 This open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate 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 members 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 so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation in such 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 and that some attendees are participating by video conference accordingly please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording all of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the novice agenda dashboard and we recommend the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on novice. We are. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude the chair will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide any comment questions 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 a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking if members wish to engage in public comment and each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. So we have five people who signed up in advance for public comment and I'm going to call on them a little bit out of order that I have on my thing because I need to find them in the list so. Mr. Joshua Roth is going to go first. Mr. Roth. I'm sorry. You know what I need to do. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I need to take attendance. So to make sure everybody can hear us. So. Ms. Eckston. Here. Mr. Cardin. Dr. Allison Ampey. Here. Mr. Thielman. Here. Mr. Schliffman. Good evening. Mr. Heiner. Mr. Schiegel. I'm sorry, Mr. Heiner. I guess we just stepped out but I think he's coming back. So we're still meeting missing Mr. Cardin. Dr. Bode. See hurry it either. Dr. McNeil. Here. Him. Mr. Mason. Here. Mr. Schpiegel. Don't see him yet. Ms. Elmer. You're here. Oh, there you are. You're right. Thanks to me. Okay. Thank you. Um, okay. So we, um, so the, uh, just as a reminder for the public, um, that as a matter of policy, the school committee does not respond to public comment. Um, and the way that public comment was set up for this meeting was that people needed to sign up, um, in advance. Um, so I'm going to call on that, uh, the people who had signed up in advance. So Mr. Roth, you can go ahead. Thank you. Uh, my thanks to the entire assembled audience and to the school committee for this opportunity. Uh, my name is Joshua Roth. I am a resident of Arlington and a teacher at Arlington High School. I'm a proud member of the AEA. However, uh, my comments, uh, do not represent the association, the faculty at Arlington High School or any other larger body than myself as a teacher and resident. Um, I simply wanted to ask, um, that the school committee and administration, uh, ensured that the entire Arlington community, uh, know what the protocols will be at the Arlington public schools in the event that the district is informed of a positive COVID result among staff, faculty or students. Uh, I'm stopping here to just ask if I can be heard clearly, Chair. We can hear you perfectly. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I would like to, uh, urge that stakeholders, uh, uh, be informed of, uh, positive COVID test in any of the Arlington public school buildings. Uh, of course, in a manner that preserves privacy, um, as required by law and custom. Um, will stakeholders be told, uh, the type, a number of tests that were administered, uh, will teacher, staff, students and families be told whether they were in proximity to a COVID positive individual? And if so, in what setting? What conditions either locally or statewide would result in a suspension of in-person instruction, be it in a particular class section cohort for a particular teacher in their classroom or a building? Uh, how quickly would the process unfold if a cohort classroom or building were to shift to remote instruction, uh, due to a COVID case, uh, presuming in-person instruction is in fact taking place in the setting. Uh, because of the contagious nature of the virus, I feel that stakeholders should be taken to include the Arlington community at large as well as faculty, staff, students and student families. I am aware that the State Education Department has issued some guidance, uh, in this subject. However, I think it best that the district, uh, communicate its intended approach and provide access to the details through a variety of channels, male, community TV, the advocate, et cetera, as well as online. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, so next is Ms. Elena Mendes. If you can, you should be able to speak and we'll make sure that we can hear you. Hi. Hi, we can hear you. Perfect. Go ahead. Great. Thank you. Uh, well, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Um, I just wanted to, you know, thank everybody up front for your thoughtful plans throughout all of these. I know it's a very difficult decision-making and I'm not going to repeat all of the points made by everybody else. Um, but acknowledge that there's a lot of valid points on all of the considerations that everyone raised. I just wanted to add to the debate three points that I haven't heard or seen, um, raised before. Uh, so this is not meant to be our comprehensive list of issues, but three new points to add for consideration. Um, the first one is just to remind ourselves that when we are talking about any form of in-person, um, model at the schools, it's really very small parts of 10 children with a teacher. So it's a very different situation from a restaurant worker or a grocery store worker that are constantly seeing different people. It's really a bigger part that one's family, but not a huge increase. So it's important to keep that in mind. The second one is also just to take into account how keeping kids at home may exhaust surveys inequities. I feel very privileged that my family can afford to support our children in many different ways. If they stay home, um, we can help them with schoolwork. We can afford a tutor or some alternative arrangements, but a lot of families cannot and not having the option to send their children to school is really going to be a financial stress for them, uh, as well as put their kids at risk. And then the third thing and perhaps the most important one of the three topics that I wanted to raise is, um, as someone who works in the mental health space, I think we should really, uh, take into consideration also the mental health of the children. Um, mental health impact, the mental health impact of remote schooling and lack of socialization will take months, perhaps to be noticeable, but it is a silent killer. We already see the numbers of anxiety and depression in America skyrocketing both like among parents and children. And this is going to have a huge effect in the future generation. Um, it will increase all of the experts are saying rates of suicide for the coming years and other exacerbations of mental health issues. And, you know, the decision on when the kids can start socializing and being supported in their mental health and social well-being will make a difference in those numbers and those rates of anxiety and depression and exacerbation of mental health issues. So that's just one more, I think, important consideration that I haven't heard before, um, discussing the previous meeting that just wanted to make sure that everybody's keeping in mind. Thank you. Um, Ms. Alham Sadat. Oh, good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm speaking on behalf of myself and two other Arlington public school parents, Mara Vats and Angela Cristiana, along with over 100 parent volunteers about outdoor options for in-person school time. Tonight we're providing a brief update of these plans. The health and safety of students and teachers must be a priority in any back-to-school plan and we must take every step to reduce the spread of COVID-19. In thinking about the highest risk behaviors during the school day, we are focusing on outdoor lunch, snack, and mask breaks in elementary and sixth grade on all in-person days on the severe weather prohibits outdoor 10. There are also tents and portable classrooms being proposed at AHS and Audison. We'll facilitate the creation of fully accessible outdoor spaces, properly equipped to support those activities in order to achieve a safer and healthier environment that reduces the chances of spreading viruses by the start of the school in fall of 2020. We have met with representative principals from the elementary schools and the Gibbs and are working on securing the following items. One, we are assessing details such as outdoor space, square footage, tree canopy, existing outdoor seating options at each of the schools. Number two, we are pricing various outdoor seating options, hand-washing, and or hand sanitizing stations and fencing. Three, we are assessing what outdoor spaces are available, adjacent to each of the schools and identifying what permits may be needed for parks and rec. And four, we're identifying appropriate funding sources to make all of this possible. Once we have this information collected, we will seek feedback from all stakeholders in our community. Again, we do not intend to increase the burden put on teachers and administrators during these challenging times and intend these efforts to be parent-driven. We invite school committee members, administration, teachers, PTO leads, and parents to contribute to this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Brett Lambert. Thank you. Can you, can everyone hear me? Thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you to everyone for your continued hard work in this unprecedented time. I would like to, I listened to the facilities subcommittee meeting last week and from what I heard it appeared that the facilities work update was in large part focused on ensuring all of the equipment was operating as intended. There was a lot of discussion about replacing motors and belts and servicing of equipment. Understanding that this of course is a critical first step, I was concerned that there was not an apparent update on the increased ventilation capacity or any talk about higher level of filtration being installed. Early on a lot of the discussions and reports were very much focused on increasing ventilation rates and installing MIRV 13 filtration but there was always a caveat of where possible because at the time there was not of course an understanding of where all of that could be implemented. I'm very aware of how difficult of a task the facilities department and the school department is facing with trying to get all of these answers together in a short period of time but I'm also very aware of how much ventilation and filtration can affect occupant health even under normal circumstances and I would like to ensure that increase increasing ventilation and filtration above and beyond the code level ASHRAE standards that the equipment was previously operating at is still being half is still a priority and still happening district-wide and furthermore I'd like to understand where if anywhere this is not possible due to the existing equipment. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Key. Hi can you hear me? We can thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm an Arlington parent of a child who'll be a senior at AHS and a child who be at Gibbs this year. I've also worked as a school counselor school social worker in Arlington public schools for a decade. I have very significant concerns about the reopening plans from both of these perspectives. I'm very concerned about the inequitable education my child will receive as a senior at AHS if the hybrid model occurs. I hope you recognize that the 87 percent of parents quote choosing hybrid for the AHS students does not reflect actual intent or desire for students to attend in person. There was effectively no choice in order for my child to enroll in her classes. If the hybrid model occurs I and others will be switching to remote due to health and safety concerns. The remote plan will offer quote graduation requirements and she will only have access to standard English class no longer an AP class and she will have to independently prepare for the AP. It appears that she will lose access to another AP class and honors class, pre-calculus, and all of her electives that she was still looking forward to as a senior. There'll be no Arlington teachers as they'll all be assigned to hybrid based on everyone's initial commitment and she'll have to teach herself via online platforms. This is not the education any Arlington taxpayers should receive for their child particularly in their senior year. For my child it gives it seems clear to me that the all remote option is by far the better educational and social emotional option. He'll have synchronous classes taught by APS teachers all day every day. Hybrid students will only have two days of synchronous in-person classes sitting at one desk all day restricted to a six foot bubble on all sides. Children may be struggling to hear their teacher 18 feet away behind a mask and a face shield. Many minutes of the day will be taken from education for the purposes of cleaning hands, taking mass breaks, and extra time to transition to the cafeteria with a hundred other students where they will be assigned to a desk with the six foot bubble from everyone else again. They cannot work in small groups, they cannot share a smile, a hug, a high five, or even a pencil. Never mind to have a personal conversation with the friends. I'm not even touching on the issues with the bathrooms. I see no benefit here only an incredibly socially emotionally stifled environment with constant reminders of the health risks that they're facing. This is not an environment primed for learning. As a school counselor we have approximately 250 students on each of our caseloads. In a typical year it's challenging to say the least to work with as many students. Counselors have not been given any plan that would reduce our physical health risk exposure to less than our typical caseload numbers. Even if we were all to work remotely, keeping our caseloads so high at this time significantly decreases our abilities to appropriately attend to the drastically increased mental health needs of our students and families. In less than 40 hours APS staff are due to report for work. I still have not been given notice about whether or not I will be granted a remote position. If I am granted remote positions I don't know if I'll actually be able to work from home or still be required to go into the school building. Due to health and safety concerns I've requested a leave of absence if I'm not able to work from home. I don't know if that will be granted. If it is I'll get no salary for the year and will be expected to pay over $20,000 in order to keep my family's health insurance which is one of the least expensive plans offered. If my leave is not granted and I resign I'll be out of a job with no realistic prospect of ever being able to get another job in a school. This has not been a summer off. It's been an unbelievably stressful summer wondering what will become of my job and my future and I still have no answers despite multiple meetings. As a clinical social worker with over 20 years of experience I'm extremely concerned about the social-emotional impact of students attending school in person this year. Is it tough on social-emotional health not to go to school? Absolutely and I believe it will be far worse to go back now. How will children feel when school staff and friends start getting sick? How will children feel who bring COVID back to their family members who later die? I don't think you need to have my professional background to start to imagine the answers to these questions. It's not if COVID will return to APS but when. There was a 90% increase in COVID cases in U.S. children from mid-July to mid-August. 90 plus children have died. Now that children are being taken out of their homes to return to school school buildings with hundreds of people and enclosed spaces for multiple hours a day what will happen to those numbers? What if there's just one kid at APS who dies? What if that one dead kid is your kid? Miss Key I need you to wrap up because you're at about four minutes now so if you can just finish that would be great. As full committee meets together remotely for health and safety reasons I implore you to reconsider your choice of an in-person reopening plan for our thousands of children and staff. A full remote plan provides the best education for our children. It's the safest both physically and mentally for our community as well as the most equitable for students and staff. Remote learning and working are not ideal but it's what we need to do right now. We are not in an ideal situation. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Keyes. All right thank you everybody. It has been an awful couple of weeks to be union president. Let me just tell you that. So in one of my many conversations with educators this summer our recently retired teacher gave me this advice. Times change values endure and I've that really struck with me and I've done a lot of thinking about what our values are this summer since that conversation. When summer began we were looking forward to going back to school in person this fall. As time passed that process has just become more and more complicated. The AEA asked Arlington to put safety first and the district has done a really admirable job of securing testing for staff and updating our building ventilation systems. When staff were surveyed at the end of July 58% said they wanted to start remotely. There were many lingering concerns which is why we asked the committee to plan for a phased reentry that would start with our highest need students and then bring back the rest of the students into the building. This committee chose to ignore that request and start in a full hybrid model. You voted for that before even discussing the plans and as they were revealed more and more questions were raised questions which still have not been answered. In fact no one has been able to answer questions about the schedule in the month that has now elapsed. We don't know how prep periods will be covered or how specialists will be limited to a cohort of students for safety. We don't know if we're going to be able to hire enough staff to adequately fill the schedules and monitor the students safely. We don't know how to run a high school schedule in a hybrid model because of the wide range of core and elective classes. There are not enough hours in the day for the special education services required and meetings that are needed in special ed in our hybrid schedules. The increased custodial load triple the cleaning in 11 buildings defies the logic of a 2.0 FTE increase. There are not enough hours in the day for both teaching in person and preparing lessons for students at home let alone the grading that goes with it. The schedules reduce prep time for many staff rather than increasing it as this committee talked about at the august 10th meeting and perhaps most alarming. There is almost no opportunity for individual attention to students as teachers will be at least six feet away in person and with a different group when students are at home. Our teachers want to be back in the building but not like this. The hybrid schedules that exist right now are a chaotic nightmare and the truth is we're used to starting in chaos. We're used to schedules not being done or still changing on the first day or students showing up in the wrong place. We're used to the unknowns and we make it work but we can't do that this year. If a schedule for a student is wrong we can't just move them to another class because there are hard limits on class size for safety. If there's no one to cover a prep period you can't just ask someone to step in because it will break the cohort. We can't combine classes with a substitute when a teacher is sick. We simply cannot cover up the systematic failures this year the way teachers and other educators have done in the past and so last week I surveyed our members again and I asked them how they felt about the plans. I asked do you support returning to school with the current proposed hybrid schedule for your building and nearly 82 percent said no. I asked do you believe if the current proposed hybrid schedule for your building will provide a high quality education to students and more than 88 percent said no. And I asked if you would support the union in a strong push to begin remotely while the district continues to work on a better hybrid plan and more than 90 percent said yes. I hope you can see how strong the opposition is to the hybrid plans among the staff. If you move forward with this you are doing so without the support of the educators in the district. We have been sounding the alarm for a month in department meetings building faculty meetings and in our union meetings with administration these plans don't work. You're not listening. You are so determined to put kids in physical buildings that you are sacrificing the quality of the education they will receive to get them there. We can do better. We teach our students to learn from failure and do better next time. These plans are failing. Let's pause. Let's start remotely and correct the course to a hybrid model designed by teams with teacher representation. We can use models from other districts that found a better way or we can build our own putting education first. Let's utilize our current staffing to get our highest needs kids in first and then add more groups as we fill the many open positions that we have right now. So what are our values? Do we value quality education based on research best practice? Do we value relationships between teachers and students? Do we value staff collaboration in developing lessons and in caring for students? Or do we value a physical presence in a building even if it sacrifices the learning and the relationship? Your decisions thus far show that you believe it's better to be in the building no matter the cost and we are telling you as loudly and as clearly as possible that the educational and emotional costs of these hybrid plans are too high for our students. We really value the working relationship with that the teachers in the district have with our administration. This is not their fault. Everybody's doing the best that they can and this is an unsolvable problem. Every other town is going through the same thing. But time's up on debating. We start school Wednesday. We need to correct course on this. Thank you and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them. Thank you Ms. Keys for sharing this important message from our union. Just so that everybody at home watching is aware the district and the AEA are inactive and ongoing negotiations that began after our August 10th meeting. I think they've met five or six times. I'm not sure. Negotiations happen in executive session. They are confidential and it means that it's challenging and difficult for the administration or the committee to be able to respond or comment as it can be considered public bargaining. But it's important for the full committee and for the community to hear from the AEA. I'm very grateful that they were here. Ms. Keys was able to share with all of you tonight. Typically subcommittee reports for our school committee happened at the end of the meeting. But for tonight's meeting since so many of them have met in the last 10 days I elected to bring the committee reports to the front so that we can hear directly from subcommittee chairs about their meetings. As the public knows the school committee approved the superintendent's recommendation to begin in a hybrid model with a remote option due to facilities concerns the high school will start remotely and in order to work through the other pieces of the motion related to facilities metrics testing etc many of our subcommittees met over the last few weeks. Not every school committee member is on every subcommittee although many attend some or all of the meetings. Many of our administrators have been at so many meetings. Ms. Keys has been at so many meetings over the last few weeks but I wanted to bring these reports forward as a way to make sure that everybody has the information that we received. So tonight we're going to hear in order from facilities budget curriculum policy and then finally the superintendent search. So we're going to start with the facility subcommittee report from Mr. Theoman. Thank you Ms. Morgan. So after as Ms. Morgan said after the school committee voted on August 10th to adopt Dr. Bode's recommendation to begin the school year with a hybrid model each of the subcommittees were asked to meet to break down different parts of that motion and and speak about it with district administrators. So the facility subcommittee which includes Dr. Curci Allison Ampe and myself met on Wednesday August 26th at 2 p.m. Dr. Bode, Mr. Mason, Mr. Spiegel, Dr. Janger, Mr. McCarthy from the high school, Mr. Feeney were present along with Ms. Morgan and Mr. Hayner. So lots of people were there for the conversation. Mr. Feeney reviewed an Excel spreadsheet that included a status report on HVAC equipment throughout the district and he said this review and repairs would be ongoing. After reviewing the report Mr. Feeney was asked what would you know what what's classrooms would be ready and when and he was confident that the HVAC systems would be up to speed and that classrooms would be ready for opening in grades k through 6th and all the elementary schools and the Gibbs Middle School by the 21st of September. Mr. Feeney said that he anticipates the ventilation systems in all but two classrooms the Addison Middle School will be working on September 21st. Dr. Bode said in the meeting that assuming that the average daily enrollment in the hybrid model stays as it's currently projected she does not anticipate a delay in reopening that school because of ventilation concerns. Mr. Feeney said that he needed more information to make an assessment of Arlington High School. The district is fixing a large rooftop air handler on Fusco House. The Downs House is and should be ready by September 21st and Mr. McCarthy from the high school informed us at the meeting that the building contractor for the HVAC building contract and SIGLE won't have all of the HVAC all of the air conditioning installed in the high school until sometime after September 21st sometime in early October. The committee had a discussion in the second part of the meeting after a general overview of HVAC in the district the committee had a discussion about Arlington High School and Dr. Janger and Mr. McCarthy are putting together a report. I've not seen a copy of it yet but they we asked for some specific information on the size of each AHS classroom the number of students each can hold while meeting COVID-19 restrictions the possibility of using any other space in or out of the building for instruction and any reductions in electives or other course offerings that may have to occur because of a return to schooling. We Mr. Mason asked the facility subcommittee again we're going to do that I'll talk to Dr. Kirstie Ellison-Ampe and get a date. There were questions about ventilation there was a question tonight Mr. Feeney did a pine on that in the meeting and essentially what he said is that we can increase mechanical fresh air ventilation in the classrooms but we'll be limited in our capacity to do so as winter conditions get more extreme so that was the meeting it was a good discussion and we'll meet again probably I don't know if we're going to meet before the 10th or we'll meet after the 10th we'll find that out. Thank you. Do committee members do you guys want to you want to ask I mean this is sort of a report on the meeting so I think if you have questions about the content we should do that probably as our part of our reopening report and and just do these subcommittee reports you know as they come so um Dr. Ellison-Ampe on budget. Thank you. Budget subcommittee met on August 26th to discuss the budget needs resulting from COVID and the school reopening. In addition to subcommittee and school committee members we were joined by Dr. Bode Mr. Mason and Dean Carmen of the finance committee. The intent was to discuss the following remote by choice additional budgetary needs hybrid additional budgetary needs facilities additional budgetary needs transportation needs and anything else as um to address these things Mr. Mason presented a draft spreadsheet and an updated version of this can be found I know this looks this one that you can see I'm not going to try and screen actually maybe I will screen share so we basically looked at this spreadsheet and then discussed it topics and questions raised included a desire to increase the number of substitute teachers to allow building substitute per learning community of the day. Concerns that the salary designated by contract may not be sufficient to track these teachers questions from the committee about additional needs for example computer software licenses. Committee wondered also if we needed additional staff including licensed teachers and then we wondered how much money was being put towards accomplishing the testing which is being described. The committee felt it would be helpful to have a summary of all spending being put towards reopening the school to share with the public in the future and we'd like to see this developed in the near future. Additionally the subcommittee encouraged the administration to consider and present needs that even if they might stretch beyond our current budget because it was felt that this indeed is the time to utilize rainy days first. Additional needs I heard are mine. Let me can I screen share just a sec let me find the thing I want to screen share first. I was just going to pull up the the sorry I didn't anticipate doing okay where is it. Okay yeah can I screen share? Sure okay. Hit the green button at the bottom. Yeah let me let me make sure I know where I'm going yes okay I know where I'm going. I forgot I have to fix what I'll do is I'll screen share it for you Carsey give me one second. Okay yeah just I'm sorry I forget that we have I have to fix things on my computer and I forget I have not had the screen share yet so I'm just going to put up the ask Michael to put up the spreadsheet that is also in our novice thing. It's available Carsey. Right great so what this shows is that it breaks down the different categories where we anticipate additional funds. You'll notice there are a number of things that are to be determined that's because we know that they're likely to be needed but we haven't figured out how many or how much we're going to be spending on those but it includes an additional learning community the oddison and at the Gibbs building substitute teachers a second grade teacher at the Stratton and additional administrative and instruction planning time. Some of these things the the they're listed as a quantity of one that's just to make the math work the they obviously don't don't worry about that. In terms of facilities there's a need for custodians and cleaning supplies there are full-time equivalents for custodians and training as well as supplies and also including tents throughout their spaces and other things then moving on to technology there are Chromebooks for students MacBooks iPads great and software plus additional expenses including nurses and some administrative costs. So what that shows is that right now we've got we're spending a little bit beyond what we anticipate what what we have but we've also informed the administration that we can spend beyond that if they feel that there are needs which should be addressed and that's about it. Great thank you curriculum Mr. Cardin. Thank you. The curriculum instruction assessment and accountability subcommittee met Friday morning to get an update on the back to school plans. Most of the principles were there Dr. McNeil was there Dr. Bodey Dr. Bisson information on technology director most of the department heads were there so it was quite a large group. We did get some update on the plans. It's important to note that you know the the the documents submitted on on October I'm sorry on August 10th by the superintendent was sort of the the basic overview plan and the details continue to get filled in. There are many things that affect how those details will be determined. One big one was the number of students that selected the different models which we still didn't have firm numbers on Friday because there were some people that submitted two responses there were some people that didn't submit any response. So we're getting close to those numbers maybe Dr. Bodey will update that in her presentation but the numbers who choose the different models determine how many staff can be allocated to which model at the middle school for example there's about a third of the students or 30 percent or so of the students that did choose the remote option the remote academy and we did hear from Mr. Merringer something that concerns many parents is that that split does will likely you know he's still working through the details but that will likely allow the foreign language teachers to split their day so they can teach in both programs. In Spanish for example there's enough to allocate a full Spanish teacher to the remote program but the Latin teacher would have to split her day and that might that might hopefully the schedule will work out so that she can do that. So we heard a little bit more about things that were evolving in the plans we heard from Dr. Bisson that we are moving to utilize Zoom as one of the technologies to use but otherwise we're sticking with the Google suite and we heard from Dr. Janger a little bit more details about the phase in for the high school in the plan there weren't any certain dates but I think he's proposing to wait until the end of the first term to start phasing in the hybrid model assuming that all the building work is done at that time. So again as you know as things evolve the details are getting filled in we heard about bathrooms for example how bathroom use. Susan Franke our director of nursing services is visiting each building with each principal to look at the bathrooms determine how many students can be in a bathroom at a time and the buildings are working out protocols for figuring out how students get sent to the bathroom which is going to be unique for each building so all of those details you know I got a question from a parent how are we going to drop our kids off all those details are obviously still being worked out there's an enormous number of details that do have to be worked out and the administrative team is working you know day and night to do that and they are bringing in their teachers particularly next week the teachers will be back on staff and we'll be able to help work out some of those details so um that was the basic update and I think Dr. Bodie and her update will will have a bit more information as well thank you. Great and Mr. Schliffman I'm gonna have you do policy and then call on yourself to switch over to superintendent search if that's all right with you. Okay good thumbs up if you can hear me okay good because I was having a little issues with my headset policies and procedures we met this morning we had a discussion with Doug Heim sorry for delaying getting the meeting in but we had to work around Doug's availability as well the basics are there are three three policies that are up for second read EBC, BEDB, and JJK. EBC has a slight change of the recommendation to Mr. Heim. Doug recommended the addition to the language and or the town of Arlington among the organizations that could issue COVID emergency orders in two places highlighted in read in the policy copy for EBC supplemental that is before you at this point that we can vote or just go through when we do the second read. EBCFA is face coverings at the last subcommittee meeting we questioned whether we needed to do this because there's already an emergency declaration however upon legal advice we were advised that yes we should do EBCFA and we sent it out to you and we need to do a suspend the rules in order to enact it past the second reading tonight not as the recommendation of the subcommittee. Mr. Heiner and Dr. Allison Ampe may want to further comment on that. You've covered it very well for me. Same. Okay so I move that we suspend the rules to adopt policy EBCFA face coverings. Second. Discussion. So this is only a vote to suspend the rules correct Mr. Schliffman are we gonna we're gonna do these policies after the consent agenda but I'm gonna add if we approve this I'm gonna add EBCFA to the list of three that we already have is that is my understanding correct? Yeah that's the way we can do that you can add that to the second read list and so that when we get to the policies at the end we'd be enacting the four policies including the minor change to EBC supplemental. Great okay any other discussion? Seeing none roll call vote on this oh Mr. Cardin. Sorry no sorry so just a question about the policy as well as in relation to the internal protocol that we saw in early draft of there there's a there's more detail in that protocol but just want to make sure that those those two can harmonize and not be conflicting. Was that considered? Essentially the policy will enable the protocol I mean we could if the committee wishes come back in two weeks and offer the protocol is EBCFA-E is an exhibit to the policy but I don't think it's necessary. Great thanks just want to make sure there wasn't nothing that nothing that we're adopting that conflicts with what they were proposing. Okay any other discussion? Seeing none roll call vote on the suspension so that we can vote this later Ms. Extin. Yes Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Hillman. Yes. Mr. Schliffman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. Okay back to you Mr. Schliffman. Okay now moving into the superintendent search subcommittee meeting we met on Friday made a lot of progress the minutes are in the packet but I'll walk you through them. We received the MASC focus group report which is attached to the minutes of the August 28th meeting. The report is also now posted at ArlingtonSuper.com. ArlingtonSuper.com is where members of the public can go and find that report. We talked about the recruitment brochure. We discussed dates and language for the brochure. The committee agreed that October 9th at 3 p.m. would be the deadline for superintendent candidates to submit applications to MASC with the intent to appoint the new superintendent by vote of the full school committee in mid-December 2020. The subcommittee looked at various MASC brochures and they're attached to the subcommittee meeting. The subcommittee was most interested in Bedford and Lexington's brochure. We also had the brochure we had out when we hired Dr. Bode 10 years ago so we can see the progress that we've been able to make in terms of doing brochures. A draft brochure was prepared by MASC and if you have any suggestions to edit or change it please submit them by noon on Wednesday. The subcommittee will meet again Thursday, September 3rd at 10 a.m. so that we'll be able to make any adjustments to the brochure and vote to authorize it to be posted with the application form for superintendent candidates. Now, we have a second set of applications we have to go through. The second one is for the screening committee. The subcommittee will finalize an invitation for persons wishing to serve on the screening committee on Thursday's meeting. Mr. Kutcher suggested we ask for a statement of interest and reason for participating which is standard for their searches. He also recommended a statement describing affirming their time commitment and giving notice that we're going to set a date for the initial meeting, the training session and please do not apply to join the committee if you cannot attend that session and cannot make a large time commitment to being present at all screening meetings. Mr. Cardin found the WALTHAM invitation on their website presented it to us and it's tagged at the end of the minutes in order that folks can take a look at that. It will probably work off of that. The applications will be available after the September 3rd subcommittee meeting. Now, the size and categorical composition of the screening committee will be recommended by the subcommittee and brought forth at the September 10th school committee meeting so we're setting forth the application but we're not going to go forth with the composition or the categorical composition and how many members and how many need to be from whatever category until it's approved by the full committee. The deadline at the September 10th meeting, the deadline for submitting applications to serve on the screening committee, we're targeting for September 17th so the subcommittee can go screen the applications and make a recommendation for appointment to the full school committee on September 24th. Once that committee is in place, the screening committee will hold its orientation meeting sometime between then and October 9th and begin work on or after October 13th. Mr. Kutcher gave a prototypical 13 member screening committee to the group. We may do 13, we may do 15. The larger it is, the more problems you can have with coordinating schedules and getting a manageable group to interact with candidates. So he's recommending 13 to 15 is a target number for members of the committee. That I think covers what we've talked about. Again, Thursday at 10 a.m. is our next meeting and if you want to look at the draft brochure, please get information back to me by Wednesday at noon so I can forward it to MISC and they can play with it. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Schiffman. Next piece is the reopening discussion of fall reopening plans. Dr. Boody. Thank you, Ms. Morgan. Well, first let me begin by just saying to the committee and to the community that my recommendation and the recommendation of all the administrators that I've been working with is to still have a hybrid plan and a remote choice plan. I'm actually calling it more of a remote academy now because there's been a lot of confusion about that term. So we have two programs that we are planning for simultaneously and there was a motion by the committee on August 10th which had several eight conditions to it and I do want to speak to all of those conditions. But one of them was supporting an application of the Department of Education in order to have three additional days for planning and preparation. That application was approved and our first day for students is going to be September 21 for both programs. Parents have been notified, staff have been notified that that will be the first day for students. However, there'll be nine days prior to that that we will have extensive professional development planning collaboration as we plan for the start of the new year. Now the first day of school is going to be this coming Wednesday and it's that was set on the calendar some time ago. This day will be as we have always had a welcome to everyone and there will be faculty meetings after that. The afternoon of the of the first teacher day of the year is also spent with teachers having a chance to work in their classrooms or offices. So as we, I want to talk a little bit about the hybrid and remote plans and get a little bit of update where we are with with the planning for that. We're going to hear from Dr. McNeil and some of the principles about more detail about the hybrid and the remote academy plans and then I have a number of other hybrid and the remote plan. Mr. Carden is correct. We had at the middle school roughly about 30 percent of our families about 25 percent and at the high school 13 percent. Since we we actually had to spend a fair amount of time last week actually going through because there were a lot of duplicates and and I think you know some parents both filled out a form so we had to so the the school principal's administration had to go through each one of the lists just to make sure that we didn't have any duplicates and we had actual numbers. So after that process was completed we did begin the process of looking at how the remote academy is going to be set up and I think one of the the positives we found is that for the most part with very little exception the remote program is going to be within each school. So the teachers of a particular elementary school will be teaching the the remote academy classes. Now there are you know a couple exceptions that it could be that we will have students from one school being assigned to another but that's really going to be really the minority of the situations and that would happen in the situation where we really did need to balance class sizes so that one one class was not substantially larger than another from a different school. Now we have been targeting the range for these remote academy classes at around 23 to 25 and I suspect that that the vast majority of those classes will be within that range we are not choosing to have classes of 30. So we have begun the process actually of contacting teachers we are not finished with that process yet letting them know that they have been assigned to the remote academy. We have for the most part as I said we've already been working mainly on classroom teachers this weekend and today. Everyone who chose to have a selective remote academy has been given that opportunity. We still have to take a look at some of the other non-classroom positions and that will be done tomorrow. But we are we are there's a there's a fairly positive correlation there between the people who would like to be in that program and those and the positions that we have. I think one of the things that I really liked about this is that the teachers in a particular building will be teaching the children in that building in the remote academy. Another positive of that is that our faculties will continue to meet as a faculty departments continue to meet as a department whether you are assigned to the remote academy or whether you're in the hybrid program and that's actually one of the reasons why we are having an early release for all schools on Wednesdays in order to make that possible. So one of our our goals in this process is to make sure that there is a uniformity between curriculum in the hybrid and the remote choice programs which certainly will be something that we begin with and will be an ongoing effort as we go through the year. So one of the other things that we have been looking into in many of our classes that are going to be in the hybrid program we are going to use as the outdoors as much as possible. I think one of I'm going to say that an advantage is always pros and cons to all these programs either program. We know that neither one is the ideal of what we'd like which is all students to be back in school on a regular schedule but that's not possible and we're going to make both of these programs as successful as we possibly can this year. But one of the pieces on this is that by having a remote academy it does free up spaces in the various schools and that's actually very important because we do need more space for the hybrid program. We want to make sure that you know any any small group class that was in a room that might be too small for it under the under the conditions that we've set up for this year that they that class could be in a different location. So we again we so that we're very clear on this what we have set up in our classrooms is that the desks are six feet apart seat to seat and our expectation is that the children pre-k through 12 will be wearing masks as well as the teachers in the building. It does not mean we will not have mass breaks, we will and I think having tents set up where we can in buildings will also make that more possible even when the weather may not be as hospitable to being outside as otherwise. So we had Mr. Feeney has prepared an update on the ventilation room by room for the for the department for the school committee as well as an overview of the work they've been doing. This work will be ongoing. I think that everything should be probably completed at least the expectation is by next week if not even this week and and really what's what is left is quite minor in our in our pre-k eight buildings. The high school on the other hand is still going to need more time as we evaluate the rooms and actually the issue at the high school is is not as much about ventilation as it is about space. When you have a hybrid program and Dr. Janger is here tonight can talk a little bit more about this but actually the hybrid program it does require more classrooms than we would have otherwise and so it's just making sure that we have sufficient classrooms and that those classrooms do have the ventilation that we are we are expecting in our in all of our classrooms this year. So with respect to where we are in the presentation this evening I would like to ask Dr. McNeil if he would give an update on the plans. I know that as Mr. Cardin said we are filling in the details as he said in the planning as we go forward and we've made a lot of progress. It's not to say that we don't we're not going to be doing more planning. The full expectation is that we're going to continue to tweak and refine these these schedules so that they work as well as we possibly can make them. So Dr. McNeil I know you're here and if you would like to you have a slide deck that you could share with us. Yes I am going to share my screen and then I am going to just give an overview of the things that we were asked to do to try to give context for what people would be viewing in the slide deck and then I'm going to ask the principals to help me to give them an opportunity to talk about the schedules that they have added to the slide deck. So let me just make sure so let me back up here to the first slide. Okay so can everybody let me just make sure that everybody can see my screen. Is that a yes? Yes thumbs up. Thank you very much. Okay so the part of the request from school committee was for us to look at the hybrid schedule and then look at the remote component of that hybrid schedule and to fill in more details as it relates to the student schedule and we've also been asked to look at Wednesday and provide more details as to what you know what that day would look like from the teacher point of view and from the student point of view and then what so what you will see in the slide deck you will see the hybrid schedules you will see a more flushed out student schedule and you will see details as to what that Wednesday will look like. So I'm going to begin with the element elementary portion of it and I'm going to ask Miss Kate Peretz who has worked very diligently with the other elementary principals to add those details. Thank you Dr McNeil and good evening everyone I'm Kate Peretz I'm the principal at the Hardy Elementary School and I am representing the elementary level tonight and before I start I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has worked so hard over the summer. It's certainly not just the administrators who have been working through the summer. Our teachers have participated a great deal in the decision-making process and in professional development over the summer and it has really been a wonderful thing to see. We also appreciate all of our families out there watching this and also at home who have been very very patient as this process this difficult summer and process unfolds so thank you. So basically there are two versions of we're looking right now at a typical what could be a typical schedule for an elementary educator on the remote days during the hybrid model so this is something that has come up quite a lot with our educators thinking about what are the roles and responsibilities during this time. So what we have decided is that the educators that we have for art music PE and library will be the ones who are beginning the days so we have mentioned in other meetings that on those remote days in the hybrid model that it might not be the classroom teacher that it probably won't be the classroom teacher who is spending most of that live contact time with students who are at home that it will be other people who work within our building so it could be paraprofessionals or it could be some of our teachers who are focused on particular subjects like art music PE and library. So they'll start the day our focus is always social emotional in the morning with a morning meeting with greeting everyone to the day we will be taking attendance and making sure that we're following that and then typically if it is a specialist it can roll right into that first period so the students on these days when they're home will really have the opportunity to participate in these in special classes right so it could also could be digital literacy on some days it could be instrumental music on some days and then as we go through the periods of the day you'll see that there are screen break breaks that are built in and typically about 10 minutes between those classes so that the adults have a chance to shift gears and think about the next class as they go through the periods of the day the adults who are working will have their prep periods and lunch periods and attendance will be taken at the beginning of each of these live sessions to monitor how the students are doing throughout the day and then at the end of the day it might be a kindergarten class for example because while most of our sessions are 40 minutes we have decided that the kindergarten sessions will be slightly shorter at 30 minutes so that's just an example of what those teachers are doing during the day the classroom teachers are with the children who are in the classroom in person so as was mentioned before and as we've talked about at other meetings the there are pros and cons to each of the various models so one of the benefits of the hybrid model is that there are two full days of in-person instruction with an educator in the building so we don't want that person to be necessarily torn between these two worlds we want their focus to be on the children who are present and before they the children leave for the day during those in-person days the classroom teachers will take care to make sure that they're setting up the children for their work on the days that they're home they'll have the materials that they need and that it won't necessarily always be on the computer that work that they're doing we want to be sensitive to the screen time on the next slide Dr. McNeil will look at a schedule for oh sorry I'm going a little ahead of myself some of the things that I just talked about were bulleted on that slide they are thinking about other considerations so those are just some of the things that I just spoke about this slide is really just about what a student might expect to do on that day so it'll be the same thing they'll be getting ready for the day they'll be a live connection with an adult in the building during that time in order to do that morning meeting it might be an art music or PE teacher it could be a paraprofessional it could be another adult in the building but that person will be consistent so that the children will know who it is that they're looking for each one of the adults in the building will be assigned to one of the various cohorts to work with the classrooms and that serves multiple purposes one is to keep the contact with the whole big building to a minimum for the students and the educators but it's also because we really want to build strong personal relationships with the adults and the students in our buildings whether we're in person or whether we're on the computer um so there will be a couple of times during the day that the student is able to do these classes so these classes will not be happening when they're on the in-person day we're going to focus it on the hybrid the remote part of the hybrid schedule um so that on the days when the students are in person they'll have more of a focus with their teacher on the academic calendar and on the social emotional development um as you look through this you'll see that as we get to various blocks of academics at 9 20 we have second period that's a math block it's asynchronous lessons and so these will be recorded um our coaches and other curriculum um leaders within our district will be doing some of this with classroom teachers and also for classroom teachers as we've mentioned before we really want this to be um a effort that is very collaborative and so that classroom teachers will be able to work together with coaches to do this work the curriculum itself is really going to dig down into essential standards and the idea here is to really get to those learning understandings and not necessarily just worry about coverage a lot of coverage and moving too fast um so there will be lots of snack and movement breaks built into that day um like I mentioned previously students who opt into instrumental music will participate in that we also have many online platforms that have been developed um and Dr. Bisson has been a great resource and a support with this things like keyboarding without tiers or other programs that you're familiar with but some new ones that we've added into um the ELA block um it could very much be something that the children brought home from school um it could be a time too when there might be if a child is getting some reading support or earlier in the math block or at other times of the day when there's choice that a math interventionist might support a child or other services might take place lunch and movement through the day quiet time is a part of our responsive classroom that we'd like to see um continue as a part of the schedule at home this could be independent reading or a practice or some kind of choice activity science and social studies of course are an important part of our students learning and um we'd like a lot of these activities to be more experiential and to perhaps be off the screen um google classroom is still something the children will be using when they're on their in-person days um with their classroom teacher they'll be having a lot of time to be able to learn the different programs and to learn how to use their devices we're working to provide devices for children to use and so that those will be familiar for at the times when they are home so hopefully as we go through this they'll become more independent um and require a little less assistance than perhaps they have in the past from people at home and then the end of the day will still be 230. As we keep going um some of the things you might want to consider and think about from the student perspective it are some of the things I just mentioned that services could happen on those days uh kindergarten periods will be shorter in duration um we are going to provide some materials for students to be able to take home so you know the basic things that you might need in little kits that can go back and forth um there will still be things that can be done on paper um and so if there are children who are in school for four days so some of our high need students have been invited for four days of the week um a question that has come up as we've gone through these schedules is you know will they still be able to participate in things like art music pe and library and yes they will we'll make sure that that happens within the schedule and then on early release days those are the days that the classroom teachers will be with the children uh in more of that live model in the morning and then they'll set them up for some activities um that could be recorded in the afternoon it could perhaps be pe pe is something that typically happens twice during the week so the children will have that live connection with the pe teacher then perhaps a recorded activity on a wednesday um and then in the afternoon the teachers will be doing things like um common planning time um meeting with um professionals in the different curricular areas or perhaps meeting with an administrator um in order to do that work that we typically in an elementary schedule would have done on tuesdays um but now we're shifting that day to wednesday lunch will be made available to everyone on those days who need it and um it's wonderful that our food service has been you know really thinking long and hard about how to make sure that that still happens for kids on the next slide this is something that you've seen already so this is just an example of what that hybrid model looks like just to remind people that there are those a and those bb days um and that wednesday is that early release uh and that some students will be there um for four days in our highest needs category some of the lessons will be live some will be those asynchronous recorded lessons and something to think about with those live connections uh on a computer too and any one of these models is that it doesn't necessarily mean um that there's 40 minutes of straight time on the computer with the teacher I think that that's something that we've discovered in our in our research of remote learning is that shorter blocks of time in order to support students learning in small groups or to give really very targeted tasks that then the teacher is able to circle back around to support students with can be very powerful and can really advance the learning well in that remote world you'll see that in the in person days there are mask breaks there are hand washing times and while it's not put into this schedule and particularly because we still need to develop this as someone mentioned previously the developing of the very specifics of a schedule are things that we typically do with teachers at school and thank very much our teacher leaders who helped to do that um but those details will be put in and they will be outside as much as we possibly can um because we think that's what's best for our students and the adults do um so on the next slide I believe you will see the older students schedule so second through fifth grade this is the one that doesn't fit on one side it's a little bit longer but it follows the same pattern as the children get older they're able to have a little bit more time with the larger group for longer periods of time and also be engaging much more within that Google classroom in both models right there hopefully will be time for some closing up and closing meetings at the end of the day and making sure that again that's a time when we wash hands and you know make sure that we have all of those materials that we need in order to especially if it's the end of our AA or our BB session to have what we need in order to work at home and then the last slides are just reminders of those remote schedules that you've seen already um that they also follow that same kind of pattern um that there will be breaks and times in which children are encouraged with activities to move to get outside to have a snack to have lunch and of course one of the benefits of that all fully remote learning is and it has been mentioned that the time isn't taken right for masks and for washing hands and I think that's something that people notice when they look at these schedules and that's true and also that I just wanted to say before we move on to Gibbs that there are pieces of the schedule too that are still flexible within the school buildings and I think that the amounts of times that we spend on different things as we get better about being in school together and following all of the new safety procedures and precautions will move faster it just will be new but kids are you know they're very flexible and they'll be able to to learn these things and to move through them very quickly and I think that will be true in the remote learning too there may be things here that slow them down a little bit as they get used to fully learning online but it will all come together as these two programs move through the same curriculum for elementary students so thank you okay so we're going to move into the Gibbs schedules and then I'm going to ask Madame Fabian Pierre Maxwell to present the Gibbs schedule thank you Dr. Magnell good evening everyone so tonight I will be presenting two exemplar of student schedule and the first one it's the one that a student who's in the hybrid program would be a following so that means the student is in school for two days in this example Monday Tuesday the student will be in school Wednesday it's district wide all synchronous day and then Thursday the student would be home on Thursday and Fridays so the highlight of the schedule we start every day an advisory which is about 30 minutes where students 20 minutes where students would be having a social emotional check by their classroom teachers or other staff member would be a consistent part of that students group advisory because when the students are home on Thursday and Friday that partner that the classroom teacher would have an advisory would then be the person to start advisory with the students one day at home in the asynchronous days noticing that we have still showcasing the seven block we shared the last time in the schedule this is a student simple schedule so in this schedule that students start the day with science and then art and then Spanish PE math ELA and ancient civilization for social studies and then in that students wind block remember again wind means what I need for that student that student would need math support so that students will be receiving that in the wind block and notice that the schedule is identical whether the student is in front of the teacher under two days that they are live in the building and the two days that the student is learning remotely through going to google classroom for assignment or doing assignment that the teacher may have discussed during the two days they were in school with that teacher on Wednesday we wanted to be more specific to what the day would look like on Wednesday the first half of Wednesday will be a synchronous day where again in the case of that students we highlight on the right side of the screen again they start with advisory noticing the consistency in that student schedule that the plan they would have the times would be much shorter because in the afternoon of that Wednesday the students will be asynchronously again doing assignment that were scheduled and posted on google classroom or assignment that were discussed with the teacher when they were live that morning or the day before so the students will have lunch between the third and the fourth period block between 11 16 and 2 p and 1 p.m 130 p.m and again this will be placed in each student's schedule because the lens schedule cover an extension of time and it's something that is worked out when the whole staff come together to decide which learning community will go to lunch for a second and third um thank you Dr. magnil could we go to the next slide please and this is a a copy of our remote bike choice schedule again this in the schedule we're showcasing the same thing that the major difference is that it is a synchronous schedule meaning that those students are learning from home every day of the week the same half day on wednesday but then they have their teachers uh on the screen for most of the time with them again as it was pointed out by principal parents uh the synchronous time does not mean that the student would be on the screen from 8 30 to the 256 where the school day end rather the teachers will be communicating with each other they would be collaborate so they could be in sync so they're not starting any major units that would take the whole entire screen time at the same time on the same day they will also communicate in regard to homework assignment so the children are not receiving a heavy loaded of assignment every night so so that's the kind of communication the teachers will do uh within the subject and vertically across the subjects to make sure that there's a appropriate momentum there's a time given for the students to learn and get used to the schedule get used to how they're learning remotely get used how to balance the day when they are in the hybrid program so this schedule represent perhaps a schedule of a student who received ELL service you'll notice that there are seven block where they have what I need what that students would need in a seven block would be ELL support because this is an ELL students again they would receive that consistent support throughout the seven block and the Wednesday is highlighted on the side it would be very similar and the schedule is created in such a way that if we were to move completely from a hybrid to a completely remote schedule that it would not be anything to do but to rearrange the teachers in regard to the grouping because the whole building would then move to that all remote but you can see the schedules they are very similar and again as it was mentioned by principal Peretz there are some things you are not seeing on our schedule right now like when are they going to have their mass break when they're going to maybe transition elsewhere some of these housekeeping are things that we do when the teachers come together so we can scaffold them appropriately we can stagger them appropriately so that's a conversation that happened within the learning communities and across the learning communities so those schedules are shared the liaison the special education teachers they will be meeting with those teachers again when school begin so to make sure that as they pull students for a support that is required by their IP or their ELL program they're not creating a hole by not removing the student at a time the student needs to be learning something with the group so there are some things that we will will not be able to show until we have our staff and we'll have our staff as of this Wednesday so we can be planning and before we send actual schedule to our parents this is all for tonight for right now thank you thank you madam pierre maxwell the next schedule that we're going to present is the oddison schedules and i'm going to ask mr. maringer to come and speak about those schedules thank you dr. mcneil um i'm going to start off with the hybrid schedule and this is uh just kind of a general format in which you can see on monday if you were part of the AA cohort you would have six periods then um in those classes i will show you the next screen but your four main core classes for your learning community that's math science social studies and english you also will have a special area subject that will rotate quarterly that's technology art facts or music and then we have one class that is called the wind block that madame talked about earlier for many kids that's when they'll get academic support if they're on an iep for other students they'll be able to work on their world languages on wednesday that is a kind of district-wide synchronous classes so you will have six classes kind of very quickly that will last for about 25 minutes and then when you're at home you will take a world language you will take maybe computer science you might might take um band orchestra or chorus and pe so if we can go to the next slide please this was just a mock-up schedule so as you can see when you're in class you might have as an eighth grader you might have algebra one then science then art you might have then your lunch period you might have your win slash academic support el a in civics on the days that you're at home you'll have some asynchronous videos and assignments but that might be where you're taking your french class your p computer science or band orchestra and chorus so that's really the hybrid schedule the you know the major pro is that you're in school for two days and you're in for classes you're meeting synchronously on wednesday and you are having one or two classes at home that will be synchronous along with some asynchronous assignments can we go to the next slide and so this is really a teacher's view so a teacher teaches five out of six classes when they are in person so and when they're in person on monday tuesday teaching cohort a and teaching cohort b on thursday friday once again synchronous is with everyone so if you're a teacher you're teaching in miss schedules period one three four five and six you have period two off and on the wednesday the a a and bb groups meet to see each other and those classes will be about 22 to 24 students so let's talk about the all remote schedule or the remote academy as we're calling it so i really would like to thank some teachers and dr vick neal who did a little research over the summer there was a bunch of teachers from the oddison including terry dash poly ford rachel rubino who's an assistant principal um nicky hawker and nalu hogan who took a harvard professional development course that was recommended to them by dr mcneil then they met with a couple other teachers uh susan stewart and kory smith among a couple of other people to really look at what was successful for remote learning so i did want to take this opportunity just to say that there were teachers working hard on this schedule and i wanted to go over this just a little bit so what would happen is that on monday periods one four and five and i'll show you more substantially on the next slide one four and five are live teachers are expected to be in a 45 minute class teaching students periods two three six and seven teachers are available but they're not live teaching then on tuesday two three six and seven have live 45 minute classes but teachers are available one four and five so if i can go to the next slide i hopefully can explain this a little bit better so let's say your son or daughter has this for a schedule on monday they would go to science el a and algebra they would have 45 minute classes the facts teacher the spanish teacher and the civics teachers are all available during those times while you're working on asynchronous material tuesday your science teacher is still available first period but they're not teaching a 45 minute live class they're there to answer questions about the asynchronous learning then you can go to pe you can go to fax which are live you have a break for lunch then el a and algebra right there you're working on asynchronous classes but your teachers are available and then you have live spanish and civics the reason behind this was we wanted to make sure that there was a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning for many of you at home we've been on for about two class worth of time so if you're right now and you spent an hour and a half listening to the school committee that's about two courses that your kids have gone through if you unwrap the tension fantastic if some of you have drifted off a little bit there's a chance that you can understand what kids are going to go through if you're looking to have six or seven 45 minute synchronous courses so when dr mcneil and uh different teachers took the pd they really found that looking at different models that it was really successful if you had a mix between synchronous and asynchronous on the same day and that you didn't have kids really on screen time from 845 to 3 o'clock so just go to the next schedule please thank you so from a teacher's point of view this could be a teacher's view where first period on monday they're teaching synchronous but on tuesday they're still available wednesday synchronous thursday synchronous on friday available for small group and individual help then period two they're they're off period three they're on once again so three out of five days they're teaching live lessons and the other two they're available for help at that time and in looking at some of the models that they looked at it was seen as real successful because teachers could give outreach to certain kids to meet with them at that time in the class and kids knew when they were doing asynchronous work they could talk to their teachers if they had questions at that time one of the big questions that um i know school committee was very concerned with and i know parents were very concerned with is in the remote schedule could they get world languages and originally i said i didn't know and i didn't want to over promise and under deliver but it looks like right now that all world language classes will be taught by autism teachers no matter if you are in the hybrid or you are in the all remote schedule we are also looking to we have four quarterly classes and we're looking to be able to rotate those in so once again we are thinking as of now art music technology and art technology and facts will be able to be taught quarterly by autism teachers so we think that we're going to be able to give people the best and things on things on the ground still might change there's still some negotiation and other things that are happening but for the most part we are trying to make the schedule for both the 300 kids who picked the all remote the best possible education and for the 620 kids or so that have picked the hybrid and we're looking at doing things to the best of our ability the last thing i did want to tell is the remote students i did talk to both the orchestra and band teacher and they are going to have one session from 3 to 345 on wednesdays so that they can meet with the orchestra and band kids who have picked the remote schedule and i think that's my last slide dr. neal excellent thank you yes it is yes it is so uh we're going to move into arlington high school and so i'm going to ask dr. matthew jenger to present the schedules uh and to talk about the if there's been any updates since the last time he has presented the schedules to school committee dr jenger um sure so you can jump to the first visual um so i've been gone through all these other things i feel like my picture looks very simple um but there's an awful lot of complexity behind that there haven't been really significant changes we've been sticking to the same basic model and refining the options and the actual schedule within it's worthwhile to realize that you know in the course of a high school year we teach over 500 classes so in the sort of simple seven or eight slots there's a huge variety and the complexity is in the individual kids and their motion through it so the basic plan at the high school has been to have a common four by four semesterized schedule whether students were in the all remote option or in the hybrid option and just to be clear when i refer to the hybrid option even the hybrid option this year is proposed to start remotely so because of the ventilation issues because of small classrooms because we're working through having enough classroom space um to be able to accommodate all of the classes in the hybrid option we're not able to start right away and i do want to echo something dr bodie said earlier the issue with ventilation is not that the high school is not a safe place to be the issue is that if the ventilation in a classroom is not working at its full capacity then it's not necessarily able to hold the full capacity of students so if i have a class where it could hold 10 students six feet apart but i don't know that the pc is working i'm not able to ensure that that space is safe down that full cohort of kids it doesn't mean that two or three or five kids can't be in there and at this point the facilities department has cleared large portions of the school but if i don't have a gym if i don't have even five or 10 percent of the classrooms i still can't offer the full hybrid option right now in the schedule that we've done with room capacities in there assuming ventilation and with classrooms that we know won't be usable taken out of service we're functioning about 90 to 95 percent and that's even with a schedule which gives us about 15 percent more classroom slots than we've had in previous years and that's because of the small number of seats allowed in classrooms we have some classes where we can only have nine kids at a time six feet apart nine kids at a time six feet apart means i need to set class size for 18 and so we are very tight in terms of just the number of actual seats that we can schedule in and i've sent that information which was requested by the facilities committee to the doctor both on sections that we don't have enough seats for and then the capacity of all the classrooms and which ones we currently know out of service and which ones are not but that's one of the issues we have to work through so the four by four semesterized model so the idea here is that students are only taking three or four classes at a time but they're taking them for twice as much time and this is a common schedule that's used in schools around the country it's used in Cambridge and so you focus on depth over breadth so the advantage of that is that students don't have to focus on a large number of classes that they need to keep track of when they're functioning remotely because we know there's a real strain on executive function when the students are at home for a lot more of their day it also means the teachers are focusing on a much smaller number of students and have a smaller number of classes to prepare and given that there's a lot of grading associated with remote instruction and that there's a lot of preparation with this whole new approach and we want a student to be able to focus on following up with 40 to 60 kids not 100 to 120 kids this model seemed like a really positive way to go so it's fairly simple a student would be taking if you want to just skip down for a sec to the next slide Dr McNeil and then I'll split back up so a student might for example this is not the schedule that anyone would necessarily get be taking their English their math and an elective in the first quarter I'm sorry the first term started again first semester the first semester is half the year that's term one and term two so they would be taking English math and an elective and they might for the second half of the year be taking say history science a world language and some other elective if their elective was a band or chorus they might be taking it in both the D and H spot all the way across if they had an academic support there would be room in there as well so the idea then if the student is taking those three classes is can you skip back up to the last one so now they're in their A block they're in an English class it's been decided district-wide in order to accommodate families and teachers and other schedules to have the cohort model be Monday Tuesday for cohort one and Thursday Friday for cohort two so in this plan you'd be focusing on in now let's jump back to the all remote model this teacher is going to take attendance for their whole 20 25 students during a block Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday they're going to work primarily in terms of contact with the students who are in cohort one and so that would be what i'm calling a seminar or tutorial where they're focusing a lot of their teacher attention on one group of students the other group of students they're going to set to what we've been calling structured learning so that's video work independent work group work other activities that they're setting the students on and that are going to be due during that class period so they're working with one cohort on Monday and Tuesday primarily with the students the other students working independently and then on Thursday Friday switch cohorts and one half of the class is working independently and the other half of this class is working more with the teachers so that's the basic structure and then the students would go through three or four of those periods depending on how full a schedule they add in the course of a day and then we have Wednesdays so there are things we've taken out of the general schedule in order to simplify it and in order to provide more space and time for those other classes so PE has gone all remote because we don't have the gym spaces and the locker room spaces to accommodate activities within the school so they're going to meet with their classes for 45 minutes that's where we're setting it right now um each PE teacher is teaching about four classes at a time so they'd be teaching the uh the freshman will go all year in one of those slots and then they'll teach their other quarter of electives they'll meet with their whole group in each class for the 45 minute period and then they'll arrange with all the students in the class to meet with them in small groups based on their individual schedules as kind of personal trainers to coach them and follow through and then the students will do what we've called a PE contract something we've done in the past where they're journaling on their activities that they're doing independently and working with the PE teachers are reporting on them we'll then have advisory which is going to be for all students advisory something we've done for many years it's the only group if you think about it where the students are going back in with a group of kids and a teacher that they've met with on a regular basis and we'll use advisory as the basis of our freshman orientation program so the advisory will be about 30 minutes the plan this year to give it some more structure is to have sort of two key components attendance some sort of video or activity or sharing of information then some kind of an exit ticket which makes sure kids pay attention and then conversations within the group and participate as long as students attend and participate do the exit tickets that'll be a one credit activity so it'll be pass fail and then the last is X block or counseling we've had X block again now for about five years and the teachers and the staff have made an enormous amount of use of it we've done it in slightly different ways over the course of each year last year we had a rotating priority block so math department would have priority over X block one week then English to another week and history another week but any student could meet in office hours with any teacher but the math teachers for example and their priority could require that the students meet with them and we found that there was a really very heavy use of that as the time when kids knew that they were on call they were expected to come meet with the folks and also when the staff knew that they could expect to get kids and if you walked into the math department when the math department had their priority X block there were five kids receiving extra help in every classroom now at the same time our counseling department has seminars where they meet with students by grade level sometimes the entire grade sometimes small groups and they've asked us to put a schedule in for that as well so that one hour is going to do a lot of work we'll actually have a schedule probably by grade level by priority for departments and by counseling activities and then in the midst of all that usually folks make a lot of use of that for club meetings as well then the district wide is planning on doing PD because there's an enormous amount of planning that's going to be going into this and then our staff meeting time by contract has to start before 245 in order to go to after school and we moved to start time so that's why the slightly early slot is there as well so I feel like other people said a lot more things and I have more notes here but I'll stop there thank you so I would like to thank all the building administrators for presenting today this is the product of a lot of discussion a lot of meetings as someone stated earlier we had the synchronous study groups that were meeting at the elementary level and secondary level so we had teacher input so the what you're seeing is just literally you know I can't even quantify the number of hours that have gone into trying to make sure that we are applying best practice and using research in order to provide the best learning experience in all of the models for our students so I'm going to Dr. Mill, can I jump back in? I knew there was one more thing down small here so I just wanted to also talk about how the difference is between the phase remote which will start all remote and those students who chose the all remote option so in the all remote option we only had about 170 requests and so some folks have commented that we're not able to offer as wide a range of options so you need to understand that at Arlington High School we offer for example 17 different AP courses and I don't even know how many different electives and with only with fewer than 80 students in the junior and senior class having selected the all remote option it's it's not possible that we're going to be able to individually staff those AP classes the core classes all of those classes will be staffed with Arlington teachers they'll follow the same schedule on the same basic model as I just described for the beginning of the phase remote PE advisory X block I'm sorry PE advisory world language music and computer science will be all remote for all so those students that are in the all remote academy will be doing that with the students who are in the phase remote hybrid and then what we're doing really is going through looking at the course requests of those 170 students and seeing what clusters of interest and need there are and we'll figure out what we can do in terms of staffing or supporting those different activities so thank you for that thank you for that additional explanation so I'm going to send it back over to Dr. Bote to see if she has any or more comments and then we can definitely take questions or comments on the schedules the only thing I actually have a few more things to add but I just want to also mention with the high school that the recommendation is that just for the planning purposes is that we have a decision point at the end of October when we decide when we're able to move back into a hybrid model there'll be a transition time of a couple of weeks but I think that we're going to start the year with that recommendation and with the goal of getting the students back into a hybrid model Dr. Jango do you want to mention about athletics this year? Yes but it's I'm a little afraid because the details are pretty complicated but yes so the plan right now with athletics is voted by the MIA is that there will be a fall season it will be a limited season and it will be limited essentially to outdoor non-contact sports so and then they're going to add an extra season later in the year which is called fall two which is actually in the winter for those sports that they were not able to offer in the fall so we'll be starting out I might not get this exactly right but it's written in the FAQ soccer field hockey cross country and I'm forgetting one soccer field hockey cross country and golf there you go four sports that will start in the fall they'll run a limited competition schedule and they'll be entirely outside until we can get access to any gyms or locker rooms for changing but that's the plan so those ones will meet in the fall with some modifications for distancing to the programs and then they'll go through the other seasons and the ones that were taken out of the fall swimming football will be in fall too so that's the basic plan we're pretty excited about that and one of the other things is the limit competition sizes but I talked to Dr. Bower today and we really want to encourage this isn't something I've talked to Dr. Bode about but we we really want to encourage as many kids as possible to participate in those teams and that we'll find sort of intramural ways and squad ways to create a competitive environment even if they're not able to participate in the full competitions because they're limiting the numbers to that okay thank you um actually it might be better if there's any questions before I go on which which are related to the reopening plan but are not necessarily related to schedules if there's any comments or questions the committee had yeah I think that's probably good um so um Ms. Exton there you are um I first I just want to say thank you to all of you for all the work that um has gone into this planning um I especially appreciate the work that the principals and teachers have done um and the details that you've refined on these schedules um especially um the slides tonight Dr. McNeil um they would be great if they could be shared um I wanted to thank um Mr. Feeney and his team for all the work that they have done in all the buildings to get them um up and ready um for our students I know that that has not been an easy um task uh I also wanted to thank Dr. Bodie um and Christine Bangernau and the board of health for the work that they have done to get the testing um organized for teachers um and for our the town for funding that testing um that's not something that's happening everywhere and I really appreciate the work that that went into that um I also I just I want to acknowledge um the teachers concerns about um going back to school um I know that there are a lot more questions than there are answers I know um that there are a lot of concerns around developing relationships with students the complexities of the hybrid schedule um the challenges of managing classrooms in a new way concerns about workload and expectations in a new teaching model um the need for even more collaboration time with more specialists and more um coaches and curriculum leaders and um you know I I feel all of that um as well and I I think it's important that we that we acknowledge that teachers are feeling that way um we're asking them to do a lot of things that they haven't had to do before and um in ways that are countered to a lot of what we all know about good pedagogy um and while I continue to support the hybrid model and as I said before the work that has gone into the scheduling and how they've been refined um has taken a lot of work and I really appreciate all of that um but I just hope you know we continue going forward to continue to take um teachers perspectives and feedback um and thoughts into account um and continue as school starts and students come into our building that we continue to um listen to teachers and hear what's going well and what's not working and how we can continue to support them um in the things that are that are happening um in this daily ever-changing um environment that that we're all about to embark on um so that I wanted to say that um and then I guess in terms my questions are are more about the schedule so if we're waiting on on that I can do that um Miss Morgan no no go ahead okay um so along the lines of what I sort of said about teachers the um the remote teaching schedule and the hybrid teaching schedule um feel really uneven in terms of teacher rule and I realize maybe we can't talk about that um here at a public meeting but um I just I wanted to put that out there um it feels like in the hybrid schedule um it's an extra period one less prep time um being in a building in a mask in a face shield um so whether or not there's can be an answer to that or if you just want to acknowledge that I mentioned it but that's that's really my biggest question right now so can you just can you ask that again because I just want to make sure that we're responding to what what you need what you're um so I I'm just in the in the OMS um all remote schedule from the teacher perspective um it looks like there are two prep times um they see students they're available for students every other day um and then in the hybrid schedule at OMS um they are live in person with students six out of seven periods a day so there's one prep time period um and they are in a building in a mask in a face shield with students and so I just um again there's been so much work on the schedule already but but that stood out to me when you presented those two teacher perspective schedules Mr. Manager did you want to comment on that? Sure um no I think you're reading that 100 percent correctly um the issue is that you usually have seven classes a day at the middle school and because two of the seven couldn't meet during in person because they would cross contaminate cohorts really what happened is you had seven classes you had five meeting on one day and two meeting on the other day and really the only way that you could get special education services on the end day was to have a wind block so I I agree I do feel like there is a little bit more on the teachers who are in school than the teachers that are out of school although it might be offset by the fact that the teachers who are doing the all remote it's a little bit more tech savvy that you have to be where if you are in school you're doing a little bit more in person which is more familiar for a lot more teachers so there is a little bit of that balance I found that a lot of teachers who wanted the you know remote academy tended to be more of our tech savvy teachers where teachers who sometimes maybe weren't as comfortable wanted more of the hybrid that's an over generalization there's plenty of teachers who are in the hybrid who are going to be great with technology but I do agree there is a little inequity but it's really the only way we could look at it because of trying to keep the cohort separate but I I agree with you main point thanks and I I would just follow up but I hope as the as school starts we continue to get feedback from teachers about how that's feeling for them in terms of workload and managing things yes I agree and I think that's why that Wednesday afternoon professional development is going to be important for teachers to be able to have time to meet and hopefully collaborate on things and that's why I hope we'll have time may I just add a comment to that too that there that is there is differences there's definitely pros and cons to both schedules one thing that might be is hoped for is that when a teacher in the remote program is teaching synchronously they're teaching the whole class so there's not the same opportunity to have smaller groups unless you you build that in and I think that those times when there's it's it's being available but it's really an opportunity to have smaller groups from that from that class meet whereas in our hybrid program in the middle school classes are going to be relatively small just because we're limited to the size of the classroom so it it's it's trying to keep a balance in terms of you know that that piece of it as well thanks thank you so I want to echo Miss Exton's thanks for the the hard word we've seen a lot of progress on the schedules Dr. McNeil if we could get that presentation presented to Karen I think she could actually upload it while we're here it's still in that it's still in that would be helpful to people if not put it on the web you know also put it on the website um so uh yes I also want to you know acknowledge the concern that we've heard from from teachers you know this this was a decision based on a recommendation of the administrative team and I also as Miss Exton said encouraged the admin team to continue to listen to the teachers I know there's been a lot of conversation that has been happening and as the details further evolve there will be more chance for teachers to have input but I think what the administrative team recommended and what we supported was the basic outline of a hybrid plan which has two days in school one half synchronous day and two days remote the exact details of how that all works it is messy it's messy in every single district that's doing it hundreds of districts are doing it we're all struggling to figure it out but that doesn't mean we we abandon ship and and and and not implement it or put it off to some uncertain date in the future when everything's nice and perfect so we've got nine professional development days coming for this all to be sorted out and I I do believe that um with some effort we can get it done and I support the administrative team and continuing to do that my one question was about the teacher assignments my understanding was that they actually were some teachers who had originally requested a remote academy position and may have withdrawn that request or some that were offered the remote academy position and and decided to come in to hybrid instead um is that correct um yes it is great so you know obviously there are a lot of teachers understandably who are very concerned about the hybrid model but there are also that are some some that are voluntarily switching into it so um you know just for the greater community um I just wanted to make that point uh and then finally um just uh at the middle school schedule Mr. Merringer um you know on the on the teacher side you did you did note that there's on those async for the for the fully remote program when the teacher is in the asynchronous mode sorry sorry not the not live mode um the teacher is available but there's also a possibility for small group work um and I actually would as as you meet with the teachers I would encourage we've had this discussion before in subcommittee I would encourage you know more focus on the small group work um because it's somewhat unlikely that middle schoolers are going to reach out to their teacher um if they have a question some a small portion will um but it might be more effective for the teacher to schedule you know 10-minute check-ins with with four or five students at a time um and again that's a that's a detail that the teacher should be definitely deciding but I do hope that that we encourage teachers to do that thank you so uh Mr. Cardin I totally agree I had there was a science teacher in eighth grade who really did a lot of feedback last year and got a lot of surveys from students and she felt like 70 percent to 75 percent of the kids did fairly well in kind of the remote learning when they had it in April and May and she said it was trying to keep the 25 to 30 percent of the kids really engaged and she found having that extra time was when she could really connect with kids make sure that they were learning and engaged so I think the teachers are looking at that time as there's going to be a lot of kids who get asynchronous work and are independent and going to do a great job but there's other kids that they're really going to have to keep after and so I don't believe that the teachers are looking at that as kind of like you know a college course where they're like oh well I had office hours and you should have stopped by I think they're really looking at it as here are the kids that we really need to make sure that we connect with and that we have a chance to reach out because there are a lot of kids who come home do their homework and are self-motivated and independent and there are some other kids that struggle with executive functioning and they're going to be a little bit more so I know the teachers who designed that one of their impact was we're really going to be able to catch those kids that might fall through the cracks if we have those days so I share your same concerns great thank you thank you miss Morgan and Mr. Carter and I definitely will make sure that we post the slide deck and I will give it to Karen so she could share it with everybody. Dr. Allison Ampe. Hi thank you all thank you very I echo the thanks that Mr. Cardin and Ms. Exton have said to save time I won't go into it but I really do appreciate all the work that everyone's put into this both administration and all of our other staff. I have two kind of questions first I'm thinking about the parents of our kindergarteners to maybe grade two and about the schedule that I saw actually for either the remote or the the hybrid the remote section of the hybrid and I understand that we're trying to to give them screen breaks and stuff but I'm thinking as a parent especially if I'm trying to work a job at the same time coordinating when the kids supposed to be on off back on off again I I mean I have a hard time scheduling it for myself I'd have to set up alarms or something and I'm concerned about how well it's going to go um I personally wonder if I understand that we're trying to meet the time on learning as specified by desi but I really feel like for remote things I'm questioning whether the hour the the normal length of our school day appropriately translates to the correct amount for a remote school day and whether there's any way to petition or something to decrease this because I just feel like it's going to be really hard for parents to accomplish and help their children achieve and that that's what we're going to be asking them to do um so uh maybe I'll stop there and hear so I'm I'm going to yield that to Dr. Bode because you know structurally this is what we have recommended and you know we've always said along the way that there's going to be pros and cons to each schedule so some of it is just inherent so you know are you asking I just want to make sure that I understand what you're asking are you asking us to consider the length of the day or like what are you what are you proposing in in your question I'm saying I don't see how parents are going to make this work for a lot of kids or for their family setup both and and it's not just one schedule or the other it's the remote it's it's all the remote day I mean all the remote school or the remote sections of the hybrid portion and maybe everyone else is much more organized and is going to be able to do this okay Johnny has to be looking at the screen at 10 and then oh oops time to take him off the screen here Johnny go do oh no come back you have to come back it's time for English now I just think this is going to be really hard and I feel like I understand that we're supposed to be doing the same time on learning but I don't think it's necessarily what we're coming up with does not sound like potential best practice for doing remote schooling for someone who's in kindergarten to grade two or three I'm not sure where the cutoff would be but I'm just I'm it's not so much a specific question it's I don't see how this is going to work well I don't disagree with you that this is going to be challenging for parents it's going to be challenging for little kids that are only grades kindergarten and first grade I think that there's a we're also going to be having a hybrid class a remote class for our preschool as well though I will say that last year went quite well but their day isn't as long either and I think this is something that we're going to have to be monitoring for sure and and I don't think that anybody should think that these schedules right now are just locked in cement because I do think we have to be responsive as we go along to how this is working and you know one of the things we've talked about this summer is is how do we get that kind of parental feedback so that matters student feedback as we as we do this and you're absolutely correct that regardless of whether you're in the hybrid plan or the remote academy plan we're going to be asking a lot for our young our young children so we do have this requirement for time and learning but we also know that you know we can we're trying to make it work in a way that is a little bit more student friendly but I do think we just have to wait and see how this plays itself out and I know Miss Exton teaches kindergarten and she's going to probably see how it's working on you know for for her class as well but it's going to be a challenge and I understand the challenge for parents I see this with my own children the challenge is that they're going to be facing as they face this year as well thank you I guess part of it is just as you're doing it if there's any way that the software you know the the stuff that's being used the tools can help with doing the transition so that there's perhaps less parental input that would be helpful yeah yeah I think using seesaw will be a big improvement over just using google classroom for that for that grade this year but again we'll be monitoring that as well okay um and then my second question was I too have been listening very hard to the teachers I've been circumspect in what I say because of our ongoing negotiation um but one thing that would be helpful for me is for us and by this I mean all of us both administration teachers school committee if we can try and boil some of the teacher concerns down into problems that can be solved so just for two examples there's concerns about ways of there's concerns that students won't be able to collaborate when they're sitting in their classroom in the hybrid situation so that seems like a problem that we can solve is there a way for the kids who are sitting you know in their rows to be able to collaborate with each other even without moving next to each other um another problem is how can we decrease I'm calling it mental load the mental load on the hybrid teachers um is there ways that we can offset that so that we can make balance the load better among our staff so that that's not really a question but it's a comment thank you um mr. delmond thank you um so I I want to echo it Ms. X instead to start this conversation I think you know I want to I want to congratulate and commend the uh principals for a thoughtful and collaborative approach to planning I mean they put a lot of time into this a lot of thinking into this and uh I'm grateful for all the time they put in the summer I would say that as Dr. Bodie said earlier we're going to learn a lot as we go and I think we have to be prepared pivot as we get new information and new data on on the degree to which students are learning in each model so I I think that's what we're going to have to be prepared to do and I think the administrative team is prepared to do that on the topic of the high school I heard Dr. Janger say that he has given a report to Dr. Bodie on uh the questions the facility subcommittee asked last week about capacity of all the rooms in the high school and some other questions that we had so we we would really like to get that report um so uh whenever that's ready I know we'll get it to the facilities committee yes yeah okay thank you very much I know you're very busy so yeah I'd like to get that report um and that said I don't really have anything else to add I know I know we're getting you know when you get into a con just for the public's benefit when you get into a conversation about schedule you're actually you're really bordering on a conversation about negotiations so I think um I'm not going to say anything else and I uh I hear what the teachers are saying and uh and uh I I commend the principles for the hard work they they've done and putting together this schedule thank you um Mr. Schuchman yeah I also want to commend everybody for their work uh look is somebody who's scheduled schools uh and has done a lot of the logistical stuff that uh is being attempted I think that we're dealing with something that's extraordinarily difficult bordering and impossible and I commend everybody's efforts um I don't want to go into more detail in that direction because I have you know because the email from Mr. Hayner that he's uh maybe putting forth a motion later in the meeting but I do want to ask a quest a specific question and put this out for the entire community and know that we've got a few hundred people watching right now and I hope the word spreads I have heard from several parents who are submitting plans to withdraw their children from the district to homeschool based on what they've been seeing now I want to note that our 2021-22 or fiscal 22 state aid level is based on our enrollment on October 1 2020 so the for parents who are looking you have a seat in the school uh the subsequent school you're not 2021 but 21-22 the state funding for that seat is based on who was enrolled in our district on October 1 2020 so please start with us and make if if you feel the need to go to a homeschool model and withdraw from the system for a year please wait until after October to make that decision and and try try out what we're doing for you uh don't be quick to pull a kid out of the school system right now because even though I disagree with the strategy that we're using right now I think that we've got talented educators here in Arlington who are trying their best to present a good outcome and will be flexible in in making things work for every child in the district and that's where I'll stop right now uh Mr. Hayner as everyone said before me I appreciate for all the work that everyone has put into this and for what I might do later on I want everyone to know it is not a reflection on the administration the teachers or anything else I have undergone a tremendous struggle hearing from parents hearing from teachers and seeing all the things that are going on I'd like to ask a couple of administrative questions right now have all the teachers that are requested remote or hybrid been notified um yes well we have notified classroom teachers at this point we haven't notified everybody but yes emails went out today um and we still have more to consider tomorrow but the idea is that we will respond to everybody uh before Wednesday thank you but every but really the the people who have asked classroom teachers who have asked for a remote schedule have been assigned to a remote schedule they've all all those that have requested it have been honored all the classroom teachers that have requested um there and there is let me just say this there's a a couple of choices some people have to make about changing grade levels so those those decisions haven't been made yet but the the people who have been classroom teachers have been offered a remote schedule yes okay the other question I have uh during uh I don't remember whether it was a budget or one of the other curriculum but there was a concern about staffing have we been successful in getting substitute teachers our aides the additional staff that we were considering we have budgeted for an additional certainly more more staffing than we have right now and we have not reached the the number that we would like to have um we have been expanding the different ways that we are advertising for uh for teaching assistance and uh I suspect that we will be continuing to hire all the way through September as we move forward I don't wish to speak for the entire committee but I heard a consensus the other day it's my opinion that if you if because of where we are in salary schedules and in lack of competitiveness and surrounding areas if that becomes an issue I think it's important that we are notified to support you in any way to eliminate that restraint thank you I'd like to ask the chair when it is appropriate I have a motion to make okay why don't I do my questions and then we can come back to that right um miss morgan can I finish going through my report for the I wanted a chance to ask my question no no I mean after your question is that possible sure okay um so I'm gonna be brief um I think I appreciate what Mr. Miranger was able to share with us about the definition of this term available that's part of the the um the remote academy schedule at the oddison and um I just encourage you and I it sounds like you are to continue to flush out what that definition means to faculty and staff once they're um you know back in whatever capacity um you know whether you're um meeting you know in whatever way you're meeting with them to sort of keep uh keep working at that definition um I know it doesn't lots of words don't fit into a box in a schedule very well but um I I think that they I know that they'll have great ideas and and you seem really open to thinking about that and talking about that with them so um that's really good to hear um that one question I had for you Mr. Miranger how is aspire synchronous on remote days for hybrid is like is it their same aspire person or we don't know yet so it depends who your aspire is that's the person that you will be assigned to so most of the aspire in the hybrid is going to be who your first period class is because we felt that it was one less change but in the in the remote only it will be a first period teacher that will also be the aspire because we're thinking that's one less click that you have to that you have to go to got it okay um and then um yeah just you know echoing what Dr. Allison Ampe said you know I have a I have a seven-year-old and I'm not uh I've I've told his principal this already so I'm not breaking confidence here that I I feel really good about that eight ten attendance check like I really think we're going to be able to do that um I feel really iffy about the second one um and so I'm I'm I'm nervous about that I'm I'm hoping it can be and this is just feedback to all the elementary principals if it can be like at least the same time every day like if it's like like he's seven and has no idea what a period is or what 125 means he can't tell time on an analog clock yet I think he's going to learn that in second grade I hope um but he can't do it now so um that makes me nervous but I feel really solid about eight ten um and we're going to start there um but to the extent that that can be really predictable um for families so that we can hit that that second one that would be super for us um and the other feedback I just had for um from Madame Pierre Maxwell I I really appreciate that uh fluidity of the remote academy periods at the Gibbs um I think that it it sounds exciting I'm I'm a little concerned about the amount of work it will be for um for for LC teachers to help make those decisions about what's going to be synchronous and what's going to be asynchronous like we we have like two situations right we have the oddison that's that's quite prescriptive although we've got this availability piece that we're still working on which is good um but at the Gibbs we have all we have all these periods four days um and and I'm I'm curious and I'm looking forward to hearing how it works for teachers to to think through whether ELA is synchronous this day and math is synchronous the next day um so I'm just I'm looking forward to hearing more I don't really need to I I know that you know at this point we know what we know but I'm I'm interested to see how those decisions will be made um by by teachers and teams of teachers so that's definitely something I want to hear about more um in the future so I think that's it I guess I didn't only have a question for Mr. Merringer so um yeah so uh Dr. Bodie did you want to finish yes I would if you wouldn't mind because you you had a motion the last time that had many parts to it and um one of the parts of it um we already talked about the high school and the revised reentry plan is what is ongoing the recommendation remains the same as I have said already but then we move on there are also um a criteria informed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts her mother recognized health authority to based on public health metrics to determine the model in person hybrid or remote so the department the public health created a chart which I have um shared with all of you that gives metrics in terms of actually colored zones but the one thing I would like to say about that uh and that and it was then used by the Department of Education to talk about if you're in the white zone green yellow red what that would mean in terms of one of these programs but the thing that I do want to say in the Board of Health would um would echo this that uh the Department of Public Health thought of this only as a tool that there are there are so many situations that could arise that the tool is only going to help in some ways um the the Arlington Board of Health and the Arlington Public Schools are continuing to work together to create more language around some of these but even with that work that we are doing it's going to be hard to cover every situation so I just want to I want to just give that caveat to this but just know that we are in communication with our local Board of Health which is actually going to be the partner as we think through these as well as you know consulting with DPH or DESI as we move forward but right now Arlington remains a very low incident community um we still are point less than 0.5 cases on a seven day average and if you look at that that metric you know you start moving through that but it's been the Arlington incidents remain very stable over the last um couple months so but we will be watching that very closely so that was one issue so you have the chart but as I said it's more there's going to be more nuance and more discussion that's going to go forward I also want to report that you know this already that we received the the extension and um we um what about the COVID testing for teachers so the over the weekend a survey was sent out to teachers and staff just to find out whether they're interested in getting a test and I want to echo what Ms. Exton said very few communities are doing this and this is expensive and I want to thank the town of Arlington for willing to do this because this is a free service to all of our teachers but anyway we will get the results back this evening that will allow the Board of Health to order the tests that they need to have and then also we'll decide on um right now we're planning on three sites but we may not need three sites we'll we'll see but the other important part about the testing is that it's going to be ongoing so Arlington teachers can make an appointment at Armstrong Ambulance two days a week on Tuesday Thursdays after school to arrange for arrange for a test so that that is in place and again I think it's commendable that the town has has devoted its resources to doing this um the other announcement for parents and this is in we've we've updated in in documents out to the community some of us on our website that vaccinations have been given a grace period of 60 days so until just recently if you were parents sending your child to school in Arlington or any public school for that matter you had to have your vaccinations up to date but that has been extended for 60 days but in Arlington we have very very high compliance I think something like 98% of our families have vaccinations that are ready to enter school so that's terrific but I did want people to know to not panic if they haven't been able to get a doctor's appointment um the other thing that we are looking at just it's not it's still very much in the planning stages but I did want the committee to know that we are looking into the possibility of with the um so having some kind of babysitting in place the school age children for our staff but I can tell you more about that probably by the next meeting and you know one of the speakers earlier talked about social emotional but I think one of the things you can see in the schedule and conversations been going on that this is a very high priority in terms of the work that we're going to be doing with students regardless of whether they're in the hybrid program or whether they're in the remote academy so I do want to mention that the other thing and I'll just wrap up with this is that we were talking about values and this morning we we've just we've just um had gone through our new teacher orientation program last week which is a very intensive preparation time for new teachers we have about 40 and they were part of a meeting this morning and the one thing that I you know I said to them besides you know becoming aware of our curriculum and all of our different you know procedures protocols and we can only do so much and then some of them will have to be learned as we go on but one of the things I wanted to make sure that they also appreciate it are what we value as a school district and and I talked to them about an excellent education for all of our students and that with the foundation and our vision of a student as learner and a global citizen which we have talked about many times at this table we also prioritize very strongly social emotional well-being of our students and staff and we cultivate and supports a social school environments and practices that promote and sustain equity and that is a very high priority they said we're trying certainly to make sure that all of our environments are safe and healthy and we have a strong commitment to the professional learning of all of our staff and this includes um ongoing implicit bias anti-racism um professional development as well as culturally responsive teaching practices so these these are our values and our values are not changing even though we're going into different models this year and I think it's important for the community to hear this and for all the people that are joining our school system this year so that is the report so far and I don't know if there's any questions that anyone would have so uh I want to get back to Mr. Hayner and Dr. Alice Nampy do you have a question or a comment a question okay Dr. Alice Nampy okay thank you um Dr. Bodie going back to the criteria can we expect to see something more in writing in at our next meeting um I will see what we can have in writing that's just about a week from now but yes the plan is that we are continuing to talk with the Board of Health about that and make and put something in writing that we can share with all of you okay thank you okay Mr. Hayner thank you uh after hearing everything uh at this time I'm going to make a motion that the Allington public school system go remote with a phased-in hybrid uh for the entire district second I may speak yes very briefly uh again as I said before this is not a reflection on any administrators I have listened to the teachers I'll listen to the parents and uh I feel that at this time this is not a reflection on the preparation and all the work that you folks have done but I think it is important for us to do this a lot slower than we're doing it thank you other discussion mr. Cardin thank you um so again I would defer to the administrative team certainly if uh there was a lot of concern about um getting what needs to be done in the next three weeks done in three weeks um then I'd be happy to hear uh a recommendation to um to do things more slowly but uh I have not heard that so uh I do have to rely on our administrative team to make the determination we we have you know 21 days left um can they get what's what what's done done in 21 days this is not never going to be perfect this is always going to be a very difficult model to implement I don't really see how spending more time is going to mark going to going to more than marginally improve it um there are obviously are a lot of details to be worked out there's a tremendous amount of work to be done over the next three weeks but I'm not sure two additional weeks four additional weeks um some districts are doing you know 10 additional weeks is going to really buy us much uh except perhaps a resurgence of uh of the virus in which case um we'll never get our kids and our kids will never see their teachers so uh I'm going to rely on our administrative team uh and if you know but by by our next meeting on the 10th if they determine that things need to go slower then then then we'll we'll hear that recommendation then but uh for now um I don't hear that so I'm going to oppose this motion thank you mr schlickman thank you um I I want to remind the committee that the people of Ireland voted for us to make the decision we shouldn't be sitting here waiting for a decision to be presented to us to be ratified and all through this process all summer I felt that's where we've been going is that we haven't had the debate we haven't had the discourse we haven't weighed the options uh in one of the subcommittee meetings uh it was just said matter of factly well if you wanted the best educational outcome in the safest model you'd be going all remote and I think that's exactly what we should be doing this is a very very difficult model to pull off a very difficult one because what you're doing is you're scheduling two different school districts in one set of schools it is extraordinarily difficult the way to pull this off the way to make this work is to start with everybody in place as a baseline in the hybrid model then as you open seats based on the highest needs and move on down the list to move people into remote you start off in a team teaching model or you have two teachers working together so kids depending on how they split hybrid to remote they maintain contact with their teaching team so there's a continuity if there is an emergency it's easier to revert back to a all remote model if that's the way we started rather than starting in a complex hybrid model and then trying to package everybody back into into a remote learning plan the logical starting point for a district in terms of moving kids into a hybrid program somewhere's around fifth grade I think that in a high school it's much easier to start with and stay in a remote model I have a hard time seeing how kindergarten kids are going to benefit from COVID restricted teaching on an all-day model yeah we want to get them into the buildings we want them to acculturate we want them to make connections but I don't see them walking around with social distancing and face masks and doing the kinds of things that happen in a good kindergarten under this model people here have been working very very hard incredibly hard to try to pull off the impossible and it's not easy to do and it's taking a lot of time to do there's still uncertainty hanging over it and there are a lot of parents who are uneasy because of all this uncertainty if we want to do what's best for kids if we want to do what is the safest thing then we start off with a full remote model and then gradually work kids into a co into a hybrid model expanded out as the situation permits and then if there's a problem we can very quickly bounce back into an all remote model keep everybody safe and do the best thing for kids and that's why I'm supporting Mr. Hayner's motion. Any more discussion? Dr. Allison Ampe? So if we want to talk about what's best for kids it depends on who you're talking to if you talk to the American Association of Pediatrics it's having the kids in school face-to-face with their teachers even with masks on if you talk to a whole lot of parents in Arlington it's the same thing. I don't agree that the remote schooling is necessary by default better than the hybrid model. I think that's taking a lot of assumptions about what's going on and how much kids get out of face-to-face time versus remote time and making those assumptions and and going from there. I agree with Mr. Cardin that I am listening to our administration because our role is to make policy decisions not to run the school district. I mean we're trying to make sure that the decisions made are good ones and that they have the necessary information and have thought about the right things but we're not supposed to be running the school district. I feel at this point in time that the hybrid model remains the model that we should go with and that's also in this setting that we're in about as good a place as we could possibly be in terms of COVID with the number of cases that we have both in our town our town and in our county and in the surrounding communities and by going to me it was a decision point where our three options are going full-time which I didn't think that our buildings or staffing would support going back hybrid so part-time in person or part-time remote and then remote by giving parents the option to have remote I mean to to opt for remote that allows the people who are really concerned or have family reasons or whatever that they feel being in the building is the problem and then by having a hybrid option we're able to offer those other parents the choice that they feel is best for their child. Okay now I forgot where I was going with this. We okay I totally lost my train of thought. This is a problem with Zoom meetings. I think that we're offering we need there are definitely concerns about what's going on in terms of the remote schedules and stuff. There's kinks and things that need to be worked out but that doesn't mean that they can't be worked out and by putting everyone in a remote schedule we even if we choose to do a phase in later because we realize there's some things that we have to work out first we're able to do that if we just go totally remote which it sort of to me sounded like what Mr. Hayner was proposing we won't be able to bring kids back at all so anyway I'm going to vote I'm going to vote against this motion and I'll see what the administration brings to us next week also. This keys. Hi I just want to make everybody make sure everybody understands our teachers want to be in the building like that is the primary goal to the point where we are involuntarily transferring teachers to remote positions that's happening this week. We want to be in the buildings with the kids. This is not going to work I mean just from great we have a sample model from one teacher can you scale it up to the whole school like do we have the staff to cover it and at some point we actually have to plan we don't just walk in on the first day of school and everything magically happens it takes a lot of planning and every teacher in the district right now is looking at September 18th the Friday before the kids start and we're going what if we don't have staff in place by that day are we going to get told oops sorry can't open the building readjust everything over the weekend to start remotely we have to plan and it's like I said this to the beginning of August like if you're not sure we can do this give us a chance to start successfully and then you know if the staffing's in place we can set a date and move in to a hybrid but I don't know what you expect the staff to be doing in these next nine days when everyone's just sitting around going do we have enough task do we have enough TAs yet do we have enough TAs yet is yet like there's got to come a point where you say this is the goal we all want to get there we need more time and we need more time it's not that we don't want to go into the building it's not that we don't think that's the best thing for the kids it's that if it's not structurally feasible and I'm not talking about minor little scheduling issues and you keep talking about having all this time we start Wednesday 21st might be where kids come but like we have teachers starting the school year not knowing what they're teaching like at some point you just have to say we need more time thank you okay any more any more comments middexton so this is this is um this is a challenge for me um I I've heard um you know a lot of the concerns about the scheduling the staffing um at the same time um as an early childhood teacher as much as kindergarten is not going to look like it has looked um I have real concerns about what kindergarten will look like on a zoom screen as well um and then thinking about a phased in model without you know specific dates makes it really hard for me to support this motion um I guess you know when I'm thinking about is if if the administration felt like a phased in um remote um starting remote and phasing in at certain levels um was something that was recommended I would consider supporting that but um I I really think that particularly the elementary students need to be starting um in the classroom in a hybrid model from from the beginning um so as the motion is now I'm not going to support it either all right anybody else okay uh so um motion by Mr. Heiner seconded by Mr. Schlickman middexton no Mr. Cardin no Dr. Allison Ampe no Mr. Thielman no Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Heiner yes and I'm also a no okay um let's see so is that the end of your report Dr. Bodie have we covered that are we ready to move on yes we're ready to move on okay um the consent agenda all 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 approval of warrant warrant number two one zero three nine check date will be tuesday august 25th 2020 in the amount of six hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and two dollars and seventy three cents so move second uh middexton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Heiner yes and I am also a yes uh policy second read files ebc bedb jjk and the added ebcfa Mr. Schlickman I move adoption on second read with the amendment to ebc supplemental second uh discussion saying none um middexton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Heiner yes and I am also a yes um subcommittee and liaison reports and announcement community relations Mr. Heiner nothing on the committee to report but I have a question uh will community relations be the one that's doing the selection of members for the uh superintendent search committee I don't know if that should be discussed now or the another meeting can you take that could you uh bring that to the superintendent search process committee meeting I'd be happy to thank you with Mr. Schlickman great this superintendent search uh committee I would think is charged with that task okay Arlington High School Building Committee uh Mr. Thielman okay Ms. Morgan so can I interrupt for a sec yes sorry I see your little blue hand yeah um did Mr. Schlickman did we pass the face mask um policy yes we did okay sorry thank you Mr. Thielman uh you know we're moving along at a good pace and uh we had some good news last week with some uh savings in our budget were we able to do some good things for the schools on Dr. Boat he wants to add anything Dr. Boat do you want to add anything at all about the building committee no I think that you're absolutely right that we had some very good news on our 90 percent about um cost uh cost proposals and so we were able to add some things back that we thought uh really uh were a positive for the school both aesthetically in terms of sustainability was an important feature on that um some of that had to do with triple glazing is not exactly um uh something that is aesthetic but it certainly is going to make a big difference we also were able to to change the the flooring on the on the entrance areas on those floors to a terraza that was very positive but there there were a number of brick things the committee agreed on it and we were able to take off quite a few things off of the alternate list but at the same time keeping some of some cushion for later on should we need it so it was it was a very good news where we are and we're moving along I I do know and for those that have been listening to the pile drivings that have been going on in the front of the high school that is going to improve fairly soon so that's that's good news for those that are sitting in a building shaking and but that will end yeah and parents had questions about soil testing and uh air quality and that sort of thing and we are we are updating our website with information to answer specific questions so but it's moving along well and we're very excited about it a lot of good news there uh liaison reports announcements future agenda items um okay so the last item in our agenda is executive session to conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiations with union and or yet non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted motion to go into executive session so move second and we are not we are going to adjourn from executive session and will not be coming back so uh roll call vote uh miss exton yes mr cardin yes dr ellison ampie yes mr sealman yes mr schlickman yes mr hainer yes and i'm also a yes