put this on the agenda to discuss a little bit where different committees might do work with regard to enrollment issues particularly at the elementary schools so we know that some of the elementary schools are too full we don't quite know how many students to expect in the next few years we've had nobody's here should address it but Mr. Mason and Dr. Bodie had tried to get some quotes on consultants that could help us with enrollment projections that never really went anywhere I think we need to get more information from them as to whether we should rebid that process or maybe just go with that one consultant that did respond something is better than nothing so we did discuss a little bit of budget this morning it seems like budget which deals with numbers is the logical subcommittee to drive that process as far as getting better enrollment numbers to the extent we can my suggestion would be that if the budget committee determines that the enrollment trends are concerning enough for impact of space then I think we should probably start to have a conversation with other people in town about restarting the school enrollment task force which was a committee that included people from capital planning and finance and select board and school committee superintendent time manager and so that group I served on at Cindy did and so we met for a couple of years and that led to party expansion town center expansion oddison I'm not saying we want to do all that stuff I'm not saying that I don't want anyone to hear that right now but I do think that group should if it's serious enough the group should meet so I think that's a ventrality what might happen if it's serious enough but first we have to figure out what are the numbers going to look like how many and then the facilities can look at where do we have space we added space at the hearty and we're not using all of it so can we use that space if we use that space then are the other schools okay or are they not we don't know we definitely have to do all that groundwork I think first and unfortunately we've already started the conversations about modulars I think we need to have that use this year to sort of do that groundwork there isn't a crisis yet I mean bracket has some issues but there isn't a crisis yet so I think we do have some time but that definitely would be down the road just to clarify certainly I don't know whenever we did this I can't remember the year whenever we did this the last time we basically had a conversation inside the school district and then we realized we have nowhere to go and then it went out of the school so I don't think I'm not advocating that it lead this table or lead the school committee or lead the school district conversation yet but I think it's the budget committee's job to figure out if it should and to provide the data to determine whether it should just a clarification the budget committee will be responsible for looking at the numbers will be responsibility to look at the current facilities that we have and make a determination of what is or is not available do we have do we have enough room yeah exactly and community relations is going to deal with potential buffers yes to the extent that we can ameliorate some of the issues of certain schools by buffer zones and you know that's another but right now we I mean other than putting the placeholder in place for the whatever the placeholder the modular we don't have a crisis we're not sure we don't have enough information to make a determination right okay fair enough budget is happy to take this up I guess the question so I think the first thing to do will be to sit down with the administration and look to them for a plan and I'm just telling you all that that's that's going to be the approach we need to have a motion to put this on or is it just it's been said and I don't think so I think it's okay I would just ask that this has to be done as soon as possible you're aware of it but although we don't have a crisis there are people concerned because we discussed that thing about modular units more information is better than none thank you yeah I point out we've had parents come to us last year and this year asking for modules in schools and we need to have some data to start talking so it's not this is not new and different word we need to address I have to tell you that I was impressed with the demographer report that we had what six years ago now around 2012 played out pretty well but it's very stale we were pointing in the right direction but every year you go past the initial set of assumptions it unravels a little more and a little more and I think that we were pointing towards trends but we're past the point where it's useful and these things are really imperfect beasts the ones that are free and cheap are not really worth what we pay for them and if we and I see a still looking it increases in various parts of the community and knowing the sales patterns and where the homes that are likely to turn over are and all those elements that went into the methodology for doing the demographic report I think are important to understand all over again because the town is very different now than it was in 2012 my memory is the presenter was very impressed with this presentation oh yeah he was he had a good time he had a good time very impressed with everything he said and the way he said it he was having fun very impressed with it but it was really an interesting methodology I appreciate it watching I wish I had that level of self confidence if we could see the methodology it would be nice to report I just have a couple of things that I'd like to highlight in this recent our recent town I'd like to highlight our jazz band director Sabatino Tino D'Agostino and the jazz band came and they performed and I'd also like to highlight the magical singers which was who were conducted by our new Arlington high school's choral director and I didn't write down her name and her name is Mara Walker so our new the new high school's choral director Mara Walker I'd like to highlight the magical singers for their town day performance looking at athletics I have an updated report from our new athletic director John Bowler I will have asked him also to come in in order to introduce himself to the community but some of the bullet points that he shared with me is that in our in regards to our new fall sports we have over 459 student athletes participating in 10 different sports cross country which is a non-cut sport has 138 athletes 76 girls and 62 boys which is a cut sport has 132 athletes which are girls 63 girls and 69 boys and these are two of two of our biggest sports by enrollment this fall cross country and soccer we have two new varsity coaches this fall we have Rob Di Loreto who was one of the deans in the high school was our football coach head coach and Don Hirsch is the golf head coach at the first football game we had over 300 students attend in which they showed a lot of positive school spirit and our next week we will have their pep rally which is scheduled for actually in a couple of weeks and next week they're going to start the captain council and then in a couple of weeks they're going to have their first pep rally on October 22nd I'd like to highlight Bill Barrett who retired as a golf coach just past July he was the golf coach at Arlington high school since 1977 so we'd like to thank him for his service the John Bowler also let me know that there's going to be a blog on the school website that he's going to update each week and with the results from the various games and competitions and a list of all the home games for the upcoming week the blog is also linked to the school's Facebook and Twitter accounts I'd like to highlight also that during this past couple of weeks we've had a lot of our curriculum nights and back to school nights tonight we had four we had Brackett elementary Dallin, Hardy and Pierce most of the curriculum nights and back to school nights have already taken place the only one that still needs to happen is monotony preschool which happens on October 3rd that concludes the superintendent's report great thank you now subcommittee there's no policies subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget consent agenda sorry the consent agenda yes all items listed below are considered routine it will be enacted by one motion no separate discussion of these items in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant warrant number two zero zero four nine dated nine seventeen nineteen in the amount of seven nineteen three nine seven dot five eight approval of minutes June 13th two thousand nineteen in September 12th two thousand nineteen regular meeting minutes and no trip so moved all those in favor any abstentions unanimous all right now subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget budget met this morning um we um because Mr. Mason was ill um we couldn't get really deep into much but we've just we've begun discussing calendar um and the budget we're looking to potentially change the budget uh reporting dates and instead of monthly um we're talking about maybe every other month um and also we're going to be looking at what sort of information people want to get from the budget reports so if any of you folks have ideas send them on I mean who's not on budget send them on to us um but we have to have some more meetings with the administration present to make some more progress great thank you policies and procedures uh no report uh c i a a no report uh community relations uh we need to have a meeting uh we have five applicants for transposition advisory committee um I thought we'd find our availability and then see who can make it and maybe call in if they can't be in person I also wanted to throw out something um I haven't talked about this specific um proposal so you feel free to throw it back um but we did generally talk about having fewer um uh school committee chats and I think last year we talked about maybe two I'd like to propose three for the year um which would make so that we could have two at each total six people the charity wouldn't wouldn't meet then um November February and May and I was wondering what people thought of that it's worth a try I'm not a polish um but a problem for the public is that um we love the idea of chats we want to hear from the community but we found that we people weren't necessarily showing up and so maybe if we have fewer of them um that there might be greater attendance at them that was sort of the working hypothesis great okay good all right thank you facilities Mr. Heyner we met on the 18th uh to discuss uh the approach for the new year uh we're gonna do a regular um facility subcommittee meetings will be scheduled to address items such as space capacity and other things of that nature the other part was uh we're gonna schedule information meetings with each building PTO to present what has been accomplished what is going on and what will be accomplished this uh report this information will be prepared uh by the superintendent CFO and facilities director to be presented by a subcommittee member any feedback during the meeting would be noted and passed on to the CFO the first meeting will be held at the Hardy PTO meeting on October 16th great thank you uh legal services nothing at this time Arlington high school building committee we meet next on uh Tuesday at six o'clock at uh in this room uh the calendar committee uh we haven't we don't have another meeting yet okay I need to push to have that election modernization committee oh uh I accidentally missed the last no problem that's okay I actually I have been I've been looking over the minutes I'm sorry uh superintendent search process uh we're going to schedule meeting uh since we get to get it together I've requested uh some sample great RFPs uh that other districts have used in terms of soliciting so we can look at them as a template uh Mr. Heiner's provided some documentation from prior search uh and we'll just get started great uh there's nothing on negotiations yet are there any liaison reports or announcements nothing I saw our former colleague Judd Judd Pierce do an outstanding job in uh in uh race going Saturdays it is he's it's a great show yeah we have tickets too it is a great show it is great uh any future agenda items nothing sorry we want to just mention again that the schools are closed on Monday sure yes that's a good point so no school on September 30 uh September 30 Mr. Heiner we talked about updating on a regular basis uh what's going on with the issues on the high school early start um I realize part of that's negotiations you just addressed that the other part is uh dealing with the medco issue so I don't know whether we're going to do it on a monthly basis uh but just to keep us informed of what's going on thank you all right I wanted that for some future agenda Mr. Shikman we need to put the uh delegate assembly yes I do all right anything else there's no executive session so motion adjourned second all those in favor your proposed or abstentions unanimous