 Good evening. It's 6.30. So we're going to go ahead and get started. This December 10th, 2020 open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded to the public and follow along with the deliberation of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. For this meeting, the Arlington School Committee is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. Some attendees are participating by videoconference. Accordingly, please be aware that others may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything new broadcasts may be captured by the recording. All the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the Novus agenda dashboard. We recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless I note otherwise. We will shortly be turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do, these will be the ground rules. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude. I will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, question or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in such a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response. Please wait until the chair yields the floor to you. Each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. So I am going to do roll. This is a very, very full agenda this evening. So there are a lot of people on the agenda. So this is going to take a little bit of time. I'm assuming we're on a couple of screens. So Ms. Ekston, here. Mr. Cardin. Here. Dr. Allison Ampe. Here. Dr. Thielman. We can't- Here, here. Mr. Schlickman. Good evening. Peter. Here. And I am here. Dr. Bodie. Present. Dr. McNeil. I don't see him yet. There you are. You guys are really small tonight. Okay, hold on. Mr. Mason. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Ms. Elmer. Here. Ms. Keys. Here. Ms. Carmody. Here. All right. I think that's everybody on the circle. Now I'm going to go through the agenda. So Ms. Baldwin. Hi. Hi. Dr. Janger. Here. Mr. Merringer. Here. But I'm here, Maxwell. Present. Ms. Fernandez. Here. Let's see. All right. I see Mr. DeLoretto. Yes. Thank you. Hello. All right. Okey-doke. So we, the first item on the agenda is public comment. We have 15 minutes for public comment and we have 11 people who signed up. So everybody will be able to speak for two minutes and I am going to use a timer and we'll be cutting you off at two minutes because that's how we've got to do this. So as a matter of policy, the school committee does not respond to public comment. And I did get a couple of questions today from the community about controlling the content of the comment and having it relating only to the high school, which is not what we do. So people can come and make comments about whatever they want. So the first, let me find her. If you are somebody who has signed up for public comment in advance and you can raise your hand, it brings your name up to the top and it makes it easier for us to call on you. So I don't, Ms. Kubeta, I don't see her yet in that list. So we'll come back to her when we see her. I just don't see her down here either. All right, so we're gonna come back to her and I'm gonna promote Ms. Morrison. And after Ms. Morrison will be Ms. Lisa Robinson. So we'll get you cued up too. I don't see you yet either. And after Ms. Robinson will be Ms. Lisa Sturma. So Ms. Morrison, can we see you? I'm looking for you. There you are. Okay, all right. Ms. Morrison, can you hear us? We can't hear you if you're talking. So you may need to unmute. So Ms. Morrison, we can't hear you. I'm not sure if you're trying to talk because I can't see you. All right, let's keep you as a panelist here and then I'll come back to you. How about that? Ms. Robinson, I don't see on the list. And Lisa Sturzma, I also do not see. All right, Mr. Holler, I'm gonna promote you. And after Mr. Holler is Ms. Amat. So I'm gonna go ahead and promote you at the same time. And then we'll see, we need to figure out how we can hear from Ms. Morrison. I'm not sure how we're gonna get her unmuted, but we'll get there. So Mr. Holler, can you hear us? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great, good evening. First and foremost, I'd like to thank the committee for all the hard work that you've been putting into this challenging year. It's definitely not going unnoticed. And for that, we are very grateful. I'm the father of a first grader at Thompson, who is in the hybrid model. And I don't need to go into detail about how much of a struggle the remote days have been for the children, the parents, the teachers, as you're well aware. I am, however, encouraged by the fact that there's increasing committee support to get our youngest kids safely back in school full-time. Now, there are many factors that must be considered to achieve this. But what I'm here to say today is that we cannot solely depend on the vaccine in order to implement these changes. I'm a research scientist and I'm very excited about the data that is coming out surrounding the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. But there are still unknown surrounding transmission even with the vaccine. We also know that there are gonna be challenges in the rollout process in getting those vaccines into our school system. For example, Governor Baker just released a timeline indicating that K-12 teachers will be in phase two, which is expected to occur between February and April, 2021. This is assuming that everything goes according to plan with distribution and the willingness of the public to receive the vaccine. But if we wait for this phase two rollout to get our youngest learners back in school full-time, then our children will have been receiving inadequate education for a full year. That is a terrible failure of our public school system. As far as timeline for vaccinating our children, currently no kids under the age of 12 have received a vaccine in clinical trials. Given the timelines needed to carry out safety and efficacy trials for the youngest children, they may not be vaccinated until late 2021 at the earliest. What we do know is that the youngest children are not major transmitters or severely affected by this virus. This has even been stated multiple times by Dr. Bodie that our schools are not where transmission is occurring. Therefore, waiting on a vaccination of the student body is simply not an option. So now is the time to come up with a plan for elementary kids to have full in school or remote choice with or without wide distribution of the vaccine to get our youngest learners, the education they need and deserve. Like everyone else I'm concerned with the current virus surge that this shouldn't keep us from moving forward with specific plans and concrete deadlines because we know this will take some time. We saw how this played out over the summer but we are better informed and prepared now. So I look forward to hearing what options are proposed and I will certainly help the committee in the schools in any way that I can moving forward. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Holler. I see Ms. Cubeta. So can you hear me? Can you hear me? We can, yes. Oh, great. Okay. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. I'm grateful for the chance to speak to you. Elizabeth Holman is not ready to be our superintendent. She has had limited teaching and even more limited leadership experience. Her impressive accomplishments vis-à-vis equity and diversity and collaboration have all been accomplished by Dr. Greer as well. In comparison, Dr. Greer is a dream candidate. She is more than qualified to lead our schools. She has just led Sharon's high school rebuild which could not be more relevant to Arlington right now. Our next leader will be arriving in the middle of our rebuild, of our high school. She has the negotiating skills and knowledge of town governance and finance that will be required to see the rebuild through to completion. Dr. Greer enjoyed teaching and then leading special education for over 10 years. She was so talented at it that she was recruited from Nashville by the superintendent of Cambridge to improve the teaching of special ed in our neighboring city. After three and a half years as assistant superintendent, her boss endorsed her for the superintendency of Sharon. I would like you to consider remarks published in the Cambridge Day in January of 2017 when Dr. Greer had just been chosen to be Sharon's superintendent. Quote, before her hire, complaints about the special education department by families were legion. But with Greer, the tone has changed dramatically. Almost overnight, the various special ed advisory council members appeared before Cambridge's school committee as fans of her work. Under her leadership, more progress has been made than has been made for many, many years. Superintendent Kenneth Salem said, "'Dr. Greer has been a tremendous part of our team bringing her strength, vision and leadership." Salem called the shift in her approach a sea change, one that we want to continue. We are committing to building on her successes. How does a lot Elizabeth Holman top that record of achievement in your minds is not special ed a major concern in Arlington as witnessed by the previous speaker. It is natural to be attracted to people who are like you. Everyone is. I think some of you see yourselves in Dr. Holman. Fine. But this affinity leads to narrow thinking and preferring the familiar. You must make a professional, not a personal choice of superintendent. Dr. Martin Luther King said, "'You must make a professional, not a personal choice of superintendent. Dr. Martin Luther King said, "'You must make a professional, not a personal choice of superintendent. Dr. Martin Luther King wisely said, "'Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability "'but comes through continuous struggle. "'Dr. King would want me to speak up now "'about the mud of complacency and denial "'in which you the school committee appears to be mired. "'You shy away from the chance to be fair and bold "'and on the right side of history. "'You feel comfortable in maintaining the status quo "'in a town that begs you to do better. "'Please do not vote in Holman tonight. "'Holman tonight. "'Each of you please muster the courage and humility "'to admit you may have rushed to judgment. "'Open a window.'" I really need you to finish up. Okay. This is my last sentence. I'm in the middle of my last sentence, I promise. Open a window and let fresh air in to reexamine and weigh your choices as lots of citizens are asking you to do. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Ms. Morrison, you're next, and it didn't work very well when I promoted you to a panelist for whatever reason. I'm going to try to allow you to talk just as a participant and let's see if we can hear you that way. Are you able to hear me now? We can, yes. I'm sorry about that. We can hear you very well. Thank you. Go ahead. That's all right. No problem. I want to thank Karen Fitzgerald for keeping me posted on this meeting. My concern this evening is similar to what Ms. Beta has brought to your attention. It is the Allington school committee overlooking the appointment of candidate Dr. Greer for the position of superintendent of the Allington public schools. I'm not going to repeat all of the accolades that Ms. Beta has brought to your attention, only to say that by far she has more experience as a assistant superintendent and a superintendent. But my concern is, I mean, I've been a homeowner in Allington for 50 years. I've served on several committees, as a person that volunteers to serve on the superintendent's diversity advisory committee. Since superintendent Walter Divine, that's quite a while ago. I have to say that at this point in time, the actions of this school committee, it has left me stymied. I'm disappointed. I'm agitated. I want to know what was the thought process that this body used to overlook Dr. Greer? What was the thought process? I know some of us have been admonished by the fact that we don't hire people because they are black, because of their race. And I'm not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to hire a person who is more than qualified and that is able to, not a person that has potential, but a person that has a proven track record. So I, you know, I regret that I feel this way about the Allington school committee, but I have to say that the committee has displayed in this regard, the typical unconscious bias that you didn't have the courage to envision two African Americans, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent in positions of policymaking. My argument is not with Dr. Holman as an individual. It's with my school committee. So Ms. Morris, I do need you to adjust. I just wanted to say to the young lady in the committee that I'm just devastated and upset by this decision by the school committee. So as Dr. King has said, and you can work with this tonight, it's never too late to do the right thing. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak and greetings to all the Allington residents who are all beginning to celebrate. Good night. Thank you, Ms. Morrison. I still don't see Lisa Robinson in the attendees list. Ms. Robinson, if you are here, if you could raise your hand so you will come to the top of the list. And I also don't see Ms. Sturma who signed up also signed up in advance to speak. So if you are also here, please also raise your hand so that we can find you. Ms. Amat, you can go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Excellent. Good evening, everybody. I'm here to talk about a full in-person option for the elementary schools and I want to make a few salient points. The first is that coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. Even the vaccine will not be a silver bullet. We need to learn to live with this virus by taking precautions and continuing with the essentials of our, the essential tasks of our lives. That includes above all else, the education of our children. Second point. Studies have shown that kids under 10 do not contract or spread the virus or get as sick from the virus as adults. This increases somewhat in middle school and then high school college and then adults. And it's both biological and behavioral. They don't understand why they don't spread, kids don't spread it at the same rate, but we do know that the elementary school kids are among the best mask wearers of our population. They police their friends and they scoff at adults who are not wearing masks. Evidence shows that elementary school kids can safely attend school in person without the risk of spreading coronavirus in the school or the community. Third point. The youngest kids need the most full time in person learning with their teachers. We're not talking about missing out on calculus or Russian lip. We're talking about reading, writing and arithmetic. These are the fundamental building blocks of their learning. They need the classroom structure, the peer group to help them focus and the teacher to guide them. They need to be aware of what they're doing and what they're doing. They cannot adequately learn via zoom or independently. Fourth point. Teachers are overworked in the hybrid model. They have to teach in three different modes. In person via zoom and planning remote assignments for home. I know they put a lot of extra time into doing all of this for our kids while still being acutely aware of the fact that this is not what they signed up for when they decided to become teachers. They want to be with the kids and they want to teach them in the most effective way possible and that's in the classroom. You said so yourself that you had a hard time getting enough teachers to sign up for the remote academy in the K through 8 group. Most teachers want to be in school and those that don't are self-selecting out. Fifth point. Second point. I'm going to wrap up. We're approaching a full year of third rate education for our kids. I implore you to offer a full in person option for the elementary schools starting Monday, January 4th, 2021. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Martin and then Ms. Dre. Mr. Martin. Thank you very much. My name is Tim Martin. I'm an English teacher at the high school. I wanted to let you know how positive the experience of remote teaching has been for me and I believe for my students. It goes without saying that I would prefer a world without the pandemic but as long as this is the state in which we find ourselves, remote classes are the closest approximation of a regular classroom available to us. I'm currently teaching three sections of AP language and teaching is generally very high. And other than a few hiccups inevitable to learning new processes, the transition to remote classes has been smooth and we've been able to cover a lot of ground. In classes held over Zoom, I am able to reproduce many of the most important elements of in person teaching. Elements that would be effectively impossible in a socially distant classroom with everyone wearing masks. In my current remote classroom, I frequently place a students into breakout rooms to have small group meetings with their peers. They are often able to voice their opinions more confidently when class reconvenes. Breakout rooms also enable my more introverted students to participate in discussions. When my students are working on an essay, I usually have a class or two where they are in individual breakout rooms so they can invite me to the room if they have questions or want to discuss their writing without their classmates over hearing. Again, this mimics precisely a useful technique from regular classroom when students call me over to ask me a question privately. When I'm working on an essay, I am able to communicate with my classmates. In a way that would be much more difficult from behind the mask. Finally, and arguably most importantly, one of the most surprisingly positive elements of remote learning has been the utterly disarming cameos by everyone's pets. It sounds like a joke, but if the school committee is interested in the social emotional learning of Arlington students, it would be hard-pressed to find a more pure moment of unfeigned engagement and group bonding than when someone's cat or dog besides they're ready for their close-up now. I don't downplay the challenges everyone is facing in this brand new medium, but my overall assessment of remote learning so far is that has been overwhelmingly positive, especially in contrast to the alternatives. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Dre. Good evening. Thank you. I'm here again to ask the school committee to do their job. From September and right up to today, it feels like you've blindly accepted the administration's vague statements about what can and can't happen without asking them to show the data or the work to back up those statements. In the presentation last week, the slide about hybrid models uses the phrase requiring significant staffing and significantly change class offerings five times, but no one can change class offerings. What does significantly change class offerings mean? How many classes? Which ones? Are they core classes? Are they electives? And why those classes? And the same for significant staffing. How many staff equals significant staffing? And are they teachers? Are they assistants? Are they aides? Which departments are they in? Are they AP teachers, honor teachers, or are they in B teachers? There's no details. You've allowed the administration to use this vague and scary language and sort of threat like significant without asking for an explanation or providing any details of what it actually means. And now since the last meeting, I'm being told that no honors or AP classes can be offered in the two cohort model. This is brand new information. And again, no one can explain to me why that decision is so important. And I'm not asking for the details behind it. The process, the work that led up to that decision, because it seems unfathomable to me that a school can simply say that no one who comes in person will be able to take an honors or an AP class and not be able to explain why. And not only that, it is inequitable. And it's a violation of students' rights to a school. And I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for a clear, accurate data. So I ask you to not vote on next semester's hybrid model until you have that data. And if the high school administration cannot figure out how to get that data or articulate their process, then hire someone who can help them. Because we are running out of time. And I ask you not to accept any hybrid model that is not flexible to move towards more in-person services. And I'm not saying that we will be vaccinated from mid February to mid April. There is a lot of school left. And it would be a travesty if the teachers are vaccinated and our kids are still at home in front of the computer because the school committee did not choose a plan that was flexible. And just to respond to Mr. Martin, I'm not saying that remote learning isn't academically successful. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not the needs of many of our kids who are struggling. And so for that reason, I'd like you to consider, I'd like you to bring our kids back to school. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Roth. Good evening. Can you hear me? Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Joshua Roth. I am an Arlington resident. I am a student of the school. I thank you for this opportunity. And I will try to be brief. I want to issue three thanks and expressions of gratitude. And then a modest request. First to the school committee and administrators. To Ms. Fitzgerald. To all the people who are putting in. Great time and effort. And psychic energy. To helping us find a path forward, whatever. That path may be. Thank you very much. I also was touched hearing the last two meetings and listening sessions. By the expressions of support from parents. And this came regardless of whatever model of future high school operations. The parents favored. They were very generous with their support and their thanks. And it means a lot. But most of all, I want to thank my students and by extension, the other students at Arlington high school. Without exception, they've been generous, tolerant of our technology stumbles. And I believe a really kind and accepting of each other in a moment of duress. And it's for me without any doubt the highlight of this school year. I want to just ask that as you consider a path forward for Arlington high school. Bearing a couple of things in mind. One is that. Any transitions that require the teachers to. For the second time in one year. Completely tear up all that they have built at a great time and expense in the way of less and plans. Will be to the potential detriment of students in the community. The second is to consider when you look at schedules, the possible impacts on special needs students who thrive on routine. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Roth. The next person is Ms. Donnet. Followed by Ms. Skazansky. Just a note if Ms. Robinson or Ms. Sturma are here and can raise your hand. But if I don't see you before. Ms. Because. Done. Then we won't be able to call on you tonight. So Ms. Donnet. Can you. Can you say hello so that we can make sure we can hear you. Hello. Okay. Great. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm a member of the community. I'm a parent of an eighth grader in Arlington. I actually am participating in the diversion and inclusion group for the middle school. I wanted to speak again. About the important process of selection of the superintendent. Especially between the selection between the two finalists. And I would like to say thank you very much. Thank you. I want to say that I spend many hours reading all information available publicly as well as attending all the meetings open to the community. I. Know that there were strong. Consensus in areas. Where actually Doctor Greer definitely shown experience and proficiency that includes. That includes the main focuses that were required by the community on experiencing special education, issues of cultural diversity, and more. I'm trying to be very brief here, so for the sake of time, but Dr. Kubeda and Ms. Morrison were awesome describing all the particular characteristics in the previous presentation. So that makes it easier for me. I more than agree because my feedback that I submitted pretty much reads the same as Mr. Heiner said in the meeting where he said that Arlington requires experience and not on the job training and an innovative leader who will make tough decisions in the best interest of all children of Arlington, especially those who needs a higher and we need a candidate that will hit the ground running and Dr. Greer seems to be responding perfectly to that description to him and to me too. So I was underwhelmed when on the 24th this committee rushed to make a final decision. And there was no unanimity. And Dr. Heiner ended up turning his decision at the end to vote together with the other member committees, but one of the members who vote against actually requested the same things I was, I would have requested and I see one would be the technical issues that prevented Dr. Greer to have a proper session with the town officers. And also there was a feedback survey, but there was no clear deadline. So also the interview with the second candidate with Dr. Heiner actually took some time to be posted. And even though you can say there were similar feedback provided by both, I myself waited until I could see both. Yes, so I want to say that I found out about the petition by the MLK committee, which I realized Ms. Kubeda, Ms. Morrison who spoke before were part of this, writing this petition. I just checked last time I checked, I think it had like 120 signatures. And it says to reconsider the decision and re-examine for a chance to give Dr. Greer to the chance to speak with the representatives that she didn't have and maybe some side visits and all the things that were skipped and rushed. And while this would be kind of strange to set back now, but well, this was forced by the fact that the school committee rushed to make the decision. It wouldn't happen if you would have taken the time to make the decision more after examining as much of the evidence. And while we vote you to represent us, I feel, and that's going to be my last sentence, I was underwhelmed when I heard that somebody thought like they can make decisions for us because they are nominated members elected. But well, when I vote, I care that I feel that person will represent me if needed. But I also care that the representative is going to be waiting for the feedback from us, the people, and then collecting as much evidence to represent the people, the community that they should be representing, you should be represented. So thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you. Ms. Kazenski. Hello, can you hear me. Thank you. So thank you for your time. So I'm here tonight because although Arlington High School has some amazing teachers, including Mr. Martin and Mr. Roth, a lot of Arlington's teens, including my son, are struggling academically and are suffering with isolation in the fully remote model at Arlington High School. Our students deserve the safe and comprehensive to cohort hybrid model that was adopted by the school committee in the fall, the same model that's being used safely across Arlington for grades K through eight. Some of the speakers at Monday's listening session, who advocated for staying all remote for the entire school year are justifiably worried about the winter COVID surge. So today's task is to direct a plan for the spring semester, which doesn't start until mid February and will take us all the way through June. We need to be thinking now about what we can deliver for our students in the spring. Many of the all remote advocates seem to forget that we already have a full to cohort hybrid model in all of Arlington's other schools, forcing the high school to remain all remote as a public health measure, while allowing the other two days per week of in-person learning is both inequitable and nonsensical. Families who need or want an all remote program should be able to choose that option, but their choice shouldn't dictate the other families who don't currently have the option to choose a different model. I urge the school committee not to decide about the spring semester based on the inadequate survey data that we currently have that we got from AHS. Instead, the committee needs to push the administration to pursue all avenues for supplemental spaces and reasonable course offering tradeoffs. And more importantly, to show their work by reporting out clearly on what the tradeoffs would look like. And by that I mean show us the data please. Rather than making vague statements about the elimination of AP courses and honors courses and electives. Specifically, the administration should not tell us we would lose all APs and honor courses in a hybrid model without showing strong data to support that. I say to the school committee, please say no to all three recent hybrid models and instead support a motion directing the superintendent to do further research on or move directly to implement the two cohort hybrid model at AHS for the spring semester. In my opinion, this is the only way to help our students get the education and the mental health belt back on track. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms Gazinski, and I don't see Ms Robinson or Ms Sturma on the list so the next item on the agenda is the monotony hunter image retirement. And so there is a document in Novus for the committee that Ms Baldwin and some of her students and colleagues prepared for us, which was great. And so I wanted to give her a couple of minutes to explain to us a little bit about where this came from and what their requests are. So, Ms Baldwin, go ahead. Hello everyone. I'm Louisa Baldwin. I'm a senior at Arlington High School and I'm also the chair of the Arlington High School Inclusion and Diversity Committee. The physics that the Inclusion and Diversity Committee has been pursuing since the summer before this school year has been to investigate and do as we see it with the monotony hunter image that has been an integrated part of the Arlington High School and Arlington Public Schools community for decades. Research the history of the image. We researched the history of the statue that the image is based on. And we talked with many Native American voices about how the image being used in a school context. So after conducting all of that research with the help of the Arlington High School Administration, the Arlington Human Rights Commission and the Cyrus Dowling Museum and multiple Native American organizations in the area. We came to the conclusion that when being used in a school context, Native American imagery is offensive towards the Native American community. And we believe that the Arlington Public Schools is better than this and that we can be a community who doesn't feel the need to tear down a minority group just so that we can have a specific image on our basketball jerseys. We feel that though you can contextualize the statue, which the image is based off of and Cyrus Gallant's history as an artist, you cannot contextualize reproducing that image thousands of times onto countless different pieces of merchandise to be sold to children and parents in the Arlington community. So we have three motions in our proposal. The first of which is to retire all usage of the monotony hunter in Arlington Public Schools and to remove it from where it currently stands in all forms. And the second to concern something called the land acknowledgement. So land acknowledgements are a very easy and respectful way to acknowledge the harm done to the Native American community by colonizers over the past centuries. All it is is a brief spoken and more drawn out written statement that acknowledges the fact that we are on stolen land, and that we know who we stole the land from and we acknowledge their history, and that they are still present today. So included in the document is an example text of a land acknowledgement that was written for a panel that the Ireland Human Rights Commission helped facilitate surrounding the monotony hunter. The first sentence of which can serve as the brief spoken piece of a land acknowledgement. So our two motions around that are to adopt the written land acknowledgement to appear on Arlington Public School buildings and on Arlington Public School websites, and to adopt the brief spoken land acknowledgement to be used at important public forum events, such as school committee meetings. Thank you, Ms Baldwin. So, I want to give the, I see Dr. Janger is here too but I think Ms Baldwin as well, able to address our questions. And so I want to give the committee a chance to ask questions, and then see where we're at with this. Ms Exton, did you have any questions? I don't have any questions I just want to say that I appreciate all the work and thoughtfulness that went into this motion and your work to make this happen and communicating with the administration and your peers. And I appreciate all of that. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Curtin. Great. Thank you. Yes, I go. Ms. Exton, thanks for this report. I was just a little bit confused by the document that we have there's only one land acknowledgement that I see there isn't a separate spoken one. Is there a different talking. The first sentence of the written it's in bold text is would be the brief version of the land acknowledgement. Okay. And the motion is to, to Well, I think we need to write the motion. Right. I think we're going to need to come up with a motion and I would suggest actually that we do these separately. Yeah, so I think in the regular process as policies go to the policy committee first. You know, I do think as far as we've already discussed the, the, the image and retiring that and I'd be happy to entertain a motion to do that to support a motion to do that but the, the land acknowledgement is a new thing that this is the first time it's come to us. I do think there are certain policy implications that we need to think about, you know, where that will be displayed. I think we can recommend that speakers say, say it but I don't think we can require speakers to say it. I mean we I guess legally we can but we've never done anything like that before so I think that needs more work and I'd be happy to have the policy committee review that part. Thank you. I'm. I appreciate the work. I have also have questions about the land acknowledgement and would like to hear more discussion of it policy would be a good place but I also feel that it's more of something to me that feels on a town level and that then we would be acting as part of the town, because it's not just our buildings it's the whole town that that you're really talking about. So, yeah, I would prefer that go to policy. Thank you for the monotony Hunter. I'm trying to remember how we left it when we talked about it before if there was going to be any other. I'm an agreement that we needed to retire the usage. I just, I remember we were talking about this. And I don't remember exactly what we decided at that point. That's all. Great. Mr. Thielman. So, Miss Baldwin, thanks very much for the presentation and for coming to the school committee with prepared motions. That's a good thing. I echo what my colleagues have said I support the decision on the monotony Hunter, and I agree with Mr. Cardin that we probably have to send this to the policies and procedures subcommittee. Can you describe, Miss Baldwin, if there was any opposition to this move within the school and what students who might have had a different opinion about. So, in the administration that we had direct contact with there was no opposition, I think that these adults who have been a part of the school community for years and years, realize the full effects of that this image on the culture of the community and how the change is a long time coming and is needed. And we were very fortunate to have that support while pursuing our work as a student group. In terms of students, we have had conversations with many students, our research team. The inclusion and diversity committee encompasses students from the student council, the Gender Sexuality Alliance, the Young Feminist Alliance, the Black Student Union and Best Buddies at Arlington High School. So all of those student groups are represented in our committee and our project. We are also working with members of the anti-racism working group on the project. And we have also been in contact with some history teachers, mainly the United States history teachers at Arlington High School, and we helped facilitate a reverse field trip with one of those teachers and our classes in which we went to the town gardens where the statue of the Non-Mehunter Sits and we just had these long conversations with those students. I believe they were all sophomores about the statue and what they think we did not encounter any direct opposition to making the change. I think that we are fortunate to live in a town with teachers who care about teaching all of the voices in history to their students and students who care enough to learn about all of those voices and be conscious of them. Thank you. Mr. Schuchman. Thank you for bringing this forward. Yeah, the, it's my understanding that at present we're working towards finding a new image and logo for the high school and for our sports teams. So, if there's a further motion that would be required, I think the committee can certainly think about this, but I think we're already on that road with the support of the committee and actually through the active direction of the committee. The land statement I think is brilliant. I'm happy to see it before us, but as my colleagues have stated, we need to actually codify that in policy as to what will be said and when it would be said and how it would be posted so that it is an appropriate thing to advance to the policies committee. But thank you for doing this. This is really great work. Mr. Heiner. Thank you, Ms Baldwin. I'm excited for your presentation. I'm also willing to state that I will support you in any elected office you seek in the future. Your articulation and your organization is just phenomenal. I would ask the chair, it would be appropriate to entertain a motion at this time with regarding retiring the image. Yes, go ahead, Mr. Heiner. I saw move to Miss Baldwin. Could you give us the language you gave us before. Yes, to retire the usage of the monotony hunter image completely from the Arlington public schools community and to remove it from where it stands currently in all forms. I saw move. Thank you. So discussion on this and I'm going to take the chance to do my discussion now and then I'm happy if anybody else wants to raise their hand to further discuss I'm happy to call in you as well. This was very impressively put together and brought to us. I just want to let the community know a couple of things. And this is, these are things that Ms Baldwin and I had a chance to discuss before tonight, the, the, the hunter seal, or the imagery is in the middle of Pierce field at the high school. This is a location that will require significant investment to resurface and repaint. I'm not a field person, but it will take a significant investment to resurface and repaint that field and it is not up to be done for another, I believe four to five years. And so that's that in that location. I think it is possible that we may have it for longer. But Ms Baldwin as part of the work that her and her team did, they gave us a sense of where else the the seal is used, which was very helpful, as well as a plan and it sounds like it's generally pretty straightforward. I also will say that there are, I looked around online and there are a lot of websites that have taken this iconography and have used it on swag and booster apparel that is outside of the auspices of the Arlington public schools and I think it could take a while to get it removed from there. Other than that, you know, I think that this is something that has been really impressively put together and brought forward. And so I am looking forward to supporting this motion. So anybody else who would like to speak on this particular motion again. Mr Schlickman. Thank you just in terms of the image on the football field yeah that is going to be an expensive thing. And I think we can fundraise when we have a replacement image that we'd like to place there. So I would urge the school community to work as quickly as they can to devise a new image that we could use as a replacement. Anybody else. All right, so let's vote on the Mr carton. Thanks, so I just was wondering if we need to modify the motion just to allow for the field to remain as is, until we can either on raise or go through the regular cycle. Mr salmon. I would suggest so just add a comma and then with the understanding that it will take time to remove it from the, from the football field. Is that work for you, Mr. Heiner. Yes, it does. Thank you. All right. Dr. Janker. So I didn't want to say much because the students have done such a fabulous idea but I, I did want to say that one of the things that's really positive about this is that their plan and the plan with the Human Rights Commission with the Dow Museum with a Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness, the United American Native Indian Native American American Indians in England, and contacts at the Pankapag tribe. That whole conversation around the panel that was held is to keep this going forward right that the work doesn't end for the students and the work they're doing with removing the image but then educating themselves so the work they're doing going forward is really exciting. The Dow Museum is working to contextualize the sculpture itself to think about the way in which that image is being used in the community. And there was a question and I just wanted to reply to it in terms of responses in the community when the letter went out in July, initially, you know, asking for a moratorium on the use while we had this conversation. The main concern that I got was people were concerned about the sculpture and the history of Cyrus Dowling, whereas there was a real distinction between that and the use of the symbol in the school. So I think the students and all the folks that have had the conversations have done a really nice job of dividing and educating people about that so I just wanted to give huge points to the students in terms of really doing the work in a different way. It's a lot of fun when that happens and watch them do that and I'm really impressed. Thank you. Dr Allison Ampe. So first, I will be voting for this motion but I think we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that there are a lot of alumni who I think may in some respects be disappointed or feel sadness because this is what. It's their high school and now not only are we knocking down the old building but we're kind of taking away a picture and I'm not saying we shouldn't do it and I'm not saying we're not doing this for the right reasons but that there is going to be some angst and sadness in the community especially among older alumni and I think it'd be good as we go forward that there's good messaging about why it was done and that a new mascot is on the way. And just acknowledgement that this is something rightly or wrongly that there will be some sadness about. Dr Jinger. I agree with that 100% and I'm going to count on the student committee to do the work because I think they're really on top of it. I did want to mention though that we've actually been in conversation and correspondence with the woman who drew the seal as it is used and with Bill Grandin who was the select board member who actually initially authorized the creation of that seal so they've been involved and we're working to involve them in the conversation. All right, anybody else. Okay, Ms. Exton. Yes. So motion by Mr. Heyner second by Mr. Exton, Ms. Exton on retirement of the monotomy hunter image and an acknowledgement that we've got it's going to take a little while to deal with Pierce Field. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Alice Nampy. Yes. Mr. Stilman. Yes. Mr. Stilman. Yes. Mr. Heyner. Yes. I am also yes. So the and the other piece of this, I guess I would be looking for a motion so that I think it's important that we signal to the students that we want to move forward with looking at the idea of land use acknowledgement for the Arlington public schools. And so I would be looking for a motion to send that to the policy subcommittee Mr. So moved. Second. Discussion. All right, seeing none. Ms. Exton, go ahead. I sort of a question. Somebody suggested it being also about the town because it's not just the school that sits on this land. Is there separately from this motion referring to the policy committee a way to include the town in a broader conversation? We certainly could do so. I'm obviously open to that. I would probably my inclination would be to send it to policy and then go out from there with that ask, but Mr. Heyner. Mike just turn around and invite town representative. Let them know what we're doing and invite them to the policy discussion. I think we could have some conversations on the town with the town side. Just who do we think should own the on the bigger picture and you do they want to do two separate things or to me it really feels more like it should be from the town and then all the different communities come down but we can discuss this in policy. Alright, anybody else. Thank you. I have a motion to send the discussion of a land use acknowledgement in the Arlington public schools to the policy subcommittee motion by Mr. Schlickman. The second was by. I don't know. Mr. Heyner. Super. Ms. Exton. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much, Ms. Baldwin. Please keep in touch. If there's, we will certainly connect with you and make sure that you and your classmates know when the policy subcommittee will meet about this and take this up. Mr. Schlickman is the chair of that subcommittee. So I will cast your contact information along to him and I know that he will reach out when when that meeting is scheduled. Thank you so much for your time this evening. All right, the next item on our agenda are enrollment projections. Mr. Mason. Good evening. Good evening. Tonight. You guys are hopefully seen the report and projection, which were included for your review. This report includes the board enrollment as what we would call the October 1 report and with nine years, nine prior years of actual enrollment. And as you may already know, you will see upon observation. The public schools have seen substantial growth from October 1, 2011 to October 1, 2019, which was a growth of about 1252 students, which was over 25.7% rate of growth over that particular period. However, this year is the first year we see a decline in enrollment after seeing those nine years of increase upon increases of enrollment. The total enrollment for October 1 report this year is 5,841 students. And this is a decrease of 287 students from last year. This brings us more in line to an enrollment level that we last seen in October, 2017. The substantial reduction is something that, you know, we've talked about before we are still currently analyzing the 287 students that are reflected in this report. And our is a net of the students that have left the district, plus those that have entered this year, mainly from incoming kindergarten or other other lower grade levels. And currently on record, we have about 106 kindergarten students that enrolled from APS this year, shown in our student information system based on that analysis that we're doing. And in that data we see about third we have a understanding that are currently enrolled in private schools of those hundred students. And another third has will probably not return to Arlington because they have moved out of the community. And 1515 of the syllable students we know will return there being held back. And overall total numbers for the student not just for those for the kindergarten coming class is unenrolled from the district was 259 that had moved out of the community. These numbers were previously provided to you. And a prior report that we're still wrapping up 156 of those are been transferred to private schools to be free for your memory and then 70 students are enrolled in private schools and have been considered being homeschooled. And some are also enrolled in a virtual, another virtual program that's not part of Arlington public schools. I just wanted to also kind of note that we, we, we were planning to select a vendor. We brought this up in last year on doing a 10 year projection we've just selected a vendor to do that. We have a division of power schools as a company called decision insight power schools is our student information system. And they're going to provide a demographic study and enrollment projection for for the district which they're going to do two different projections as a moderate and a conservative model, and they will also consider any planning with the pandemic in terms of the return of students, along with any surveys that we're going to do internally. Also included for you guys was a prior projection, I thought it was important to remind you what the prior projection was before this year. The decline affects the weighted average formula used to project enrollment, and this is the formula that we use to fund our schools was agreed to with the town. This decrease changes to projection where the years project, the year's projections changes over over last year when you look at the four year projection five year projection of nearly 800 students. So the most important this is significant and the reason why this is reason why we probably shouldn't use this year's enrollment as you may already know, that's because that it would cause this big change and we still probably have to provide the services for those that do return to the district. And, you know what we'll get closer to figuring out that that number. I just will open up to any questions. Mr. Cardin and then Mr. Heiner. Yeah, I know I was going to say that I mean I think we, we need to come up with our sort of a revised estimate of the projection of the projections. You know, I think for 2021 that's going to be a lot of guesswork, you know, based on my guesswork but piecing together the information we have about those 15 kindergarten students and the 70 homeschool students and the other information we have. You can put people back in into into the right years and come up with a, you know, a guess. In the remaining years, I would, you know, maybe we can discuss this offline but I would go back to using the weighted averages that you have here in the second sheet, because it doesn't make sense to wait using you to put this year's numbers into that formula at all because it's such an anomaly. Yeah, so we do expect that whatever we get back we'll get back and then in the out years we're going to continue to grow because of the pipeline of kids. So it doesn't make sense to, to, to bake this year's decline into the formula. So, but we need to figure that out. Thanks. Mr. Heiner. The answer is on the kindergarten. When you talk about those that made an option, chose the option not to participate this year. We get kindergarten enrollment right up to and sometimes even after school starts. So, there may be a group of people out there that never even showed that they were interested in coming as the pandemic increased in the later months. And that kindergarten number may be bigger, much bigger than we thought it may not be. Well, we are also analyzing the birth rates data. We received some initial reports from the clerk's office and we're shifting shifting to that data, and we'll provide update once I can get more solid information back to you. I don't reflect anyone that's moved in here after being born. Correct. It just would give us some kind of God, big baseline to the, to the correlation between the, the, the birth rate data to the enrollment from those prior years. That's what we're going to use the data for. Prior to you coming here, your predecessor of yours use just that as the only basis as one tool. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to schedule a budget subcommittee meeting next week. So I think this, that would be this would that would be a good place to take this up. Thank you. Anybody else. Mr. shipment. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Mr Mason for the report. Yeah, the wild card on this is how many kindergarten kids were withheld this year who will be coming back next year so I think that we need to be thinking about some sort of policy or incentive or request out to the community to look at the indications of registration for next year. So we have a handle on how many kindergarten sessions we're going to need. I think that that it's going to be a significant issue for us. Thank you. So my only the only thing that I would like to see at some point, and I thought that it was what was in the superintendent's report for tonight under class size but that's just a breakdown by I think age and ethnicity. So, I'm hoping for our meeting a week from tonight that we can get a class size report. So it needs to be read done based on that we have some remote classrooms that are in other schools. But I was hoping that we could get a look at that by next week if possible. Okay. Anybody else. All right. Thank you, Mr Mason. So the next item on the agenda are the fiscal year 2020 Arlington high school, Madison middle school and Gibbs budget needs. So just so the community knows the way this is part of our traditional budget process we're going to actually have our second vote of the budget calendar here later on in our meeting this evening, which will be exciting and we'll know exactly where we are at in our calendar needs but this is the part of the process where we invite both the principles as well as our representatives from the, the AA our teachers union to come and share their budget requests and we do it the way that we do it here at Arlington is by level. This is a time for principles and the AA to come and tell us what they think that they are going to need for FY 22, FY 22 begins in on July one of 2021 and goes until July, well till June 30 of 2022. So it totally makes sense. And the way that we do this is we were we're asking for things now. So this I always say this is the like pre new year pre holiday break time where people come and they ask for what they want and we all say we not along and and then we come into January and March and that's where it starts to get much trickier. But this is this is a nice, this is a nice event tonight I'm looking forward to it. I think unless the principles object I think we should go in chronological order so starting with Madame Pierre Maxwell, followed by Mr. Merringer and then finishing up with Dr. Janger and then with the AA, where we hear from Miss Fernandez. So I don't see any objections so Madame Pierre Maxwell you can go ahead. Thank you. Good evening everyone. First I'd like to wish a happy Hanukkah to anyone who's celebrating tonight and starting their eight day at night celebration. So I want to thank the school committee members for having me tonight to present a summary of where we are at Gibbs and what we would like for next year. So I'm happy to hear maybe everything somebody say yes to tonight. And then maybe, maybe somebody thinking in February. But so far, I was reviewing over last school year at this time, when former principal the Francisco presented to this school committee and say we were fully engaging in helping our responsive classroom and that was well underway and our well he was servicing the school. And I must support that responsive classroom has been really a great philosophy and framework for our school which was timely implemented to help us, transition to school year, dealing with all the effects of COVID has had on our families and the framework really focused on cooperation, perseverance, academic mindset so children can really stay the course even under difficult conditions, empathy, self control responsibilities, all these skills that our children especially needs today to be successful doing school very differently than they were used to doing it. Also, we have had the opportunity for a grant find by us for by the director of the SCL for Allington Public School, Miss Sarah Bird that has allowed us to give a COVID screening to all of our sixth graders to help us identified where the children are socially emotionally and so over 95% of the children have taken the COVID screener and so I'm glad to report not too many of our kids or were identified as tier three but in that case those who were we in communication with their families. And we have a partnership with the AYCC and the interface to assist us in providing the appropriate services for those children. In addition to our school counselors and our social workers and all the other staff were helping the classroom teachers to support our students. So, so far so good. And did our first term and we are in the process of taking a closer look at the children's academic performance to see where they are. Over the next few weeks we will be examining the results and really think about what's going well and what can we do better to support our students moving into the second terms and definitely see what can be improved as soon as we return from the winter break. So, before I speak to what we really think we will need next year to support the school to continue the work that we're doing is that I want to put the caveat that the elephant in the room is that we don't know if we're still going to be under this very specific restriction of the COVID. So whatever estimation I'm giving tonight as well put by Ms. Morgan may really be changed by the time we get to mid year based on what our seven elementary school fifth graders will be needed to really make that transition in an effective way. So that said, we're looking at next year needing a point three world language teacher in Spanish to really balance the need for we have many students requesting Spanish as a language so point three was actually approved and added, but we have not been able to fill the position because of just not able to find a person for that point three so that is still something we will need will continue to look this year but if we're not successful, that's a position we hope to be able to hire for next year. We're also looking at one full time math coach interventionist anticipating to be able to support many of our students who may be it's really going to be a question of equity next year, looking at what the students have received as you know our students in a hybrid program, or physically here two days of the week and the other two days and a half at home. So we're anticipating some of our kid is going to have some very specific means. And we would like to be able to intervene timely to make sure that we are helping them being able to be successful next year in the sixth grade. We're also asking for an additional office assistant currently we have one at the Gibbs school versus a 2.6 of that same position at the audition. Our office assistant miss Angelakis, she is fabulous, but she is also just one person and servicing over 500 people if you count the students and we have a staff of about 77 people and I'm grateful that not being a I am a new principal to allington but not a new principal so I've been able to take on some of those recent abilities typically an assistant will be doing so we would very much appreciate to have someone else in the building to help assist with all the different with some faculties a school this size need to take care of and certainly COVID has added so many other procedural aspect of the work for myself and miss Salvatore who's the assistant principal so we definitely could use some assistant not just next year but also this school year. We're looking at adding some more building subs in in the building. This is something that I did look into even pre COVID when I was giving the position in conversation with Miss Salvatore and principal differences go as I was transitioning because we really want to maximize Miss Salvatore's time working more on academic issues supporting teachers being in classroom versus spending a significant amount of time right now covering lunchtime and doing other tasks that we think will be better serve. We had more building subs helping us support the learning communities and doing coverage when teachers are out etc also helping monitoring when we have a recess and and these types of activities and last but not least also a school social worker again on the issue of how students coping with this current condition under COVID having to adjust to learning either fully at home or part time in school. We're hoping that the children are resilient and we won't have too many tier two and tier three students. However, currently the school is being serviced by one social worker who's mainly servicing children who may have an individualized plan. So therefore we are anticipating that our tier one students to remain tier one will need some special attention. So that's the reason for asking that 1.0 social worker and Mr. Merringer and I have had conversation where we actually discussed sharing one extra. And I think that probably both school would need one to support what's going on in the individual buildings. So these were the staffing priorities we have for next year and then non staffing priorities. They remain practically the same which is the fundings to support our MTSS and UDL training for all staff, the MTSS framework, that's also embedded the just designing experiences where teachers can really think of the whole students and having lessons that is proactively meeting the needs of all of our students. And so they do still need some significant training in that every time they are thinking of creating lessons to think of the social emotional the academic and the behavioral all at once but not just for our maybe a proficient or advanced students but all students. So we feel that the staff can benefit from some more trainings there and of course to continue to train any new staff members in responsive classroom and maintaining that training for our staff who have had received it taking them to the next level to continue to do well with the framework. We also would like funding to get further into project based learning, the staff is still at an infancy stage in doing this work and also having the code teaching model at Gibbs school where our teacher liaison and the core classroom are learning to collaborate together and servicing the students so and last but not least certainly in the issue of equity inclusion and anti racist, which is a work that we all know it's long term work and difficult work so we would like to have some support for all these practices that we currently using at the school and think is really serving us well and we would like to continue to use them at the Gibbs school I appreciate your attention, I hope I didn't time myself so hopefully I didn't take too long. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Great. So I think we should do questions by level I know I can't. I'm not going to be able to track the social workers school to school so questions for Madame here Maxwell. Mr. Cardin. Thanks. So this might actually be for Mr. Spiegel but I always get confused about the difference between a school counselor and a social worker and I know we have social workers that specifically fulfill needs on IEP's. And then I thought we had school counselors which basically did social work type services. So that's a question to helping with course selection and other things so can can someone explain the difference. Fabian would you like me to explain. Yes, at the middle school level the school counselors are social workers because there isn't a you know that formerly guidance counselor model at the middle school level so for the middle school level they're used interchangeably as far as the title but Rob it would be hired under General Ed social worker. You have more flexibility with the licensure for the school counselors I mean there's a school counselor licenses which is all now, which I believe they all have and I think they also all have or have the school so for the counselor license. I think this is sort of more analogous to there's a couple of positions at the high school that are general and social workers that support students, social emotional needs not necessarily under IEP's. I think that's probably the need at the middle school as well that is being requested to have general and social workers to really support social emotional, and Mr manager or Madame Pierre Maxwell can sort of jump in as what the school counselors do is a lot of the scheduling a lot of 504 management, I think, and probably a lot of a longer list that I can name right now but I think the social worker I think that they're looking for is more specifically focused on social emotional counseling needs for under for any student but it would be a general and position. Yeah, can I can I actually speak to it since you know I'm looking to potentially share this position with you know but so the idea right now the setup is that we right now at the middle school at the autism we have for school counselors. Traditionally, you can think of almost a guidance counselor we divide those case loads up pretty evenly so we, they each have about 225 students that they're taking care of, they're doing anything from scheduling to help with issues of friendships sometimes they're doing some counseling, but they usually don't have like weekly counseling sessions that you would have on an IEP. And one of the difficulties that we're running into is we have two social workers, one for seventh grade and one for eighth grade but they work almost exclusively with kids on IEPs. One of the things that we're seeing is sometimes kids need more regular counseling than what we can really provide from school counseling, but we don't really have a place for those kids to go, because the social workers who see kids routinely are only for kids on IEPs. And what we're really seeing is when kids suffer from anxiety or depression or sometimes there's an event that happens, and we would like them to meet with a social worker, more regularly, the only way we can really access that is by getting an IEP. So we're seeing an increased number of parents looking for more social emotional help, and as a school we're saying, Well, we can kind of stop gap it a little bit by having you meet with a counselor, but we won't really have much to offer you long term. And I think there's been a couple of incidents in which I think if we had had a regular general ed counselor, I think we could have probably just have them meet with the student instead of going through the IEP process. And I think both Madame and I are worried about next year, we don't know what the social emotional impact is going to look like, but we definitely want to provide that level of support for kids who are in the general education program. So just a follow up, just a follow up, is it because the four school counselors don't have time in their schedules to see people regularly or because they don't have the skills needed to do that. They don't have the time. It's a time issue, not a skill issue, but you'll have someone that has something that happens and they're needing like weekly check-ins. So for some times, it might be a shorter period for two or three weeks that they might need, you know, coming in and daily counseling, kids with school refusal, and it might be more intensive counseling to get them in through the door to deal with something that might have happened in their lives. And then they're fine. But we're really finding that there's, there's a group of people and I think this was even pre-COVID for us at the middle school was it was a real gap, because the school counselors, they do have 225 kids on their caseload. Enrollment's going to go up. They're going to have 250. That's a lot of kids to kind of look after, parent phone calls, check in with kids, friends' issues, changing schedules, trying to help them with their grades. They're busy seeing kids all day. And when you have that one or two students that all of a sudden walk through the door and they need to meet with someone for a half an hour every two or three days, I don't think we, you know, can necessarily meet their needs. Okay, thanks. That's helpful. And then my other, it's more of a point for Mr. Mason and Dr. Vody. I think for next year I would suggest that we need to have sort of a category in our budget for recovery services. Things that we need, we think we're going to need for next year to recover, you know, assuming we're back in school, knock on wood. But things that we need to recover from this year that might be one year only things and separate that out from things that we need going forward for regular enrollment growth or whatever because I think those one year things are going to be easier to justify than funding other long-term initiatives right now. So, I would definitely advocate for that. Maybe something we can discuss at budget. Thank you. Anybody else for Madame Pierre Maxwell? Mr. Schickman with that your hand, I'm sorry. Yeah, that was my hand. I don't know if this is specifically for Madame Pierre Maxwell or for Mr. Merringer, because we're on the topic of social workers. Which is something I've advocated for for the past several years. Maybe my experience is an urban district principal is substantively different than what we're experiencing on Arlington, and I'm willing to go and accept that as a hypothesis. But a lot of the things that I've needed social workers for were for things that were not necessarily tied to an IEP because family trauma and other things that have impact that require a social worker aren't limited to kids with IEPs. In fact, often happen to kids who don't. So, I would think that one of the priorities would be to add social workers who were not targeted to special ed IEPs but to the situational aspects of life that kids are confronting right now. And I'm sure that that's going to be even more dramatic as we are returning from COVID. I think that's exactly the point, Mr. Schlickman, you stated in exactly what we wanted to say. The current social worker at Gibbs school is servicing children who already have an IEP, but currently without two school counselors, we're noticing there's more work to do with our tier one students. And the way we're set up requires it's a difficult, it's a different dynamic now to create small community and group with the students so that in itself takes more time for those two persons to be able to make that happen for everyone. And we have other children who are being very affected. They want to turn on their screen or they don't want to participate and the parents are not sure how to assist them. So, there is a lot more work to be done with children who typically would have been tier one students but now because of the different where they are dealing with this whole situation, we're seeing that we need more help for our regular ed population versus just children who may have been officially identified. Thank you. I just couldn't run a school without a social worker who met with the general population. And I think this has to be a really huge priority going forward, especially because of the turmoil that we've experienced this year. Great. Anybody else? So, my comment and this can be, I won't repeat it, Mr. Merringer, because the examples that I have heard have actually been at the oddison but I'm sure that there are situations like this at the Gibbs as well where there are students who are in the general education population and you've spoken to it who need to have access to a social worker and your staff has agreed with the parents who have agreed. So, everybody's in agreement and there is literally not time to see them and I think the other excruciating issue with this that hasn't been touched on and I would like to add it is that there is not availability of people to work with children in this community basically anywhere. Parents cannot get their kids in, even if they have private health insurance that will pay for it. When they are dogged about finding somebody to work with their kid, you literally cannot find a mental health professional with availability to work with children in the greater Boston area at this time. So, to the extent that we can provide those services to students in our schools, I think it's really, it's really critical because they just are not available to people elsewhere. Anybody else on the Gibbs? Mr. Merringer, you're up. Thank you. So happy holidays to everyone and I just wanted to briefly go over some budget requests here for the oddison. It is a little bit more of a difficult year to forecast as we know through enrollment increases which we think will happen but we're not really sure. We don't know exactly some of the academic impact that this year will have on our students and we don't know some of the social emotional effects that it will have on our students. We're trying to look at all these factors and come up with a come up with requests for next year. The first request we'd like to make it the oddison is to have an extra half cluster or half learning community. So just to let you know last year. We had eight learning communities. We requested another half a learning community last spring. It was graciously approved so we were coming into this year with eight and a half during the summer because of needs of classroom space and remote Academy. We moved up to nine learning communities. We would like to keep those nine learning communities. It's somewhere between 940 to probably 990 students. We would like the learning community sizes to be anywhere between 105 and 110. We would like to keep class sizes a little bit smaller 21 to 22 kids and not go over that. We think there's going to be more individual attention needed. We're really looking for nine learning communities which is an increasing to FTE. I already talked a little bit about the social worker so we're looking to increase services there. We are also looking to increase a reading teacher so currently right now the Gibbs has three reading teachers we have to at the oddison. We're looking at the amount of reading students right now at the Gibbs. There's 82 students which is a much bigger group of students that will be entering into the oddison looking for reading support. It's something that right now we have two reading teachers but they have a very busy case load and we think that that's going to be busy next year again and increase in the future years. We're looking at a point to math support teacher. We're just feeling that to get another class of math support as we increase enrollment. And then the last thing we are thinking is at the middle school we do have study halls and we're thinking right now we'd like to get to instructional support specialist, which would be almost smaller tutors for kids to go to that study halls to get extra help. So in the high school it's almost a learning center model. We're trying to look at the high school and kind of come up with a learning center model for those kids who aren't on IEP's but need a little extra support in a smaller setting other than a study hall which for us is usually run by a building sub. So those are really the requests that we're looking for at the oddison. Any questions or comments for Mr. Mason? I mean for Mr. Mason. Mr. Meringer. Mr. Mason I'm sure you could take on running a middle school. I have no doubt but. Thanks. Mr. Meringer. I think Mr. Meringer would rather have the checkbook in his own hands. Yeah, yeah. Anybody else for Mr. Meringer? This isn't really a question. It's more of a statement that I agree that this would next year would be the year to try and keep class sizes down. Given everything that everyone's going to be dealing with coming back hopefully. So that's all. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much Mr. Meringer. Dr. Minger. Thank you very much. So I was remembering back to last year this time when I thought that the big struggle coming into this year was going to be a building project, which most of us aren't talking about very much. And I think Mr. Meringer was said it very well when he talked about the big characterization of this coming year is uncertainty. I'm going to try to be short and I'm going to try to keep it simple. The things that have driven our enrollment growth over I mean our staffing growth, which our main budget asked each year. Over the last years have been enrollment and continue to be enrollment, but we had a very different outcome this year as a result of the pandemic. So I think we have concerns obviously about addressing COVID readiness for students coming up in the fall addressing mental health issues, building out those programs, building out academic support, potentially building up capacity and things like our learning center, and our other support programs. Those are all embedded in the conversation that I'm going to have, but the practice that has worked pretty well given the way that the high school program gets set which is that around this time every year. We begin the process of building out looking at student needs building out our various class offerings, get the class offering and then driven based on student need we build the schedule. What we've done over the last years and that's represented in the table and the memo that I sent you is tried to work off essentially a multiplier which keeps our staffing consistent at the level we're at now I'm just going to say this right now. If we have additional funds to provide additional social workers or additional teachers to support the concerns that we do have going forward. We will 100% take them. So what we're talking about here is how we work with the flat funding that's based on enrollment growth. So this year we'd expected growth of anywhere from 40 to 105 students. And as a result of the pandemic and likely the construction project we actually were flat we went down by just a handful like four or five students depending on which day you look. Based on our estimates right now we're estimating 36 students next year which would be part of the anticipated increase and not recouping many of the students that went elsewhere. If that's not the case we're going to obviously be looking for reserve positions. So in addition to this I would just make a recommendation in planning the schedule that the superintendent this year have a large portion of reserve positions, because the enrollment levels at different levels are going to be very hard to predict. So again, with the 36 students anticipated. In order to keep enrollment levels high and staff I'm sorry staffing levels where they are staff the classes that we would need to staff for those additional students, and then proportionally staff the support services we would need for those additional We would be looking at 2.45 FTE and the way we anticipate distributing those right now would be that two of those FTE would go towards classroom teachers staffing core classes and also at this point we really are desperate for staffing additional electives as you can see right now and students would like to get a fourth class but where there's not enough room for that. And we've also been going through this five year process of building inclusion model around co teaching. At this point, we have co teaching in every single core department area except for the world languages. And then almost all of the required classes in order for those co talk classes to be truly inclusion, you really want to keep the number of students and I appease under 30% and so we anticipate needing a couple more sections of co teaching, in order to be able to provide the inclusion of students. And then an ask that is new this year driven by student need, not by the increase in increase in enrollment is the speech and language pathologist assistant. And I know that Ms Elmer will be talking about that more when she speaks about the budget from the special education perspective but simple to simply put the speech and language pathologist assistant is supervised by our current speech instructor and allows us to serve a wider range of students with the increasing need for that level. So that's a relatively simple ask and it's outlined in terms of the general expectations that lead to that based on the model we have at the school. But in addition, next year, we will be finishing very exciting phase one. So the building that's currently going up in the front, the steel is going up will be done in January of 2022 if all things go according to plan. We will create some staffing needs, as well as some other costs. So right now going into the fall, the coordination of the process of moving half the school halfway through the year, coordinating the construction project and then during phase two classes that will now be wrapping around the construction project which will be happening where the theater is. We really anticipate that the administration particularly the assistant principal is going to need a half time secretary to support the logistics around that and scheduling. In addition, built into the building there's two entrances. So in the design of the building there's a main entrance on the field side and a main entrance on the mass outside. The main entrance on the mass outside will be open. Right now we have a temporary main entrance on the other side. Those are intended to be staffed by an attendance and reception person. And that person will start halfway through the year. So that's half an FTE, and that is carried over to the next year when it'll have to be a full time position. In addition, as we are wrapping around the building, right now we have a mile and a half of hallways. We will have even more during the construction project. And in order to be able to supervise that sprawling building, and particularly the links we're looking again needing a half time paraprofessional building sub so those combined into a 1.0 paraprofessional position. It's actually two positions hired halfway through the year, which is why in order to make them full time the following year you'll need to add an additional position. So that's 1.5 positions for the building project. We're skipping down pretty quickly through the memo. The one additional cost which is worth noting related to the building project is when we return in the fall. A number of staff who are moved across the building in order to get into the spaces that were appropriate for their classes the in school programming that we have right now are going to need to move back or into other spaces there will be some changes from then. And then in January, almost 80% of the building will be either moving classrooms within the existing buildings, or shifting into the new building and by contract, those staff get a per diem for the move so we're anticipating roughly $40,000 in staff per diem essentially a day's pay for everybody for every teacher in the school. I just want to remind folks as we're planning going into the next year that in the process of preparing for the pandemic and for the remote instruction in particular. We high school and across the district handed out a large number of Chromebooks. We've also broken up our computer labs in order to get teachers monitors and distributed materials around so those are going to have to be recouped and refurbished we expect to have some breakage and loss and so planning for the that digital technology is going to be extremely important. So that is a very truncated version of the budget for this year and I thank you for your attention. Thank you questions or comments. Let me speak that shortly you're all stopped. Mr. Schickman. No, no, no, no, we're not stumped. I just wanted to ask Dr. Janger his thoughts on maintaining the four by four schedule next year. So, there's a number of things that we have done this year, which are good practices that are successful in other areas. And based on learning and experience this year some people are asking the question, the four by four schedule had our genius grouping, and, and some of the structures we've had around advisory. I would say that is a conversation for later in the year for January and February. I know that there's a lot of support for that in the English department and there's a lot of support for that and special education. I also know that there have been concerns around that for math and world language and performing arts. So it is a conversation we will have, but it's not a conversation I'm prepared to have I can only handle so many balls in the air at the same time. I only asked that for budgetary purposes. I don't think that it will really it does make some effects in the way we shuffle, but it doesn't affect staffing levels the way we are right now. There is one advantage to the four by four if you build it out, which does allow students to accelerate. And there are students right now who are experiencing that and looking to take more classes. That would would if we could, it would be nice to be able to staff that in order to give students more opportunities. Yeah, that that impacts the kinds of teachers you need to have within within the schedule day as well. So, you know, I'm looking at that in terms of what what's going to happen with the schedule now. You also mentioned the stipends and the move is that something coming out of our operating budget. The high schools operating budget is this a line item, but where do I find that money in the budget process. Dr Brody and Michael Mason would you like to respond to that. Kathy, you want me to respond to that. Yeah, so this is something that we're not we're not entirely sure. But we believe that this will probably work with the town to come out of a capital related request. This since it's tied to the project. But I can't speak with certainty yet I'm not sure if Kathy wants to add to that. We don't know the answer to that yet. I'm not sure for now but obviously we're going to need to know the answer that as we're looking to build a more solid budget for next year. Thank you. Thanks. So, again, just repeating the comment. I mean you mentioned that you're looking sort of at the flat budget but it, I would put together a recovery budget and things that you think you need for next year to recover from this to go along with your additional requests. So just to be clear as I was trying to say at the beginning. The fact that I'm not asking for additional funds in order to do the recovery programming. But it doesn't mean that we're not already planning around recovery programming. So the issue for us becomes I mean I try very hard to be within the realality of the money that is available there's not infinite funds available. And so, I mean I can tell you right now where we would put additional funds if we had them right we would put them towards social work we would put them towards learning center would put them towards building out our harbor program, building out the place, building out the learning center, and potentially towards enter towards summer school and, and potentially night school if that becomes an issue later on. We work within the funds that we have and the staffing that we have to build those things and you know that is where we've built over time those programs out of existing funds and levels. Okay, but, but, but for next year we have the opportunity to ask for additional funds, specifically for recovery purposes. So we should we should make a request. We may not get it, but we should make a request. Sure. Thank you. Mr. Kevin. Yeah, I just, I had a general comment to make after all three presentations so thanks to all three principles for their presentations tonight and that is that I'm sitting here in December, we can know and understand everything we're going to need in September of 2021. And so I do think. And I, I'm sure budget subcommittees already thinking about this Dr. Bode and Mr Mason already thinking about this but we do, we should have a reserve fund of some amount in the budget to accommodate items and resources of personnel and resources that we're, we're going to figure out we need over the course of the summer. We're not going to have it all I don't think we're going to have the whole budget. And we're going to have to present a budget to town meeting I understand that's our duty and responsible and we'll do that. But within that budget there needs to be some unanswered some some money for unanswered questions, because we're not going to have a final idea of what the school year is going to look like. And I think until sometime in the summer, there's a lot of a lot we have to do to get ready. And so that's my only point. Thank you. Dr. Bode. I totally agree with the comments been made about reserve positions and because what's going to be involved with recovery. We don't entirely know yet. We've always, in many recent years, had some built in reserve positions. We're going to ask for an increase in those numbers this year, for exactly the reason you mentioned that we're not going to know really until after the budget is approved, what our needs could be this summer. Thank you. I just want to echo what Mr. Cardin said that the more specific you can be about needs and recovery. The more help we can be to you because this year, the dance between the town and schools in terms of how much money we get is going to be squishy because it's not following normal. It's a normal formula, but there's going to be other negotiations going on. And so if we have specifics that, and this actually goes for all principles. If we have specifics, it's easier for us to advocate strongly and so help us help you. Thank you. And I'm going to have to be driving soon so I'll listen in but I won't be able to talk or anything. Okay, anybody else for Dr. Janger. Great. Okay. Thank you, Madame Pierre Maxwell and Mr. Merringer and Dr. Janger for doing yours. I hope that I know Dr. Janger later on the schedule I hope Mr. Merringer Madame Pierre Maxwell you can stay to listen to Ms. Fernandez do the a budget priorities and then we'll do questions for her and then that will wrap up our budget process for this evening. So Ms. Fernandez go ahead. Thank you all for the opportunity to share with you this evening the AA's budget priorities for the secondary level. This year has been very difficult in many ways but one of the best things to come from it is that in terms of teaching staff we are finally close to appropriately staffed by hiring additional teachers particularly in special education our class sizes and caseloads have been brought down to a level that's much more manageable. We want to advocate for retaining the extra positions that were added this year, such as the learning communities at the Gibbs and at Odyssey and particularly the special education additions in grades six through eight. One area that still needs additional staffing is counseling. The pandemic has increased the need for social emotional outreach and mental health counseling and our counselors are stretched very thin as it is. Additional counselors and social workers for students who are not on IEPs would enable them to more quickly respond to student needs and allow time in their schedules for teaching coping skills preventively before the problems arise. Our special educators have been working above and beyond this year with increased required documentation and increased communication with families, learning to support students in a new way. And of course at the high school being the only teachers in the building each day with students. Teachers in our special education programs in particular are responsible for providing services teaching classes and managing a caseload. But some of them also do the extra work of running their programs, which would include scheduling students and scheduling their BSPs and handling the overall communication about the programs. So we are requesting a stipend for these program leader positions to reflect that extra work. In addition, we strongly believe the school committee needs to plan for salary increases for all educators. We have been working over time this past year without additional compensation. The shift to remote and hybrid teaching has meant a complete redesign of curriculum from pre K to 12 with almost no time in which to do that work. There's also an increase in communication with students and families who are working remotely, which is taking additional hours every day. Many of our staff are putting their lives on the line each day to come into buildings. During a time of unprecedented community spread of a deadly disease. But beyond the pandemic Arlington continues to lose highly qualified staff to neighboring districts that offer higher salaries. We don't want to be the training ground for great teachers in other districts. And that means offering a competitive compensation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fernandez. Questions. Great. So thank you to everybody who presented tonight. Thank you to the, to the AA and your team and to Madame Pierre Maxwell and Mr. manager and Dr. Jinger. I appreciate this part of the process. This is my favorite part of the process. So I'm glad that we were able to do this this evening. So, and for the public that the documents are all in novice that list out that list out the requests. Great. So the next item on the agenda is the Arlington high school hybrid options discussion. Are you going to start or do you want Dr. Jinger to start? I think it would be appropriate for Dr. Jinger to start. Thank you. All right. Dr. Jinger, go ahead. That's why no one heard my question because I'm muted. All right, so I'm going to share my screen now if that's all right. Does everyone's hit now see our length in high school semester to proposal? Yes, thanks. Okay. So I'm going to present all 105 slides that are showed here. I'm kidding. I'm not going to do that. But there's been a lot of conversation around sort of showing work and having detail. And so I wanted to pull as much as possible of the information and work that's been done on this together in one place. So that folks could go through this in some detail. I've made I believe four presentations to the school committee about this topic. More slide shows. There have been surveys and videos sent out to the community. I've had two focus groups with parents. The listening session that we had recently with the community, two focus groups with students, two folks, a team of staff working with me on this. So there's been a lot of effort to try to make this. And one of the things I realized in being a principal and principal now for a long time is there come times when you have to these decisions you have to make where no matter what decision you make, there are people angry at you on both sides. And what really we, I and the school committee are called upon to do is to listen to both sides with an open mind to look at the information that we have and then to make the best decision we can. And to understand that most likely we will, we will continue to have some strong voices on both sides of the issue that aren't happy with where we are. And that's not what we like to do most of the time in my department heads and my team with my staff and conversations we really work to have conversations that are by consensus. But in this kind of an environment it's not always possible because people have individual needs and individual concerns that aren't served. And so I understand that and I'm listening and have heard what folks have been talking about. So, in this presentation I feel like we've had a lot of conversations and a lot of depth and I'm going to just talk a little now. But people want things that are simple to understand because these schedules are very complicated it's hard to visualize. It's hard to walk yourself through it. It's hard to understand all of the tradeoffs that you would go into there. And I have a lot of conversations about can I know exactly what would happen, but it misunderstands the way a high school schedule was built, which is it depends on who chooses what we go through. And if you know this many students choose BC calculus we run a section if they don't we don't. In this case if we were dividing the school into two or three piles to create a hybrid model. And where those students made selections and what we were able to staff, whether we would be able to offer sections for example of that at all. So what I can tell you is that classes that span across their standalone would be affected classes that are spread across grades would be affected, but I can't tell you exactly which ones we would choose to consolidate or cut or shift and then, depending on what programming and what staffing we had available, whether we could run tinier sections of some of those things. So, going quickly at the 30,000 foot level. So what I want to do quickly I just reviewed the process. I want to very quickly review the survey results I want to make a proposal because I believe that we are at that place and then I'd like to clarify what I'd like to do for planning steps. So I'm going to oops, which just happened. That wasn't supposed to happen. All right, my computer's doing weird things I apologize. All right, so we talked about these focus goals and the question was across all of them to look at each of these different models in order to try to focus on what approach is going to serve best. So we had these different key goals that we have and how to prioritize those goals in the different models we had a good response rate we had 414 students, 757 parents, 88 teachers that's a fairly large proportion of each of those populations. Again, so I used to do survey research and I'm not saying that this is brilliant and maybe my research approach led to a survey like this that is complicated to read, but was meant to help me to understand and to get a clear view of not just the sort of high level what do people want, but to really dig down under it. So in the end when one does a survey like this, sometimes you don't get a clear answer, but in this case, I think we did. And the clear answer is this first. If you look at the levels of satisfaction, about 80% of folks on this satisfaction students and families, three and above on a Likert scale are saying that they're relatively satisfied with the current model, and almost all staff are saying they're really satisfied with the current model. Why is it different, because they have different priorities as you'll see down as you saw, when we talked about that below, but in both cases, those are extremely high levels of satisfaction. In terms of academic progress, our students and our families were reporting that the levels of academic work and challenge were about right for most a little high and a little low students feeling a little high parents feeling a little low, but on generally on target. And staff quite remarkably given the situation, we're reporting in 83% of the cases that students were at or above standard. Now remember, this isn't a case when we keep talking about how students are falling behind academically. I met today with principals from the middle sex league, and they were talking about failure rates that were double their normal rate. And so we're looking at students making adequate academic progress in spite of the challenges that teachers talking about that today. I think you've seen letters from teachers there've been comments throughout. That's being done on the shoulders of teachers who are working tirelessly long hours, much beyond, you know, 40 or 50 hour week, in order to change what they teach to follow up with students that's why the attendance is strong to grade and get feedback quickly to modify things. And that's a huge burden, and one that is not entirely sustainable we've been doing this now for eight months reinventing ourselves every few months and doing it under conditions of extreme uncertainty and anxiety and stress for ourselves. One of the most recent analysis we did was the quarter grades which just ended. And I did not know right we worry every year, every fall, we get together our student study team and our concern with all the students that are failing. And then every year we look back and say but is it more or less than in the past. And when we ran the quarter grade comparison, this year, compared to last year. I'm not probably surprised to find the D's and F's are consistent with past proportions. So the numbers are smaller remember because we're offering fewer classes so what we're looking at is the proportion of grades. And one of the things we saw and the teachers have been talking about this is that we actually have a higher level of AIDS. The question then would be is that great inflation well the conversation has been teachers going to the department heads and saying, I'm sorry but the kids are doing really good work we're giving them some better grades. And so that's really pretty again remarkable. Given the current situation. That's just a pretty picture of the same information. At the same time, we're seeing continuing levels of attendance, but we know and this is really super important. There are students who are really struggling. We have ongoing concern about student social interaction and isolation and worry. We have ongoing concern for students who need more in person academics. We are not seeing an increase in M's although we're calculating differently because the quarters versus the semester versus, but it appears that the number of students who medically excused from the work is not above what it has been in the past this time. But we are worried about it and we're worried that over time right the fatigue continues to to mount and so it is something that we're really concerned about. But at this point what we are seeing is a high level of success and a relatively high level of satisfaction with the current model. So then we look at the model comparisons. I'm going to be very quick. You are offered essentially four models. And the three different models were meant to test not just individual, you can do it this way, but they had features that allowed us to see whether or not people wanted particular things. So the four cohort model got you in without having to change the schedule without having to have a remote active Academy got you into class on a regular basis, but it had to trade off of four cohorts, because that's what our building demands. The departmental shift kept our current model, but created more structure so that students would come in once or twice a week in order to be able to have that social interaction. And then the grade shift to cohort model was a way of solving this question of can we do a two cohort model. But the only way to do that is to divide the school in half and to have a remote Academy, if one did a simple AB cohort that still be a division of the school in some way and there would also be the need for the mode Academy so there is a loss of opportunity. We can't say exactly what it would be. But we know that classes there stand alone classes that have combinations of 10th 11th 9th 12th graders in them would be split in half and then depending on where students fell, we would either offer one or the other or neither or have to staff them differently that we'd have to simplify electives. We'd have to reduce offerings particularly in things like Mandarin Italian and Latin because there's only a small number of courses in each of those levels in those. So those are the things that would be affected. And what did we see? We saw that the priorities were different. Teachers prioritized safety, COVID readiness, mental health, equity and academics as the sort of fourth and fifth that tended to be tied. And families and students both prioritize safety, academics, mental health, and then social interaction and COVID readiness were in their fourth and fifth category. The question was asking people what were they most concerned with. And so what we see then is that although these things are levels of concern for a large proportion of the population, their levels of concern were first safety and then academics fell before mental health for this families and students. It doesn't again mean that for those students struggling with mental health concerns that it is not a five for them. That it's not right at the top of their priorities. And that's something we need to differentiate for. So I'm not going to talk very quickly about those, but so that led us down to the comparison. Based on those priorities, which model did students, families and staff feel Beth served those priority areas. And that's where the survey was shockingly clear. In every single category, but one, students, families and staff agree that the departmental shift best serves those priority areas. But to keep on moving around looking for a better option. When it is clear that that departmental shift, it's not that they're saying well I like mental, I think mental health is important. And this one's better for mental health but academics is less. And therefore maybe there's a trade off that's close. It's really not close at all. It's the only place where the departmental shift doesn't come in first is in students perception of safety, where it's roughly tied with the four cohort model. And the grade shift to cohort model which gives you an example of how much appetite, people have. I mean that's a one to one trade off every other week. And when you get a sense of how much appetite people have for changing course required options and having and lost losing instructional time, in order to get in. And that's the least popular model and the one that most of the community feels least well serves mental health and even social interaction. And so it seems pretty clear to me that that's the direction we want to go. Now the next question people said many people said was well why not just keep the current model. When you look at the survey I'm only doing the chart version this is the pretty picture version, but the simple summary is actually in each category, people slightly preferred the current model over the departmental shift. And the reason for that if you look very quickly through each of these is that is the, the plus in fewer, fewer meetings. And not to dispense with the survey there when when it serves suits us, but that's issue. One being safe versus another being safe I think goes to the planning that we have to do now. So my proposal my recommendation is that we assume a departmental shift. And the reason why I would say a departmental shift and not the current model is because the main difference between the two is that the reverse field trips were intermittent. They were difficult to plan. And they were not necessarily very effective. And with the time we have in the experience we have, we can schedule those in a rotation I've already started meeting with departments in anticipation of this to see what they would want to do to think about you know where would the band meet where would the chorus meet. And then would they schedule to be able to do that how would they transition. What would that look like for the drama class how would you do that's the last people I met with. And so my recommendation is that we do adopt the departmental shift we keep the current semesterized model. If you look at the little blue links if anybody's going through that that's where you can find the videos of me explaining each of these models in more detail. So I'm going to go through that this is what we've already talked about the departmental shift with a rotation. As I was explaining before the difference in a shift and a field trip is that we planned for two field trips. And we hope we pushed on teachers to make them happen under the departmental shift, given that there's a 17 week term that we probably don't want one the first and last week of the term. We're going to lose some time for AP exams MCAS and other things we imagine doing a rotation that would mean that each class would meet four to eight times, and that we would have department by department conversations about how those were structured. We have the large spaces we have our other large spaces and we propose to build out the larger lab spaces, so that different programs can use them effectively. In terms of COVID readiness and the next I think addresses that safety concern that many of the groups had that we're not going to hold in person instruction if there's reasonable concern about in school transmission. And that we absolutely believe that we can set up facilities where staff can control their, their interaction with kids and where social distancing can be reasonable and ventilation can be substantial. Under this any student can choose remote. So if there are folks who are particularly concerned about coming in, they don't have to choose to come in for the shifts. So what would I see as the planning timeline and some of the issues. So I'm hoping very much that you make a decision tonight. I had actually hoped that we would make a decision a few weeks ago but we discussed when was the last point at which the decision could happen. This was the data that we were targeting. Why is that because the end of the semester is not far away we have a week and a half before Christmas. And then we will come back for about three to four weeks, and then it will be the next semester. And then we will have two weeks to plan the staff, which we like we will want to do for programming potentially for support programming for students that we talked about later to fill the various slots. We need to start hiring that staff now it takes two to four weeks to do so. It takes two to four weeks to plan programs and other supplemental things that we are working on. It will take us two to four weeks to finish ordering and building out sound systems and other sorts of things. We believe it's going to be necessary given the feedback we've gotten to do some follow up work at the actual schedule and to refine the number and sequence of shifts. I'd like to have we have heard a lot of feedback with concerns about the Wednesday schedule, and I actually believe that using the Wednesday time. We can address some of the issues about transmission transition that I think school committee members heard from students yesterday and that other folks have expressed. So that we can increase the transition time to make it easier for students to not get stranded at school before after a shift. We obviously have to address staffing needs. Some of those being issues around accommodations because there are staff that are concerned we need to work through what the staff concerns and issues are and potential hiring. We need to go through department by department, figuring out what those rotations are and figuring out what kinds of facilities issues we need. My plan would be that by January 4 or very soon thereafter, department rotation with more detail about how it's going to work and when it's going to work would be shared with staff and then shortly after with the community. A kid could look at their schedule and figure out what the schedule was going to look like and when they're going to come in and begin to work through planning for that. At that point, we're going to want students and parents to know enough to be able to affirmatively opt in or opt out of the shifts, which will affect our planning. And then February 8 semester two would begin. And when we return from break, we would expect the shifts would begin. So that is my hope. Some purchases that we imagine we've priced out sound systems for the large spaces with headsets for staff so that they don't have to touch anything and they can be heard easily when students are spread out. We have $20,000 for the spaces we have looking at projection and screens for those spaces up to about $5,000. I don't have a price on the electric heat lights and the links which would give us an additional outdoor space, particularly for chorus but also for other programs. We've already begun to purchase pads and muffles and things that allow the band to have more practice space. The labs for science. And that's actually science family and consumer science arts. We would need monitors so that you could watch from one to the other and plexiglass we're estimating about 8000 for the four labs. We would need to plan a bus for students coming in from Boston, the plan would be to actually specifically look at those students schedules, see how it's affected by the rotation because right now that bus is relatively full I believe on Mondays and Tuesdays but less on Thursdays and Fridays. So as much as we could shift the classes that those students are taking to have their shifts on Thursdays and Fridays, we hopefully could consolidate on the buses but there probably would be some additional transportation. We're already at the point now where a number of students are coming in from Boston, just to use the building and access services. And so we're at the point where we're just about needing another bus anyway. Then there's the issue of tutoring and targeted support, building programming, both building out some of the in school programs right now that we really want to promote to students who are beginning to struggle, as well as this possibility of creating a small focused hybrid Academy so can Academy for students who are really struggling that would focus on core requirements, most likely in the morning we believe that would take to FTE to support. And not entirely related to this but something which is just on our radar right now is this AP and MCAS preview and review which we've started to plan out. So to have students begin right now for their spring classes in preview for their their APs getting ramped up because the time is short. And for students who finished their APs right now and MCAS courses to be doing review as they go to the MCAS and the AP. So some additional planning that's not so much the timeline about this, but is an important thing that we are doing right now and will continue to do to develop academic interventions credit recovery in person options for struggling students and I just want to review this briefly because I was reviewing those with dr Bodie a memo went out recently to the parents about this it's gone out a few times, but I'm not sure the word is getting out and I'm not sure the school committee is understood. Right now we have the learning center it is open and available in school. We offer that to students who are to have need a supervised space with a tutor so they can come into school and work for days a week as long as there's space available with the staff tutors they're available. That's something that was in place before but now it's in place for in person a lot of the students are getting tutoring support remotely from those teachers but there's a very small number so there's there in the learning center, and that is something we can potentially build out the harbor program which supports students with social emotional challenges again a general education program for students with chronic and complex mental and medical health issues. And that staff and students are able to come into that program four days a week, if they need support in staying engaged with classes, and they're actually three paraprofessionals who do case management and support those students and staying engaged in classes, and they work with our social workers. That is a program which I wouldn't mind adding staffing to next year in anticipation, and which we may build out again if we reach capacity going into the spring. The workplace is a program that we have that's been remarkably effective those students have been coming in every day and those are students often who don't come in. And that's a student that's available for students who kind of need wraparound services, usually social work and more self contained programming. That's supported by two staff that's our oldest alternative program and again that program still has capacity is to people want to apply our special education programs have teachers and liaisons have reached out to every single special education student and offered them to be able to come into the building in person. The numbers of students coming in still remains relatively small, and most come in for only part of the day that come in for the class academic support, and if they have any special education class, and then many of them if they can transition home again. And then the last thing which I've mentioned a couple times, which once we've sort of worked on this, looking at the failures. One of the things we will start to do right away is to do a needs assessment around what kind of interest, what you know what kind of interest is there in a small focused hybrid Academy. And we, you know, because you can only staff you know one ninth grade English one ninth grade math. It would be ninth grade English it wouldn't be a range of different options and electives. So we have some models in mind about how that could work. And based on sort of some iterative conversations with the targeted population, we would float out a plan for that. So mental health interventions, we've talked before about the covert screening that's going forward. We have interface available I know, as Morgan talked before about the challenges of folks finding special education, finding support services for mental health. Obviously I know has been stepping up and, and offering services and then the interface program is something which gives us extra capacity for referral so if folks are having trouble finding resources for their children. Please reach out to our counselors and social workers, because they will help you to to connect and and if they're not able to and that's not working. Let me know so that we can escalate that because that is obviously something in his bird or social emotional learning director is really working on making sure that students have access. And then a big thing that everyone's worried about and I know we're worried about and I would like to start working on it as soon as possible. There are people already working on senior events, schoolwide events volunteer support and the student council activities for social interaction. We've talked about remote requests and I've already talked about model summaries so I am done. Thank you. Questions. So, Dr. Janger, can you stop sharing your screen just so that I can see where we're at it's there's perfect thank you so much we can go back to the slides. As needed. So, Mr. Heiner. So should we do. Should we do, let's do questions and comments and then I know there are. There were a few motions that came through Karen. So we can, we can work on looking at those but let's do questions. So I think, you know, questions on Dr. Janger's presentation, Ms. Extin, or comments, obviously. Sorry, I have a lot of thoughts here that I'm trying to. I mean, I feel like Dr. Janger brought sort of addressed some of the things that I was thinking about in terms of facilitating or supporting students transportation into school. That was a big concern at the meeting with the students yesterday sort of ways to address students staying if they're staying for a remote class after an in person class and how to make that more, more conducive to their learning. And they shared some ideas and so I guess so that's just something I'm thinking about but I feel like you talked about that to Dr. Janger and then you know the use of Wednesdays you had said something about would you switch classes? Can you say a little more about the Wednesdays? I guess that's I didn't fully understand what your thoughts are. This is one of these things that has been discussed with some groups of teachers but not many groups of teachers. And it's a conversation I'd like to sort of work through but I suffice it to say that around right now on purpose we consolidated a lot of our activities and we put a lot of activities that are not visible. Students support meetings, class prep, all those sorts of things on to Wednesday and use that as a place to put the PE classes and the advisory. So that was sort of an independent day. It means that students feel largely unsupervised during that day and so that's something that's not so anyway the idea is that there is some flexibility in moving around those times and we believe that moving around those times we can create some longer transition times as well as more support on Wednesdays. But we really want to make sure that that's a conversation we have with teachers and with the union because that's I cannot emphasize enough that part of the reason teachers have been able to be successful in making this turn to effectively engage students to follow up with students to keep those failure rates where they are and to make academic progress is because they've had time to reach those students to do the prep and to talk to their colleagues. So I want to have a conversation with them but I just suffice it to say we believe we can shift around time to create bigger transition times so the number of students and the length of time a student might not be able to transition would be shorter. The transition times would be longer. There would be more support on Wednesdays. And for the issue of study halls, we do currently have students, sizable numbers of students who are working in the building in study halls. And we know the setting that is necessary for them to be able to participate in a remote class effectively and kids are coming in in order to participate in those. And so we spread them out and we problem solve around that. We've purchased headsets that we've issued to students who are coming in regularly. They have about 80 right now left. We would probably need a lot more but that's budgeted for. And but I also, given the way we think the planning would work and given sort of the percentages, I think the number of students who would be sort of stuck for a study hall period would be in the five to 10 range. And it would be, you know, once every three weeks, it wouldn't be in the 50 to 100 range. And so we have plenty of room to spread those students out. But until I finalize the schedule, I promise you I will give you a matrix of why it works that way. But I don't really want to share it in detail right now because we have gone through that with folks. And it really begs me to, and then I will. And so I think right now, those are my, those are my sort of questions and comments. Thanks. Mr. Carter. Thanks. So to hopefully quick questions. So the, the four to eight times that there would be a shift. That's out of 17 weeks out of 17 weeks there might be a student that only has in person four times. No, that's per class. Right before times for like let's say I have an English class and I'd only be four times over the 17 weeks. So if you came in every other week in 17 weeks, and you didn't come in the first and last week that would be 15 weeks you come in seven times. Right. And so then the question is, and I think we asked the students yesterday and this is a question I think to have in terms of how much the students value the in person versus how much they don't want to have to do the transition. I think we want to make it so that students on average are coming in at least once a week. We in the accelerated model where it's every other week in the lab to rotating students are coming in on the order of two times a week. And so I think just right sizing that again based on some feedback from the community is going to be one of the conversations we need to have right away. Okay, so. Yeah, I mean so that's just helpful and understanding what we're approving is it's because of holidays and not doing the first week in the last week and taking weeks off for MCAS and other things that may only be four times. Five times, you know, for those classes that come every other week for the lab classes, it would be double that most likely right for super science it would be closer to the seven or eight. Yeah, I mean, again, I think we one of the things that we can do is really sort of tailor it I mean so right now family and consumer science. They're coming in every other week. I mean, half the class is coming in every other week. That's the way they're doing it right now. So a student comes in every other week, but somebody's coming in every other every week. Some of them are actually doing it two days. And so the kids are coming in every week. So, you know, right now, performing arts, they're performing before and after school on a pretty regular basis. So some of those are going to come in a lot more the question that becomes kind of the minimum expectation. I think, I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot right when you say, but that's the thing that you realize only 17 weeks is the semester and 17 weeks goes by like that. So if you came in every time it would be 17 times, which doesn't sound like very much come in every other time, it would be six day. It would be great to have kids coming in at least once a week. So that there is that regular contact. Okay. And then, do you have a sense of the course load for teachers right now do do we is it like 50% of doing three classes and 50% of doing two classes and that'll flip. Because it did it somehow end up that like 70% are doing three classes this term. And so therefore next term it'll be 70% doing two classes, about two thirds right now are doing three classes. And, but we've also held reserve positions and are looking to hire to be able to build out some of that. And that, remember, we built the schedule for the whole year so this the periods are there. There are because of the shorthandedness in the spring some large sections that we're trying to hire to cover additional sections of the Spanish section that's that we need another, some more Spanish more Mandarin. But as, but as far as sort of taking up some of the time on Wednesday because two thirds of the staff will only be teaching two classes that might be a little bit more palatable two thirds of the staff will have two empty periods every day. Yeah, that makes that makes sense. That could be okay. So just some some comments. You know I'm not sure that the departmental shift really addresses the need that that that we're seeing so 21% of the students and a higher percentage of the families are either not satisfied or just slightly satisfied with the way learning is currently structured. And you know we've heard in listening sessions you've all heard from, you know, quite a few families whose kids are struggling in the current model. You know I'm disappointed with some of the feedback we've received from the staff that even after sharing this survey results. There was really only one email that acknowledged this population, and I understand that staff families and others want to protect the model that's working for the majority of students and we do need to do that. I just don't think we have a real solution yet for for those who this model isn't working. So, I guess I'd still like to see, you know, you mentioned a 5050 hybrid for core classes but I think, you know, I'd still like to see who would be interested in that 5050 model. Is there enough to build additional sections of classes that we could do. Nothing would be an issue, but that would be something I'd be interested in seeing. And secondly, my other concern with this is in other, my colleagues raised this last week is if we do get a better situation in the spring with staff vaccinated and you know hopefully community spread coming down. It really seemed like we can do much more in person with this model and then I mentioned last week, the possibility of flipping to a 5050 model, but we really can't do that because we wouldn't be able to separate out the remote people at that point. So, you mentioned maybe doing more frequent shifts, but that doesn't really add a lot that still people coming kids coming into school for one period a day, maybe two times a week instead of one time a week so I. So the, the shortcomings I see with the model I don't have solutions but I'm open to hearing what my colleagues say, thank you. Dr. Allison MP will come back to you, unless you hop on. Mr. Thielman. Thank you Ms Morgan. So first I just want to ask some clarifying questions about the departmental shift. And you, I know you said this so in the 17 weeks of the semester. The participation is that students will get into school. How many, how many hours do you think on average total. Well, if it's two, if it's one or two times a week, then it's going to be 15 to 30 hours 15 to 30 hours. Okay. And then there's the possibility of students remaining in the school for study halls if they sign up for it. You had also talked about, can you also talk about the possibility of extracurricular activities such as athletics, clubs, performing arts, meeting in the schools in the second semester. Do you envision that happening. They're already doing it is clubs have met in the school clubs are welcome to use those spaces supervising socially distanced. Performing arts like if there was a spring play they would they would rehearse in the school. So there are specific requirements for performing arts that actually have them 10 feet apart singing is not allowed period, unless it's outside right now. We're looking at there are guidelines around the instrumental music that actually allow instrumental music to perform inside now. We're not sure about performances but to practice inside. And so we've been buying pads and you actually have muscles for the, for the things so that your trumpet has a mask on it essentially. And we're looking to, to allow obviously instrumental music to make use of the theater, because that's one of our biggest spaces for rehearsals. In terms of drama. You know, I hope spring is eternal. We, we were all excited about I was excited about doing an outdoor performance of Tommy last spring when we didn't think that things were going to keep getting worse. And so, you know, I could imagine doing something on the field outside socially distanced. We talked about doing a live, not alive a drive in movie viewing of it's a wonderful life, but we don't have the rights. So, we're not allowed to, we're not allowed to make an assemble you have to watch it on at home on individual screens. I think we'll figure out they're doing really creative things they're running also performing arts this year is running more plays, and then they have in the past so they're running three shows right now are planned. And they're being actually directed by adults who are alums of the high school. So they're coming back, I don't know if Jenna knew them, did you know them Jenna. Yeah, so that's also really exciting so there's a lot of work being done. Okay, my next question about the departmental shift. If a family starts in the departmental shift. So first of all, it's, I think it's correct to say that a student that if a family so chooses, they can keep their, their student home on the hours on the 15 to 30 hours when they be expected to be in that correct. Correct. And then it'll be an attempt to either live stream the class have students call in or get the work otherwise. Correct. Okay. So, if a family decides. So the only way you can opt out of this model would be by simply keeping your, your student home on the day the students are supposed to be in school. I just want to make sure there's clarity for parents. If you're in special education you may choose to come in if you, you know, if, if, if we do this alternative small focused hybrid program that may be something something. But if you're a general ed student who, you know, isn't looking like one of those targeted programs, then yes your option would be to opt out of the shifts out of the shifts. Okay, I just want to make sure that's clear. On the Wednesdays, are you envisioning, what are you envisioning? Are you envisioning instruction on those days possibly? Are you, I know this has to be discussed with teachers and I understand that but what are you envisioning? Yes, I'm envisioning instruction. Okay. I'm envisioning that we would shift time in order to have more instruction on Wednesdays. One of the issues we ran into with the hybrid model in the elementary K through eight schools was that, I mean it was just, it was K through eight was a disproportionate number of students in the, who had to come to school on Monday, lost time in school with in person instruction lost days. So this model going to contemplate a schedule that might have students normally coming in on a Monday and what the Monday holiday Monday holidays might have in terms of impact. So I have this fabulous spreadsheet that I use because we've had this five day rotation, which meant that there were different drop classes. So our practice has been to actually do the schedule for the entire semester, which my plan is to do that in January, and you go through and you take all the drop classes out and you balance it and I actually balance minutes, and keep tracking snow days, in order to see if there needs to be any adjustment. One of the, one of the things I'm concerned about is that we'll get to the end of the year and we'll still have uncertainty about next year. And one thing that would give people assurances about what next year would look like is if we can find a way to get more students in the school this year. One is, would it be possible to what extent can you pivot with the departmental shift to a model should things become better in the spring to allow more students and staff in the school, more hours. Is it is another 17 weeks in the semester goes by fast, and all of a sudden you're in April and you might have good news and you might have everybody in the school, every teacher vaccinated. Is it possible to shift and at least get more students in the school somehow. I guess what I would say is I, I don't know about you but I have not been able to predict the constraints that the scientists and the CDC. I know, I accept that accept. So the answer is yes, we can pivot. I think we're going to have a I think there will be a reasonable conversation again about cost benefits of how much you're pivoting the preferences that it seems like that were expressed early in the process in the focus groups, and that seem to have been held consistent through the responses in the survey, were to not do a really substantial shift to not lose academic opportunities to not require students to split off and therefore some haves and have nots. So those constraints. You know, if and when let's say the CDC comes out and says three feet now is like really fine and the union agrees and the Department of Education agrees. And we say okay so now we're looking at these rooms. Now, all of a sudden my eight person rooms or 12 person rooms. I can start looking at whether or not we want to do an AB cohort. I will say that I believe Mr. Hainor asked yesterday the students. The question of if you were offered an AB cohort, or keeping what you have now what would you pick, forget safety, the students said departmental shift. Not all. The majority of those students in their answers use the word safety as an issue. Right. And they didn't believe necessary to hear it. They didn't hear my, my qualifier. So I don't know. I think the question can be asked, but I think we'd have to ask the question again. And if it's three feet. Then an AB cohort I think would probably I don't guarantee because I have to go measure it differently. But if it's two feet if it's no feet if there's no distancing of masks and hygiene is sufficient. Then clearly we could fit because we were going to fit in the building as it is so when that changes will remeasure will do the new schedule and we'll see whether or not you can do that and then I think you'll have to ask that question. The seniors. I know you're working on activities and I know senior activities normally take place later in the year but this is an extraordinary year how early can you actually have a senior activity next in 2021 like, could you do something in January. If you, I believe so I mean I think most of those activities right there not it's funny when people said like most of those activities are not run, you know, like graduation is run very much by us graduation costs about $20,000. Right, so if we wanted to do Friday senior movie nights. I mean these things are going to start to happen if you wanted to do Friday senior movie nights, you'd need 17 parents, we need to clear it by the board of health. And we need to get people projectors so they could do movie nights on the sides of their garages. So I think we're going to have a massive kindness walking challenges. I think those things are going to start rolling out of the student council pretty quickly. So I'd expect I want to start doing way more of that stuff coming in January. And then the question of course is you know, I just have to say this, because it hurts us sometimes kids plan dances, and nobody comes. It's cool. It's not what they want to do is not what their friends do. So we will keep on moving to sort of trying new activities to try to keep more kids engaged. And yeah, I think we'll just start doing things in January. Okay, so then I want to, you know, there were there were parents who who spoke at the meeting the other night or parents who spoke at the beginning of this meeting. All of us have received emails from people asking us for data on the hybrid options that we that you listed in the in the report, and there were three you talked about the combined grade shift and to cohort model, a limited hybrid training and the second shift. And in the report you talk about the fact that it, it requires a substantial increase in staff and a substantial reduction in course offerings, which I have no reason to doubt that's true but people have asked for some of the data to support that so is it possible to get that earlier on in this presentation. The grade shift to cohort model is one of the models that was offered. Right in the grade shift to cohort model. As I said, I don't know what classes would get offered to which groups, or what classes would not be but I can tell you that world languages would stretch across multiple grades you're dividing all those classes and half this way. And then you're having to pull out a remote Academy. So 20 to 30% of your staff are now pulled out and which classes we staff and the remote Academy will depend on which kids chose the remote Academy and which which classes they are assigned to have selected, and you'll go through and the ones that will get cut will be your standalone classes. You know your soup, Italian Mandarin, Latin. Now we have teachers for that but there's only one of those at every level, and you're not going to have two sections of 10 because we don't have enough teachers. So one group or the other is going to get them or you're going to collapse them into four fives. The super classes, the many of those other classes any standalone class most of the art selectives. If they're going to be divided this way and this way because you have to pull out the students and you have to pull out remote Academy, they're going to be grossly simplified. So that's where you have the reductions in offerings. I can't tell you exactly what those would be. When we build the schedule, it takes us weeks to get everyone's collection information, then to look through how this their requests go then to look how they break, and to staff them up and do the puzzle. But I can tell you that that's where that would go. What I would say about the grade shift to cohort model is that I don't see a great appetite for that in the community as a whole. Given that trade off, it's a two cohort model and understanding that there's going to be some loss in diversity of classes. It was the least popular model. So the next option is the two shift model we could have a morning shift and an afternoon shift. That's what they do when they do construction projects and they tear down the building. Again, you're dividing the school in half, and you're pulling out a remote Academy, she lose the same offerings in terms of diversity of offerings. And now you have to renegotiate that with the teachers union, because that's not the schedule that they have. When we looked at any of these other models remember twice as many staff a substantial number of staff said they would ask for leaves of absence. So in addition to not being able to negotiate it, we're going to lose staff. And then the last which was a targeted hybrid Academy I've already said we're going to try to do. Right, like I think that we've held back some FTE we're going to move around some FTE and I'm going to beg Dr. Bode and you for some additional FTE that with two FTE. That's 10 sections. We can schedule math English Science Social Studies classes for core requirements. And then we have students to come in, depending then on the number of students, we would run that with 12 kids per section. If it was 12 kids per section we bring them in for four days if it was 25 for section, we bring them in as an AB cohort. So I think we'll do some need we need to define it. So people know whether they're choosing it, we need to make sure we can staff it which just to hire people right now we have a post hitting science position and we've had zero applications. And, but we'll try. I mean we'll do the needs assessment and we'll look to see whether we can get the staffing to do it. And just I want to point out, we do have programs right now that have capacity learning center, harbor shortstop workplace, and it's much easier for us to build out capacity and that kind of programming, because we already have it if people are interested in those models. Okay, I'm going to, I've asked all my questions so I will come back to the discussion the only I would say that echoes what Mr. Cardin said is that I, you know, one I, I appreciate the hard work teachers are doing. I do not deny they're working very hard to I appreciate the great information my reaction to that was you know, people often write their best pros when they're depressed. And so I think that there's still a sizable chunk of the, the population of students and I see this even among among parents who told me that kids are doing really well I've even had parents have actually said to me, my kid is doing really well, but she's not feeling that great about life right right now. So I think it should be communicated to the teachers that, yes, the kids might be doing well academically but a lot of them are are are suffering, and not doing well at home and not doing well in their lives and I've heard this from countless parents, and I didn't hear that, and the remarks by teachers tonight. Can I respond to that teachers first four priorities, safety, COVID readiness, mental health and equity. Those are their first four priorities. And in every category, what they said was that the current model best serve that. And I think that the assumption that in person education that this that the hybrid model is a panacea that is going to solve the problem of the pandemic. We are all stressed, we are all isolated, we are all frustrated and worried, every one of us. And people are working around the clock. That is not because school is remote. And school right now is still a protective factor for those students. The fact that students are coming to school and succeeding in school is a protective factor for them. The idea when you heard Mr Martin talk earlier on, he was talking very much about engaging with his students and knowing who they were. What he was saying was that he was not convinced and he and I have argued about our levels of feelings about this, but he was not convinced that coming in in a very stressful environment of masks and whatever was necessarily better. Now I know that other schools that are doing hybrid are experiencing levels of success there too because the teachers have adapted and made it work. I think that like the implication that people don't care or not taking concern around students because they are finding that students are being successful and engaging and working with them and talking to them. You know, means that they don't care is really problematic because the teachers are. I can't express how hard they're working and how much they care and how much they think about their students all the time. I think that's my time. Miss Carmody, and then Mr shipment. Yes, I just wanted to speak on this from more of a student perspective obviously Mr Thielman brought up concerns of students mental health and then also concerns of if there's any options that have students go in more. But I think many students just want to go in at all. Right now we are having a thing or where we're going in once every few weeks with Dr Jangers departmental switch. We'd be going in once every two weeks maybe even like maybe once every week, which I think many students would prefer that. Even if we are not going in like, like twice every week or something I think many students would just like to go in and see people at all and I think, although mental health is a huge concern with like online obviously Dr James said it is just the stress of what's going on in the world right now that's like causing all of this and it's not just the like being online. And I think that it could help to have students see each other because our students right now that just haven't talked to like seen people in person for weeks on end. And it's obviously affecting them but I just think that going in at all with just even if it is not a lot going in would be so helpful for many students. And I think we do need to adopt something that is hybrid just to help students and also just like to advance our learning because obviously learning online is very effective but it's not the same as learning in person if you're doing a science lab. You're not seeing this stuff in person you're not seeing what they're doing like in real time you can't do it yourself at home. So I think it just, it would help a lot of students out to be able to be in person and see what is happening and learn in a new environment that's not just online. Thank you. Mr Schlichman. Thank you. So, I just want to drill down on a few things because one of the things that I've done in my career has been to schedule. I've worked for a couple of years which is a schedule in any high school is a miserable job. So, one of the premises of building a master schedule is that for every decision you make everything you lock into on the foundation of your master schedule. You are limiting options for everything else you're building on top of the schedule. Do you agree with that Dr Janger all trade offs everything. Absolutely. And the facility is is the one hard item that you can't work around so under normal times the biggest limit and most school schedules is the size of the cafeteria. There's a lot of commentary as to G you're doing an AB cohort on grades K through eight. But you can't do it nine through 12. As I'm looking at this is that your average high school student has discrete schedule so they're not traveling in groups throughout the day is in the middle school or staying with one teacher. I think that's an elementary that each class is discrete with a different cohort of students in it. And that is what makes it difficult in just in theory to build a an a ABB. Would you agree with that Dr Janger. Yes. Okay. Essentially if we were to try to do an ABB we were taking one set of students distributing them among three different schools with one faculty. So that the degrees of freedom within the arranging of students to classes makes it more difficult is that correct. That is correct. Half of the freedom degrees of freedom within your scheduling have already been eaten out because eaten up because you've done four out of eight class periods scheduled for the year in the first semester, correct. Yes, that's true. So the fact that you've used classes and kids have gone to classes and teachers have taught classes is a limiting factor going forward into the second semester. I would, I would say yes. Okay. So that if we were offering 10 sections, how many sections of English 10 do we offer. I don't know what is 20 to 350 about 17. So we so that if we're offering 17 sections of English 10 which is probably one of the most common classes in the school. Easily divide those among two cohorts of three cohorts. Again, remembering the fact that we've already division divided the school in half so that if say we're offering 17 we may have run eight of those sections already in the fall so that we're now only looking to do eight or nine in the spring. Correct. So it comes to doing right. So when it comes to going forth and dealing not with the split of nine English sections into three different cohorts when we're looking for more for what are described as singletons the courses that only have one section running during the school year. This is the real limiting factor, correct. Correct. And if we were to go and change to a model that divides up the school, either the kids in a remote Academy or in an AB cohort might be restricted so they couldn't get into that class correct. All of them would be restricted. And that in theory that if one if a student was looking for two difficult electives one was offered in the AA cohort, and one was offered in the BB even though that they were both working within the the same mode of being on hybrid that one of those courses would have been precluded. Essentially, yes. So that essentially by going to some sort of splitting the cohorts is the problem so that without going for the data. This is sort of a logical stream if it's an if to then that if you divide the groups and limit access to any individual course. You will buy by virtue of the of the logic of setting up the schedule with every decision you're going to restrict students so while you may not be able to provide data that specifically says how many students would not be able to get into which particular courses. You're more or less mathematically and logically saying that this will happen to a certain extent. Correct. And that to come up with data as to which students are going to be shut out of courses that they're right now scheduled for in the spring. You wouldn't be able to do without extensive work in terms of trying to build a new master schedule for the spring schedule. This is not sort of an easy thing to do it's it's it's a long long iterative process, playing with power school and getting to the structure and loading it correct. Correct. And it's also a, it's an ecological process which is that as we make changes people change people schedules, and it pushes itself into an outcome. Yeah, and so that if you're if you're going and building the schedule and you have a constraint that's in there, then the next step would be maybe to pull out that constraint, and see what happens if that constraint is pulled out and you're putting a different one in instead just to see if you can get a satisfaction rate that's higher for the students. So the satisfaction rate is the percentage of students who are getting all the courses that they want correct. So, if we divert from something that is aligned with the fall builds, which has students already scheduled for four periods in the spring. You're not going to be telling students and a considerable number that they can't have something they planned on having in the spring correct correct. Okay. So the departmental shift and the other shift are the only two scheduling options that aren't going to end up taking away classes from kids who have them already written into their schedule correct. Essentially, yes. Okay. I think we had this conversation and subcommittee in that the departmental shift. In your opinion, and I think it's in my opinion to is the model that allows you to do more to add in person days, or to pull out back and do fully remote if the coven situation warrants simply by adjusting the bell schedule rather than the underlying structure of the master schedule is that correct. Yes, and it doesn't in a way that doesn't significantly up and the teacher planning either. So that if we get all our teachers vaccinated by the beginning of April, which is what the governor seems to think we should be doing and is it is in his. His plan, we can aggressively bring more in person days in under the departmental shift, whereas we might not be able to do it in some sort of a hybrid sport, correct. Correct. I think the logic is pointing in the direction of going to a departmental shift. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Allison. Okay, so I've been listening in as I go and let me, but I have to try and put everything together. First, I wanted to acknowledge that what we've. Okay, so my understanding is this is more questions and then we may have motions and discussion of motion. So I'm focusing there but what I'm hearing from parents is parents and students is that some feel that the current school model is going working well enough or some even feel even better than that. Some feel it's going so so. And there are some. And I don't know exactly how many who feel it's going very poorly for their students, and that those students, they feel those students in particular would benefit from having a maybe hybrid as we have in to cohort, maybe hybrid as in the middle school and such. I wanted to get some clarity about a couple of things. First, I think part of what is confusing or part of where this to me seems like it's coming from is because when we initially asked people back in the fall. We asked, would you like to sign up for a AB cohort. At that point we did not realize that it was not schedulable. So it was an ask that ultimately we couldn't deliver, but I feel like that's been lost people feel like because we asked if we could do this. I mean, we asked if you wanted to do this we asked parents. It's what I mean by you. People think it can be done. And they continue to request it. And there was a lot of discussion as as the plans changed as more information came available about where HVAC was heading but especially where there were a lot of capacities of rooms and stuff headed. It became clear that it, we can't do it, and staff ever have both a to cohort model and a remote can have remote remote hybrid option, and have the classes that people want in both of them one of them is going to not work. I mean one of them is not going to provide the selection that people want. But I still feel that people are looking back to that and saying but you asked so it must be out there somewhere, you know we're just we've lost it we, if we're creative enough if we work hard enough we can find it and we can make it happen. And I think it's been lost that that's not that unfortunately never existed. The questions that I have are under the departmental shift. What are the things we can do for the parents who feel it is going so poorly for their students. I mean I think I tried to answer that so there are a number of in person options available. Currently to students who are I mean to who are struggling there's learning center. There's the harbor program there's workplace special education students are available to come into the building and all have been offered that. There, we are working with interface and a YCC and others to contact to direct people towards mental health services, if they need that we are planning the coven 19 screening. In January, where we will identify students who are tier three to be referred to treatment but also students are tier two to participate in social emotional support groups. I guess I'm thinking of the ones who their parents feel they would benefit from in person more direct in person school so it sounds like the first things that you mentioned are more. Right well but I'm just. Another harbor workplace special add those are all programs that are currently available. In addition, and this was the thing we talked about that with a couple of FTE. We believe that we could create a program that would support core requirements English math science and studies. Most students most likely is an ABB cohort depending on the numbers. And we would, we're hoping to be able to a obtain staff to do it because we need to find people to hire, which is not not an automatically a given. And, and then to identify populations that are interested in doing that. We've had many folks that have come to us and said that you know my student is struggling have been offered services but have not chosen the services that we've offered. Not all many are obtaining the services. And so, you know, those are the options at the moment that we have available to us and then also and I think this is really important for many. There are different issues right social interaction versus mental health versus you know if this issue is executive function if the issue is engagement, they're going to be different interventions and so. I think for us to have the conversation with individual parents to try to figure out how to connect people to the right services is also going to be important. The other question I had about departmental shift. And I know you touched on this a little bit but just review it for me please, because I didn't hear everything as I was trying. How would we handle if things get better, and we can bring more kids back how will we have how will we have more in person class time under departmental shift. It depends on how the constraints are changed. So as the constraints, if the constraints are changed in ways that let us have larger groups of kids in rooms. So, if all of a sudden all of our rooms can easily handle 12 kids, because the constraints have been shortened to that amount, then we would then we would potentially have the option to offer an AB. But if we offered an AB. It wouldn't, it would require most likely some level of remote Academy. So we would have to ask the community at that time, you know, is the appetite there to be able to come in half the time and the trade offs are right the trade offs are some loss and diversity of instruction changing classes you halfway through the time would be challenging but we're clever folks we can do it if we have to. And the second would be the loss of instructional time you go from the four or five days a week to two to three days a week, depending on how we configured it so. So at that time, what the appetite of the community would be. And so we'd have to ask that question. I'm pretty confident that, you know, the other issue is also going to be the impact that it would have on staff. And the impact and the number of staff that would under those circumstances feel like it was appropriate for them to take a leave because I know that has been something that has already happened. We already had staff request lease of absence just from the burden of teaching and all the changes that they're doing right now. And so that would be the other thing we'd have to look and see what the trade offs were, if the option was that we didn't need to do social distancing, and that we would all fit in the building. Then it wouldn't be and then we could bring them back full time the schedule would work as a full time school if there's room in the building to do so. And then beyond that, the last is, as we have more ability to have more kids together as the levels go down and the risk goes down as the staff become less at risk as a result of running those activities. I foresee simply having more events more activities, more social distancing and the weather is going to get warmer. So we'll start gathering outside and doing more social events. So I think I do hope that there's a real sort of awakening in April, just in general where we can, you know, have the giant dance parties doubt on the, on the pierce field or run a, you know, an outdoor musical with social distancing. I just don't know until we see what the specific guidelines are what we'll be able to do. Okay, thank you. I'll defer my time until the motion. Okay, great. I just had a couple of quick comments I'm glad that we're talking about Wednesdays I think that's, I think that's really important it's a theme we've heard from families and we've, it's come up at the school committee over and over again. So I hope that there continues to be movement on that I appreciate that you're not there yet on a plan to share with us but I hope we get there because it's certainly something that that I've heard here many many many times. I think the other piece this this whole idea that I feel like we get stuck in a lot of sort of hyperbolic language, the, the idea that coming into school in person has to be a panacea for everything that's wrong with the pandemic. Like, that's ridiculous. Like, that is not my expectation. It is not the expectation of this community. And I find it frustrating that that's the expectation that we're putting on our schools or our teachers. I have an eighth grade daughter. She is not a ninth grader. I do not have a high school student but on her in person days, she wakes up, and she's ready to go and she leaves the house because she's going into school. She's going to be some of her classmates and her friends but she's going to see Miss Carlson who's going to teach her algebra and she's going to see Miss Packer who's going to critique her writing and then critique her writing again. And she is, is proud to go and have those experiences. I don't believe as a parent that it is a panacea for everything that is wrong I would never put that burden on my kids as teachers, but it is valuable for her to go and see them and have those interactions with them. And to talk to Mrs. Ford about her artwork and to engage in her work in person. So I, I, you know, we, we went through this in August, we talked about how it was going to be so hard because there were going to be masked and everything was going to be difficult. And the reality is for a lot of these kids and again we have to be very, very careful. There are so many cases. There's a lot going on and we must be careful but this idea that we, we, we have to expect that somehow to make in person, learning what to do that it somehow has to cure all of these things it doesn't it but it does have to help and it does support them. And I have so much faith in our educators, those who can be in person with kids who can work with them. It's extraordinarily valuable so I just I don't like putting so much pressure on it that it becomes so impossible to do. So I'm glad we're talking about Wednesdays. I think we need to be realistic about what we can do to support kids. And, and part of that is having those opportunities to be in person I, I agree with Mr. Cardin I mean I am willing to go. If there is not another viable option, then I can, you know, we can do the departmental shift. I do think you know the pressure for movement, if possible, and with the guidance of the Department of Health, once there are vaccinations in the fall, I think is really significant. I mean, you know, Charlie Baker came out there and said that K 12 educators are going to get a vaccine, likely before my 77 year old dad. Right. And, and that's, I'm fine with that I think that you know they're setting the levels that the prioritization but at some point, you know, we're, if we are able to do so in the later spring and certainly moving into the fall. It would be really important that we're able to move and, and I've appreciated that that I have had it has been easier tonight for me to understand how a departmental shift could switch or could become a more viable in person option were, you know, should come to a place where there can be relaxation around social distancing and I'm not projecting when or how that will come to pass, but I do think you know I hope that we get there and I think that we need to continue talking about that. So I don't actually think I have any questions, because I think they were asked by, by my colleagues earlier. So, I know that there were that there are a few. But the governor has a motion. So, let's start with that one and discuss that one and then see, see what else we have. Thank you. I'll be offering a motion to the for the committee to entertain but first, before doing that I wish to make a statement. During the past nine months, the faculty and the administration with parents and, of course, all the students have gone way above and beyond what anyone could expect. Teachers have had to rethink how to deliver education with minimal and often no physical interaction with the students. They have had to develop ways to engage students in activities that require students to be remote or maintain physical separation. This is contrary to good educational pedagogy. Teachers have had to create lessons little no wanting that could have required total retooling to for another form of delivery. They have done this and are continually striving to develop and hone new and innovative approaches. The administrators have had to develop schedules that like the lesson plans must be responsive to changes of the pandemic. I want to share that countless staff had contacted me praising the work, their principles have done on their behalf. Top administrators have had to develop totally new approaches to hiring staff and purchasing materials that are unique to making students and staff safe. I personally want to commend the entire staff for their tireless work and dedication. They have given to the children, parents and town of Ellington. I want to recognize the tremendous sacrifices parents have had to make during this time that families had to adapt to parents working from home with all the adjustments that can bring. Families have had to find a way to deal with children home full apart time while both parents had to go to work. Families that felt that they were not getting enough of the proper information about programs being offered at school. Families that have expressed concerns for the child's social and emotional welfare. Families that were concerned that their child was falling behind in academics. All of the families had to be commended for their concerns on how they have withered them. Most of all, their adequacy on behalf of their children. There's been a great deal of concern and frustration regarding the offerings for the spring programming at the high school. During the past week, I have heard from many parents, those supporting a program presented by Dr. Jenga and those who want the two cohort AABB model. I've also heard from several high school students who participated in the meeting yesterday on this topic. At the August 10, 2020, August 10 2020 meeting, this board voted to support a two cohort AABB program for the high school. We were told that it could not be implemented because the building could not accommodate the population. Many people, some on this board too, feel that there is a need for specific data to affirm this statement. The motion I will make is to request a survey to determine if a two cohort AABB program can be initiated within the restrictions established by the Board of Health. There is not the intent of this motion to suggest that the two cohort AABB program will be initiated. It is the intent to support creating a program of study to be implemented if health conditions allow this board so directs. Therefore, I move that we suspend any decision regarding programming at the high school for one week and have the superintendent direct the principal of the high school to create a survey with the following question on it. Would you send your child to a two cohort AABB program if it was offered in the spring? Yes or no? No other qualifiers should be on this survey. All right. Thank you. So, motion by Mr. Heiner. Mr. Heiner, can you give us a second for the purposes of discussion? Second from Dr. Allison Ampey on a motion from Mr. Heiner. Mr. Heiner, can you just so that I don't oversimplify, can you give me the language of the motion, like just the motion part again? Okay. Thank you. Let's see. To suspend any decision regarding program at the high school for one week, then have the superintendent direct the principal of the high school to create a survey with the following question on it. Would you send your child to a two cohort AABB program if it was offered in the spring? Yes or no? I may just add one more comment. It is not my intent to promote this as a program. It is to get the data that I think has not been given. I think when this question or forms of this question have been asked, have been qualifiers in it that may have skewed the data. That's all. This is not a reflection on prior surveys. Thank you. All right. So second from Dr. Allison Ampey. And so discussion on this. Dr. Allison Ampey. So I will be voting against this motion because as written, it again suggests the possibility of the existence of a workable two cohort model, which I feel was discussed quite a bit in the fall. And ultimately, I do not believe exists given the constraints of the building, the COVID restrictions and the staffing needed for both a remote hybrid and a two cohort. I'm sorry, remote option and a two cohort thing. What I mean by staffing not being available is we wouldn't be able to adequately give core selection to one or the other or both groups. And so I think to put something like this out would be very misleading and we just, it would create more problems such as we've been seeing, I feel that result from the fall. So. Can we, before we go to you, Mr. Thielman, can we do a movement on the 10 o'clock rule. We have to give it time. So I think we're going to move to 10 o'clock rule to 11 o'clock. Second. Miss Xen. Yes. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm also yes. Go ahead, Mr. Thielman. I'm going to support Mr. Heiner's motion. I think that the survey can add in the information that Dr. Janger shared in my questions with him a few minutes ago about would you be in favor would you opt for this model given all of these restrictions I think it's a chance for them. The school's leadership, the district's leadership to lay out in more detail what this hybrid model would look like in general terms or a little more specifics about what the restrictions would look like a range of what the restrictions would look like. I think it's important that parents see that. And I think it's important that we get the data. I think if the restrictions are clearly explained and the limits on course offerings are clearly explained. We might get information that would make us feel better about the ultimate decision so I'm going to support Mr. Heiner's motion I think is a good step to take I would just say that in addition. I hope the understanding is that the survey should come with several paragraphs explaining clearly the models that were outlined in Dr. Janger's report combined, you know the different hybrid models and the limitations on them so parents can see that. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. So, I'm interested in the idea of a survey I'm not sure that the limitations and Mr. Heiner has put on it is appropriate but we'll get to that. So I mean, Dr. Janger talked about implementing a hybrid model, you know, halfway through the term, the semester, if, if things are relaxed. Any time we try to do that we're going to have the same issues. You're going to have people who want to stay remote. We're going to have it's going to be impossible to split up people in the middle of the semester so I don't think it's realistic to talk about switching to an AA BB split in the middle of the semester, we can't do it at the start we're not going to be able to do it at the middle. We might be able to do it at the start, if only 30% or 40% are interested that they can fit in the building. Obviously would have an issue with with re jiggering course selection, those one off courses. If it's a 6040 split those one off courses would be offered in the remote academy, and the kids coming in the hybrid would have to remote into them. Some of them may not, you know, all three classes that they have, maybe stuck in the remote academy and even if they'll even though they want hybrid they won't be able to really get anything in person because they happen to have three classes that are only offered remotely. But there could be quite a few who have one or two classes that are that are in person because of guiding lesion math and we've got lots of sections of those. I think it's worth gathering the data I don't know that the question is formulated in the best way but this is, this is, this is something we're going to we have to do now. We can't hold out the hope or even the possibility of switching in the middle middle of the semester that just not going to happen it's not realistic to even talk about. Thank you. Mr. Heiner. I appreciate the idea of the intent of this motion I apologize if I wasn't clear is to affirm that the numbers are too big to do. If the numbers come out the way Mr. Cardin just suggested maybe it's something that it could happen. We were told the main the reason we would not, we would not be considering this thing that we passed back in August was because there would be too many students. We never surveyed. It's just black and white, would you participate. I think if you put all the qualifiers on it and offering all the other selections, it's going to skew it just the way it has done before. So I will not. I'm not willing to accept any addition beyond what I did. People want to change it then they can make their own motion on. Thank you. Ms. Ecksten and then Mr. Schiffman. I don't think the question the way that phrase is going to bring the clarity that we're looking for the different options are nuanced based on what courses are offered what courses can't be offered. How many students are going to choose remote. I don't think families can could commit to an AAVB model with just that being the question. I think there's there's too many things going on. And I, the teachers to have them have to change again from switching to a semester teaching remote. And then another hybrid model where they have students in front of them and then they're creating asynchronous work for another group. It's, it's a lot, it's just better. A lot to just to. And I, I just don't think this one question is going to give us that that Mr. Rainer is hoping for or the committee is hoping for. Mr. Schiffman. Yeah, I think that the survey question will end up dangling an option in front of parents that the school system can't really deliver, or certainly can't deliver in an environment that would be in the best interest of the academic needs of the students. For the reasons why Dr. Allison Ampey stated, I can't support the motion either. Thank you. Mr. Thielman and then Dr. Janger. One thing I would add is that if the committee were open to it we could add a sentence to Mr. Heiner's motion. I'm selecting one member of the school committee to work with Dr. Bodie and Dr. Janger on the final wording of the of the of the survey and let them work it out and give them the freedom to do that. So I'll just throw that out there as a possibility. Dr. Bodie and then Dr. Janger. There's some constraints that this motion doesn't take into consideration. Let me just take an AP course, for example. If you had a course that was running with 28 students, which would not be unusual. If you broke that class into two of 1414, we have a limited number of rooms in the school that could even hold 14 students with our six foot constraints. Now you add to that all the other courses that are 25 and above. And you all want those classes to be in the building at the same time there are constraints there so there's multiple variables that are going on. I think what I've been also hearing is that parents want those courses to be able to be hybrid and not necessarily have the more restricted, you know, algebra one geometry that the fundamental courses at each grade level. The problem is the building and the constraint we want to have on safety. And I think it's much more complicated than a simple choice around a hybrid. We can offer a small hybrid program in the school that a limit that limits a particular cohort to, you know, 10 students we've been able to have those kind of rooms. But you're forgetting the class sizes we have at the high school. And particularly in some courses are very popular, such as AP psychology for example. So, that would mean that we want hybrid in those courses. We may have one section or two sections, but can we have staffing for three or four to meet the room requirements. There are a lot of unintended consequences of trying to do this and constraints. A lot of students are not going to be able to get the choice because we are not going to be able to take what we're now maybe have two sections of AP something and now be able to have to have three or four to get in in the school. We're not going to be able to do that. And we're not going to be able to hire these people in the current market. So we have the constraints of the faculty we have the certifications they have the size of the school we have. And it's not possible to do everything everyone would like to have happen. We would like it too. I'm not we were very much want to have students and parents and everyone get what they would like. But it's really doesn't work the same way as k8. It just doesn't. And somebody also earlier Mr. Slickman pointed that out, you have a single teacher or you have a, you have a learning community. All of the classes in the high school students may not even, you know, you're going to get a mix in all of the different classes is not it doesn't operate the same way. So I think to offer a very simple choice is missing the complexity of the situation. But can we offer a smaller hybrid. We can be more in the neighborhood of, you know, 50s, maybe 60 students, and that's assuming we can hire the staff to do that. So I just, I, I realize if you don't live in the world of high schools and understand schedules. It's a little bit harder to understand why this is as constrained as it is. And so I just want to offer those comments as you're considering this. Dr. Janger. So I guess I'm concerned because I think that this, this is really a survey that's angling towards the solution. And I tried very hard in the survey that I gave to be trying to get an understanding from where the community stood. The question you're asking, would you do a hybrid was this was asked to some extent in a realistic frame with the third cohort, the great shift to cohort that was a two cohort model. The time trade off was comparable just only every other week. And the realistic loss of some instructional diversity was another concern. And that was the least popular of the three models. And now it seems pretty transparent is this idea that if we can say if it's only 30 or 50% or 40% that say that they would do the hybrid, then great, because we can fit those people on the building. But what you've now done is taken the other 60% and required them to go into a model now that reduces their offerings as well. And that people were told that they were getting offered this hybrid but if they're not understanding the trade offs. Then it's not a realistic offering. And it seems to me that with a program that we could offer me if if we went and built the great shift to cohort model. And half the school district said or two thirds of the school district said, if that was the popular model and we've done that. And two thirds of people had come back and said, well, we're going to be remote anyway, then we would have increased the number of shifts. But the reality was asked that question with the same essential trade offs. And that was the most popular model with on every single category of need. And I also want to remind you that it was also the one which raised the most concern among staff. So, I don't think you're going to get the information you want. I think you're going to muddy the waters and what is already a fairly clear response and I also want to go back to this issue of satisfaction. Because schools during normal times run about 70%. So an 80% satisfaction rate with the school under these conditions is remarkable. And, you know, at the same time the mass ink survey shows only about 60% of people feel like their schools are satisfied with what their schools are doing. So, we know that there are folks that are not happy, which is why as Dr. Bodie said, we want to target services towards those students and we believe that we can staff, you know, again, depending on interest and staff availability. You know, we could support 50, maybe even as many as 100 students although I'm not sure we can get the staff for that. But to sort of flip this whole thing and understand also in doing this, we end up where we were last time, which is that the teachers that all the planning that needs to go in place to make whatever it is we do run well. Doesn't happen until January and now it's a sprint and teachers go into their classrooms not prepared. So I'm very concerned about postponing this. I'd like to preface my statement. First off by recognizing how much work you've done Dr. Jango, and I applaud it. I've heard nothing but positive things from staff and people that you work with and I mean that sincerely. My concern is from hearing from other parents that when we the committee back in August, past the concept of this to cohort a ABB. Then you asked to come for us to come back and give you a chance to evaluate it. The main reason for not going forward at the time when you brought it to us was the, the amount of people could not be sustained in this kind of a program. And we did not have any specific data to go along with it. I think the programs that you're offering tonight are commendable. And the day in the information that you got go forward. There is that portion of parents out there that feel that they were not given all the information. That was the purpose of this motion, not to change programs just to come out and reaffirm and validate that too many people would be asking for it and it would not be a way to do it. There's no motivation behind this and not to attack you or any of the other programs. Thank you. All right, other comments on this motion. I think the challenge for me is that I know that there are other pieces coming. I think it's hard to sort of on the fly, try to pull pieces together in thinking about some kind of, you know, Frankenstein type motion here. I know that's not a good analogy. So it, but we need to take these sort of one at a time. So I guess I think what we need to do, if we're done with discussion on Mr. Heiner's motion. I think we need to vote on this one and then see what else, see what else we have. So is there any more discussion on the on Mr. Heiner's motion. So it's seeing none. Let's let's vote on this one. So Ms. Exton. No. No, thanks. Dr. Allison Ampe. No. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. No. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. All right. So we're not going to do. So that motion. Did not pass. All right. So, but we have more, I think. So, or do we not have more. It's also fine. I can't make motions. So. Dr. Allison Ampe. Sorry, just a sec. I have to pull up my emotions. Okay. So mine are just trying to work to. Improve the situation that's on the ground. And. I had the idea late in the game as in this afternoon to send my motion to Dr. Janger and Dr. Mr. McCarthy. So I haven't gotten their approval. So they can say that these are not super helpful. But first, I'm, well, they're all together, but then they're in nois. I moved that the school committee authorized the following one, the sum of $50,000 to be used on purchases such as individual noise canceling headphones that wouldn't allow an improved in school experience for study halls, et cetera. To the hiring of a survey consultant form for either part-time or retainer for administration to consult as desired when creating surveys, three, the sum of $25,000 for the high school principal and staff to safely enhance the social experience for student of students with a focus on seniors, but to include all students. Again, my aim with these motions is not to increase the burden on Dr. Janger, but rather to give him resources that he can then delegate to others. And my sums are really placeholders. I wanted it to be clear that there is money that we have authorized that can be spent. He mentioned in passing that there are headphones and such in the high school for students to use from what we were hearing from the students. It doesn't sound like they know about them and also they probably need more. But I just, I think there are things that we can do to improve the in-school experience for students and the social experience for students and that I'm willing to put some of our money there to help make it happen. So. Second. All right. Discussion on this. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you. I think this is a good idea. I just like to ask Mr. Mason what the line item and the fiscal impact of this is, is the money sitting there? Do we need to do anything more specific or is this just a good thing to do and, and in directing this to happen? Mr. Mason, do you have a, I know this wasn't. What do you, what do you have for us, Mr. Mason? I'm sorry, because I'm being distracted, but can you repeat what was stated, Paul? I'm sorry. Okay. So, so the motion was to direct the sum of $50,000 to be used on purchases such as individual noise, canceling headphones that would allow an improved in-school experience for study halls in the sum of $25,000 for high school principal and staff to use to safely enhance the social experience of students with a focus on seniors, but to include all students. So we're talking about $75,000 to the high school to improve things with, with a couple of specifics tied to them. Is this consistent with the budget and something we can do? Yes. I believe that's something that we can do. Thank you for asking. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. So I, I support the idea. I'm reluctantly vote for the motion. I think this kind of line item budgeting is actually not within our policies because we, you know, budget in those five budget categories. So I understand the intent. It's an extreme circumstance. We want to make sure these things are happening. And I, you know, I, I said last week, you know, I think we should hire an event coordinator and I wasn't being flippant. I mean, I really think we need someone full time or, or not full time part time, but the only thing that they're doing is organizing social events because that's the need that we, we, that everybody sees that maybe there's scavenger, you know, scavenger type hunts in the high school building. Maybe it's, it's a group read where everybody reads a short book and you come to come in on Wednesday and meet in small classes after your advice, before your advisory to discuss it. I, there's got to be some creative ideas to bring our community together in person for the next four few months. So I'm going to support this. And I, you know, I strongly encourage Dr. Bode to, to work with her team to start making this happen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thielman. I support this as well. And I think we should just move to a vote. Thanks for letting us know, Mr. Thielman. Would anybody else like to discuss this? Dr. Allison Ampe. I'd be happy for the money to be used for an event coordinator. I was leaving it open in case they had other ideas. All right. Anybody else. No key. Ms. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe's motion. About $75,000 spread over a couple of. Categories. Ms. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I am also. Yes. Okay. Mr. Thielman. I moved the Arlington school committee endorses the departmental shift. As described. This evening for the second semester. And. A hybrid option as articulated by Dr. Bode this evening. Period. Second. All right. Let's talk about this one. Mr. Thielman, do you want to speak to this motion? Yes, I will. Yeah. I mean, I think that look. I, I, I think. That. I appreciate the. Desire to have interventions for kids, but I think the student who spoke spoke well, they wanted to be back in the school. So whatever we can do to start to bring students back to the school. Is a good idea. I, I, I mean, I maintain the position that I, I think that. I appreciate the desire to have interventions for kids. That's the. The position that I stated earlier about. My impression of some of the feedback. And I hope that going forward, we can have. Healthy discussions about. What's best for kids in that school. Thank you. So I'm going to vote for that. Mr. Cardin. the issue of getting out of this departmental shift model and getting more in-person activity in the spring as things get better. So just to be clear, in the departmental shift, for every additional shift we are able to add, we're taking away a class for those kids that are gonna stay remote. So because we're not doing assorting at the beginning, the classes are mixed. Mr. Schuchman's Facebook post today, there was a parent who said, my kid's not going back until they get the vaccine. It doesn't matter that the teachers get the vaccine and numbers, regardless of numbers, their kids aren't gonna come back. So we're gonna be required to have a remote option for the rest of the year. So every time we add, we try to add, let's say English is every week instead of every two weeks. That's gonna take an English class away from somebody. So there's gonna be a very quickly, once a week is probably gonna be the maximum we're gonna be able to get. We already have science at once a week. We already, so the idea that there's gonna be suddenly significantly more in-person activity ever this year is just not realistic in this model. And so I guess I will reluctantly support it, but I really wish we could take some time, find out how many people are interested in a 50-50 hybrid and see if we can build a program for those people, not just with the core 50 students that we're talking about, but maybe it'll be 400 or 500 students that opt for that. And maybe we will be able to build a program for that. We don't know because we haven't asked. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman, Mr. Schlickman. Oh, you're back. Thank you. Dr. Janger, is this motion something you understand and can accomplish your mute? I'm looking up data. Yes, I believe so. Excellent, then I can support it, thank you. Ms. Eksten. So I'm gonna be supporting this motion. I believe that students and teachers need as much synchronous time together as possible, whether that's in person or online. And I believe that teachers have already made tremendous adjustments to their practice, to their curriculum design, and their delivery of instruction, and they don't need to be asked to completely shift their teaching schedule and structure again. I also think we need to be careful about relying on the vaccine to make the high school safe. We know that high school students transmit the virus at levels similar to adults, but most high schoolers aren't gonna be eligible for the vaccine by April, unlike teachers. So only teachers are gonna be getting the vaccine by the spring, and then only children over 16 are eligible for the current vaccine that's being, we're waiting to have approved. So I think it's a little presumptuous to think that we can reduce the spacing for students just because the teachers are vaccinated against the virus at the high school level. So I am planning to support the departmental shift model because of the amount of synchronous time it offers to teachers and students, and because it maintains the semesterized schedule for teachers and for students who need that consistency of structure. Thank you. Dr. Alton-Ape. I'll support this motion also for the reason so eloquently stated by Ms. Exton. All right, anybody else on this one? So I think that the challenge here and I share Mr. Cardin's concerns about, and I talked about this all in August and all in September that if you're going to run a hybrid, then you have to do the sort first. And not only does an increase in a departmental shift model mean that there really is less of a viable option for students who wanna be remote. On the end game, on the backend, there also isn't a viable option for teachers who need to be remote on the front end. And that's part of what is so appealing about the very challenging K-8 model. There was at least the ability at the beginning to sort teachers and sort kids and come up with two models that ran together. I recognize that the high school is way more complicated and the space is an issue and the numbers are uncertain. But it's hard to, we can't change course again, right? So I share Mr. Cardin's concerns that it's tricky to find flexibility with this, both for teachers on the front end and students on the backend. So those are my thoughts. I don't feel like there's other choices. So we'll do this one and we'll do the best we can, which I have no doubt that when I talked to teachers at the beginning of the year, I remember I had, it was given like 60 seconds to speak, which was appropriate, probably too much. And I remember saying that I knew that they would give our students their very best because they always have. And I believe that very much still, probably even more so. So, all right. So any more conversation about the motion by Mr. Thielman? Mr. Thielman. Yeah, so I just wanna say, I mean, what you said is more gonna, Mr. Cardin said, do you have any suggestions on how to amend the motion to incorporate those? I mean, I guess I would like to understand what this sort of limited hybrid option is that Dr. Bodie talked about. So I suppose I would like to put more provisions around that piece, I guess, so that we could get an update on, cause it's kind of, I mean, I know that it has been buried in the slides that we've seen for weeks now, but I feel like it's only just sort of come into, it's not even in focus for me yet, but it's sort of only come to my consciousness, you know, in the last day or so. Okay, then my suggestion to you is that we vote on this now, I can make a followup motion on what you articulated, I think, you get a report for the next week. Mr. Cardin, do you have more comments on what you said earlier? Well, I mean, I think, Jeff, your original written motion that talks about combining the departmental shift with a hybrid model, it is a little bit more open-ended. So instead of referring to the one Dr. Bodie discussed, why not say a hybrid model that meets unmet needs? I accept that from the amendment, it's well articulated. So Mr. Thielman, can you? Yeah, moved at the Arlington School Committee endorses the departmental shift model for the second semester coupled with a hybrid option that meets unmet needs. Dr. Allison Ampe. I'm a little concerned that starting to open doors that I don't really know where they're going. I think what Dr. Bodie was talking about before was limited. I was alone, comfortable with it to begin with, but Dr. Tanger felt that he could work with it. So I was okay, but I'm worried when you start adding that, unmet needs, to me, it has the potential to balloon. And I would prefer that these things are separated into two motions. Mr. Schlichman. I agree, I think that the original motion was reasonable. I think that we're amending it, opens some kettles of fish. And I would like to maintain the fact that at this point, the motion gives direction, in the sense of the committee, without going to specificity that will box us in and cause problems. So without the friendly amendment, I'm in favor of the motion. I'm not really in favor of it with the friendly amendment. I said we're wordsmithing on the fly, which is always there. Mr. Cardin, do you have a suggestion? No, I mean, my intent is not what Mr. Schlichman and Dr. Allison Ampe would want, and perhaps not what a majority wants. So I guess we can do a separate motion. Maybe we can do a separate motion on that. Sure. So why don't we do this? I'm sorry to jump over here, everybody here. So why don't we just do what I said first, which is move that the Arlington School Committee endorses the departmental shift model for the second semester, coupled with the hybrid option presented this evening by Dr. or articulated this evening by Dr. Bode. And vote on that one. And then we can try a second motion. And if there's a majority for the second motion, there is, if there isn't, there isn't. All right. So any more discussion on that motion? Oh, yeah. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Cardin. No. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. And I am also yes. Okay. So now. Mr. Cardin should make the motion. Sure. I move that the superintendent is directed to expand on her hybrid program to meet other unmet needs. Second. Discussion. Yeah. Just a quick point of order on this one. Wouldn't it be good to have a time, Mr. Cardin? Sure. By the, by our January, the first meeting in January. January 14th. Oh, that's really late. Is that enough time? Well. Dr. Bode. I'm not clear what this motion is about. In the last motion, Dr. Janger is well expressed, you know, what we would be able to manage for a second semester, which would be a limited hybrid program with some of the fundamental courses that students would need for graduation. And we are certainly interested and I thought it was a good suggestion maybe we have to hire somebody to help with some event planning. I'm not sure we need a motion for that because we think it's a good idea. But I'm not sure what this means unmet needs. It seems very broad. We're not envisioning that we're going to offer AP classes in a hybrid model or singleton electives in a hybrid model. That's not what we were talking about earlier. And also to, I appreciated Ms. Exton's comments because I do think teachers are exhausted and have to switch their entire, you know, planning at this time would be really quite a burden. So I appreciated those comments. Mr. Schlickman. I'm looking at the original motion and the discussion we had in that adding a hybrid section of English 10 or English 11 or geometry or the other core sections that are offered in bulk layered on top of the departmental shift, I think is sort of the way this would end up working to add in additional language if we're talking about creating a hybrid that meets the needs of the people who are unhappy and want the hybrid, I think ends up setting ourselves up to fail. And I think we should leave well enough alone. Thank you. Further discussion on Mr. Cardin's motion. Dr. Allison Ampe. I'm going to vote against this motion because I feel it's too broad in scope. And I also feel that it's probably not needed in that I think the administration is going to try and help as many of the kids as they can within the constraints of what they can get done with the hybrid model. Dr. Janker. Sorry, I'm not sure about the motion but let me just tell you what we'll do if you don't make a motion. If you don't make a motion, we will promote Harbor Workplace Learning Center special education supports and identify whether their additional students are going to take advantage of those programings which should have a wide range of needs and then consider whether we need to add additional staff in order to support it. We will also then if we can identify staff to do so which is an issue work our way up from the remaining students looking at students who need credit recovery to meet graduation requirements and if then there's still capacity offer that more widely to the community. But as Dr. Bodie said, we're looking at 50 maybe students, maximum about a 100 students that we would even be able to staff to do that on top of everything else and have space for. But that's what we will do. We'll try to build that program and identify those students. I think if you say we have to do it, I'm not sure I'll be able to staff it. I think if you say that I'm not sure that we wouldn't be better served by having some of the students who are looking at our high levels of academic challenge participate in some of the other in school support options. So I mean, I think you can expect from us in January a presentation to this community about the structure of what the departmental shifts gonna look like and a review of ways in which we're expanding other in-person activities and launching social activities for the spring. And you can expect that to come from us both in January for academics and then mid to later January for social events. I don't know that you need a motion in order to push or structure that. And I think in some ways it creates a set of expectations that are confusing to people. All right, more, is there more comments on Mr. Cardin's motion? So for me, I think the challenge with it is that I don't, I'm not clear what I'm not really clear what we're asking for, honestly. So is there more that, is there more you can tell me about it, Mr. Cardin? Like what this sort of, what it looks like. I don't like making motions and passing there's the support for this anyway. So I don't wanna take up too much time if there's not four votes for it. But I don't like passing motions that then people come back and they're like, well, we really couldn't do that because of whatever. So can I hear more about what it looks like or like what we're asking for? So the options that so far have been discussed being in addition to the departmental shift, the harbor, the shortstop, this credit recovery programs, none of that is going to address the students whose parents we've been hearing from. So there is a group of students, 20%, 10%, I'm not sure, who are struggling. They may be doing okay academically, but they're struggling socially. And their parents think they would benefit from a hybrid program. So let's find out who they are, see what classes they need to take and see what we can build for them. Like I said, a lot of their classes are gonna have to remain remote and we may not be able to offer them something for them. But if they happen to be enrolled in math and English and these are the classes that we can offer in person, then we should have our program to be able to do that. Great, thank you. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, I mean, what Mr. Cardin's motion does in my opinion is there are students who are not high needs, who may be struggling somewhat academically, who are not doing well with, or as well as they would like or as their parents would like with remote learning. They're in their rooms, they're in their attics, they're in their basements and they're not doing well. And parents have articulated this pretty clearly and what we've proposed tonight doesn't respond to those needs. And so what Mr. Cardin's motion does is it pushes the district leadership to come up with some options to help that segment of the population. That's how I see the motion. That's how I read it. And that's why I'm supporting it. Dr. Jainer. It's a, it's a, yeah, thank you. So I guess I just have to ask in terms of the role of the school committee and I say this with all differential deference to your role, but is it the role of the school committee to individually sort of mandate specific services to particular parents who are unhappy? And it's not that there aren't folks that are unhappy, but it just seems like we're getting so down into the weeds of our ability to build this out. And I know that there are people out there that are unhappy, right? And those folks will go to the school committee, sometimes they'll come to us and whatever. But I think when you start trying to mandate what the services and the relationship is that's going to be with those folks to service those folks at the school committee level, you sort of circumventing the conversation that they have with us. Sometimes we make folks unhappy, right? Sometimes folks say, this teacher is terrible and they're doing X, Y and Z and we sit down and we're like, we problem solve, most of the time we come to an agreement, but sometimes they don't like the way the class runs and they are unhappy with the class. And we say, this teacher is teaching within the expectations that they're teaching, the student is getting the services they're getting and we have to agree to disagree and there is an unhappy parent. You get those angry emails all the time, but we don't have a school committee motion directing me to come up with a program to service that parent. And so I guess I'm concerned just about the level of detail we're getting into here. We're gonna go through the needs assessment, we're gonna work with the parents. I think those parents that are not feeling well served should engage with the school and we will engage with them to problem solve around how we can support their needs and how other programs and services can support their needs. But I guess I just get concerned about where we can come up with a school committee motion to do that. So with all due respect to you, Dr. Janger, I've sat in many meetings with you and your team over the last many weeks where you have told anybody and everybody who would listen that ultimately this would be a school committee decision and you would bring it to them and they would decide. And so it feels a little bit funny now that it's like, well, actually, I'm not sure I like what you're gonna decide and I was gonna bring you these three choices and provide you with those and then you were gonna pick one of them. And so it feels a little weird that now, we've heard that from you many, many times or the school committee is gonna say, they're gonna decide, they're gonna decide. That's why people are reaching out to us to tell us what they want because you've told them that we're gonna make this decision. So I guess I push back on that idea that we get to make the decision but only within the parameters that you provide us. I don't know that I buy that. I think it's very likely that you're gonna get a decision tonight that's within the parameters that you provided us but I don't feel like you get to provide the parameters and then also say we have to pick one of those. So that's my feedback to you. Okay, and I don't wanna be interpreted that way. I was more concerned than I feel like I get concerned about the level of detail but I obviously will do whatever you tell me to do. It is your right and privilege as the school committee and I understand what you're saying in terms of trying to figure out amongst a very difficult decision. So I appreciate that. So Mr. Hanner and then Mr. Cardin, I saw your hand. Number one, policy is our purview. It's one of the three left by the state to school committees. We are also, I have the power to direct the superintendent to direct you, to direct you directly, no. You came to us tonight with several programs, programs for us to approve as this Morgan just stated. Policy belongs to us, whether you like it or not, you can come to us and tell us we don't have the money, we don't have the staff then we have to either provide you with the money of staff or the program doesn't work. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. It's all been covered. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, just very brief. I just wanna clarify, we are not getting into a level of individual teacher performance. That's not what this motion is about, just to be clear. I'm voting for Mr. Cardin's motion because based on that survey, I would say 20% of general ed students are not gonna get everything they need on the model that we've adopted. And I'm concerned about those kids and that's why I'm gonna support the motion and we'll see where the vote goes. That's my vote. Thank you. All right, any more conversation about Mr. Cardin's motion, seconded by Mr. Thielman. Okay, seeing none, Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. No. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. No. Mr. Hayner. Yes. And I am also yes. All right. So are there any more motions on this agenda item? Mr. Thielman. I just have a general question. I'm not sure if it is necessary. I don't know if a motion's needed, but one of the things that we talked about at our last meeting was meeting with the department of public health about to get a sense of the criteria for the six foot rule. And this is not to change that rule right now. It's not to change the rule without- But I have an update for that in the future agenda item. You do, I'm sorry. I can do it now. Well, it's a very small update. I have emailed them requesting said meeting period. That's my update. You don't need anything else from us. Great. Thank you. Not right now. But no, I asked them if they were open to come into one of our two January meetings and if that timing wasn't convenient, I mean, we can't compel them to come, right? So we can just ask. And if that didn't work, then if there was a time in January, you know, that I would rally the troops and I committed all of you to going at the time they told us to. So I will circle back on that, but- Thank you, Ms. Morgan. Good job. The email is out there. So, okay. Any more motions on the 750 PM AHS hybrid options discussion? Seeing none. Let's move on. We're gonna start flying here. I've got it. We're gonna dispense of a bunch of these before we have to move the 11 o'clock rule. The Jason Russell House CPA application support. I have my name on this. This was a request from Mr. Hainor. I believe that it is directing me to write a letter in support of the application. Is that correct, Mr. Hainor? Yes, it is. Or we don't- On behalf of the school committee. Oh, absolutely. All right. Is there anybody that would like to direct me to do that? I moved to direct this. I moved to direct the superintendent at the chair of the Allington school committee to write said letter. Super. All right. Is there a second? Second. Second. Look at all you guys jumping in here. Okay. Any discussion about this? Seeing none, Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Simpson. Yes. Ms. Hainor. Yes. I am also yes. All right. Super. Next, vote approval of the 2020-2021 budget calendar. Dr. Allison Ampey, I believe this is a second read. Is that correct? That is correct. I moved that we approve it as we do our final approval. Second. Great. Anybody want to talk about this? Nope. Good. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Hainor. Yes. I am also yes. All right. Election Modernization Committee. I don't believe that I put the email in Novus, but I might have done. Nope. I didn't. So we had a request. So the, as part of what town meeting did, they opted to change the way. Something happened with the Election Modernization Commission Committee that we appointed Jennifer Seuss to when she was a school committee member. She was appointed to that committee. They changed their formation at town meetings such that we can appoint somebody to that committee who is not a sitting member of the school committee, which is kind of neat for us because as it turns out, Ms. Seuss is still willing to serve on that committee. So as requested by the chair, reached out to us, to myself and to Mr. Hainor, Mr. Hainor being the chair of the Community Relations Subcommittee, being that if we were going to go through a more robust appointment process, we would run it through his subcommittee. So I'm bringing it to you with a recommendation that given that she is a former member of the school committee, barring what I, maybe there's somebody here tonight who would like to be considered to serve, which is fine. So I guess we need to have a little conversation. If anybody wants to do it and if people have an issue with appointing Ms. Jennifer Seuss to serve on the election modernization committee. So conversation, Dr. Alcin Ampe. I move to appoint Dr. Seuss as our representative on the election modernization committee. Second. Great, anybody wanna talk about it? Mr. Hainor. Briefly, I would just ask that either in the motion or some way to have her report to us at least once a year. Okay. Accept as a friendly amendment. Great, all right, any more conversation? Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, as the election modernization committee was attempting to bring us into rank choice voting as a multi seat committee, I would hope that going forward she would come to us then and discuss this with us before any votes are taken to move us into a different electoral scheme. Okay, anybody else? Okay, let's vote. Ms. Ecksten. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Alcin Ampe. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Hainor. Yes. I am also yes. Okido, 1056, Mr. Mason, how long do you need for your end of the year 2020 report? Are you still here? Yeah, of course you should. I am still here. Of course you are here. I mean, I don't have to do much. I mean- Let's move the rule and then you can give us a little piece of it and then we'll see if people have questions. That sound good? I mean, it sounds good. Sounds great. Whatever you like to do. You were great, right? Okay. Do we have movement on 11 PM, which we're imminently approaching? Move to change the end time to 11 30. Second. Okay. Great. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, stop, stop, stop. Okay, let's just- Did you have a comment on that, Dr. Allison Ampe, or no? I had a comment on the end of year report. I'm just wondering if we could do it next month. I mean, next week instead, just push it. Is anybody not in favor of that? I'm blowing your mind now. Not in favor. Did you catch that? Okay. Yes. Good. So did I get my vote on 11 30? Not yet. All right. No. I want my vote on 11 30. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Ms. Hardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Ms. Nealman. Yes. Ms. Shikman. Yes. Nealner. Yes. I'm also, yes. Okay. So, Mr. Mason, we're going to bunt you to next week. Is that all right? That's fine. Okay, cool. Superintendent's report, Dr. Bodie, you're on mute. I really just want to give an update on the high school and can talk more about this next week. But the good news is that we've entered into an agreement with our conceitfully construction and have a guaranteed maximum price called the GMT. And we are a million dollars under our original budget for construction that the voters approved in June 19. And we were able to add in a number of things that people had wanted to have at the time. And that includes lighting on the field, the Minuteman walkway that would come down from the bike path to the school grounds. It would also include a traffic light at Mill Street, additional insulation, the California Arts Wing, and improvement in HVAC system so that we have a better filtration system so we ever have something similar to the pandemic. And actually during flu season it would be great as well. So it involves an ionization system and a higher grade of filtration. That's it. That's pretty quick. I would also encourage people to look at our website because there are some great videos there that you would appreciate seeing. Great. That was great. That was really good. Does anybody have any questions for Dr. Bodie? Seeing none, we're gonna... Oh, Mr. Carden, really? Okay, go. Sorry, there's no in the forecast next week, Dr. Bodie. Thank you, Mr. Card. A lot or a little? Could be a significant amount. Okay. Thanks for that, Lynn. Thank you. Well, a lot of districts have shifted their policy but we haven't announced anything yet. Correct. That's correct. We'll see how the weather forecast goes. But we can shift into remote and I think that that is the... Well, we can try it and see how it works. And I think one of the issues with snow days is whether we want to add days onto the end of the year or people have a break now and that's what that would occur or do we want to just shift into remote? And I think the sentiment throughout the district right now is to shift into remote. But we're also thinking that we might not do a full day and let teachers have the lunch and prep for the afternoon planning time then. Do you need anything from us, Dr. Bodie, to do that? Okay, super. Nothing. All right, great. But you're gonna let people know about this when... Of course I will. In fact, I'll take a look at the forecast and give people a heads up. That would be super. And okay, I don't wanna talk about this right now. All right, great. Is anybody else for this? Super. So vote amendment, the contract for Michael Mason, who is our CFO. Dr. Bodie, do you wanna introduce this one or do you want me to? I'm happy to or you're welcome to. Yes, why don't you do that? Great. So we voted in executive session, gosh, maybe a week ago. So we have been very fortunate to have Mr. Mason as our CFO. He is in the third year of his contract, well into it, being that it's December. And so we were in a position to amend that and then extend it for the next three year period. And we were able to meet some of the things that he needed from us as well as meet the needs of our district, which is to keep him here. Our needs are very simple and explicit and we are very fortunate to have him. He has been just such a joy to work with. He is kind and funny and humble and he makes beautiful reports that he brings to us with great amounts of patience. Me especially, he can engage with us if we're excruciatingly prepared down to the decimal point or if we're more hazy about what's going on. He moves in so many different directions and the feedback that we've gotten about him from all of the various places that this district sends him out to at all hours of the day and night where he represents us well has just been so positive and they are so appreciative of his hard work. And so I'm really grateful that we were able to come to an agreement over a contract to keep him here with us. So that's all I have to say, but I'm wondering if anybody else has anything they wanna add to that. Mr. Cardin. Sure, you stated it very eloquently, but I was on the search committee that that brought Mr. Mason in. It was a large promotion for him. And we were able to get him at sort of a bargain price and now he's excelled and he's really one of the top achieving CFOs in the area very quickly has filled the position. And so we brought him up to market salary and able to keep him here. That's terrific, a big win for the district. Thank you. Any others? Mr. Domen. I just wanna echo the comments of my colleagues. I think we're lucky to have Mr. Mason. He does a great job and I hope he stays with our district for a long time. Mr. Hainer and then Dr. Hiddo. Hiddo. Dr. Allison Ampe. Same, Hiddo. Do we have a motion for Mr. Mason's contract? Mr. Schlickman. I move that we approve the amendment to the current contract and the new contract and authorize the chair of the school committee to sign it on our behalf as this is a wonderful thing to do. Second. Any more conversation? All right, great. Ms. Exton. Yeah. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Hi, I'm Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Domen. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. I'm also yes. We're glad to have you, Mr. Mason. Thank you for being here. Thank you. You're very welcome. Okay, consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Vote approval of warrant 21107. Warrant dated 1110, 2020. Total amount 7519210.42. Almost done. Wrong place there, though, guys. Hang on. Do we think it's 7,519,210? That possible? There's a lot of numbers. Does anybody have this? Is either the commas in the wrong place or it's a $7 million warrant? I mean, I don't know, guys, but that seems like a big one. All right. Read the other ones and I'll look up the number. Okay. Vote approval of warrant, warrant number 2113, dated 1124, 2020. Total amount $714,070 and 20 cents. Vote approval of warrant, warrant number 2113, zero, dated 128, 2020. Total amount 386657.59. Vote approval of minutes, September 24th, 2020. October 8th, 2020. October 22nd, 2020. Regular minutes. Vote to approve Kathleen Bodie as Arlington representative for EDCO Board of Directors for 2020, 2021. So it's just that 21107 warrant. We just doubled. It's 75. I got it. Oh, it's fine. Karen has it. Go ahead. Anybody? 751, 920 and 42 cents. 920.42. Yes. All right. So vote approval of warrant 21107, dated 1110, 2020. Total amount 751920.42. Don't move. Second. Ms. Eksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Billman. Yes. Shlickman. Yes. Heiner. Yes. I am also yes. Subcommittee liaison reports and announcements, budget. We will meet next week. Look for the doodle tomorrow. Thank you, bye. Community relations, Mr. Heiner. We had our third school committee chat last Saturday. It went well. Tomorrow we'll be meeting at 430 in the afternoon. CIAA, Mr. Cardin. We've met to go over the high school stuff which we discussed. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Gilman. No report. Policy, Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, it looks like we have something for the agenda. We'll schedule as beginning of next year, next calendar year. Okay. Superintendent search process, Mr. Schlickman. We're done. Right. But maybe let's hold it and pull it off. Do we have to do anything to pull it off? No. No, not yet. We could just leave it there. Is there's any mopping up we have to do? We might have to deal with the MASC on the contract. Who knows? Okay, no. Arlington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. Go by the school and see it. We're not gonna allow visits for a while but you'll see the building going up. Super. Liaison reports, announcements. Future agenda items. So I have a future agenda item. Dr. Bodie's evaluation is up next Thursday. Be here. The 17th. She got her work to us, which was great. Thank you so much, Dr. Bodie. That was super helpful. Much appreciated. And all of you, your due date for her evaluation, which is in your email is 12142020, which is Tuesday maybe, Monday? I don't know, Monday. I've received none of them. So here we go. But if you- Excuse me, is yours done? Okay, just checking. Yep, it's gonna be great. So anyway, just a reminder, friendly reminder. So I don't have to send an email. Okay, executive session to enter into executive session pursuant to Massachusetts General Law chapter 30A, section 21A, purpose to discuss strategy in preparation for negotiations of employment agreement with non-union personnel, specifically Dr. Homan to discuss pending litigation, McLaughlin versus Desi to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel, or contract negotiations with union and or non-union which held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect, collective bargaining may also be conducted. And will we be coming back? We will not be coming back. So move. Second. Great. Ms. Eksten? Yes. Dr. Ferdin? Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe? Yes. Dr. Homan? Yes. Cliffman? Yes. Dr. Hayner? Yes. I am also yes.