 Okay, we're out of executive session today is Thursday, September 12th, 2013. Good evening everyone, welcome back. I'm excited as I hope all of you are for a productive and exciting 2013-2014 new school year. Already our students have returned, so I'm to find a beautiful new Thompson Elementary School, more on that later on. Others have returned to see some of their friends having moved on to different schools or back to the Thompson. On this point, I say to you, keep in touch, foster the friendships, continue to share your experiences with one another. All of our students and our staff and administration are experiencing the yearly ritual of change. A new school year carries with it promises and hopes. And despite this we acknowledge that at times things may seem difficult, even stressful. Indeed, there are expected changes due to the new Common Core Implementation as well as the new kindergarten curriculum and the new evaluation system. On this point, I want to say, remain hopeful and open to these new ideas. Most of all, I want to say thank you. Thank you to the teachers and staff who've worked so tirelessly last year and through this past summer to get ready for these changes. Thank you to the parents and to the students who are getting up each morning, going to school, coming home, doing their homework, going to bed, early I hope, and starting it all over again the next day. Daily rituals. We in this room will always be at your service for any questions or help you may require. And with that, I'd like to introduce our student rep for the evening, Alex Crowley, grade 11, junior. Alex is active in soccer, junior class president, and he plays high school basketball. So thanks for being here tonight, Alex. We have our AEA rep in attendance, Linda Hansen. Thank you, Linda. And I would like to move into public participation. Looks like we have one gentleman who would like to speak, John Leonard. Up to the mic, sir. Thanks. Good evening. This is my first participation in a school committee meeting. I know by time is limited, so I won't take up too much of your time. Some of you might know me as a town meeting member from precinct 17. In this particular town meeting session, the issue that I was pressing was utility poles in the town of Allington. You might remember that they put up some pictures at the back of the hall for all the sessions of town meeting, showing some of the conditions existing on Mass Avenue. The final result was that the Board of Selection turned around on my resolution and were voting no action. But with the help of town meeting, it was passed unanimously. I have copies of the resolution here, which you can look at later on. I basically would ask the Board of Selection to look into the use of utility poles because they're cleaning them up, regulating them. Anything that's not working on them, abandoned equipment, abandoned wiring, and if you wanted to, double poles. But basically to get some plan of attack in for cleaning up the utility poles. Again, not telephone poles anymore. They're called utility poles because there's more than one utility there. It occurred to me after a town meeting that I might be out on a limb by myself with this. So I decided to find out to myself what other ways that I could pursue it. And one of the ways I decided to pursue it was why not investigate what's going on around the town schools. So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go around, I think it was around the 26th or the 27th of August. And I took pictures of the various conditions that I call it around the eight elementary schools in the town of Allington. And the utility pole conditions that exist there. For you to look at, I will leave these pictures here tonight. I would like to, if possible, be placed on the agenda for two weeks hence. I think it's the 26th. And maybe at that particular time we could exchange thoughts about what I hope to do or what could possibly be done to clean up some of the conditions that exist in utility poles in regards to around the schools in the town of Allington. I think you'd be surprised at some of the pictures of anything from wires hanging down to abandoned stuff that all of our children pass by every single day to and from school. With that, I will leave you these pictures and I won't bother you anymore. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, moving on to the opening of school overview. Superintendent Bode. Well, thank you. And thank you for your opening words and thanking all of our teachers because not only our teachers but all of our administrators and custodians with service. A lot of people spend a considerable amount of time this summer preparing for the start of the school year, including a couple of people sitting here at the table. I think that Mr. Spiegel had a particularly busy summer and he'll talk a little bit more about that this evening in terms of our hiring. But a lot of preparation goes into a school year, particularly around curriculum and assessments. And you alluded to some major changes that are occurring this year and we are in a full implementation of the Massachusetts Common Core Standards. And what that entails is certainly aligning our curriculum to those standards, but we've been working on that for a number of years, but it's also developing the assessments that correspond to that. In addition to, we'll hear more about this year, the district determined measures, the acronym for that is DDMs. And these are pilot assessments that we're going to be implementing this year in five core subject areas. Whereas, and they're also being developed in other subjects as well. And we talked a little bit about this already, but it was a lot of work. It involved many teachers, not only do teachers participate in that curriculum work, but they also did a lot of professional development on their own. Including the tech university that we offered thanks to a grant from the AEF this summer. And we had over 60 teachers participating in that program at both at the entry level of using some of our technology, particularly the iPad, but also people who are very advanced and actually people who were very advanced became mentors and teachers to the other teachers as well. So it was a busy summer and a shorter than usual summer. I think that's one comment that we've heard over and over again. It did feel shorter. It was. We started the first week off from school July 4th week and we were back in school the last week of August. So that actually presented a few problems with the opening in that there were some, as we made this transition in a shorter summer and transition to a new cleaning, custodial supervisors, but there was a mad rush at the end to get schools ready. And that's something we have to look at in future years is having sort of a master calendar about this. We're increasingly having summer programs. Many of those summer programs are district sponsored special education programs at the elementary level, the middle school level. We have some general education programs. Our summer fund program has just been growing. You'll get a report on that this fall, but it's well over a thousand students. But we rent out different spaces, which puts in a summer like this a lot of pressure on being able to get the buildings up to the level that they need to be. Having said that, on opening date for students, the buildings look great. Hall is done. The floor is waxed. And the end of the summer, well, the whole summer was a major preoccupation, too, with moving, having Thompson open, which is probably the highlight of this fall. And this might be a good time to talk a little bit about what's going to be happening this coming Sunday, which is the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Thompson. And we have put it in newspapers, out on emails. We've been trying to disseminate this invitation as much as possible. So tonight's another opportunity. We will have a ceremony beginning at 2 o'clock on Sunday. And State Treasurer Grossman is coming as well as the Executive Director of MSBA, Jack McCarthy. And we have a number of speakers, both from Mr. Pierce and Mr. Dunn, our State Senator, State Rap, Tom Manager, Principal of Thompson, Sherry Donovan, as well as we're going to have a fifth grade student. They had an essay contest at Thompson over the last week or so, and they were judging as to which essay would win. And in fact, we'll get the name tomorrow to go into the last minute insertion in our program. The program we're looking, we've decided to move it into the gym for a number of reasons, mainly sound, to make sure that the speakers can be heard and not, even though it's a good sound system, I'm not confident about its projection quality into a big space outside. We will have refreshments, and then after the program and the ribbon-cutting ceremony, members of the community will be able to tour Thompson. And the school will be open until 4 o'clock for tours. So I hope that you'll be able to join us. It'll be about a half hour program, so don't feel as though most of the time there will be in the gym, but it will also give you great opportunities to look very closely at all the nice features of the gym as well. While we're talking about Thompson, I also want to mention that on September 29th, which is also a Sunday at 2 o'clock, the library is going to be dedicated to Mr. Bill Shea. And I talked about that at the last meeting, but again, it's worth reminding people that we're going to have this ceremony in his honor. He was a member of the Thompson School Building Committee as he was on the permanent town building committee for all of the other refurbishing of our schools. He was an avid reader, and so many people who worked to raise money on behalf of Thompson Library talked about that. He particularly liked the book, The Little Engine That Could, and we have a mural to that effect that's in the Thompson Library. So the library will be dedicated. We have an author coming. We'll have activities for students in different classrooms. There will be refreshments, and it'll just be a great day. And again, another opportunity for people to come and to see the Thompson School. It really is beautiful. I think people who've been there, I think a lot of, in fact, I think all of you have been there at this point. And it's just unusually colorful and open and very, I think very joyful place. And certainly that's a view shared by the children and the staff there. All right. I have actually a number of things to talk about. So in terms of this year, there were a number of changes that we're going to see in our schools. At all of our schools, at the elementary level, one of the major changes that we're going to have is a scheduling change. And for that matter, that's also a change at the middle school as well. At the elementary, we have moved into a block scheduling so that, for example, at grade three at a particular school, all of them will be doing literacy at the same time. All of them will be doing mathematics at the same time so that we can create opportunities for more flexible groupings. But a major and important component of this new schedule change is the flex block, which will allow more opportunities to pull students out for special services, whether it be ELL, reading, special education at the same time so that we have less impact on the actual academic part of the day. I'm sure that already we've seen a few little glitches and any kind of major change like this is going to be some rollout issues which we are working on right now. Another change at the middle school, which is quite welcome by all the staff, is that in order to accommodate instrumental music, we've had to have on two days of the week an eight period day through a lot of work on the part of Assistant Principal Maureen Murphy, we are now able to schedule everything in a seven period day for the entire cycle and moving the instrumental music to the first period. So this is actually, I've heard so many comments about that. Speaking of schedule changes, I've also heard a lot of very positive comments from teachers about starting before Labor Day. It just felt a lot more relaxed and then you're ready to really start as soon as Labor Day is over. So some other changes in that respect is we have a few other major initiatives and that is the increase of special education teachers at the elementary school. We now have two math coaches in addition to our math science specialist. We are now offering Mandarin in the middle school as well as the high school and we have, I mentioned that in the newsletter I just put out, we have two classes of seventh grade taking Mandarin. Through a grant, we are also now reintroducing Italian at the high school level and to our surprise, we expected to have only two classes, but we have three classes of introductory Italian. So there's a lot of changes, but I would say that when I was talking to teachers on opening day, when I'm thinking about what the real focus of this year is going to be about, it is really focused on two major areas and I would say a third, not a distant, not too far behind it. And that is the implementation, the new teacher education evaluation system, educator evaluation system. It's going to be a change in what we've done at a technical level certainly in terms of the number of observations that evaluators will be engaging in, but I think that there are some real adaptive issues which I think are consistent with directions we've been going in the district for a while. And that is thinking about goals for the year and focusing on both an achievement goal for students and a personal practice goal. This year I've encouraged teachers as I have administrators to think about a team goal as we work together with certain initiatives. So we're all going to be learning more about this and as a result many of our early release days are devoted to, or not completely but certainly a number of them to the implementation professional development that's necessary. We have professional development lined up for all of the administrators that will be doing evaluations as we did this summer. They've already engaged in four full days in fact this summer. So that is going to be something that we will be working on and as well as the implementation fully of the Massachusetts Common Core State Standards. And we will be seeing the assessment of those standards on this year's MCAS. And one of the things I'll talk about in the superintendent's report is actually we are going to be a park testing site. So we'll talk about that a little bit later. So this is the focus as we go forward in the year. And then also we have 60 of our elementary teachers that are engaging in the retail course, 30 in the fall, 30 in the spring. And this will be an opportunity for us as a school district to expand our repertoire of knowledge and skills around teaching students, English language learner students which is something that continues to increase not only in our school system but in our district. In Arlington about 12% of the families in Arlington have a different language than English as their first language. That's a very high percent. Now perhaps certainly in Lowell it's probably not anywhere near as high as that. But in our school district we mimic the same percentage roughly between 11 and 12%. So this week was the first week for kindergarten students to come. And last week they spent meeting teachers coming in for their screening. But this was the first full weekend. Several principals have told me how just utterly charming it was on Monday. Particularly at lunchtime watching these little kindergartners come in. A lot of them brought lunch but a lot of them were brave enough to try to get a lunch. And what would they do with it? Where do they go? So it all went very well. There were some tearful moments outside the schools. But any tearful parents here? Very good. Very good. It went well. No. But it went very well. One of the things that I think is good for people to know is that we had our opening faculty meetings. There are a lot of things that we do PD with teachers even on the first day in terms of issues around bullying, harassment, FERPA laws, restraint laws. So there is a, and I see you shaking your head, yes? Same thing. It takes almost three hours. Yes, those meetings take nearly three hours. And then the principals finally get to talk about the initiatives they have for the year. But it is very intense. So I think it is important for the public to know that we do this type of professional development up front on the first day of faculty meetings. Can I ask you this? Yes, absolutely. How often are faculty meetings? Do they vary school to school? No, we have a very set schedule for faculty meetings. In fact, we have given, the entire year has been laid out. There are three afternoon meetings a month. And the first meeting of the month is faculty meetings across the district. Then the second meeting is often department meetings at the secondary level, which mean they are grade level meetings at the elementary. And then the third meeting is for our professional learning community, which again might mean grade level meetings at the elementary or some vertical kind of group or secondary. It is probably a subset of a particular department. Now having said that, there is a little bit of variation to that in that we do have early release days. And I know we have had a lot of discussion about these early release days. But at the elementary level, we decided back in the spring, and Linda Hansen was very much a part of that, is looking at what the content was that we needed to work with all of our elementary teachers. At the secondary level, they are content specific as well. Or they are working in the professional learning community. So it is all laid out for the year completely. The only thing that is missing is which room do you go to at this point? But that is coming soon. As well as all the meetings for administrators, that is all laid out. We have different types of meetings for administrators. I will expand on that a little bit. I will be interested. We have four meetings in the year for every administrator in the district who does evaluations, part of the training. We have administrative team, which is curriculum leaders and principals. We have meetings just for principals. We have just meetings for curriculum leaders. And then there are different subgroups of that as well that are working on particular projects. But that home meeting schedule is laid out for the year as well. Any other questions on subjects touched so far? I had a question briefly on the park field test. Yep. And we have some materials in our packets this evening explaining a little bit about a PowerPoint presentation. Are we having more of an explanation of this tonight? Or are we putting this on another agenda? Because I would like to know a little bit more about this. I am sure. Yes. I just sent this out to actually the whole staff this week. So they are aware of it. We will. Okay. Right now I was just to let you know this is happening. I have even gotten emails already today from staff saying you are going to schedule this end of the year. This is the end of the year ones after MCAS. And the answer is yes, of course. I was going to talk about that in the superintendent's report but you brought it up. I mean I wasn't going to spend a lot of time on it. If you want to talk about now we could. Okay. Pull up. We have three elementary schools and the middle school involved in the park assessments. It is a field test. And no student takes more than one part of the test. And it is pretty well distributed among the elementary. The only elementary school that is doing two of the parts is Dallin. What did I do with that in a second? Thank you. It is in my pile here. It was in the order in which I was doing this tonight. All right. You will see on your form here it says E-O-Y and P-B-A. The E-O-Y is end of year and the P-B-A is performance based assessment. When we implement this in 14, 15 there are going to be two assessments for all the grades in E-L-A and mathematics, literacy and mathematics. And one of them is going to be in March and it is going to be a performance based assessment. And then there will be one at 90% through the year which will probably put it in May, late May for the follow-up. So what we are testing as a site at Bishop, we are going to be testing in fifth grade. Only two of the classes though and this all has to be done randomly. The state is offered to give us a random generator but we only have three classes at Bishop. I think we can handle this random. So we will handle it. But there will only be two and we won't decide yet. Now there will be a paper test. Some of these are going to be paper and some online. One of the big issues across the state is whether you have the bandwidth and the technology to do an online testing. And for Arlington we do. Now when we have the whole school district going at the same time, it is going to require some scheduling because we have had experience when we have all been on at the same time. Some crashing around because it is just not. When everybody is logging on to the internet that creates a problem. But we can handle that with scheduling. So the schools that are going to be doing the online field test are going to be down. And that is going to be in grade five. Only two classes but they are going to do both the performance based and the end of the year. And they will only have two classes. Thompson is going to do mathematics in fourth grade. They will only have two as well but they only have two at Thompson in fourth grade. So both their classes are going to be tested. And they will be doing the paper. And of course this is sort of ironic that it is our first one to one elementary school and they are doing the paper. But the state did not know that. It is all random. And then Ottison middle is going to be tested in sixth, seventh and eighth. Six in mathematics. ELA in seventh and eighth grade mathematics. And only two classes from each. So that is going to be a little bit more because there is probably 15 classes in the sixth grade. So we will take two out of the 15. And six in the eighth with mathematics will be end of the year. And for seventh grade it will be the performance based in March. All of these classes will still be taking MCAS. So we would schedule this because we have a window to do it after MCAS. Yes, Bill. Just a thought for the future. We are going to end up doing park. We are going to have to wait until the park is here to stay. Shouldn't we plan on investing to increase our bandwidth. Because invariably my experience if we ask everybody not to use it while we are using it for the test, something will happen and crash the test or something else that might be important. We had that discussion the other day. Lord Cheess and David Good and myself, Dan Sheen as well, we all listen to the webinar together. The answer is yes, but I think we will also, during testing times, just to make sure we don't have crashing, to not let, to put a prohibition up for other uses of it. Just one more. Why did Dallin get picked to do two? Is that part of the random selection? It's all random. So we've been told. And I trust that it has been. When they offered to give us a random generator to decide which two classes, I suspect it was all quite random. Now, I will say this, just one last thing, and that is we may have more schools in October because if a school asks for a waiver because they don't have the bandwidth to do it, they can't switch from being an online to a paper. So if they can't do the online, they're not testing. So then they're going to randomly assign those school districts to other districts. I just wanted to say, I mean, first, this was the first that we had seen of this or heard that it was coming to Arlington. So we haven't had a lot of time about it. But I'm just concerned that we have a for-profit company coming in. They made $1.5 billion profit last year. And our students are essentially being conscripted to prove their test. They're getting no results back. We're getting nothing. There's nothing coming from us. There's time taken away from studies. There's stress, test stress added to our students. There's all the logistics for doing this. And it just, it bothers me a lot that there was, I understand that the DSE approved it and said, yes, we'll do this, but it just doesn't feel fair that we're just told, let's suck it up. Is there anything we can do? I mean, if I am a parent of someone who's potentially taking at least one of these tests, and what can our parents do? As it just, first of all, answer that from the point of view of a district. We can apply for a waiver, but there's only a set number of reasons why you would be granted a waiver, meaning you wouldn't take the assessment this year as part of the field test. And I went through the reasons and I couldn't find one reason why we would be exempt. So at that level, I'm not going to apply for any waivers because I would assume that they would be turned down. The expansiveness of this is much larger than what I was led to believe this summer. It's about two-thirds of the districts in the state are involved in this. And it is a time test. Unlike MCAS, it is timed. And the sessions roughly are two to two-and-a-half hours. That's the other part of this field test they want to see is the bill, if this is adequate amount of time. Because MCAS is un-timed. And there'll be some limited, there'll be some accommodations built into it, particularly online, for example, magnification, which would normally be an accommodation you would apply for. Well, yeah, you would apply for the state, for a particular student. So there are some advantages, honestly, if this is going to be implemented next year across the state in these subjects for us to have an opportunity to administer. Now, having said that, test administrators cannot look at the test, which is true also of MCAS, but there's no prohibition against asking the students about them after. So it'll be good for us to get a sense of the materials being tested as we think about what we're going to be doing next year to prepare. Just to go along with what was just said, I think once again we're being asked to take time from regular education and effort. It's going to happen. It's going to happen again. But without any consequence to our children, to our staff, and the state just arbitrarily does this. And I appreciate the value of having this. But at the same time, we should gain something from this besides the experience that we have to glean from the children afterwards. We will get no results from it, but they will use the data from this to the field testing the questions or field testing the amount of time that will be required for a set. And I suspect, though they didn't quite say this, I would hope that they would be looking at correlation between how a group of students would do on this test as compared to what they would have done on MCAS. Are there other testing companies that are out there to look into that might have a better system? I believe there are, but I believe that we have a contract with Pearson doing this. I think it's not just us. I think it's all the states participating in part. The state decided. This is who we're going with. I'm in complete agreement with what Dr. Allison Ampe just pointed out, but one advantage for teachers is they are going to release all of the test items. And we have requested as an association that they request those at least one full year before teachers and students would have to be held accountable for it. So one small thing is we should get a lot more test items so that we start to understand how these new. So they'll release the actual questions that were asked, not the answers, not how our kids did. But, well, possibly answers and rubrics, but at least teachers will begin to understand better how these new standards are going to be measured, which is really important. It will be. We don't know. I don't know if they're going to be released this spring or whether they're going to be released in the summer, but we should be able to see what some of those questions will be down the road, just like we do with MCAS. Isn't this test, though, supposed to assess the Common Core? Yes. Yes. That's the intent. Yes. And that's why we're doing it. I just want to clarify this because if we're implementing the, if we are required to implement the Common Core next September, am I correct? No, we're implementing it now. Okay. Implementing it now. We'll be in the second year of this. So I hope it's going to be different than the MCAS was originally because it didn't measure what was going on. Well, that's what they want to find out. This year's MCAS will be measuring Common Core standards completely. Last year, they tested some, but not all. So will MCAS be eventually phased out? Yes. But we don't have a date on that. I think next year. Next year. This should be our last year at MCAS. It comes park. 1415 is park. I mean essentially what's happening is we have a long string of MCAS data that you can validate tests to. They can look at questions based on what happened previous years. But I suspect this is all an issue of scaling so that you'd want, if you're defining proficient as something and they're constantly adjusting the number of points you need to get or questions correct in order to get to that proficient rating, they have to do that scaling every year. And if they don't have the two measures side by side, it's impossible for them to have an equivalent scaling between the old test and the new test. So that's why it's important for them to have kids to take both tests within a reasonably close period of time so that if the MCAS shows the child is proficient, they can correlate that over to the new instrument and see how that works. So it's psychometrically important that it's done. The park test is supposed to be different in that it should be more performance oriented, less multiple choice kind of stuff. And as we move fully into computer based testing, the amount of time required to take the test will be less and the questions can be more sophisticated. So the precision of the measure will be a better instrument once everybody's able to go online. I mean, I don't know if you want to sit here and listen to any discussion, but the one thing I will say is very simply. If you have a paper and pencil test and the question is, I'm thinking of a number between one and a hundred, you have to answer a hundred questions on a paper and pencil test in order to hit the right number. But if you've got a computer which is iterative, they'll go right for the fifty. And then if you get it right, they'll go for a harder question or if they get it wrong, they'll go for an easier question. And it will just be very iterative and it will zone in about the area where a student is so you'll get a more accurate measure with far fewer questions. I'm not expecting that you'll be able to answer this today, but I'm thinking back to a PTO meeting that I went to at Otteson last year. And the questions that were being asked then about the concern, what's it going to be like if we go to online testing? What are the students expected to be able to do and things? I know parents are going to be very concerned if some of our kids are taking online tests. And we're going to need information in advance of this of when is, you know, first is this just the trial for this and we're going to be doing paper. And for how many years are we doing paper? When are we going to be doing any necessary computer skills or typing skills in the elementary schools, let alone the middle and high school? All of these things because otherwise people are going to hear these things and they're just going to freak out. That's what was happening at the PTO meeting to some extent, just the idea that there was online testing coming. And if it's actually here, we need to know these things so that we can explain. I think we need to have some parent meetings once we know a little bit more about this. And you bring up a very important question that I've been talking to RIT people and is about keyboarding. Because we can use iPads for this online testing, but you also have to have a keyboard with the iPad. We will have enough for this year's testing, but my concern is when are we going, we've been doing keyboarding in the sixth grade. And at what point are we going to really start changing that? And so that's an issue that we're aware of and talking about right now. Having students taking these online tests going like this is not ideal as we go forward. On the other hand, it may simply be that kind of level. We just don't know yet. I think the good news is that it looks like from what Linda said and what you're saying that, you know, the district is going to use this experience to get familiar with PARC, to learn from it, to calibrate our common assessment. So, I mean, it sounds like, I mean, I sympathize. I agree with what Kershi is saying about students taking two tests in one year and taking MCAS and that. But I think there's some advantages for the district too. I mean, I think there's some advantage. We're going to get data and we're going to have an experience that we could. So we should use this experience to help inform our practice as well. Not just let it be used for the state. When I've talked to a couple of curriculum leaders that they have been positive about this. First of all, it's time test. It's only going to be two hours and the students are only going to do one session. So it's not going to be a particularly intrusive, you know, time test into the school day. But it is another test. On the other hand, it can be beneficial to us. I think as long as we're using the experience to inform and improve our practice, that's certainly a positive side of the whole discussion. Okay, I have a few more things. I'll make it pretty fast. One thing I want to encourage parents about is to go into the parent portal if you have not done that. Make sure your information is updated. I know that the people who run the list serves are also encouraging parents to get into the portal and update information. And I say that for a couple of reasons. One is when emails go out, right now I'm not confident that all people are getting emails. But more importantly, our alert system is based on the information that's in the portals. So emails, or that's your choice, telephone numbers so that we can contact you if there's a need to give an all district message. I have a question about that. Did something change from last year to this year so as to make parents have to redo maybe what they formally did on registering online? For example, I'm not sure if I'm getting emails. And I'm not certain that... Do we have a web address that we could just announce out there to the public right now for folks to log on and make sure that they're registered? Do you have that? Well, you can go through our Arlington website. Go to the front of the Arlington Public Schools. On the school website and it'll lead you through the steps. What was confusing to anything to a lot of parents last year, and we finally figured this out or why we didn't have some emails, is that they thought when they went in and registered on this listserv that they were then updating their information on the actual school power school forms. And that's not the case. The two don't link. So we've been working with the two people who have been helping with those listservs to make sure that they direct people back to the portal. So that's an important piece as well. But it's also a way for parents to sort of keep abreast of how their students are doing during the year. We can certainly get maybe... We're going to double check that out and just see where we are on that at this point. But we want to make sure that we have information for every parent. Some form of contact when we have to send out an alert. So again, it's arlington.k12.ma.us. On the home page you'll see a little sidebar on the right that says sign up for parent notices. Is that it? Yeah, well that's the sign up for the parent notices. You should have gotten information and setting up a password into the parent portal. It hasn't come home from our elementary school. It has from the middle school. I don't know if the elementary schools have a link. The middle school does have a link through the website. If you go to Austin, you can find it. Yeah, but it would be great if it was on our home page. Yes, if you want everyone doing it. I agree. I don't think it is though right now. Yeah, okay. Let me make sure that is happening. Any questions on the portal? I also want to just update you a little bit on security and safety at our buildings. The good news is that I've had parents say I can't get in this building. This is good news. Our buildings are locked and we're getting much more vigilant and consistent about identification when you come to the door. So please, if you're coming as a parent, don't be offended when the building secretary or the person at the front desk asks you what reason you're coming to the school. But a big change here at the high school, this has been the most difficult building to secure. Though I'm also getting feedback that doors are locked, but we have now someone that sits at the front desk and buzzes people in. And people, when they come into the high school, they have to sign in, get a badge. So that's progressing. And you're smiling. Hopefully you haven't been, you haven't. No, no. I've been fortunate. Not have that experience. No, I've been fortunate. You've given us the passes so I have not been going through the front door. I don't see a badge on Mr. Fanning out there. Well, after hours, we're okay. After hours. So we're, and also another big change at the high school, if you notice, we had a cutaway put in. And we do have the accessibility door, which is the school committee door with a buzzer system. But right now, the handicapped parking for the school is now right in front of that door. Three places. Three parking places. So this is good. So it's all working together. In the newsletter I sent out, I did mention a couple of things that went on this summer. One I just wanted, I won't go through all of them, but one I do want to mention, because I thought it was just a wonderful opportunity that we were able to offer through a grant. And that was our ELL program that ran from July 1 to July 25. We had 55 students who are English language learners coming four mornings a week to improve their language skills. We had teachers in our district that were teaching. The feedback we had from parents and students alike that it was just a wonderful program. So I want to thank our director of ELL, Carla Brzeze and principal, Mark McEnany, for designing this program and getting it implemented. I also want to take this opportunity, too, just to, it goes back to Thompson, but it's another special thank you. Everybody's ready to go back to Thompson, and the Thompson teachers could not be happier. There's, of course, bittersweet moments of all the friendships they made in the schools they were at. But this worked better than what we even anticipated over the last couple of years. It was due in large part to the flexibility of our Thompson teachers, their can-do attitude, and the graciousness of the teachers at Stratton, Hardy and Bishop, and the parents there as well. So they did a lot to make this work, and they did a great job. And so really a heartfelt thanks to all of them. And to the parents continuing to support our teachers, they were out there doing breakfasts and things for them all beginning of the year, and it was very much appreciated by the teachers. So another time we'll probably go into our mentoring program, but I think that, I mean, there's a lot here yet to be said, but I think we should move on to, one of the other big news is our elementary enrollment. Unless there's any questions anybody has. Now, this is the sheet that we were given, the white sheet. Is this, let me ask you this before you get started, Dr. Bode, is this sheet on our website for folks to see? It's a really important sheet. It is not on our website right at the moment. I'd love to get this on too. These numbers are rather outstanding. Yes, they are. They are very outstanding. And totally unpredictable. I mean, we were predicting what our elementary enrollment would be based on the patterns that we've had. Diane has given you that over the year. Well, she's going to update it looking at this, but we had seen certainly a steady increase, which was, if we looked at a 10-year, back from actually maybe 2000, about a 1.8%, but it's, you know, a little blip. It's never a perfect straight line. But we saw leveling, sort of a leveling off, not leveling off, but it's the same steady increase over the last couple of years. But this summer, since May, we've had a huge increase. We have nearly 160 new elementary students as compared to last year, October. And it's really somewhat unprecedented in the last decade, really, this kind of a jump. The middle school has gone up about 40 students. The high school is remaining pretty level as to where it had been. But the elementary has created a number of challenges this year, which we've talked about here at the table at the last meeting in August. And that was the number of classrooms we've had to put in to accommodate these numbers. I will tell you one thing, also it was very helpful in the accommodation of this, was having the buffer zones. We'll get you a complete report on that probably last meeting in September. But I can just tell you right now that it was a very useful tool in trying to make sure that we kept class sizes, well, they may be growing in two schools, at least to keep them somewhat even. And it turned out to be very beneficial. But even having said that, the majority of people did get their first choice, but it was a tool. Now, when I look at these, the other thing you'll probably notice besides the fact that the total number of students is that we have five new classrooms and 8% of those classrooms have class sizes of 26 or more. I was able, actually the buffer zones was a real important tool not to have classes go into 28 and 29. So, but 27 is our largest at the moment. But these numbers are going to change. We're still having registrations happening. But the thing that's also interesting, it wasn't just kindergarten. If you can see it was other grades and it was across the district as well. But what is, you know, there has been some fluctuation. But one of the things that does remain a little bit of a concern is that Bracket is over 480. Last week, Dallin was, but some reason we've had a shift downward 468. But we're still talking about the high 400s of two of our schools as compared to the other school. Well, Bishop is getting up there in the low 400s. Thompson, Stratton, and Hardy are in the mid 300s. And then we have Pierce at under 300. So I don't know whether this is going to be a trend that's going to continue. I don't think any of us know. But 160 students is half an elementary school. Do we know if any of these students have come from new development behind the high school? I know the one, but Sims hasn't come online yet. Yes, I think I can get the exact numbers, but it's not many. It's somewhere like 8 to 10 students. And I'm more aware of that only because we made this, that project in the buffer zone. So we've had requests on the buffer zone issue. But yes, one of the things that does remain a wild card in terms of how this is going to go is the Sims project. The units are starting to go on sale. I'm not sure exactly when the first date of offering is, but I don't know when the move-in dates it either. But it's going to be this year. And I don't know what the impact will be. Dr. Allison. One question that wasn't clear to me is, do the newly enrolled students include transfers from other Arlington elementaries? So if I was in Stratton and then moved to Thompson, would I be a newly enrolled student at Thompson or would I just? These are new to Arlington. New to Arlington. So they're totally new. That's my understanding. Yes, because we did the transfers in the class sizes when we transferred students and we had some of those this year. But they showed up in the classes rather than newly enrolled. Okay. And you can also look at it in terms of just looking at last year's October 1 total for the elementary was 2,569 students. Our total right now, which is not official yet, is 2,725 students. My question is this, one of the goals of redistricting was to begin to equalize enrollments to capacity across the district this year. And I'm wondering if the current kindergarten trend that we have, which is four kindergartens in one, two, two of the schools. I'm excluding the peers, obviously. I'm wondering if that is going to make that goal, it's going to make it difficult to attain that goal. It's going to be very difficult at Dallin and Brackett to have a full contingency of four classes per grade. There's just no space. I mean, Brackett, there is something that we could do, but we have to move things out in order to accomplish it. This year, Dallin had to move, we had to eliminate the computer room and put music there so we could have the second grade. But there really is, other than giving up the music room and the art room, there's no other place to go. So Dallin, it's not sustainable to have four classes per grade. It's just not. So I guess the question is... Did we accomplish being able to move students completely? The problem we had, unless you did a massive redistricting, which was not the sense of the community at the time, you've got an area where it's pierced down and Brackett, and you can shift the students among them to keep class sizes down, but there's no wholesale place to move a whole class of students, unless you move them to Stratton. But I don't know what the effect of Sims is going to be on Stratton. That's unknown yet. It's not as though there's a lot of... Right now, Thompson clearly has some classrooms that we could have, and Hardy has one or two, a couple as well. So there are classrooms in different schools, but how you do that is going to be an issue. Now, I don't even want to speculate right now on camera, talking about... Because it just gets people upset because I don't know how we will respond. We have capacity in most of the schools to take extra classes. Brackett and Dallin next year, Dallin in particular, really does not have the capacity unless we give up one of those specialty rooms. I just raised the question because the goal of the redistricting effort was to equalize the utilization of space across the district. And I think our first chance to do that was this year's kindergarten. We were challenged to do that, and so somehow I think there's got to be some reflection... I mean, it's their place, the students are placed in it, but there's got to be some reflection on can we achieve the overall goal of the redistricting effort, which is... I think we need to certainly study that this year, but if people move into the Dallin district and they're not in the buffer zone, they're going to go to Dallin. And we're just seeing lots of people moving into that area of town, actually all over town for that matter. If you look at it, it's actually pretty well distributed. Okay, thanks. As I see that there are two ways to look at it, the numbers are relatively evenly distributed. It's the utilization of space that is of some concern, and also the limited resources. I mean, we were fortunate this summer to realize some funds that we're not budgeted for to allow us to add additional classrooms in some schools, but going forward, that's probably not going to be the case each year. That's right. That's another thing that I hope this map and this grid sheet points out to the community at large is that if this isn't just a one-year 5% increase, but it's rather a trend, then not only will it tax the facilities, but it's going to tax our budget quite a bit. And you bring up a good point. The reason we were able to address it this year is that we had assumed a reduction in our federal grants from Seeker Station. We all talked about that last year. Was that a reasonable assumption? I was going into the summer hoping we'd see only a 6% reduction, and then we're very surprised to find out that we're level funded. By the way, not all districts were level funded. Why? I don't know. But I'm not going to question that piece of it. So that was based on that assumption. Now had we not done that, we would not have probably been able to fund these classrooms, at least not all of them. And so that is a concern. And I think as we go into the budget year this year, we'll have to think about whether how many reserve positions we're going to have. We only put two in last year. We had five the year before and we used all five. Maybe this is a good segue into our next section. Update on hiring. Mr. Spiegel. So this is actually the third update now that I'm in the past three months that I'm giving you on hiring. So I'm just sort of adding to the report a little bit. There isn't much change from two weeks ago on the number of teachers hired in AEA. That's been, we pretty much did all of that hiring and don't have any positions to fill other than some maternity leave coverages that will be coming up this year. But that will be just long term subs. We have a couple that are already in right now, long term subs, a couple that will be going in towards the end of September and some for some positions. And then some later that I know about now, later in the fall, and I'm sure there'll be more in the spring. What's new in this report from the last time is just a little bit of an update on teaching assistants. We have added some more teaching assistants, some new people. And then the next phase of that will be ticketing. So it's in process, the time manager and Chief Ryan and I met today, in fact, a little bit more about this. So it's an ongoing, ongoing issue. So hypothetically, a parent needs to come to the school during the day, doesn't have a decal on his or her car? Park on Mass Ave. After school, evening event? I don't think there's going to be really much of a problem in the evening events because I think the parking is really only goes to six o'clock anyway. So I don't think there'll be a big issue there. And actually in the evening events, there's room in the circle as well that people can park there. Are we going to get, what's the word on the students? Well, that's one of the problems is where are the students going to park? We're talking about, but we don't have an answer to that. Will the selectmen to your knowledge address the issue of getting them? Well, not decal. Permit. A monthly permit. Well, the question is where to put them in a monthly permit. Why this situation arose is that residents that are on the perpendicular streets have two-hour parking in front of them. They're saying, well, if we really do have two-hour parking, why are people parking here all day? So, if they don't want them parking all day, having a permit to park all day isn't exactly going to be an acceptable alternative. I guess my concern, like everything else in this town, space is the most valuable thing. We have in a public parking lot, specific spaces assigned to a private school in this time with permits. They pay for them. I understand that. And I would expect our students to pay for a permit as well. And I guess I would ask the selectmen, the superintendent to speak to the issue of maybe a special permit for our students. Some of our students have after-school jobs. It's not just living in the community. They have after-school jobs that are not in the community, and they require their own car. And I think it would, I appreciate the individual citizen and the issue of all-day parking in the neighborhood. I mean, if I could, I'd suggest building a parking garage on the school property somewhere. I don't know. But we can't. And to do this to the students this quick, this fast, I think it'd be, who's the selectman to help the community? Thank you. Parking? Dr. Ellis? I'd like to know how many of the spaces of the parking deficit are for town functions which are hosted in the high school. I'm thinking Comptroller's office, some of the others. Comptroller's office has six places. We also have about 12 for maintenance, but that includes the people who work in maintenance, but it's also the maintenance equipment. For example, for our preschool, we have 21 people that need to park. We have a lab program. And we have, then, there's 153 staff in the high school. Right. And I'm saying there are town functions which are housed in the high school. And I want to know what their numbers are split away from the functions which are properly come under the school umbrella just to have some idea of the proportions. Well, there's six assigned places to the Comptroller's office. And then some of the IT. Well, IT is, oh, yes. There will be a couple of places for IT in the back, the people who, the IT department increasingly sees themselves not as school or town, but a department that spans both. Right. I'm just trying to say that these spaces are not all for teachers. They're not all for, they're none for students. They're not for our preschool. They're not for functions which are only able to be housed in a school. And we should have some idea of how much of that, you know, how much of our parking issue is because we are hosting other functions from the town. I'm not saying that we're booting a mat or anything. I'm just saying that's one of the first places to start is talking about this is an additional use of space. So I think as we do, as we talk about these numbers, we should be splitting those things off the things which are not just school. I mean, if you want to put a gray zone that's town and school, like IT or maintenance do that. But we should have some idea of how many of the spaces are town and school. Yeah, maybe we could ask the town people to just carpool. So Dr. Woody, what's the current status of the side streets off Mass Ave? I think at the moment there is a not a major push. So that no tickets issued at this point. Right. I'm just wondering if at your meeting today that was discussed and if there's any change. Not at the moment. There's probably going to be a time certain in the next couple of weeks. But I really want to get this decal set up first and also see who's parking here that doesn't have a decal and moving that out. So we're still in that phase of things and the chief agrees that it probably makes sense until we get a little bit more surety about that issue. So really we're looking at, we're going to hold off now in front of the front of the high school on the westbound side that's side along the park. There are 20, I think 26 places, spaces there, which is, which is helpful. But there's also, I don't think the complaints are really about Mass Ave. But the problem is in some other parts of Mass Ave, like even across the street, there's a lot of cutaways. So there's not as many places and then there was also three banks there. There's a lot of small businesses too that don't want all of the parking places on Mass Ave to be filled with school personnel or students. It's a big problem and the suggestion of the students maybe park, which is not a bad suggestion. It's just that it's blocks away. And how many of you have had teenage children suggesting that they park their car three to four blocks away is just simply not going to go over. Real well, but on the other hand, maybe that's a good alternative down the road. Thank you. Okay. First of all, this is puzzling to me because this town does not have a good track record about fairly inequitably enforcing parking laws. In my neighborhood, I've got a street that's marked no parking anytime and the cars are there all day. And there's been no effort to go move them. There's, you know, the legendary white box truck over at Lake Street and Mass Ave that seems to sit there all day. If I were convinced that the selectmen were doing this uniformly throughout the town, you know, I'd say that we'd sit down and have a nice public policy discussion on what should be going on. The thing that really puzzles me is we have public streets out there. They are public streets and the children of this town are tax payers. Those cars are paying excise tax into the town of Arlington. The parents are paying property taxes or rent, which supports property taxes. And the street in front of your house is not your private domain. And if I need to go elsewhere in town, I need to park elsewhere in town. And if somebody is coming to my neighborhood, they need to park in my neighborhood. And I don't know why there is a public policy concern that would lead the town to want to keep cars off the side streets in this neighborhood. People who bought houses in this neighborhood knew they bought houses around the corner from a high school. And when you live next to a high school, certain things are bound to happen. And one of those things that are bound to happen are cars parked on the street. Every high school I know has cars. I think that this is just the clarion call for us to have some sort of a broader conversation about parking within the neighborhood that we're at here with the selectmen. Because the two-hour parking in the side streets, I got to say, it makes no sense to me. Somebody goes to work in the morning, comes home in the afternoon and is gone all day. But they are content that there's nobody parking in front of their house. It makes no sense. We've got to take a more proactive approach. I can't see hurting our students, hurting our staff members, hurting the principals who have to come here. For meetings and other folks who have to come to this building for meetings. If the town wants to go institute a Cambridge or Somerville style resident permit parking for the entire town, so we're keeping the Attic Towners from using us as a commuter location, that's fine. If they want to post two-hour parking except by permit like they do on the major streets in Somerville, that's fine. But the situation we're looking at here is ridiculous when we've got folks looking to turn public ways into private streets. Passioned plea by Mr. Schlickman to engage the Board of Selectmen. We'll entertain you here or we'll go to you. Anyone else on the subject? Mr. Pierce. Dr. Alson. I'm too far down the line. I just want to respond to what Mr. Schlickman said that I can't understand why people would not be happy having a car parked in front of their house all day, every day. Some people don't go to work just leave in the morning and come back in the afternoon after someone's moved. Sometimes you want to have friends come over. You hope that they can park somewhere in your block. Or maybe you're a shopper and you want to go to one of the stores nearby and Mass Ave is all parked up. Normally I go up and that's where you can park on these streets. It's two hours not all day and I think that's part of it is to include turnover and I can see the homeowner's point of view. We'll have more discussion on this. Anecdotally I live where there's a lot of parking in the street too. And actually when my kids were growing up I liked the cars parked on the street because I felt they were safer out on the sidewalks. Anybody coming down is going to hit the cars before they're going to hit my kids. So you have different perspectives on this. Another anecdote. I think we're the only school department that does not have at least one parking space for a school committee member. And I have interjected myself in two parking spaces and finding out later because they didn't have a name. They belong to two of the members, staff members at this table tonight. And they kindly told me to move. We're trying to get the visitor's places in front of the high school. It's another thing we're trying to get a handle on is some people come and park all day. They're not supposed to be in and out so we're looking at that as well. So you're suggesting you'll be in a lot of competition people up here if you wanted a parking place. It used to be 80 parking spaces right out in the front here. My wife's yearbook has a parking space right in front of the high school. Okay. I have some very interesting news. This is actually a really fun event that's going to happen. And I want to give a lot of credit to Edith Moissant who is our librarian aide at the middle school. She was at a conference this summer, I believe, down in New York. And the coup is that she is having Rick Riordan. And if you looked at the name, you might think it's Riordan, but it's Riordan. Who is probably one of the most well-known middle school authors in the country. I think he's got like 35 million books out there. And in fact, over Labor Day weekend, I read one of his books and not bad. As you said, it's not bad. It's actually, it was very entertaining. So at any rate, he is going to be coming to the middle school as a fundraiser on October 8th at 7 p.m. And it is a fundraiser. How it's set up is that your ticket to get in is actually buying a book. So it's a sort of a way for him to release his books. He has a national book release on October 8th. But this is the only New England visit he's doing this fall, maybe even this year. So it's all on the Odyssey website. In terms of if you want to buy a book, you have to pre-order by the 24th of September. And then that allows in a family or allows in two people, all that's on the website. But it will be very interesting. After having read his book, which has a little bit of a Harry Potter to it. But it's about an adventure of a middle school young man who is a half blood, half God, half human and his parent is one of the Greek Olympian God. So it's very entertaining and very creative. So I wanted to let people know about that. We're trying to get that information out as widely as we can. I think that's about it. The committee has any questions? Well, thank you very much, Dr. Bode. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. I didn't get a chance to thank you for that update. Let's move on to the consent agenda. Motion, please. I'd like to have CBI-E removed from the consent agenda. Oh, okay. Pull that. Any other polls? Okay. We need to add GBGA. That was in the packet, but I didn't know if that was part of the second read. We're getting rid of it. It's the one on staff health. Yes. Yeah, so it's not on the consent agenda. Why is it not on the consent agenda? Is it different than the others? No, it's just because it's a clerical error. I mean, can we add it now? Add that right now? Yeah. Everyone's approval? So GBGA. GBGA, removal of? No, well, adding it to the consent agenda. Right. For a second read. I'd like to make a motion. All items listed within aspects are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items. Unless a member of the committee so request in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant 13186 dated 62713 total warrant amount $1,626,632.96. Warrant 13194 dated 71113. Warrant back dated 63013. Total warrant amount $299,379.20. Warrant 14015 dated 8113. Total warrant amount $255,605.84. Warrant 14024 dated 82213. Total warrant amount $528,407.67. Approval of draft minutes. Regular school committee meeting June 13, 2013. Approval of AHS Quebec City Carnival with Homestay, January 31st to February 3rd, 2014. Approval of policies and procedures. Second readings. BDFAE2. Disapplied goal setting and performance process. BBA school committee powers and duties. GDE, GDF, support staff recruiting, posting and vacancies, support staff hiring. JICFB bullying prevention and GBGA staff help. So we've pulled CBI as well? No, CBI. I only wanted to, no, I just wanted the evaluation tool. And CBI. And CBI. CBI. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those against? Okay, that passes 6-0. Yes, please. CBI. I would like to make a motion to replace the current document in CBI-E with the department of elementary secondary education form titled end of cycle summative evaluation report superintendent. You have a. May I? Yes. I don't know how much talking we had. We discussed this at one of our retreats. It was the best document we could find at the time and it was recommended by several of the people in attendance to CBI as best they could. I think it lends itself more to what we're trying to do in this learning process. I seconded it just so that the committee could reference a tool when they're doing their work. And, you know, I don't think it's mandatory that we must use the same exact tool, but it's there as a model for future committees. And any other discussion on this motion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those against? Okay. The motion is passed to 6-0. Mr. Heiner, do you have any other motions relative to the consent agenda? No. Not on the consent agenda. I was going to save them for when we get out of the other parts. All right. Moving on to subcommittee and liaison reports. Policies and procedures. We just did a lot of work with you. Okay. So the policies and procedures subcommittee meets. We have our fifth meeting of the year scheduled for Monday, September 23rd at 6.30 p.m. here in the school committee room when the agenda has been posted. I want to just, we've adopted policy CBI so it's our policy now. One of the things I want to make sure that people understand is that CBI requires us to do an evaluation to superintendent and she's required by the 30th of September to submit evidence of progress on goals. We approved goals last year under the old methodology, the old standard. So we're going to really, CBI is our, we have a new policy, but we're going to be transitioning into this and there'll be some bumps. There'll be, there'll be some, it's a transition. So we'll be, we'll be getting some evidence of progress on last year's goals approved by our old standard. Did you want to speak to this? I mean, I think you explained it well. So we're in a transition because in the, in the full implementation of the educator evaluation system, there's a process you go through in goal setting, individual goal setting or team goal setting. We haven't done that. We did a pilot, but we haven't done the full, the full beginning of the cycle because we actually were just approving it tonight. But on the other hand, we haven't done an evaluation from last year. And so that's where the, what Mr. Thielman's talking about is this transition of how to satisfy the need to do that this year, but it doesn't meet how we should be doing it for the new policy, which so the implementation of the new policy really would be going into the next cycle. So doing the district goals, the individual goals next year and doing it the way you have it in the policy. I don't know how else we can really do it. So Mr. Thielman, is there overlap that this could be like a hybrid sort of format in November for us, that we can take pieces of the new and. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think it's easily done. Pieces of it. Yeah. That's what I mean. It's a transition year or some sort. Any other points on this? Thank you very much. Moving on to budget. The budget subcommittee will meet on Wednesday, the 18th at 5.30 here. Other than that, we haven't met over the summer. Community relations. No report. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Accountability. Nothing to report. So I'll be sending out a doodle to the members of the subcommittee to set up a meeting and hopefully we'll have it before the next meeting to report back. Now I put under the chair report. I just wanted to inform the folks out there that I got a card in the mail this week for a save the day out in the town, third annual gallery in support of Arlington Youth Counseling Center. This will take place on Friday, October 18th from 7 to 10 p.m. I'm sorry if I'm stepping on secretary's report. It's all right. It's not on the agenda. Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. You're going to have a big report next time. 7 to 10, Friday, October 18th and more information will be available to you at ArlingtonMA.gov slash AYCC. That should be a very good evening for a good cause. I'd like to make two motions right now with your indulgence and turn the mic over to Mr. Hayner to make one. Let me just state them out right now. First one is to request periodic changes in venue for school committee meetings at our various schools. Second. I, in conversations I've had in thinking about this, I really would like to see us move out of this room on an occasion or two this year. Not like every month, but maybe it would be useful for the public to see really what's going on inside our schools and for the community of each school to be able to access us in a way different than coming here on a Thursday evening at 6.30. Mr. Schlicken. I will come up with two comments on this. One is when I was in the committee earlier, I think my first year in the committee in the O-102 school year we tried this and we really didn't get a lot of response from it. And the barrier we found was that it really wasn't conducive to the video. And most people respond to us by watching us in video. And if this can be done while having full mics and full cameras and to be able to do the meeting so that people can access it, I'm willing to look at it. But we didn't really get much benefit from it when we did it in O-102. And it's difficult in terms of transporting all the materials for meetings as well. So I'm not favorably inclined. You know, it's a five-square-mile town. It's not that hard to get here. Well, we just heard about parking. Well, at night, yeah. But it's not as if we're going across Brooklyn, you know. We're looking. So I'm, you know, if a plan comes forth that includes the video and direct transmission, if that's technically possible. You know, I'm willing to look at it. But I'm still, I don't think that the cost in terms of moving things around, moving equipment around is going to be offset by that much of a benefit from folks within one of the elementary school communities. Anyone else on the question? I just wanted to echo Mr. Schlickman's sentiments about the research we've done has shown that it's not conducive to public broadcasts, but also to bring up that when we were in the midst of our governance project and we did look towards restructuring our meetings so that one school committee meeting would be more of an open meeting session and the other session would be perhaps more of a working session while still subject to open meeting laws. That if we are serious about pursuing this, that we might want to look towards implementing that type of structure as well where certain meetings may or may not be broadcast depending upon what the content is while they all would still be open to the public. Do you mean like a retreat type of meeting? Actually, I believe the idea was more of a working meeting in which we would be doing more nuts and bolts, less reporting out type of events. So more, you know, doing approving minutes. And I don't have the notes in front of me right now so I certainly would be better should I have them. But I know that we were given some examples by Ms. Wasser of communities that did those dual types of meetings because of the constraints we did have around broadcasting in the schools when we considered having them rotate around the town. I just want to throw the other thing out is that subject to being able to cover in custodial costs, I don't think it's worth spending the money for custodians in another building, but we don't regularly televised subcommittee meetings and maybe we can move a couple of those around and see if that produces any effect. I'm not inclined to withdraw the motion because I haven't done enough homework with talking with ACMI on the technical aspect of this. I'd like to get that a little bit more in the graphs before I present it to you. I think in principle it's a good idea. I think it makes sense. I understand your arguments, Mr. Slickman, about us not being very large town. But I just think as a school committee member, I mean, any chance to get into a school and really see the nuts and bolts almost like highlight a school in that particular meeting almost like what you've done with ACMI in your presentations is a good idea. Yeah, Mr. Thiel? The last time we tried this was over a decade ago, but I don't know. I'm never opposed to trying something. If the ACMI situation could be accommodated, I want to give you the... I think it's the Lexington School Committee. I think it's Lexington had a meeting in Boston with Metco parents. So they actually had a posted meeting of the Lexington School Committee with Metco parents. And so because that's a whole population, we have 75 students or whatever it is that is never included in our... We don't talk a lot about it. So I thought that was a nice thing they did. It might be worth pursuing. Okay. I'll look into that if that's all right. I would just echo what Ms. Hyam and Mr. Slickman said that what I hear from people is that people really watch us on TV. I am surprised at how many actually watch us in the infinite reruns we go into. And that we really should be careful. I would be not in favor of a setup where we are off-camera, even if we're out talking to people because I think there's a lot of people who prefer to be able to connect by watching and keeping on top of things. And that I would be concerned that we would lose that audience. Another motion I was going to make tonight. I don't know if I have to make it. I could maybe just talk to Mr. Filman and the Policies and Procedure Subcommittee to look at this. We heard over the summer that BDEB concerning our liaisons to the schools perhaps needs a little bit better to it formalizing. Might I suggest that as the topic of future meeting? We'll put it on the agenda. I'd like to make a motion to have the superintendent fill out columns one and two of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Form titled, Superintendent's Performance Goals. The superintendent will also provide supporting evidence and any other relevant documents to the school committee by September 30th in compliance with school committee policy, CBI. Going along with what Dr. Bordi said a little while ago, we have a set of goals and we're again, and I support her and the rest of the committee. This is a learning process for all of us and with the current goals and just using that form state the goal and provide us with any information supporting that. I think that that belongs basically to the superintendent to have us identify specific evidence and stuff like that. I don't think it's fair. Each one of us may have a whole list of documents that we want to see and the time element would be I'd rather leave it to Dr. Bordi to support herself and the goals that we discussed earlier this year. I second it mostly for discussion purposes only except I'm in favor of it to the extent possible. We heard tonight that it might be a hybrid sort of year because we didn't pass the goals. So if the words to the extent possible were added to the motion I'd be inclined to support it. Point of order. I don't understand what's meant by fill out the columns one and two which number one just identify a goal briefly in a statement and then expand it. It's a single one that's it's title superintendent's performance goals. It's a single sheet. One of one. Okay. So it's this sheet. It should be titled superintendent's performance goals. My point is there isn't a column one to fill out. The first column under the first column on the number one just a title of the goal is what I was looking at. It doesn't say that. I'm just using that form. Oh. Do you mean rows or columns? Under the term goals it says professional practice number one. Okay. You want her to fill out the column label description. And then give a description of that goal. What's the definition of the goal? We talked. Okay. I'm just trying for clarity. I understand what we're asking her to do. That's all. Let me let me open this first. Well, I'm just wondering that we're getting into a real granular conversation here and I'm we're talking about a form. I'm wondering we have a policy as a procedure. Subcommittee meeting on the 23rd at 6.30. It might be an environment where we can go into this in more depth. I don't know. It's up to you. Your motion. Well, and I'm concerned about this. We are either going to find some way to provide an evaluation or revert back to the old form. Otherwise we're going to have a year without an evaluation. This committee agreed. We just passed the second reading to CBI which set specific dates and times. And I appreciate the end and a willing as best possible. But we are required by the state and the DESC to have an evaluation. We chose not to have an end date. We want to change the end date to June. I have no problem with postponing. Here's the thing. Bill, you've had a little more time to think about this than the rest of us. So I'm just getting my mind around the issue. So when you say in a motion you want certain things filled out on a form, I take your point and I agree with it. We need to start using the form. I'm not objecting to using the form. No objection to using the form, but it's a very specific motion about which columns to complete in the form. Point of order. So I think it might be better. I'm just wondering how this is reflected in the agenda and whether it's a legitimate conversation for us to be having. If you look under chair. Under chair. Under chair to request three motions. And I passed that motion. Survey a member. Policy review. It's there. Even in our policy on agenda setting, there's actually a clause for new business. So. Yeah, I mean, this is a little more substantive, you know, like to be able to think about this and this kind of thing. I'd rather see go to go past you policies and procedures or at least have written documentation with notice what we're looking to do before we go and debate it here on the floor. We we specifically had a retreat dealing with the evaluation, which it resulted in a policy direction of the policy committee to set up CBI. The policy committee did it. We've had two readings with specific dates. We are in a position forcing the superintendent by the next meeting to have the goals and had the evidence provide all I'm asking to have the goal stated and the and the evidence there. I found this form on DSE that we use in that retreat. We discussed the form that I presented before as the tool and we all came to a consensus. I thought that we would utilize that form if we chose or something else to help the chair in his responsibility to aggregate this. Well, here's the thing tonight when we did the second reading of CBI-E, we adopted this. This is now the policy. So the superintendent has to complete this. But I think you're making a motion about what components of it she needs to complete. And so I think that's a discussion that needs to happen in the subcommittee because the policy is the policy. This is now our policy. It's now in the policy procedures. It's there. My only concern is time. If this goes to policy, it comes back with a direction one way or the other. On the 30th, the superintendent is required to provide us evidence. I'll withdraw this motion to use this form and just ask, I guess I would like to see, well, the goals and the evidence side by side. Under a policy right now, she has to complete the whole form because it's in the policy book. So. Excuse me? We adopted CBI-E tonight. So this is in, this is the form she has to use. It's the form we have to use, not her. Right. That's for us to use. Right. But she has to, this is her assessment. But that form does not provide us with the goals and the evidence. The timeline under CBI said that the second meeting of September, no later than the 30th of September. Right. The superintendent has to provide us the evidence for us to use this form on. Right. That's all I'm asking. And if it requires removing the motion to use that form, the goals form, I have no problem with that. I just want to have the goals with the evidence so that I can connect the two to use that form. That's all I'm asking for. I think the benefit of this is we've got a lot of information that the superintendent now has to take into account as she complies with the policy. I think we need to have a talk about this because it's the goals that are on this form is part of a year-long process. And those goals haven't been stated or what the evidence would be. The idea was to have some evaluation about last year. Anything I do here isn't relevant to the evaluation in November. That's why I said originally that if we would because our timeline for evaluation is extended into November and the new evaluation form, we've got to decide whether we're going to evaluate in November or in June to complete it there and start the cycle over again. And once that's done, we are required to do an evaluation for 2012, 2013. We have not done that yet from November. Right. I don't see how this fits that. That's the problem. When do we do that evaluation? And what do we use? It's time to interject on that. Can you answer it? I would just like to point out and I did not have these documents ready not knowing that this was going to be on the agenda this evening. But this is something that we spent a considerable amount of time and effort working on this summer. My understanding is that the superintendent has the goals written and that we had left it for her to do the final revisions to the goals for Reed's submission to the committee. Now, I don't have them in front of me. I doubt my other committee members do not knowing that this was going to be an agenda item. This has been, this work has been parsed. This has been somewhat completed. And I think we would be remiss in taking this conversation any further without each of us having the time to reference our own individual notes. To look at the minutes from the meeting this summer. For Dr. Bode to bring forward the goals that we had left her with and have those at the ready to present to us and then to take it from there because the policy that has been adopted is very clear about dates and timelines and meetings. And if that's adopted, that's what we use. And that's what we discussed at this summer's meeting. So I feel that this is regurgitating old material and we need to just move forward. The policy is the policy. The meetings we covered, the notes exist. We all have our own personal notes. Let's just get it together and let's move forward for the next meeting. And we've done with this. And we know that this, we've already established that this is a transition year into a new process. Right. So we have to allow for some imperfections. So let's call the vote on it. All those in favor of that motion say aye. Aye. All those against? No. No. All right. Motion does not. I think you didn't ask for abstention. Abstentions? No. Motion does not. All right. Mr. Heyner, any other motion? Yes. To appoint motion, to appoint Mr. Heyner and any other members to investigate the dissemination of materials for future meetings in electronic format, report back to the committee no later than the last meeting in October. Second. Any discussion? All those. Oh, Mr. Slipper. Array. Yeah. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those against? Okay. The motion carries. Motion to appoint Mr. Heyner and any other members or members to determine what would be required for, I'm sorry. No. We already dealt with that. I apologize. Motion to appoint Mr. Heyner to conduct survey among members and support staff on dates, times, for future meetings, report back to the committee no later than the last meeting in April. Second. Discussion? Why April? Because we're not going to change it until the end of the school year. We just changed it to Thursday to 6.30. All I'm asking is to look at it. The vote won't take place until later. And we changed it two and a half years ago. I want to know why. Because several of us would like to attend other things than we can. It's going to happen every night we pick. I understand. If that's what it shows, then we stay. Just to do survey. Just to survey. Did we sort of discuss going on to a designating certain Thursday schedule at a previous meeting? I feel like it's almost like we're hitting deja-vu all over again. Yes. This will be by the survey. Any further discussion? Ms. Hine. I'm going to vote in opposition to this because I think instead of us appointing a committee now, we really need to examine the idea of how this type of, excuse me, how this type of information is gathered and how frequently it should be gathered. So instead of us binding this committee or the next committee to ex-date, let's look at how often elections happen, how often what percent of the spotty turns over, how often we feel it's reasonable to reconsider this, and let's do it as something that actually projects to the future as opposed to one band aid for another year. I'll withdraw the motion. Okay. The motion is withdrawn. And the last one. Motion to continue the legal subcommittee to review legal invoices and report back to the committee on a regular basis and make a final report at the last meeting of May 2014. Second for discussion? There is no one? It's not on the list. I apologize. Yeah. You know what? Can you say it more slowly please? Okay. It's already continuing until October. Did we have that vote? Yeah. We did, yeah. We did that. Okay. Okay. All right. So we are done with that part of the, I think that's it. Does anyone have anything else? No. Okay. Can I get a motion to adjourn please? So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those against? Great. We will see you on the 26th.