 Welcome. Today is Thursday, October 24th, 2013 at 6.30pm, and this is the regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee. My name is Judd Pierce, and I'm proud to chair this wonderful, hardworking group of members of our community. Hello. Let me welcome, please, Siobhan Foley of the AEA Arlington Educators Association as well as our student rep for this evening, Will Sanders. Will is a junior at AHS and serves on the student council as secretary and plays in the varsity boy soccer team. Welcome, Will. Friends, before we begin tonight, allow me to acknowledge the passing of Donald Byrne of Arlington as well as recognize the tragedy that occurred in Danvers, Massachusetts this week when we lost Colleen Ritzer. Our hearts and prayers are with the families. I'm going to ask for a moment of silence. Now, as some of you know, I'm a fan of the Boston Red Sox. I'll go out on a limb here and say that many of you in this room are too, and that those watching our television are too. In fact, I bet this meeting's ratings come 7.30pm. We'll be the lowest since Mr. Hainer got into the committee. That's true. Brutal. ACMI, you can't compete with game number two of the World Series. Much of baseball is rooted in tradition. It's part of the reason I like it. It's truly an American sport. We're able to trace our generations and share a common language in history, the sacrifice, the steal, the hit and run, the pop fly. We follow statistics and we dislike errors. We watch and wait and watch again without a clock. And baseball bridges communities and brings pride and joy. Another loyal Red Sox fan here. Great to see you, Jersey. We're witnessing the pride and joy this year with our local team, specifically with the Be Strong logo that the Red Sox uniforms proudly wear and the Be Strong logo on the green monster and the outfield grass. The local team helped us when we were questioning the good in the world. And we here in Arlington are fortunate to have them. And we're even more fortunate to have an athletics program that is second to none. And it's kind of great that Will is here tonight, represents that tradition. We recently heard from our athletic director at our meeting and have read from the newly designed website. Again, it's a fantastic website. The following philosophy. And we believe through our athletic experiences, student athletes enhance individual and collective growth during their high school careers. We strive to teach lessons that translate from the playing field to daily life. Through these experiences, players are poised to strengthen various aspects of their development through their resilience, accountability, communication and teamwork. So as we turn off ACMI this evening and go to game two in Boston, let's all remember that where the sports and teamwork starts right here in communities like Arlington. And good luck with the undefeated football team that plays tomorrow night in Lexington. And good luck with the varsity soccer team this year, Will. All right. Do we have any public participation? I don't see any, but I see some guests here this evening. I'd like to welcome our special education director, Kathleen Lockyer, and some of her team and staff. She is a presentation to show us an update. And Dr. Bodie or Kathleen would like to take it from here. Well, I want to thank them for coming. In fact, most of the team is here. Would you want to introduce everybody? Sure. Yeah, I would. We have first up at bat. I'll follow your lead. First up at bat will be David Dempsey and Meg, who you all, I think most people in the room know. They're going to be presenting on what's new at special education at Arlington High School. Then also in the audience are Chris Carlson and Jill Parkin, both of whom are elementary coordinators this year. There's a lot more to their jobs, but we'll get to a little bit of that tonight. And thank you for inviting me to give a brief overview of how the year started and kind of what's new in special education across the district. And I also know we're giving an abbreviated one. We'll be glad to come back with more information as indicated by the school committee. So I'm going to ask David and Meg to come up. They have a great presentation. They've given this in a number of places, but we condensed it quite a bit tonight just to give you the highlights. First of all, I'd like to say thank you all for having us, and we're going to go pretty quickly because I know that we all want to get home and get in front of that TV. So starting out, we're just going to really kind of give you some ideas of what's new at special education. So why don't you start clicking and we'll kind of move right along here if you can. There we go. So really at Arlington High School, one of the things we've started is an alternative high school located at Jermaine Lawrence. And if we start to really kind of take a look at this, we have the transition program at Arlington High School, which is really, and then we have also the children, we really want to ensure that disabilities have available to them the free and appropriate public education related services designed to meet their needs. At the Arlington High School, you know, regular education initiative is designed. This is the alternative high school that's at Jermaine Lawrence on campus. We have a program there now that we've really looked at in the past and we'll talk about that. It's a regular initiative designed as a transition program. It's determined for appropriate placement for each student, and it's really to determine special education eligibility when appropriate. If a student comes from us, to us from Jermaine Lawrence, that's not an IEP, we really have to start to determine whether they're eligible for a special education or not. And also it's about placing students that, you know, their placements are decided on faith, which is free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. And really what that means is that we need to really look to where we can place a student appropriately. And as you know that these students are all from sending school districts so that we're really looking not only to really transition them to the high school but find an appropriate placement for them. The staffing at the alternative program at Jermaine Lawrence, and as you know now, it's called Youth Village Jermaine Lawrence. We have a full-time lead teacher, a full-time teacher assistant, a .2 social worker, a .2 high school math teacher and a .2 high school English teacher. We also, the lead teacher there is also a certified science teacher who handles the science, and we have this new teacher as well. When we look at the student population right now, just as yesterday, we have 32 students that are there. Six are full-time students here at the Hollington High School. God bless you. Who have made the transition, has already made the transition to the high school in our part of our high school. At the Hollington High School, alternative high school at Jermaine Lawrence campus, we have 10 students that are actively in that program there right now that are on campus that are registered at our high school, and that's their alternative setting. We have two students at the Odyssey Middle School. We have four students right now that have just came to Jermaine Lawrence and that are in the enrollment process. And they will be in the Hollington High School alternative program there very shortly. We have 10 students that have been placed out of district, and the funding is from their primary sending districts. And we're also required programmatically to manage their IEPs and manage their meetings and move forward from that point on. So that gives you an idea of the student population. And just quickly, the profiles that we deal with there, as you can see, it's anything from substance abuse to physical abuse to PTSD to ADHD. We have eating disorders, ODD, and so there's an array of disabilities that we work with with this population there. And I think most of them that are placed at Jermaine Lawrence are really in a struggle. So the product that's really showed that we've been able to make a change when we look at some of the statistics. The first graduate from a student from Jermaine Lawrence graduated last year, which is the first one we've had in a long time. That's come out of that program and been able to sustain and graduate. And she's now in a post-secondary vocational program. Three students from the transitional program last year at the high school have remained, and since September they've been doing very well. One of our Arlington high school students, Arlington alternative high school students who's located at Jermaine Lawrence, and she lives at Jermaine Lawrence, actually, saying at our homecoming football game the other night. And one of the things that really is important about that is we now have those students that are at that facility and at that residential placement that now are starting to feel as though they're part of our community. And they're getting involved in extracurricular activities. They're not just students now that we've really looked as outsiders and brought them in and tried to educate them. Last year we have a student from a former jail student who was successfully placed in a foster care placement, which is really, it's not unusual, but the fact is that because of the transition year that she spent last year and the success she's had, she's now in the Boston school systems back in her community and doing extremely well. We had a 94% reduction in days missed per school annually due to suspensions or expulsions. And really what I'll give you the basic numbers, four years prior to starting this program we had 48 days per year of students from the Jermaine Lawrence residents that missed those 48 days per year because of suspensions or expulsions. And last year we had three days that was it of all the girls that participated. We only missed three days total of suspensions. So I think we're really trying to work with them and trying to give them a place. But we're also, I think the secret of it is, is that part of the program there is really about placing them in an appropriate educational environment, whether it be at Fire Academy, Dearborn Academy, or a collaborative, or here at the high school. It's really about finding the proper and the appropriate placement. Transition program. Why don't you go ahead. I just want to say one thing that we've started a transition. You want me to do the small group classes and then you do the vocational. Go ahead. One of the things that we've done here at the high school, and again, I don't like to look at these as changes. I like to look at these as improvements. Last year and in the past we had two types of classrooms that we could offer our students that are on IEP. We had the inclusion, full inclusion class, so we had the totally sub-separate classroom. And one of the things that we've done this year is, as I first came here, I started to look at, we were teaching students in our SLCB programs, which is our sub-separate learning centers. And we had teachers that were teaching four subjects to four or five students. And when I went around and I started to look at things, I realized that we had certified special ed teachers in each subject area. So what we've done this year is we've taken small cohorts of up to eight students, and we've basically put them in a classroom, a content area with a content special ed teacher teaching the content. But we've also put another special education teacher in the classroom to really help. And these are the areas that we're doing. We're doing math, we're doing language arts. We have four language arts classes in small cohorts. We have three math classes in small cohorts, two history classes and two science. And what that means is that in those classes, those classes have up to eight students that are, that normally in the past would be an either sub-separate or would be so challenged that we'd be looking for an out-of-district placement. We're now servicing them within the high school. And we have up to eight students with a special ed teacher teaching the content area, a special ed teacher in the room helping to differentiate instruction and break down content. And in some classes, even a TA to help with behavior. We're looking again at start by a content teacher, heterogeneous groups. And again, the co-teacher model allows us to really differentiate instruction and really break it down to small areas to really help these students that have high levels of need of schedule. One of the things that we did last year, I have to give Mary Milano the interim principal. When I first came here and I started to talk about this design, everyone said a schedule won't allow us to do it. Well, I have to say Mary Milano spent an enormous amount of hours working with Meg and myself during the summer, and we came up with what we've done, is we've scheduled all the academic areas for these students in the first five blocks of the morning. And we'll explain why as we go on, why that was important. The next thing is we have the modules. I'm going to let Meg kind of talk about those. So what we did is we determined that the IEP is all about specially designed instruction. And in our previous lives, we didn't really implement that. It was much more like study classes where you could do homework and the teacher would be there to help you. We called it academic support, but in fact it was not direct instruction, which now we have direct instruction that is tied to the IEP. If a student has a disability and a goal in their IEP for written expression and they go into a writing module, so it's correlated like that. So we have modules in all kinds of things. We have, oops, I've lost my arrow here. We have academic modules. This is providing that direct instruction in areas of weakness, reading, writing, math or study skills. These meet three times a cycle and they're taught by appropriate staff, either English teacher, math teacher, I myself, and doing Algebra II mathematics module. And we have study skills as well. So these are sort of the academic modules. Then we have post-secondary exploration. A lot of our students are not ready and not provided sufficient support through the guidance department. They fall through the cracks with the seminars that guidance does for them. And so they need a little more boosting through that process. And so they do a college exploration or career exploration module if they're seen as having weakness in those areas. We also have a job skills module where they'll learn about writing resumes and interviewing and they'll have practice interviews and cover letter writing and all sorts of things related to jobs. But these are classroom activities. And we also have independent living. A good portion of our student population need assistance in managing these independent living skills such as money management, health and disability awareness, clothing care, food management, travel and transportation. We have some students who don't know how to safely cross the street going to high school here. And so this takes quite a lot of training to get them to 18 and ready to go out into the world if they're starting off with trouble crossing the street. A lot of other students don't know how to use public transportation. And so this is, you know, a higher level than not knowing how to cross the street but still they need training and citizenship. They don't understand some of the local regulations and things of that nature. What resources are here in the community. So this is about building that familiarity with their community so they can navigate the adult world. And we have social cognition training where students will meet with a counselor one-to-one, a social worker. They may be part of a pragmatics group. They may have self-awareness sessions with around their disability and self-advocacy, role play, things of that nature going on in pragmatics groups. Let me just add on to that whole section of that. You know, one of the things that we really looked at was that all of these services are driven by the IEP. And, you know, we were cited in our coordinated program review that we were, you know, needed to take a look at how we were providing direct services. So that all of these services are set up and this is what we would see on the service delivery page of all of our IEPs that is based on a team decision and that a child requires these services. And this allows us to be able to really give direct services. And some of these modules have as few as three or four students in it with the really, really intense direct services and our written expression and our academic goals, which we're really looking to close the learning gaps and close those gaps in those areas. So everything that you just saw in the modules, those are all set up and those are all determined by the child's needs based on the IEP and have to provide the services through the IEP on those. And I just want to introduce this piece. This is the vocational transition piece and I think that, you know, one of the things that we really looked at at the beginning of last year was that, you know, the law states but that a child, when a child turns 14 that's on an IEP, we're required by law to start to provide transitional services. And transitional services means everything from helping them with what we're talking about in the modules, but also the school to work piece and other things, school to college and really helping them to fulfill the vision that's on their IEP. And really we weren't providing those services and what this has really allowed us to do and I have to say one thing, I took on this challenge kind of last year and I looked at a two-year plan and then Meg was kind enough to get involved with this and became part of this and I think she's allowed this whole process to accelerate to where we are now and I just wanted to let you know that I think without her here right now, we'd probably be two years away from where we are. We now have other school districts who are calling us about our transition model. We have other school districts who have already started to ask us about tuitioning students in the future and I really want to let Meg know that I think she's been an instrumental part of that and I'll let you go ahead and do your thing. That is true. Yes, it is true. Thank you. So school to work, we haven't been prepared to provide job coaching out in the workplace. So we have worked with work opportunities Unlimited and they've provided us with career resource counselors and worked with some of our more at-risk students and they do work assessments of these students. They do job coaching. So if work assessment results in a student getting a job, they will continue to coach them on the job. Everything from communicating appropriately with their boss about not being able to attend, the shift that they're supposed to be at or just the social nuances of workplace may need some coaching for some of the students who don't pick up on those things as readily. So that's that. We're also doing, I've got only a few of these going on right now but these are work study contracts. I decided that we have some students who are actually employed but they're not, what's this, conscientiously employed. They're not thinking about their employment. They're not thinking about what they could learn on the job. They're just going to work. And by implementing a work study contract, I put that reflection into their workplace. I go and visit them and observe them on the site. I'm still waiting for my plumber's assistant apprentice to set up a site visit. But I don't know anything about plumbing but I'm going to observe how he interacts with his clients, how tidy he keeps the workplace, what he does to clean up after himself and all the sort of things that I can observe. We have a list of appropriate plumbing environment standards that he should be abiding by. And so we're customizing. We're also, and it's similar to the PE contract. They have to go so many hours. They get credits according to that. They have to write essays talking about their goals. They have to come back and reflect on how well do they do, what did they do right, what did they do wrong and all those things. That's a similar flavor to the PE contract. And we also have just a couple of in-school practicums that are sort of emerging. We have Mrs. Saracen, who happens to be a special ed teacher and also our supply room person for the school and we have a student working with her. This particular student has an interest in running a toy store one day, so this is a great time for him to learn about inventory, fulfilling borders and things of that nature. And I just am working with the athletic director to set up some standards for a fitness room, for a kid who wants to be a personal trainer. So that is all in the works. He's expected to start his practicum in the second term. So it's all very fluid right now. What's next? I feel like we have to map our community resources. I'd like to develop the expertise internally to do the work assessments and job coaching that we're now farming out to work opportunities, bring it internally and internal. And then we have plenty of kinks in this whole program. I have to tell you, I'm getting this schedule right this year with not an easy test. But we're getting the kinks out. And to see more, I do have a link here of a larger presentation that is my three years of a five-year strategic plan. And you can look at it later. I'm done. I just want to say, before I turn it back over to Kathleen, in the special ed department this year, we started this planning last January. And I have to say that we have a tremendous staff of special ed teachers at the high school that not only took this challenge on of putting these new improvements in, and they're really, I think they're excited about the changes. They're seeing results with the kids. We had several parents meetings at the end of the school year last year. And the parents are now involved, and they're really encouraged about what's going on. We have approximately 160 students on IEPs at the high school. And with all the things we're doing different, we've had three phone calls this year which worked out very well in the end. So I think by communicating well to the parents, by getting the staff involved in this very early, I think we've really made some changes at the high school. And we look forward and continue to do so. And as Meg said, if any of yous have any questions or want to come back and do an extensive presentation into these areas, just let Kathleen know we'll be more than happy to do so. Thanks. First thing, this may go to Kathleen. All these programs that we've just heard, are they available for explanation on our webpage? Meg? Sort of. Okay. I started on this last spring, but with the scambling puzzle that was presented to us, I have not really updated it. And hopefully I will be able to... I have a lot of links to modules and things like that and curriculum and all that, but not a clinic-in-sight information is yet. So our intention is to put that link that was just shown on our website for people to go to? I guess first off, I should have began, you both did a phenomenal job, and I'm really excited about this program. I'm not looking for the finite detail, just an overview so that parents come in with a positive expectation of what's going on. And then you can connect them with the other thing. I think the only concern that we have about putting some of these is these are all driven by IEPs. I understand. Yeah, I think we have to be specific of that or putting it on the website. Because I think there's enough thing here where parents are going to come in and want their child involved in some of these things that they're out. So that's one of the things... I mean, just the little piece that you've shared with us here, I think it's exciting, and it might be enough. Just a couple other quick questions. Going back to the Jermaine Lawrence program, who approves the IEPs? A lot of the students come to Jermaine Lawrence with IEPs from other communities. Right. And an IEP travels with a student wherever they go, so we have to honor that IEPs when it comes. And then students that aren't on IEPs, a team is pulled together at the same as it would be with the high school to determine eligibility, determine what the students' needs are on the IEPs. But I mean, is there a gotium ad litem or something? Oftentimes there are. It also would be the original school district would have a representative of the meeting. Okay. And my last question. Do we get any financial support? I think the programs are needed or everything, but do we get any financial reimbursement or support for these children? Well, that's somewhat on an individual basis, but the global statement I could make is it's a net cost to the Arlington Public Schools. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. So I was going to ask the elementary coordinates to come up to, we'll take a little bit of time. I'm sorry. We'll dismiss you, Dave. They were in the on-deck circle, and now we're all up here. Yes. Okay. So thank you again for inviting us. What we're really going to do right now is just really highlight some of the changes that you folks helped us plan for the elementary school level. And we're not leaving the middle school out. I just sat here. It was actually when Jed Ostas last week to come, he highlighted these two programs. So we'll make sure that Audits in Middle School gets back here to talk about the exciting things they're doing as well. One thing I would say is one of the changes that we have with the reorganization had to do with our administrative reorganization, which I know everybody thinks happens every year, but I think we've finally got it right. So what's happening is we have school-based services. Both Chris and Jill have divided up the schools. Chris has four schools that he works with. Jill has three, but that's more than evened out by some other duties that she has that are system-wide. All of our coordinators have system-wide and school-based coordination assignments. So I would say that's going well. And what we've heard about that just on the ground is the appreciation for more in-school-based coordination to kind of respond to things in a more ready fashion. I will also say that I think the new evaluation system for educators is getting all of us into classrooms and out in the field much more often. And I think that certainly is one of the real benefits of that system. So what was planned and initiated last year was an increase in learning specialists across the elementary schools. And my recollection of some of the things we discussed in this room were to make sure that we had training for those who were implementing what was seen as an enhanced role for the learning specialists. So we had training this summer. Jill and Chris were the two people who organized it. We had two days of training August 19th and August 27th. We had a number of topics. All of the current learning specialists who were hired all participated. I think everybody really appreciated it. It was well attended. I attended the August 27th one. And I'm going to let both Chris or Jill speak to that. But I think we covered a lot of comprehensive topics. And that coupled with all of the really excellent mentor activities and training, curriculum training that happens for new teaching staff. And some of our returning learning specialists also took advantage of some of the curriculum workshops this summer. So what I've heard and what I observed was that there was great opportunities for training for staff prior to the start of the school year. And then I would say that the other thing that we were working on, I would like to say one thing. And I was glad Dave used the word co-teaching. One of the benefits that I've heard from the schools about the learning specialists that increase in staff. And that would be that there's two learning specialists as well as two instructional assistants assigned to the learning specialist role in each of the elementary buildings. What I've heard is that that has increased the ability for learning specialists to collaborate at the building level, to be at grade level co-planning curriculum sessions. There's also the other things that I've heard about is what principals have reported seeing as much more in classrooms, small group work with not only children on IEPs but students who are general ed, students who are not on IEPs. And that was one of our goals, was to increase small group, decrease pull-out, use pull-out when necessary, but have more in-classroom instruction. And it's benefiting not only the students on IEP but other students who are at the same skill level. And the other thing that was noted was how robustly we're able to respond to the IEPs. Where in the past, given the staffing, it was a stretch and rather difficult to respond to all the IEPs. What's been reported to me by principals is that there is less of a concern and problem-solving around that. IEPs are being fully implemented and more robustly and actually roles extended. So that's important. The last thing I'd mention than our last Chris or Jill to comment on that is that the previous year, we had increased our social work role. And this year, we have psychologists that are at least building assigned. They're not building base, but they have specific designations of buildings where they're going to be doing evaluation and support. So those teams of social worker principals, psychologists, team chair, learning specialists, all of those teams are much more strongly collaborating. It's more effective for them to be able to meet and to collaborate and plan. And that's been something that's being reported by many of the principals and the staff themselves. You know if there's something that I didn't mention that you'd like to mention, Chris or Jill? I did. I think just the one takeaway that, you know, certainly, you know, and working in the district for the last three years in this role as a coordinator and coming to you folks last year and kind of bringing forward the idea of expanding our learning center model, you know, it's been a huge addition to the district I think at the elementary level. I think it's been really well received in talking with the principals and working closely in the buildings. One takeaway that I keep hearing is that, you know, these learning specialists are making such a big impact, not just on the lives of the students with IEPs, but impacting the students in the general education. I think that was the one thing that we're really hoping to kind of come away from and to build that capacity for general ed teachers to really look to the special education department as a support, not as the answer to the problems, but how can we better support all of our students. And I think having that capacity, having a learning specialist be able to split their time versus covering potentially five grade levels, they've been more focused. They've been able to get to more students. They've been more proactive. And it's really, I think, I would look to the community and the families, but I think, you know, we'll see an impact there as well when we start to meet as teams. And I think it's a little early to tell how it will all play out, but it's been well received and I can really testify to that. It's been really exciting to kind of guide and to support and to work in the building level. I think roles of coordinators, you know, we're much more present in the buildings. Having more staff, it lends us opportunities to really getting out and seeing students and seeing how instruction is really coming forward. So it's been really nice. I should have mentioned earlier in the hiring process for a learning specialist, because I know that was a concern for many people in the district. We were able to hire staff who had been in other roles and made a determination to make a change to this role. We also were able to hire teacher assistants who had just recently become certified or had been certified and were ready to move into another role. So many of our learning specialists have had previous work within the district. They're not all new to the district. So we have a good group that had a lot of knowledge as they walked in. One of the things I'm going to ask Jill to address, because Jill, before she took the role as one of the coordinators, she was a BCBA for the district. She is a trained BCBA and a trained psychologist, a trained behavioral specialist. But that's not all she does. What she did last year, prior to this year, was she worked in a year-long project with Walker Partnerships, who worked with the social workers. And our hope was to build a continuum of social-emotional support, along with the behavioral intervention, and really have kind of a continuum that we have a wide range of support that we can offer for students and families who have those kinds of needs. So she had that as a background. And going into this year, we added a BCBA. So we have two system-wide BCBAs. We have two system-wide BSPs working with them. And then we have Jill, who along with her elementary coordination oversees that behavioral piece and helps working with social workers to keep looking at the continuum. You also know that we have the success grant that Cindy Bouvier wrote. And we have Peggy Satsoulis, who's one of our school psychologists working with her. So we really have a great resource for the district, probably unrivaled, actually, the opportunities for us to look at how we can support those issues with students. And that's really working well. I'm just going to ask Jill to comment a bit on that. Yes, it's an unusual initiative to have as many social workers as we do in our district. I was in this district once before. When I left, I chose to come back because of some of the collaborative and creative ways that we're addressing kids' social-emotional behavioral needs. We truly have a diverse department. We have social workers and BCBAs embracing that work together. And as a result of that, children are accessing the curriculum at a greater level and not being so much stopped by some of their upsets. It's a huge, as an example, is a huge need, as we all know, for many of our students. So we have this continuum of services who are able to assist our students in self-regulating as they get older to be able to self-monitor and self-manage better and better. I'm in the school's pre-K through 12 on many levels with this initiative. But it's the collaboration of the social workers and the behavior specialists that is very unique. And many of my BCBA friends always say, how do you do that? And it's because of the work in the district and the teaming and some of the support that we have. But it is a general-ed and a special-ed initiative. It really embraces all of the students. Principals have access to these resources. Hands-on, some of the professionals are attached to our supported Learning Center programs. And then some of the social workers are attached to schools that's in the elementary and the preschool. But it is a unique offering that we have to students. And it is one of the things that keeps me in this district. There is one last comment Jill just reminded me of it when we were speaking about the learning specialist role. One of the things that I've observed personally we have a great number of really talented general-ed teachers in classrooms. And I think to be able to offer them some additional support to support the education that they're doing within their classrooms. I think it's a mutual learning environment. I think our special education staff are learning a great deal about curriculum and classroom-based approaches that have been used for general-ed. We've been able to plan and talk with general-ed teachers about different accommodations and perhaps modifications that work for different disabilities. So I really see it really as each classroom is a bit of a laboratory to learn about the special issues that they see in each classroom. So that's all I want to say and I think we went a little bit over time. Thank you guys for making tonight. Members, any questions? Can you just tell us what BCBA stands for again? Yes, it's a certification. There are many people who have a background working with behavioral presentations of kids. It's a form of communication, sometimes not as adaptive as we'd like. It's a board-certified behavior analyst and there's a certification exam. Thank you. Just a quick question. I remember last year, budget time, we talked about reducing the TA budget and so that we could make some hires, professional staff hires, that's obviously happened. Yes, that would be that was related to the learning specialist role. The learning specialist role and to increase the behavioral support across the district. Thank you. With professional staff. I have to say generally, it's been well received and a number of instructional assistants who may have lost positions at the building they were have positions elsewhere in the district. Thank you. I'd like to thank you and your enthusiasm reflects what I think is a great program. Thank you. Quick question, just quickly. What about the enrollments at some of the larger elementary schools? Have you any concern about staffing at some of the larger schools? You know, and I actually rather remember Kersi speaking about this last year with a concern. I think this is a starting point. If you continue to look at data, it's certainly just an obvious issue. For the larger schools, there will be more need. It's something we'll look at all year, which we creatively try to respond to it. But as I said last year, I think a start was doubling the professional staff at the elementary schools. See them what the need is. I certainly know there was that level of need in each of the schools that we'll need. I think we may need to be talking about how to respond. Thank you. Thank you to make them and David as well for their presentation. Moving along to Miss Johnson, our financial support. Good to see you earlier this morning. Thank you today. She came from the capital planning earlier today. She just came from that. Sorry for being late. In my running into change binders, I grabbed the wrong one. I don't have the financial report in front of me. It would have been last week's packet. That's this week. Great. Thank you. Sorry. The main news on the financial reports is that special ed out-of-district tuition is quite up. We are presently tracking about $500,000 over budget for this year. This is very early in the year. Spring tending to be the season where there are more out-of-district placements. I am concerned. However, we do have the $500,000 with a reserve with town meeting. We have other reserves from this year. The main concern of this, other than we need to continue to monitor it very closely as we go forward through the year, is that what is this going to do to the base and the out years? Because if this number will stand going forward, if this isn't a bubble that's going to fall back, if this is really the new base number, then that puts us in a very different position going into next year, basically limiting a lot of flexibility to enrollment pressure. Won't be good. Is it because of the growing enrollment? Are these new kids or are these new needs for existing kids? It's hard to speak without being specific. Some of these are cases we've been seeing for a while that we knew may or may not fall our way. Some of them are new out placements. Some of them are still in the tuition stage so that it may return, may not return tending to not once they go into the 45-day placements. This is the fundamental volatility of SPED which makes budgeting so challenging in this area. One student can swing $200,000 here or there and that's tough because it changes so quickly. This is line 183-201 that you're talking about. Sounds right. Yes, tuition to other schools. I'm just confused because it doesn't have a variance. We're already moving 1.4 into circuit breaker. You see the $200,000 negative that will move the 1.4 to the circuit breaker as budgeted. That's part of that $2 million there. Then there'll be the tuition and money which I think was about $200,000 and then we're talking about the remainder that will probably approach town meeting for that reserve from special education. Now this number is lower than what I'm quoting you now. The 6.8 is subsequent to when this report was done so this is a lower number at this point. Okay. Could you just take me through this line again? I'm sorry. The budget is $6.1 tuition to other schools. That's the line we're talking about. Correct. So the budget is $4.7 million? No, the budget is $6.3 million because this is the general fund only. This is the portion that's carried by the general fund. The 6.3 total budget also includes circuit breaker and tuition in revenues to bring it up to the 6.3. This is easier for me to monitor the expenses. And you see in the estimate it's a complete a negative number because that's the money I'm going to move into circuit breaker tuition in and as we approach it probably the reserve from town. This number is lower than what I'm quoting you the 6.8 because when I ran the reports as of the end of September I did further investigation and things shifted. So 6.8 is the most current number right now. But as I say this is quite early in the year and hopefully spring is the season when we see the shifts. 6.8 is your current estimate? No, 6.8 is what we owe in out-of-district tuition. We have 6.3 to spend. In the budget. Correct. So we're looking at maybe another $200,000 above that potentially. So $700,000 above our budgeted number for out-of-district. And the special education reserve is $1.5 million. Correct. So that means there's $200,000 we may have to find somewhere in the budget to make up the shortfall. Well we do have tuition in money from prior years. The cushion that as well. I got it. But the true impact the true worrisome, I mean this isn't great but the true worrisome impact is the effect into the next year's budget if this has to be incorporated into the base. And special ed is working very hard and I think as our new run rate and how much of this may be may fall back. Maybe we'll bring some kids back. Maybe these out-of-district placements won't persist the whole year. Maybe other things will shift. So we're not at a point in the year where we can really say for sure. You can't get into specifics. I know that. But is this a result of a shift in our strategy? Because we had this whole effort to bring this up. We had this whole effort to bring this up. We had this whole effort to bring this up. We had some good years. We were able to create these reserves because there were years that we planned prudently and things got better. Let's go in the other way now. And this is the fundamental volatility of SPED that is so difficult and I'm very grateful that we've had the opportunity to build a new base, which we can't know that yet, but if this is the new base it's most certainly will. Thank you. I'd like to begin by saying please understand I'm still new with this and asking the questions. Line 81314 Custodial calling allowance. In the previous tracking report you had budgeted 9600 and showed a variance of zero. We have two codes for clothing allowance and I'm trying to get them consolidated so this is a cleanup effort. We have the money in the budget. The expenses are being split out oddly. That was the easy one. My computer just died. Here it is. The legal services 8302 it says that we've encumbered 151,117. That's part of that encumbrance. Okay. Other expenses that you're anticipating? We're just looking at what we generally spend in legal over several years and taking our best guess and putting an encumbrance in there. If in fact we don't use it we can release that encumbrance later in the year, but you know it would be odd for us not to spend at least that much, particularly when $40,000 of it is already committed in the retailer. And 81304 the maintenance salaries the variance of the prior report was positive $372 and now we're showing $108,000 variance. I'll have to get back to you on that. I don't know what's going on there. It could be that the maintenance supervisor's salary got moved into administration. I have to investigate that further to give you an answer on that. And 81115 the clerical salaries that went from $10,000 to $68,000 positive variance. We have some open clerical positions. So this is really early in the year. That number can go back once those positions are filled. This is really early in the year and variances at this point. I understand. The custodial supply services. We've contracted we've got subcontracted we still required to pay for their supplies. No, no, no, those are our supplies. We also have staff custodians. We've only outsourced a portion of our cleaning. The custodial services at the oddison at night and in the fresh well we use them all over the building in the high school but predominantly in the freshman building here but we have lots of custodians that clean and do other things that are on staff and we provide the cleaning materials for all of that. Okay. And the 83807 insurance we are now showing a negative variance close to $11,000. Yes, we got whacked on that this year. Okay. Well, the prior tracking report. The bill came in. Okay. So the contract was renewed in the early fall and it went up significantly from the prior year. But apparently school committee insurance is around the country. The insurance companies are just deciding it's a bad deal. The school committee's insurance? Well, it's a little bit for the athletics department but that hasn't varied. Most of the variance is with the school committee insurance. Okay, let me read. The insurance companies told us we could... Is this all our insurances? All of our insurance... $29,428 is what we budgeted for insurance for the district? Yes. It doesn't include health insurance. That's handled on the townspeople. No, I understand that. But this is all the... for liability? Well, and there's a piece for athletics. I thought you said that's separate from this or it's part of this? It would be part of this in the way this is expressed. Okay, I think there was... What the reason the school committee insurance went up so much is that the insurance companies gave us the feedback that they want to indemnify both the school and the town, not the school separate from the town. And so they said, oh, well, you know, if you bring the town in we'll give you a better price. And we did shop around but apparently school committee stand alone liability insurance has become a bad bet. So the price has gone up very much and it's not just here. It's all over. Would that be something we might want to consider talking to the town to go together? Sure. Thank you. So it's not liability for accident, say, at school. That's a separate policy. That's covered under the town's umbrella? No, this is the school committee, the policy for the school committee. I want to know about our general liability policy for... It's for self indemnified. For the town municipality. But we have a separate little policy for sports. And you're going to get back to us on the maintenance salary? Yes. Thank you. If someone sues the administration for something employment related, does it not? The answer is yes, it can. But usually the employees of the town fall under so the general self insured nature of how municipalities do it. They don't usually go out for insurance and we don't. As far as I understand, we do not have insurance policy like that for the town of Arlington. But would this policy cover... In particular circumstances, yes, but it would be pretty... We'd have to pull out the policy, but the answer is yes in particular situations. Yeah, I'm just... To say it's just for the school committee I think loses some of the evidence that this insurance covers and I'm trying to clarify that. Any other questions on the budget? I would like... Can I add one thing? Dr. Boogie. I'll ask Diane if she would talk to them about the audit report for our grants. Title 1, free and reduced. That is a very good look. That should be... Oh, no, I'm sorry. There was a reason I was out the last meeting and sometimes it doesn't all click back in. But we've had it... For the town audit, there's been a finding for several years about time and effort reporting on the school side with our grants. And it's really a labor-intensive and miserable thing to clean up because federal grants are predicated on the idea that everybody keeps a time sheet for hours on which they work on the grant. And schools run on exception reporting so you report when you don't show up for work as opposed to what you did while you were at work. And so you have to create this whole other level of bureaucracy that meets the needs of the federal government to know that you were actually working when you said you were on the grant. And it's taken a couple of years to get this fully implemented and I have to give Julie Dunn a big shout out for the amount of work she does and the nagging to chase people down to get them to sign off on their certificates. It's been... this piece of bureaucratic task that we have to do but we successfully did it and we had no finding this year for the first time. So that was a good thing. We moved our systems forward. We're a better bureaucracy today. So... I'm sorry, I flaked that completely. I'd like you to tell them the good news rather than me. Ms. Foley has been involved in that process too and thank the union and the teachers for their cooperation with this because it really was a collaboration to get this going between the administration when our needs to comply with the reporting and the teachers and the union's willingness to agree to do that. Great, thank you. Dr. Boatley. Right, well... Of course my... Well, I have a number of things and first of all I want to talk a little bit tonight about the goals completion. We want to do one more edit just for grammar and that type of thing but we will put this on our website but it's also an opportunity for you tonight. I'm just going to go briefly through these. I'm really doing briefly just to give people an idea that in the global sense it can say that virtually everything was completed except for the last piece which had to do with the survey which is something I think that we need to take another look at. We talked about it last year but we just couldn't clarify exactly what it is we wanted to ask so that still remains something that we jointly need to think about a little bit more. But we had some very ambitious goals last year and there certainly was a lot of effort and I would say overall a lot of success in creating these goals. So the school committee has four strategic goals and every year the plan has been is that we have very specific goals related to those strategic goals and last year under goal one in which we ensure that every graduate is prepared to enter and complete a post-secondary degree program pursue a career of citizen in an ever-changing world by offering a rigorous comprehensive standard based data driven K-12 system of curriculum instruction and assessment that integrates social emotional wellness report. The first goal had to do with the alignment this was a continued goal from the previous year to make sure that all of our curriculums were aligned with the Common Core State Frameworks as well as make sure that we have the curriculum maps and the assessments in place this year as we look at a year where we're supposed to be fully aligned because this year's MCAS will reflect the will be primarily focusing on the Common Core State Standards. Last year was sort of a half and half and this year it's a full a full testing of that. So that was very successful and involved again tremendous collaboration with all of the teachers and administrators and in the district a lot of work went into this. This was a multiple year much in the last two summers quite a bit of work and a lot of credit to Laura for the work she did in leading this effort. So we're in very good shape and I don't know if you'd like to say anything about that. Put you on the spot moment. I think that I would have to compliment the teachers more than anything else. This can be something that could be totally overwhelming and they came with it I think with a great deal of enthusiasm we still have a ways to go in implementing what we've done but I feel really good about the work we have. It will be ongoing. It has to be because when you're looking at assessments you can't remain static. You have to be always looking at this and adjusting and as we go through the year we'll find out if our pacing is right and make modifications in that way. So it's not that it's ever done but what I can say is that we're aligned at this point. The second goal which had to do with the achievement gap for the PPI score of 75 or greater for the high school for high needs students in every school. We've already had a report on this a fairly complete report on that as well as the goal 3 which had to do with the student growth percentiles and again the last meetings went through that in great detail. The fourth goal under this had to do with create and identify two common assessments at every level in all disciplines and you have to report here from all of the different curriculum areas in terms of where they are at this point in time. You've already had a report somewhat on this in terms of what DDMs we are going to be piloting this year and the smaller subset of which DDMs this district determined measures that we said to the state that we will be doing this year. So that was a topic of a conversation quite recently but the answer is that we are prepared to do the pilots this year and I believe that in a number of cases we've already done a lot of the baseline testing. Before I go on to goal 2 in sort of a quick overview of this are any questions anybody had that you would want more information about I do know that there's more backup files. Karen can attest to that they've been sitting next to her desk for the last few weeks. So if we need for the back it would go to Karen? Go to Karen. Go to Karen. Thank you. For goal 1 I was just confused because it says using the goal is using the Atlas Rubicon software to complete the alignment and when I'm reading through the text it seems like it wasn't clear that everything was done in Atlas or at least that it doesn't say that for some of these I mean it talks about for the Odyssey 1 I can't is that where the curriculum maps were done and then the other one it's saying substantially update Atlas during this year I just I couldn't I was confused reading that so the language needs more clarification as to the complete this is good at as I might need to do before we get it out I can't I'm sorry I couldn't read it and understand for sure what happened it has dates and when people work which is great except I was trying to look for part of it is you're hearing the voice which that's the that's the positives of it you get to hear exactly what how the curriculum just reported out on the other hand they can say it a little bit differently do you want to make a comment about that comment to me it's difficult to read something like this has many different voices because each time I read a paragraph I have to think who's saying this and I don't actually know because it's not really identified and it's just to me it's easier if everything's done in the same style in the same format so I can look okay here's here's this number okay I'm looking next okay it's gonna be right here that's my that's a good feedback and we can modify this a little bit but perhaps going forward that might be something we would do differently preferable to me but I don't know about the rest of committee but to answer your question all of the work that was done this summer was then put into ATLAS as part of this summer there will be we will continue as we as I know that I just met with one of the literacy specialists Dr. Bodean I met with them this afternoon and it was clear that teachers are like yeah I'm doing this but I'm also doing the assessment for the very first time and as I do the assessment we may have to go back and change how we're rolling something out more and so there will be updates as we go along okay thank you okay and our second goal strategic goal for the district we're looking to recruit higher retain and build the capacity of a diverse staff to be excellent teachers and administrators by providing high quality professional development aligned to the needs instruction support coaching and evaluation framework that fosters continuous improvement so the first goal under this strategic goal this year had to do with the create and ratify the educator evaluation system consistent with the new department of education guidelines and I would say that was one of the highlights of last year in terms of the collaborative work that that went on with teachers and in fact members of this committee participating in that we there was a year long effort where we built capacity of the teachers in different buildings to go back and be the trainers in their own buildings I thought it was a excellent model it was very successful and a lot of credit goes to Laura and to Linda Hansen for co-chairing this effort last year and we do have a ratified agreement that we are implementing this year and in fact it would be a good moment to just talk a quick update on actually where that is this year the first observation for non-professionally status teachers was due on October 15th and we met 100% of our goal the next big date for us will be 1st November 1st where the final goals and action plans that are part of the new evaluation system for every teacher will have its final approval and evaluators have been working very closely on that for the last couple months there is a long window for them to do that so that they really can do it right the first time we actually had some time one of our professional development days for them to work on that and then the next big date will be November 15th and at that point everyone in the district will have had at least one observation and feedback session by then the new system fairly well considering how complex it is every once in a while we do hit a little tweak but the company has been extraordinarily responsive and I also have to give a shout out to Kelly who works in our human resources department who is now the person who definitely knows way more about this system than I do and I refer all questions to her. In this process and congratulations you and all the staff are getting feedback from the evaluators themselves about the amount of work that it's taking what effect is it having I think that's important for us to hear on going because we've just added another pound to the one pound bag that already has three pounds in it. That's definitely true and it's something we're going to be monitoring people are challenged but it is early on in the system and so we would feel uncomfortable trying to quantify that impact to this. We meet quite regularly and discuss it. We do and at this point I think everybody is feeling the stress of all the changes and some of them are our own as you've been hearing special education but on the other hand those are some of the things that are also very exciting it's both things it's that new change but in all the work we have that change and Shyvana is here tonight we have a learning specialist it's a new way too of interacting with more people coming into your classroom to support you that's a positive but it's also a change and so there's all of this that's going on on top of we've got 60 teachers over the course of the year all elementary teachers taking the retail course that's here we have the new educator evaluation system we're moving into a fully aligned common core curriculum and this is a lot. It's just a lot for everybody that's this year and I think that there's been anxiety about it people saying that tired and I think people are tired it's been a lot of change I will say the feedback I have from principals and we've talked about this and this was principals and curriculum leaders have very pleased with the types of conversations that they've been having with teachers and from what I understand from teachers it's mutual and I don't know if you want to you know you have you're very much close to what's going on what you hear but we're all working on this and trying to get a process that's going to be effective but at the same time efficient in its implementation so we'll go through the year and we're all trying to take the deep breath and do the very best we can with it so the next one actually is related to this first goal too because it involves the professional development professional development for teachers and administrators in the implementation of the educator valuation system and I would say that probably exceeded this number last year in terms of the work that went on at faculty meetings throughout the year you also on the next goal talking about the professional development experience designed to deepen content knowledge and differentiation strategies there was a lot of professional development going on you can read by discipline but you've also had reports periodically on this over the last year and even saw a report on what all the summer PD was this year and people this is a this is a staff of teachers who are very committed to improving what their practice and you have people going to workshops in fact today I mean there's just people off we're trying to encourage people to go beyond the school system to get out there visit other classrooms so professional development takes on many forms and it's not a lot of it's district initiated but it's also the course of people take the master's programs are in the PhD programs are in the visits out to other schools there's all of that that becomes part of the whole panoply of what's offered so that is pretty much to one last one here professional development on ipad again you've heard quite a bit about the the professional development that's gone on this year the summer and continues to go on in fact you might want to mention a couple things the continuous piece of it this year we have 20 teachers that are participating in a course called T 21 that's a blended learning course where they have three face to face sessions and the rest of the time they have their work done online and it's provided by edtech teacher we have the vast majority of the teachers are from the Thompson school but we have teachers represented from other schools as well in addition we have lead technology teachers that are running after school professional development twice a month for teachers and on November 1st we're running our second annual choice pd day where there are some required sessions but there will also be choice sessions we have about 36 different workshops that are being offered the vast majority of them are on incorporating technology to better meet the needs of all students anything on this particular one okay so moving on to goal 3 goal is that the will offer cost effective education that maximizes the impact of taxpayer dollars and utilizes best practices, academic research rigorous self-evaluation to provide students and staff the resources, materials and infrastructure required for optimal teaching and learning in a safe and healthy environment well the first goal has to do with the plans to address some of our outstanding building issues the high school autism middle school, Stratton and the preschool and in fact that's actually part of my superintendent's report tonight just a quick update on that and maybe this is a good time just to jump in in fact I was just going to say Dan we'll be back today we we had a for the high school last spring and we engaged a company called onsite insight to come in and do a complete analysis of the entire physical structure of this building and that report is out in fact you've been received a copy of it it's about with all of the data tables it's about 180 pages but there are significant needs here and I think we'll have a time at the school committee to talk a little bit more in-depth presentation about those but this report I do want to say again and we talked about this long-range planning this morning does not address at all any of the educational needs of the building which would include anything to do with our science labs which have structured views in them and the standards of MSBA in the state want to see science labs doesn't include anything about our technology it actually doesn't really address a lot of the Bateman issues that would be in this building it doesn't address the preschool which we have to talk about and it also doesn't involve anything with both security or enrollment and one of the things in the long-range planning meeting this morning is that if you were to take roll forward four years and you were to take the current 8th grade, 7th grade, 6th grade and 5th grade so that's those four classes and move them into the high school in four years we would have at least 300 more students in this building now that's even the first class that's coming in that's in the 400s all these classes up to 5th grade or I should say from 12th down to 5th grade are in the 300s you hit 5th grade and you're in the 4s and our average classes in the elementary are about 450 this year kindergarten is about 488 or 90s pushing up there I think it might even be there now so you push that again in other four years you can see that we're really having incredible enrollment pressures on this building and right now there is not enough class space for it for those classes and some of the classes that we have the space isn't utilized well so there are a lot of issues that we need to address and the the onside insight report does give us a good window into the mechanical needs but that's where it begins and ends I don't know, you didn't hear what I had to say well did you mention the fact that it also doesn't deal with the cost of abating hazardous materials nor does it address IT concerns which are particular to this building because of the density of the masonry that wireless bleed from room to room is much more difficult we also have lousy cell reception so any kind of telecom stuff has some real challenges here too and this isn't touched in any of that the other piece about security besides the building is very hard to secure both in terms of just entrance into the building but there are a lot of spaces that you could hide hide and that are not normally traveled and so this is a issue I mean it is a big issue here in terms of keeping the building secure and safe we've done a lot a lot of work in that area actually something I wanted to address a little bit tonight too I know we're running a little behind here so I'll speed it up but another part of this we can talk a little bit about we can see in the plan what we did last year but we're really moving even faster this year in terms of Stratton for example we've already Diane and Mark Miano who is our director of facilities for the town and we're also engaged on-site insight to come and do an analysis you want to talk about that? Michael Hanna also was in the principal of the Stratton was in that meeting today and we've discussed it with on-site insight and they're going to send us a proposed contract and we're going to move forward with commissioning a plan a report very similar to the one we have for the high school now to really look at the nuts and nuts of the building committee to be the parody committee to decide what would be parody for the Stratton community what would be acceptable level of parody with the other elementary schools in the district and once there's a clear vision of what that parody would entail we engage the services of an architect to price it out and see and then I think it'll be a more organic and fluid process and not so linear I think there'll be some backing and forething between what we can do. Would this study be more in depth looking at the areas that weren't covered in the high school? No, it's only mechanical systems so that's the issue of the committee. My only concern is it comes back it'll give some specifics that we need to address and stuff like that but like you just said there are other areas that granted Stratton is nowhere near as old as this building but the study is just a launch pad. We cannot do less than this and say that we've renovated the building but this is by no means the top this is just a place that we can't go below this it would be foolish to say this building is renovated without addressing all of that. In fact in the high school what struck me when I looked at the report and they have a lot of graphs in there which you maybe had a chance to look at and I know the public is going to be very interested in having the building renovated because how much is in the year one? 15 million. That's not even green. That's not even replacing energy efficient systems and that speaks to how past their expiration date the systems in this building are. Very much past and so it's not that you can even wait. Two years. It was all like do it now. We're going to be moving we're more aware of the limitations in this building. Of course, Dr. Matthew Janger the principal of the high school has instituted a building committee of teachers here. They've met several times. I attended one of them. He's put an all call out to parents to see if they would be interested. He got 40 responses. Many of them architects and so there he's going to be bringing people in parent support and so this is going to be involved a lot of people moving forward. Same thing with Stratton. We're going to invite parents and teachers to participate on this committee. There'll probably be more people that will want to participate that will be able to because we have to keep it a working committee, but that will go out as an invitation to parents also very soon. So a lot of moving forward and I won't talk about autism tonight at the preschool, but we do have to address those later. Now the thing had to do with procurement and furniture for Thompson done. Well almost done, right? We still have a few punch list things to do. We're getting there. We're getting there. We had one problem at Thompson. It's complicated, but you'll apparently there was a code. We're learning about all the different codes. We had that problem with the the day that we had the dedication library. We didn't know what the code was to turn the microphone on. A similar thing happened. I got a call from families that were living in the area around Thompson who were hearing all the announcements in their living room. It's like bell ringing. I have to totally agree with them. This is not acceptable. You were broadcasting. We were broadcasting. We were broadcasting. The code systems on these new buildings have you have an outside mic. But you can turn it off. We finally got the codes. Hopefully the neighborhood can rest easy now. But it's very technological. There's lots of little things that are coming up. I'm sure that wasn't little to the people who were hearing announcements in their living room in the morning. ASOP was one of the goals and we're in good shape there in implementing that. And we certainly you've heard a lot last year about the health hunger free for kids act the implementation of that. And I have to give a lot of credit to Denise Boucher. She did a fabulous job with this with Sharon Malone who's her assistant because the meals are still excellent. They meet all the guidelines. I think if you go to the Salad Bar young men of the high school you will have plenty of food. But she's done a good job on this. But the other pieces did a good job and also at the same time staying not having to go into red. So she was able to meet her budget needs. So that was goal 3 and then goal 4 was having to do I won't read the whole goal but had to do with the smooth and efficient operation of the school system. And the first one had to do a central registration process and you've heard a lot about that. It was very successful. But we continue to find ways to improve and I'll give you an update on some of those things we've had to implement and think about later on. But you have some of the pages to one of the things I just quick note on this is that one of the things I got back from a couple parents is they go to open houses on houses and you have to make a decision on the spot as to whether you're going to put an offer in often. So to accommodate people knowing exactly where homes were we put right on our web page the school locators. You just have to put your address in and you can find out which district or which buffer zone you're in. Which by the way we will get you a complete report probably in December about the buffer zone. So that happened and certainly the redistricting and the buffer zone was one of the others and that went well. The only thing that needs further reconsideration or consideration maybe reconsideration is the whole issue of surveys to the community. Any questions? All right. Thank you. Well, I'm not done actually. Mr. I was just going to ask. I'll wait. I was just going to ask you that there's several parents have indicated to me there's a $30 fee to athletic students to purchase a pass to attend games they're not playing in. I was going to get to that. That's why I deferred to you. Well, you were right. I misunderstood what you asked me the first time and I did check this out. In fact, I gave you a copy of our athletic director, Melissa Dilecki's email about this. Apparently student athletes have been given free passes for the year and in a discussion with her captain's group she meets once a week with all the captains of the teams and had some meetings this summer. They had some tension that had been growing between the athletes, non-athletes in terms of who pays, doesn't pay. And so they decided that this year they would do that. And it's up for reconsideration. In fact, I know that there's been some parents who have said that every parent who has an athlete son or daughter should have a free pass. So I would like to have this whole issue be deferred referred to by the budget subcommittee to discuss this as a sort of a policy. But you should also know the athletic director is going to get us a breakout of what the revenue is from each one of these ticket sources so that you can sort of fully see what the impact might be of changing the athletic policy on this. There was two part concern. One was the fee. The other part is that in this is something new because we are responsible to initiate any new revenue no matter how small. And I think through your office, I think if anybody brought something like that to us and could support it would probably support it as well. But my concern is that I'm doing this. The other part is that we have and I don't want to open this can of worms we have athletic fees that are they've had we'll discuss it at budget. I think it was done out of in sort of an innocence and was after the fact we all found out about it but we're certainly going to look at this again. Thank you. I did want to respond to this tragedy that this happened in Danvers because I know that it has been very upsetting to teachers particularly at the high school and at the secondary level today teachers met early this morning about this just to talk about the feelings on it but one of the things I do want to say is that parents probably also are concerned as to what the level of security that we have we continue to try to this physical security of all of our buildings and I think we compared to where we were a year ago certainly two years ago we have really made tremendous progress. There's certainly a lot of things here at the high school that we could do more of more security cameras doors that still need to have be improved in terms of different kinds of key structures so there's still a lot that needs to be done but one of the things that I think that came through with both these tragedies both in Nevada and Danvers is that it was the perpetrator was a student and I think that's what's most upsetting to teachers is that because of that but one of the things I think that is unique here in Arlington is the amount of support that we have over the last few years with your blessing and support have put into our schools to at least we have at least one social worker in every school and we have more behavior specialists and we certainly at the secondary level have more than one social worker so that when students need support we are able to identify these students and get the support that they need we are also in Arlington uniquely benefited by having AYCC and I know that they have been and I know specific schools that they are coming and helping right now in working with students that have been identified that need some extra support so what is really important in a school besides the physical perimeter of the building is how do we help students and their parents work through behaviors that are potentially concerning and I think that while we always can do a better job I think that we are doing every year we are getting better at and I think you heard this evening from special ed department all the work that is being done in this area as well and with all of this can you completely ever prevent some of these things from happening and we would like to think that we can but we can never guarantee that but we are certainly dedicated to this work and we are just so sad about all this happened and hopefully we will see the end of it soon. I think that I hit most of these things other than I just want to say we are moving forward with searches for the director of special ed that will be posted at the end of this in November and the principal of Dalin I have gotten some emails about staffing concerns you may have as well but we are addressing those very carefully and we have put in extra TAs in a couple situations but we are doing this very carefully as you have heard some of the budget constraints that we are looking at this year but we are looking at that and the other thing is that all of our alert now is up and running and hopefully we don't have to do that but at least I know they are ready to go in case we do and I think that pretty much covers it. No school on November 1st. There is a professional day on November 1st the day after Halloween so everybody that has had candy highs the night before will get to stay home with their parents. Excellent. Thank you Dr. Bodie very much for that report. Consent agenda moved at 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 which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant 14050 dated October 10, 2013 total warrant amount $512,146.36 approval of draft minutes September 12, 2013 September 26, 2013 and October 10, 2013. Second. All those in favor? Opposed against? Subcommittee reports. Any reports out from the policies? We meet shortly. Budget. Well we have had a change to the budget calendar given that we did not tonight have our FY13 review so hopefully I will have some changes to that next time. We do have a budget subcommittee meeting on November 6th which is a Wednesday at 5 o'clock. Great. Thank you. Any other subcommittee reports? Right. Secretary's report. That's me. We have received the following correspondence a copy of a note about the accountability update at the Addison Middle School an invitation from Murphy, Hesse, Toomey and Lahane to a reception at the MASC-MASS conference on Thursday, November 7, 2013 an education alert from Murphy, Hesse, Toomey and Lahane on guidance about gender identity law a copy of the letter sent from Chair Pierce to the PAPA organization thanking them for their support of the trip to the jazz band that is going to take to Dallas, Texas. And an invitation from Bill McCarthy for school committee members to take part in the Veterans Day Parade that will be happening on 11-11-2013. That's it. Moving on to executive session. I'd like to make motion to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion which held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declares exiting only for the purposes of adjournment. Second. Aye. Aye. Thank you.