 Welcome to this regular school meeting of Thursday, October 20, Thursday, October 12, 2023. We were open just a little bit late because we were having some technical problems. We have no public speakers, but I would like to welcome our AHS representatives, Amy Kolaroo and Mo Higginbugh. And do you want, oh, I forgot to read. Liz, we don't have the land acknowledgement here. No, I don't have it. Okay, I'll read it in a little while if you can just like email it to me. And so, I'll bump to our AHS representative. So, do you folks have anything you want to talk about today? Sure. Okay, well, the first sports to start, the girls cross-country team won the Bay State Invitational and the boys got fourth, but that was good. We had a pep rally and it was really fun. Everyone was pep and rally. And then, and then club day was today and there is I think over 40 clubs. Yeah, I know it was fun. There's a lot of new ones and it was a cool experience. Anyone? Amy, no, great, thank you. Okay, and as we've said before, you folks are welcome to pop in and I'm going to try and remember to ask you after the presentations if you have questions. If you don't, please just raise your hand and I'll cut you then. And then we start our next presentation with the Diversity and Hiring Report by Mr. Spiegel. Oh, and I forgot to say our superintendent is attending from home and on Zoom and our assistant superintendent is, I'm sorry, deputy, sorry. Our deputy superintendent will be acting here in her place. So, Mr. Spiegel. Our AEA representative I think is also on Zoom. Oh, yes, yes, our AEA representative Ms. Fernandez and we are happy to see her here also. Do you want me to stay here? Do you want me to go to the table? What would you prefer? I think you've got a good mic there. Okay, do you think you can hear me? Okay, I think, okay, second for the presentation to come up. I mean, I can start before the presentation comes up. I just want to, this is the annual staffing report that goes over some of our new hires and some of our, excuse me, demographic data in the district. I want to thank Kelly Pigott who's the assistant director of HR in my office did probably the bulk of the work preparing the slides and helping with this. I just want to acknowledge Mr. Coleman who helped with some of the data on the slides and our whole team. The other thing I want to say and I was going to get to, staffing and especially new hiring, hiring new staff in the district is a team effort. It requires all of the hiring managers in the district, all the principals, assistant principals, curriculum leaders, special ed coordinators who are actually interviewing the people and hiring the people and that leads to our HR department, Kelly Taber in my office who has been managing our new onboarding process masterfully and making sure that everyone gets the paperwork they need which is all online. We are working to become more paperless in our office and have all of the new hire paperwork done via our unified talent, applicant tracking and records platforms. The business office which tracks all of our budgets and hires and make sure that we have positions for all the hires that we have. I want to thank obviously the superintendent's office, the deputy superintendent's office, special ed office who do a lot of work in the hiring and getting people onboarding, onboarded. Our payroll department which is always busy in the summer that does the work getting people into our system so they can get paid. Our IT department that gets everyone their technology that they need and our new teacher orientation leaders, new mentor coordinators and mentors who do a lot of work with our new staff. The AEA also is a partner in this and spends a lot of time at orientation getting new teachers and educators the information they need. As part of their, the union contract. So it's a team effort throughout the district to get new people onboarded and every department and not just the educators and the teachers. I mean everyone's an educator but the food service and traffic and after school every department. We need a minute to get the presentation up. Do you want me to? Yeah. Oh, you don't have. Anyone who's on Zoom would be able to share it if they have it on their computer or? Oh, if they have it on. Oh, I mean, I'm not on Zoom. I'm making, I'm going to log in to Zoom. Would you all like me to drive? I think I'll slide down. That might be helpful, yes. Thank you. All right, I got it, hold on. The wizard is speaking. Don't look behind the curtain. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's okay. Yeah, I can scroll through it this way. But can you make it bigger? Well, I can. At the bottom, magnifying glass at the bottom. Good, perfect. All right, so you can go to the next, scroll down. All right, so I want to, everything, we have a vision and mission in APS now and we want to make sure that everything is grounded in our vision and mission. And so we are, the vision of Arlington Public Schools is to be an equitable educational community where all learners feel a sense of belonging, experience growth and joy, and are empowered to shape their futures, their own futures and contribute to a better world. So in that vision, all learners include all educators, all staff in the district. So we want to make sure that everyone has that ability. If you can want to scroll down, I'm going to talk about a little bit about some of the stuff, the things that we're working on in this strategic plan. Go over some staff demographic data, an overview of new hires, an overview of the exits and reasons for staff departures. I'll review some of the vacancies we currently have, some current and future initiatives, and then some time for questions. So if you want to scroll down. So in strategic priority two, valuing all staff. So we have a new strategic plan in the district. We're working on different areas. Strategic priority two is really about staff and employees in the district. The Arlington Public Schools will recruit and retain an excellent and diverse workforce by creating a collaborative and supportive culture for all staff, providing high quality and relevant professional development, expanding leadership opportunities and shared decision-making and prioritizing representation, diverse perspectives and expertise. So our work is grounded in this priority as well. So we want to go over the next slide. We're just going to go over some of the demographics that we have in the district now. So this, the percentages here in the chart here represent all employees in the district other than substitutes, coaches and community ed, so that and what the demographic breakdown is for all of those employees. One of the things that always comes up and is a question is about the not self-identified. So in our new onboarding system, there is a mandatory form that employees have to fill out on the identification, how they identify in terms of ethnicity. However, in that form, they have the option to not identify. So it's an affirmative non-identification. So there are, still are people who do not identify, they choose not to identify, but it is a form that is required to fill out and the goal is that we would get more identification in the future. So you can see on that slide what the percentages are of our, of the categories that we have for American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, not self-identified or two or more races and white. The next slide talks about all new hires since last October 1st and where we are with the percentages there. And so you can see the breakdown, the left column is all new hires and the right is all employees and where we are in terms of the differences. We are, have made some progress in increasing the diversity of some of our staff, but you can see what the percentages are for each of the categories. The next slide talks about the new unit A educators. So that's all teachers and people in the unit A bargaining unit includes special ed related service providers, all classroom teachers, specialist teachers and several other categories of educators in that bargaining unit. You can see in the new unit A educators since October 1st last year what the percentages are and then on the left and on the right you can see for the last four years what those percentages have been. I will, the next slide will sort of probably highlight this a little more. We tend, we are still a more white district in terms of educators than we are in terms of students and our goal is to have more representation of educators that more closely mirror the experience of our students in the district. And so the next slide breaks down where we are, one more up, one, two, four. The students in the district through the data we have where we're about 3.3% black or African American, 1.39% in A unit A for that category, very small percentage of American Indian or an Alaskan native. Asian, there's a much larger representation of Asian students than staff in the district in unit A, a much larger percentage of Hispanic or Latino. And then you can see the two more races and the white. And again, we've known this is not new that we don't have the balance of the representation. That's something we've been working on for years and we'll continue to work on it as a challenge. And I can talk a little bit about the challenges we have in increasing the diversity of our staff, which is part of our strategic plan. The next slide is a little small, but if you look on Novus, you can zoom in a little bit more where we break down the percentages by different unions or types of employees. So you can see that in certain areas in the district, we have increased the representation of staff of color in certain departments and in certain areas. When we have a, the unit A is our largest single unit in this chart and so you can see we have a lot more employees in unit A and so we may have the same number of individuals or more in unit A, but the percentages are a little bit different as you can see. The next slide is just more of a breakdown and we're breaking down sort of specifically Hispanic or Latino and the breakdown of A, unit A, A, unit D, which is the paraprofessionals and students and where what the representation is among those groups. The A, unit A is the more orange color, unit D is yellow and the students are blue. The next slide goes to black or African-American, same breakdown with unit A, unit D and students, and where we are. And you can see that unit D, which is our paraprofessionals, is a more diverse, has more representation of people of color in that bargaining unit and that is an area of opportunity for the district, I think for, because I think some of the people in those units, as you will see in that unit, do want to become licensed educators in the future and we have always hired people from unit D to move into open unit A positions and that's no different this year. So it's opportunity for us to create pathways for more unit D employees to become unit A educators if that's what they choose to do, if that's their goal. The next one is the black and African-American representation among AAA members which are our assistant principals, special ed coordinators, curriculum directors and a few other categories of employees, central office and administrators and students. And the AAA is the orange line, the central office of administrators is the yellow and the students is the blue. And the next slide is for Hispanic for the same AAA central office and students. And then the next slide talks about staffing retention rates. This is a DESI, this is DESI date, a lot of the data we got is from DESI, this is a specific data point that we can get in DESI. I'm mostly focused on the teachers here on this slide. You can see the superintendent is, we have one superintendent and we've had the same superintendent for a couple years. The principals, you can see there's 100% retention and that's only because the end date for that was June 30th and we all had the same, those principals and the next day we didn't have several of those principals who left but that was, you know, what happened there. The teachers is the more relevant, I think, data point in this slide that we are just about where the state is in retention of teachers. About 85%, they're a little under 85 or a little over 85% of teachers retained. So, you know, I think we'd like to be a little bit better than that but that's a goal, again, in this strategic plan that we're working on. The next slide talks about some of the uni day hires that we've had. So this is, we've hired a lot of educators in uni day since, who started on August 30th or after and the reasons we hired these teachers. Some replace people who retired, some replace people who resigned, some educators moved to different positions within the district, some are on a leave of absence for the full year, some are budget additions based on the approved budget that you had this past spring. And so, and then as I said, you know, we always, for the past, as long as I've been here, we have had a way, we've hired teaching assistants or student teachers or substitutes who become licensed educators to take positions in uni day. And so 15 of the people we've hired this year had been in one of those categories and we have a very well-educated educator force here. 67 of the new educators have at least a master's degree, some have multiple master's degrees or doctorates or PhDs. We also had 12 educators who started sometime between October 2022 and May of 2023 based on vacancies that came up during the year last year and they continue to work here. The next slide talks about the administrators, some of the other people we added this year. You already met the new administrators at the last school committee meeting, so I'm not gonna go over them, but you saw that we had a very talented group of new principals, assistant principals, other administrators that we've added, central office that we've added to the district this year. Quite a few new teaching assistants, specialized support paraprofessionals, building substitutes and those are unit D, AEA unit D paraprofessionals and we are still hiring for those as you will see in one of the next slides that we still have some openings. Although I think we are in better shape this year throughout the district than we were last year at this time. We also have new administrative assistants at Arlington High School, Audison and Central Office and we have new staff pretty much in almost every department in the district, including our new communications and family engagement department and we always have new staff and a new person in the business office who just started recently. In the past month, we've had the new person in the business office and the central office in the deputy superintendent's department. And we're working with curriculum directors and the next slide talks about the reasons people leave. I mean, this isn't really much different than the past few years. Some people are moving away. We have people have to relocate to other parts of the country. One person left to move to another country. We do have issues that surround compensation. Some people have said they're leaving because they're gonna make more money somewhere else. Others, they live too far away and their commute is too long and one of the reasons they live too far away is because it's easier and more affordable to find housing farther away and so that goes to compensation as well. Some of it also was some dissatisfaction with their positions, some burnout, some challenges with caseload workload and that can also be tied to compensation in some ways that sometimes compensation might make up for some of those challenges but maybe not in all cases. We also have several staff members who left to be who were in the unit A, who were able to find administrator positions in other districts. They were looking to do that or just move to other districts for career moves. A couple people left the field of education. Sometimes they've decided that being a teacher or being an educator wasn't the right field for them and look for something else and a couple people had to leave for family or personal reasons. The next slide talks about the current vacancies we have. We have, I'll just highlight a few of these. We're looking for a school social worker in the METCO program because our interim METCO director was the social worker in the METCO program so we're hiring an interim social worker for the rest of the year. The next two positions on that list have just been filled. I just talked to the new hires today for the school social worker at Thompson and the design engineering teacher at the high school and those, assuming everything goes through those people will start next week. We're looking for school psychologists that's been a challenging position to fill for us and many other districts this year, multi-language learner, which ELL we now refer to as multi-MILL, multi-language learner. We're looking for a teacher at Audison and then several paraprofessionals throughout the district. We also are trying to find an administrative assistant in our interviewing for administrative assistant in the DIBJ communications department which was a newly approved job description from a recent school committee meeting and we just posted a position that's not on this list, the administrative assistant in the deputy superintendent's office that we're sorry to see. The current person, Asha Leave, but so that's an open position for administrative assistant to work with Mona and her office. And let me just talk about the recent initiatives recent things we've done. So we had a networking event in April in conjunction with the superintendent's diversity advisory committee. For several years we've done events with them which have been known as coffee socials or other things to attract more diverse candidates into the district. That was a well-attended event. It was a Saturday morning which was a new time for us to do the event and we found that that actually ended up being a good day for the event. We have hired people who attended that event. We also had a sort of hiring fair in August trying to get more candidates in the door. We were able to, that was a well-attended event as well and we have hired several of those, the people who attended and they're working in the district in primarily paraprofessional positions. I wanna highlight Kate Parrott's in her role this year as the leadership development and onboarding program designer. She's working on ways to improve the onboarding and training and professional development for administrators and paraprofessionals. Those are really the areas she's been working on. She's also been helping us find some new substitute teachers. We had some shifts in our orientation and mentoring program. We had a shorter and more focused orientation program in August and the new teachers and educators will have more focused PD throughout the school year during the district PD sessions. I wanna also highlight strategic working group two which I referenced in the strategic plan. We have working groups for all of our strategic plan initiatives and our part of strategic working group two has sort of two parts. One is the recruiting and retention and one is the professional development and the groups will be meeting throughout the year to try to develop more strategies for recruitment and retention of staff. And that's really it if anyone has questions. Great, thank you very much. Does anyone, okay, Mr. Schlickman. Hi, thank you, a very comprehensive report. On the slide that we talked about are 83 new educators. Are these all 1.0 people or are there? There's a few part-time. So it's not, yeah, I didn't give you the FTE, I'm sorry about that, I have to get that. The part-time people are mostly in instrumental music because of the expansion of our instrumental music program. We've had to hire some 0.3, 0.4 instrumental music teachers who will go to different schools for specific instruments. So our specific strings, brass or percussion. So yeah, so those are the primary part-time employees. Most of the other employees are full-time. Because I just wanted to make sure that when we're showing new positions, I think that we're like 16 new positions. Yeah. Are they 16 1.0 or are some of those music positions or part-time positions in there? Because at this point, we really need to be specific about what we're adding into the budget. Okay. The other question I have, we have a unit D person who says, gee, this is fun, I like doing this, but I want to get a license. How can we support them? So that is something we're going to be working on in strategic initiative too, in pathways. I mean, pathways as part of the strategic plan to create pathways for paraprofessionals to get licensed. And we do have some partnerships with Cambridge College and some other partnerships that I know. Margaret Cretel Thomas and the superintendent, and Special Ed and the superintendent for student services have been working on different partnerships for pathways. We do get information from other districts about opportunities that for lower cost licensure programs or lower cost MTEL, and we do pass those along. So we will, and it will be a focus. This seems to be a good way to diversify the staff if we've got, if that's our most diverse group of employees. I agree. The last question is my stock question, and you don't have to answer it tonight, but obviously we want to know is what can we do to support this? You know, I think I may not be able to answer that tonight, but just to continue to support the educators, the administrators, the central office, to everything that we're doing to try to recruit and retain staff, yeah. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate this report. I think it's an important thing for the district to give us every year. I just have a few questions on the common reasons for resignations. Do you, is this from exit interviews or is it from? It's from exit interviews. Not from an automatic? No, well that's another thing we're gonna work on. So we are going to, I think one of the things that we need to sort of focus to get better data, and I'm gonna work with Mr. Coleman on this too, is to really have a standard form that is required. I mean, so one of the things, the exit interview is not always required, people don't always have to. I do, you know, I've been doing it for years, meeting with people one-on-one to talk to them about, you know, what the reason. Sometimes people request an exit interview, sometimes I, usually I'm reaching out to request it, but we want to standardize a form and then make an option for people to also meet. Yeah, I mean, it can help with more precise trends, but I mean, this seems like, it feels right. It feels right, it doesn't seem, nothing's a surprise, it's not like new. And then the other question is in the, you know, in the did not identify, you are, I mean the EEOC does allow visual identification if you, if the district, did you guys have conversations about that or? We have had conversations about it, we have not decided to do that at this point, but it's something we could continue to talk about whether we do. I mean, and I think it is challenging because we could visual identify someone and that might not be how they identify, so I mean, that's where we want to be careful. Yeah. We had these endless conversations about this topic, you had a certain point, you got to like stop it. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? Any folks have, are reps have any questions for this? No, okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. This is really comprehensive and it's good to see. I mean, I think especially the information about the unit D and how we're trying to move some of them up into our teaching force. I mean, they're already in our teaching force, but move them up into licensure and out. I mean, a lot of people have done that already and I think we want to create more opportunities for people to be able to do that. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Okay. And at this point, let me pull this up. Oh, great. I'm having a hard time here. Okay, there we go. So I am going backwards a little bit to 635 or supposed to be at 635 p.m. when I was supposed to read the land acknowledgement. So this comes from file from our policy BEDL on April 26, 2021 under Article 85, Arlington Town Meeting voted 202 to 1 or 2 to encourage all town entities to celebrate and recognize the heritage of the people's indigenous to Massachusetts and to Arlington by including a land acknowledgement at the beginning of the town's public meetings. And we chose to do this at the beginning of our first meeting, regular meeting in October, or whichever one fell closest to Indigenous People's Day, which was celebrated earlier on Monday this week. And our land acknowledgement reads as follows. We acknowledge that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of Indigenous Peoples from whom the colony, province, and Commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. So I'm sorry I didn't have that ready right at the start of the meeting, but we do acknowledge and appreciate that. And at this point, we will move on to the Outcomes Report by Dr. Ford Walker and Mr. Coleman who is joining us in the front. So, hi all, thanks for having me again. Just up front, I've got a bad cough. My doctor's told me I'm fine. It sounds worse than it actually is. So thank you, Liz, for the water. I appreciate it. So this is sort of a continuation of a conversation we started a few weeks back. Dr. Ford Walker and I will be tag teaming this. We'll go back and forth. I'll take the lead on some of the slides, but then there'll be other information that'll be added on as we're proceeding through. Hopefully this is something that, paint's a good picture, that leads into the SIP presentations. They'll start to begin, I think in two weeks and occur all the way until February. So you'll have a good sense now, hopefully from this presentation, what you might be hearing from each of the schools as they begin their presentations as well. Next slide, please. Rob, Mr. Spiegel, very appropriately talked about the division and the mission statement. I just wanted to highlight it again, but in blue, highlight something specific. That'll be a recurring theme throughout. From the vision statement specifically, the sense of belonging, experience and growth, and joy and feeling empowered. That's gonna be a recurring theme through line. From our strategic plan, strategic priority one, just wanted to highlight the idea of equity, excellence, access to rigorous learning experiences for all students. This is something that we're committed to. This is something that we're working on. So just as a little bit of laying the foundation, I just wanted to highlight those two aspects from documents that we've seen. Next slide, please. In the review of the information that we have available, there's a lot. I will look down to some key sources. I'm seeing, we're seeing, you're gonna hear about three big core takeaways over the next however many months. First off, our students across the board are enrolling in advanced courses and experiencing academic rigor. But we do have a lot of work to do in terms of equitable access and seeing good representation from all of our students in all of these courses. Belonging for all of our students still should be an area of focus. This is something that as when we get to it, we'll see some trends there. And we do have some possible connections. Correlation doesn't mean causation, but there's definitely some correlation with attendance. We talked a little bit about the chronic absenteeism a few weeks ago. And then also mental health. And the final one is, and this initiative has already started, but the elementary ELA should still continue to be a focus in our work that we're doing in a pilot. It will be something that we should monitor and think about. Next slide, please. I don't wanna rush through these, but this is just a lot of information that I just wanted to make sure that everybody public included understood some of the words that we'll be using. In the strategic plan, there are clearly defined focal groups. They are these five groups. Students who are supported with an IEP, students who identify as black Hispanic Latinx, students who identify as LBG2QIA+, students who are multi-lingual learners, students who are from low income families. So these will be a recurring themes. Next slide. And just for all of us to understand, these are the core data sources that were pulled from for this report. Throughout a lot of the analysis over the past, I would say two to three months, there were other sources that were considered and used, but these are gonna be the core data sources that motivate this presentation. Next slide. This is gonna be super fast. Just a quick reminder of some of the things we spoke about last time, two weeks ago. Real fast. The accountability data, MCAS from both 22 and 23, access data that's informing EL achievement. There's a chronic absenteeism. This is all stuff that goes into the accountability that advanced coursework. Those are the two, the three and four that I highlighted last time. Graduation rates, annual dropout rates, and extended engagement. All of these different buckets factor into our accountability information. But again, just to highlight the ones that will come up, three and four will be things of focus for today. Next slide. Excuse me. So a few things from here, just again as a reminder. Low assessment participation. We'll talk about how our schools did again. But I just wanted to highlight that if we have less than 95% participation rate across any single test or across any different subgroup that we're looking at, we do get a little bit of a red flag. So there will be one of those. Next slide, please. This reminder is gonna come up a little later. As we start to look at some data. This is the information that the state uses for pretty much categorizing if you've met targeted seating target. So in a few of these slides, we'll see a little chart where there'll be threes and fours. Just to remind you, a three is meeting expectations and a four is exceeding. Those two numbers play a role. And 75% are the ones that tie to it. Next slide. So as mentioned last time, of all the targets that the state put forth for us for this year, 89% success rate. So great job. We should feel really happy about that. I think that's a really, really good thing for all of us. Meeting exceeding really nice. Just next slide. This is where we lie relative to the other categorizations of schools. We have done really well. A short of the schools of recognition. We should be super proud from that accountability level. We've done well. Next slide. And here's that recap. Really, really great job. The school accountability percentile, we're doing well. So great job to the community. Great job to the principals. Great job to the teachers and all the staff. Really awesome. All right. So let's start to kind of transition into the next couple of things. One last little reminder though. SGP, the student growth percentile. This turns up as well. You'll see numbers that range between one and 100. And each of the 20% are roughly a little bucket. So if you have a growth of one to 19, very low. 80 to 99, very high. We'll see a lot of typical growth and high growth between that 40 and 79 throughout this. This just is a metric that is giving us a sense of how some of our cohorts are doing relative to other similarly assessed and similarly achieved students across the state. Achievement advanced coursework in an academic rigor. We're gonna use a couple of the data sources to just paint a little bit of a picture for some of the things that we're seeing across the board. I mentioned a little while ago. Next slide, that'll be good. That we are seeing achievement and we are seeing students enroll in high academic rigorous courses. For our MCAS, just to kind of look at how we did across the board for three through eight ELA, the mean SGP is listed in one of the columns, the one in the middle. And the percent meter exceeding expectation, the two highest categories, are there for the percentages. The star is the state. So usually they try to get the mean SGP, the middle growth, to be roughly 50%. Here it's 49.7. And you can pretty clearly see that across the board, our mean SGPs are all above in that typical growth, which is good news for us. The mean exceeding for this past year for three through eight, aggregate of those two were 42% and we're well in the 60s and 70% for that. So again, this is all great news. We're doing well with our MCAS achievement. You'll see something similar for math in the next slide. We're well above what the state is doing. So again, great job. This is not a surprise considering our accountability data, but we've done well with these scores across the board. One last slide for the MCAS achievement for math in ELA. This is how we're doing for high school. If you look at the two stars, the bottom star is math. The blue circle is math. So the bottom star is relatively where we are for both SGP and mean exceeding expectations and the blue little dot is where the math is. The upper star is ELA and the yellow circle is where that is. So again, really well done. Great job by us with the achievement. Science is a little trickier to use these same graphics simply because of the fact that they don't have SGP. So just wanted to focus in on some of our focal groups. High need status for just a category encompasses three of our focal groups. It's students within EL, students within disability and students who are low income status. So those three groupings go into high needs. So this is the aggregate of those groupings and we can see just trends over the past few years. So for grade five science, it's been really nice growth. Next slide. Similar for grade eight science, the scores are doing pretty well. Somewhat leveled out, but that's good through the pandemic and the last slide. Two more actually. This is our race ethnicity. We did have the other focal group of students who identify as African American, Black or Hispanic Latinx. These are the trends for those. So again, on upward trends. Next slide. Similar here. And then the next slide is where it gets a little wonky. Last year, two years ago, 2022 and then also 23, they changed the nature of the science MCAS for grade nine. Now it is split into grade nine physics and grade nine biology. There isn't that same information that we can go back to. So we only have two years of data, but overall they're doing well. The overwhelming majority of students, just for your knowledge, sat for the physics assessment, not the biology. Overwhelming majority. If you go down to the next slide, this is the race ethnicity for physics. Next slide. For biology, it was so few. The only thing that we could actually measure is all students. There were no other categorizations. So for bio, over the two years, it's shown good growth, but this is on the scale of, I think, of roughly 15 kids who took this test, whereas every other ninth grader sat for the physics. So a quick reminder of the point scale. We see we're doing well on MCAS. We see we're doing well with the accountability data. I wanna paint a little bit of a different picture for the next couple slides though. To remind you, met target three, that's at 75%, and the four is essentially the exceeding target. Next slide. So the state puts forth different benchmarks for us to meet. This doesn't mean that every single focal group or subgroup that we're working with is scoring off the charts. What this means is for us, when we're thinking about making progress, this information tells us that across the board, if you look at all students not in high school, that first column, based on what the state has asked us to do, we are meeting or exceeding pretty much all of our targets, which again, we should be psyched about. But this doesn't paint the whole picture of what we wanna look at. It just means that for students who might be, students within disabilities, they wanted us to see a growth in a certain way and we did that. Can you go to the next slide? This is actually true also in our advanced coursework. Advanced coursework is a category that's been something that even in my prior role I've been monitoring. The state defines a whole slew of courses. Some are AP courses. Some are computer science. Some are dual enrollment courses. For math, it was anything that was past algebra two, for the most part, can be considered an advanced course. It's one of those things where tracking this as a metric is a nice way to see how we're doing it across the board. And what's great about this is the state is essentially saying that across the board, even for some of our SOAP groups, we are meeting what they feel is appropriate growth for our students accessing advanced coursework. But it doesn't paint the whole picture. Next slide. Scroll a little more. I'll talk through the top columns. These columns essentially are representing the percentages of students who are completing the advanced coursework. So if we look at all students, it's roughly around 84% of students are completing by the time they graduate. At least one course, which the state defines it as advance. But if you look at the subgroups that we might be focusing on, our students with an EL, it's only 28.6%. Our students who are identified with a learning disability, it's 55%. Students who are low income, 59%. It's a much lower rate at which they're actually accessing these courses. And they usually tend to be in certain content areas. It's not as though it's across the board. So for our EL learners, as we're going across that column, we're talking about 0% of our students who took an advanced course in ELA, 7.1% in science and technology. So we're seeing huge gaps. Even though we're meeting the benchmarks that the state's putting forth, we're seeing huge gaps in the courses that some of our students within our focal groups are actually accessing. When we're thinking about success beyond, we're thinking about college career ready, but we're also thinking about ensuring that all of our students are accessing these advanced courses to put them in a position to go towards the careers and the professions that they'd want to be accessing. And right now we are seeing some gaps in those areas. So just to start off the story to recap it, we're doing well with our MCAS, we're doing well with our meeting our benchmarks, but we still have a little bit of work to do inside of getting some of our students to feel as though they're welcome in our courses. I wanted to amplify this story a little bit with the next slide. Truth be told, the bulk of our advanced courses are AP courses. And we're seeing some interesting trends here across the board. What I kind of zoomed in on here was the number of AP exams that students are actually taking, which is an amazing amount of growth. Like we went from in 2019, 454 assessments with the 33% of the population, one out of the very three students to now, five years later, 626, with a 41% of students taking at least one. I think the most for any student who graduated last year was 18. They had 18 AP exams, which was pretty intense. I think the typical student right now is enrolling in completing at least two, which is, again, a pretty impressive trend. The one thing I do want to point out is, in spite of this unbelievable growth of kids going into our advanced courses and AP courses, our percentage of three or above. When you talk about MCASP, you usually talk about percent meeting exceeding. When you talk about APs, it's usually what's three or above. And the fact that we're still at 87%, whereas in 2019, we're at 84.4%. It's, students aren't just taking the classes. They're enrolling at an increasing rate, and essentially they're still scoring the same as they did before, which is great. But there's always a caveat. Can we go to the next slide? I wanted to understand where some of this growth was and if this growth was for all. One big area that's been changing over the past couple of years is we've seen an increased number of freshmen and sophomores enrolling in AP exams. That's been a pretty consistent trend. Most of it's computer science. I actually have to take the blame as the prior math and CS director. We have a lot of students who are coming in able to access some of our CS classes as freshmen, but there are other reasons as well. In spite of this growth, though, and this is another kind of, I think emphasis or another little place where in spite of the fact that we have this growth, we only have a total of 11 students who identify as black who sat for an AP exam. They took a bunch of tests, but it was the same 11 students and our population of students who identify as black is much greater. Hispanic Latino, it's the total of 42. For some of our students in these focal groups, they're not accessing the courses at the same rate. And actually quite a lower rate. We see a little more of that in the next slide. So these are the scores, these are percentages. Those 11 students who identified as black took 21 tests. So they actually are doing that, those students are the typical Arlington student who are taking two AP courses. Their average score is a little bit lower, still above the three, which is great. And those 40 something or so students who identify as Hispanic or Latino took 95 assessments. So again, we're seeing unbelievable enrollment. Kids are going for advanced classes, but not at the same rate across all of our focal groups. So what I was curious about after this was, do the kids actually feel as though these courses are rigorous, hard? Like how are they actually feeling about this? This data is telling us where they're going. I'm curious now for myself, like how are they actually feeling? So the next slide, Ms. Diggins, for our grade three through five students based on our panorama results, there's a pretty big increase across the board with how they feel their experience in class has been. The lion's share of this growth, and I think this is a testament to some of the goals that were put in place last year by our principals. The lion's share of this was in creating more student voice within our elementary classrooms. Some of the goals that focused around academic discourse, some of the goals that focused on student engagement. These were areas of growth in our panorama survey, which impacted this domain of rigorous expectations. So we're talking roughly around 80% of our, the bulk of our students feeling as though it's fairly rigorous. Next slide. For our students in six through 12, they're feeling the same thing, not at that same huge growth, but they were starting at a higher benchmark as is, but they're pretty much saying that our courses are feeling rigorous. So the next question that popped in my mind was, if students feel as though our courses are rigorous, if students are enrolling a lot of these courses at a higher rate, and we still are seeing gaps in some of our focal groups, what could be some of the reasons why those students aren't engaging at the same rate? And that's where we start to look at some other data sources. This was an interesting trend that I didn't totally expect. Although students feel as though our courses are more difficult, they're more rigorous. We're seeing a pretty consistent downward trend of a sense of belonging in our school community. It's not huge. It wasn't something when I looked at this, I was like, oh man, this is a huge, huge issue. But it was surprising that that's going down a little bit in three through five. So was that the same through six through 12? Can we go to the next slide? Levels off a little bit here, but even those percentages are much lower than the 67%. Like we're starting from a much lower area. So one of the things that was a curiosity of mine is that our students are here, they're taking hard classes. Some students aren't at the same rate, but overall we don't have that same sense of belonging. So then I kind of tried to dig a little bit deeper into that to understand some of the causes there. Can we go to the next slide? And what started to kind of pop up was some mental health concerns in some of our focal groups. And these aren't so surprising. I left the first one in there. 9th graders feel a lot more comfortable and good about their time. But once we get to 11th grade, some of our mental health metrics kind of go off the charts. Students who are female and gender diverse, they're significantly more likely to report mental health was not good most of the time or always, which is amazing. LGBTQIA+, we're significantly more likely to report that their mental health was not good sometimes, most of the times are always. And the one that actually I highlighted down below, students who are Hispanic and Latino, more likely to report that mental health was not good sometimes, most of the times are always. So it was intriguing to me or interesting to me that belonging across the board, we're seeing academic success, but belonging across the board for some of our focal groups, as well as their mental health assessment information is pinging as a little bit of a red flag for us. Can we go to the next slide? I was curious then about the absenteeism. Like are our students actually getting to school? Has been something that's been a little bit of a red flag the past couple of years. The state did set some guidelines for us and some benchmarks and we met them. We're at three and fours, which is great. But that's only based on how they felt we should be doing. It doesn't mean that we're necessarily doing well. So I went back to some more information. Can we go to the next slide? And sure enough, what I kind of looked at here is for all students, top left 95% roughly, they're coming to school 95% of the time. If you kind of scroll over, Liz, can I just trouble you to kind of put it down a little bit? I just want to be able to see the top columns just so I explain them. Thank you, that's perfect. The state defines chronic absenteeism as 10% or more. They made a little leeway during the pandemic to talk about 20% or more, so they left that on there as well. So one of the things I just kind of wanted to point out is this. So although the attendance rate is pretty good as we start to move to the right and look at, let's say, students who are identified as low income, chronically absent 10% of the time, that 25.2 is a percentage. So one fourth of our students who are within low income are absent 10% of the time. To put that into context, over a two week period, those students are absent one day. Every two weeks, one day. Every two weeks, one day. If you scroll over to the 20%, the 20% or more low income, 5% of those students, one in 20 are absent one day a week for the whole year. So it's one of those things where when we're looking at this a little bit, although we are improving and although we are doing better with meeting the needs of some of our students who are struggling, there still is some red flags in our chronic absenteeism. If we look across the board at those chronic absentee students, it does align closely with our students within our focal groups. So what I'm looking at this, what I'm seeing essentially is for some of our students in our focal groups, they're not engaging at the same rate in our advanced courses. They're chronically absent at a much higher rate and they're showing some other mental health concerns that we might wanna focus on. Next slide. We're gonna pivot a little bit. That's kind of the end of that little part of the narrative just in terms of our students. So a lot of positives with our academic success. It's great to see students enrolling in such hard courses, but we do have some areas of growth. We do. So the next little part, this motivates some of our initiatives that we have right now. I just wanted to make sure that folks know. Like we do have a pilot of a new curriculum in elementary school for ELA. I just wanted to kind of look at some of the trends. High need status. Little things that I wanted to kind of point out with this is for some of these graphs, you could still see a pretty big graph, pretty big gap. And for some of them, they're either stable or they are going in the negative direction. So for our high needs, those students who are identified as high needs, again, those are students who are within EL. They're students who are identified as low income and students within disabilities. That trend is going down for our grade three through five students. Next slide. For our students who identify as black or Hispanic Latino, the trends have been going down. Next slide. For our EL status, same thing. Next slide. I included this the grade six through eight, simply because of the fact that through the pandemic, I just wanted to get a sense, like where students were in elementary school to hear. The gap is still wide, but it levels out a little bit. For students who are high needs and non-high needs. This might warrant a little bit of focus as we get into the middle school grades for EL. The last slide for this is over the past few years, there's been a few more assessments implemented at the lower grades. I liked this just because of the fact that right now the current third graders, I know this well because my son is in third grade. The current third graders were those students who were in preschool or were just shy of entering public school when the pandemic started. So right now this was of interest to me because it's looking at a lot of the students who may have had a few years in those early years leading in. To give you a sense of what these mean, K grade one, grade two, that makes sense. B-O-Y is beginning of year, M-O-Y is middle of year, and E-O-Y is end of year. So the Dibbles Assessment, the eighth edition, was administered three times last year for K, one, two, and three. Some of our fourth and fifth grade students use it as a pilot, but not enough to really warrant. I did want to point out that it's great to actually see the progress that was made in each grade throughout the year. It's fantastic. But also wanted to highlight, there's still work to do. Because if you look at grade three, end of year, that's still roughly 20% of our students who still didn't meet benchmark. So it's one of those things that based on this assessment, we've seen the ELA trends, it still warrants a little bit of focus at the elementary level for those initiatives that have been put forth for ELA. There's still some work to do there as well. And one little thing, you're gonna see a lot of these recurring themes throughout the set. So one of the things I've been working on is making sure that a lot of these data displays are pretty consistent throughout. So you'll be able to go back to this as a reference, and then you can actually see district-wide, you can see what some of the schools are doing, how the trends are going throughout. So the whole goal is to create a through line and also create some consistencies with them. So I try to put graphics in here that are gonna be translatable to all in each of the schools as they move forward. And that's where the next steps come in. Go on to the one last slide. And this will be it. Thank you for your help, Les. These are the things that are pretty much recurring themes in a lot of the SIPs. EL pilot at K-5 elementary literacy. Every elementary school has at least two grades. I think it's two grades who are piloting the new EL curriculum. There's a lot of support, there's a lot of PD, there's a lot going towards that initiative, which is great. So you'll see a recurring theme there. You're gonna see goals centered on welcoming and sense of belonging, starting at the family level. Like if we want our students to feel welcome, we probably have to do a better job overall as a community to get more families feeling part of it. So the welcome center is gonna be a big initiative, the resource hub, the increased parental communication engagement. I think there's been some great things that have been done so far. Rob mentioned the working groups that are happening with the strategic initiatives. Across the board, across the district, there are these working groups that are specifically designed to look at and start to better understand the sense of belonging, the instructional vision, MTSS, and also our other student supports. The coordinated school improvement plans, hopefully I could be of help there. And then the last one is focused on the deeper learning, academic rigor, including that discourse and student voice. That was something that started last year across a lot of schools, and you'll see the continuation of that. Embedded in all of this, embedded in all of these, and I really wanted to kind of end with this, is the idea of equity. Like we still have to go back to that mission where it's equitable access for all. And right now, like just having this painted picture, we feel, I feel as though we are doing a great job, we should pat ourselves in the back, but we still have work to do to ensure that a lot of our students within those focal groups are able to access those same opportunities. So that theme is gonna be recurring in all of these initiatives that we're moving forward. Thank you very much. Before I ask for questions, I wondered if Dr. Fordbacher has anything to add. Thank you, so the only thing that I'll add in is what Matt mentioned, which is we're really trying hard to make sure that the school improvement plans are really reflective of ways in which schools are going to respond to the data that you just got a deeper dive into. And so we're really trying hard to make sure that action steps are aligned and that schools are receiving resources that they've identified as needing to help make sure that we're responding to what Matt just shared, particularly as it relates to meeting the needs of all of our focal groups. So I'll just end there and then ask if there are any questions that folks have. Great, any questions? Ms. Morgan? So I'm gonna start back at the bottom and then work my way back. So the first question I had about the Dibbles, which is in here, so my understanding is, and this is probably a question for Dr. Fordbacher, is that we're now required to notify families, right? If their students are within 30 days of the assessment, which color is the group that we have to notify? The blues or the blues in the, I mean, clearly the blues, is it the blues and the reds? So it's the well below group, so it would be the blues. It's the blues, okay, all right. And those, and will they be notified if we do this three times a year, there'll be a series of three notification. Yes, okay. Yes, we have 30 days after the screening to provide notice to families. Okay, all right, thank you. And then I guess I had a question. So Matt, it looks like to me in these, in these ELA, it doesn't, I mean, because you took us all the way back to 2019, which I appreciate, I think it's very honest, right? You know, these gaps are bigger now than they were in 2019, right, between the high needs and that. So I think, you know, that's, they're not closing, they've gotten bigger and they've actually, so I guess with what you know about this achievement, like they've gotten actually bigger since 2021, right? And I guess, but like, do we know anything about what happened in 2021 that explains that? I mean, they took a different, they took us a shorter test, right? Was that the year they took the half? Yeah, they did. Yeah, it was not a full comprehensive assessment. So the reason why we go back to the 2019 is it's echoing what the state's even doing, which is looking at 2019 against 2022, how are you doing? And then resetting yourself. So it was important to me to kind of just echo that same story with the meeting exceeding. But yeah, you're right. In 2021, it was a little bit of a bump across the board, but it was maybe not apples to oranges. They had to do a little bit of hand waving to get everything to match up. My more concern is over the past couple of years. Yeah, me too. Especially grades six through eight that in the ELA that like we're not, it's not going in the right direction. No, it's been pretty level for a while. I mean, it's a little bit of a downward trend. It's been a pretty big gap, fairly level. Okay. I really appreciate the attendance data. I think that's really helpful. And I've never seen it presented like this before. So that's really helpful for me. And I think it provides an important sort of, threes and fours look great. Go us, but then when you look at it and you think about how much school some of these students are missing and how impactful that can be both to them, but also to their teachers and to their, the people who are trying to support them. So, and I think that was all of my questions. I'll come back if I have any more, but oh, I did have a question. Okay, so when we go back to slide 23, Liz, so the kids, so most kids take physics, right? They take physics in ninth grade and then they take the physics MCAS and then they're like done with ninth grade MCAS. So what about these biology? Are these ninth graders who took biology? That's a good question. I think they're 10th graders who still need to pass the science MCAS. Or no, am I wrong about that? I don't believe that's true. I'll ask Dr. Hoyle about that. Yeah, let me ask her. I don't wanna misspeak. I'll let me ask her, but it was very, very few students. Okay, and then what do we, so what do we do, and maybe this is a question for Dr. Ford Walker with the 33% who need that science MCAS requirement? Like, so some of them didn't need or exceed, right? Like, 33% of them didn't. The Cups score is lower than that. It's what? The Cups score isn't at meet and meet. It's not at meet, okay. Yeah, so the ones that, yeah, the competency determination is it's, you still have the not meeting part, but the, I'm sorry, partially meeting. You don't have to worry too much about the partially meeting because the state doesn't mandate what's called an EPP for that. Even though you're partially meeting, you've still kind of met the competency determination. Got it, okay. As for math and ELA, it's a little bit different. If you're within partially meeting, within even a substrand of that, it's like these weird, you know, 471 to 485, even within that, they'll ask the schools to support those students with an education proficiency plan. But it's a little bit different for science. Okay, great, thank you so much. Okay, Ms. Goodelman. I just had one question, which was on the AP section, is it possible to break that data out by income level? Because that's one place where it seems to me, like income level, in terms of accessing, I would just be curious to see where one of those differences are. Yeah. Okay. And as long as I'm down at that end of the table, do our AHS representatives have questions? I actually do, yeah. Okay. Okay. Ms. Visco, a couple of weeks ago about the mental health, so I'm going to just send out, and now this, is there, like, are you addressing that there's working groups who are like the sense of belonging and equity, but I was wondering what else like there's like addressed for specifically like mental health among like the groups that you said were lower than all the others. So the working groups that are the, administrator-based groupings. Right now it's in the infancy. Right now it is the start. Myself and Ms. Elmer are co-chairing one of the working groups. So we're really just even establishing what we're going to focus on. So I don't want to misspeak about what any of those groups will be focusing on, but I can confidently say that Ms. Olander, who is our director of SEL, is working her tail off to think about and understand and to put in some initiatives that will be there to support all of our students. Alison, do you want to talk a little bit about what Moggalee's work is in terms of this mental health? So she's the director, you've met her last year. She's the director of School Counseling and SEL. She met with you to talk about some of the initiatives that they have across the district. I don't know if you're looking for specifics. No, I think it's her question. And the mental, so you participated in mental health screeners at the high school level and for students who do get flagged on those, there's follow-up either individual or there are group follow-up as one of the measures that has been in place. I think when you talk about SEL and you talk about social emotional learning as far as a content area, that's where the work of that department is. And looking particularly at the elementary grades to make sure that we're embedding that in instruction and in our academic areas just as much as math and ELA, like that. I think that there are, we have increased mental health providers across the district. It's one of our, I don't know, Dr. or Mr. Spiegel can speak to the number of staff that we've hired in that department and have been continuing to increase that. So that's some of the things, but it's not a specific subset of the strategic plan which everyone is referencing with these working groups. However, MTSS, the group that Mr. Coleman and I are part of is you look at academic, social, emotional, and behavioral in that. So under that umbrella, work will be done there through the strategic plan. That helpful? Yeah, thank you. Do you have any follow-up questions? And the only thing that I'll add in is that our Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Belonging, Margaret Cradle-Thomas, is looking at ways to connect with students, particularly at the high school, to find out a little bit more about how we can do better as adults in the district to support some of the needs as it relates to mental health. And so I know she's looking at how to actually get that information directly from students in a way where students feel open and free and honest to share it and not feel as though the information will be used in some way that will expose them or something. And so if you have ideas around that, I would offer you to contact someone at your school or even reach out to me. I know we don't necessarily only want to know the yet, but find someone who is a trusted adult that you can share that information with and hopefully they'll bring it to us so that we can figure out how to do better. Cool, thank you. Is next in? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. This has been really comprehensive and very clear. I feel like I understood all of the parts at my fourth Outcomes Report. I don't wanna repeat too much of what other people have said, but I did appreciate the context around absenteeism and sort of highlighting what that actually means in terms of one day every two weeks or a day a week. And that's significant and that stands out a lot to me. I mostly wanted to comment on the elementary ELA. The third grade sort of stands out to me and I hear what you're saying about the pandemic, but if we're looking at just grade three from the beginning of the year to the end of the year where we're actually seeing a decrease in students at or above. And so that sort of makes me think about the tier one instruction there for students in that particular grade level. And so I know we're making changes, but the DIBELS also really focuses more on the phonics even in decoding vocabulary even in grade three. So I'm wondering, I guess, what if we're including the foundations and the Hegerty into grade three also? Like, how are we maintaining that word study work as we go up the grades is one of my questions. And then more of a comment than a question is it would be helpful maybe next year when you do this, Mr. Coleman, whoever does it, to have the longitudinal data of this similar to how you have the MCAS in the sense that the third graders on this DIBELS chart were in kindergarten when the pandemic started. And so what would that grade, what that would that cohort look like from K to three versus our current first graders who have had much less of an experience of missing school masks, things like that. I don't think we had the DIBELS to do that type of analysis. We could use the whole composite so we wouldn't be able to compare it. So yeah, I agree with you. I always liked the longitudinal better, but it wasn't something we had available. Okay, so this is the first, the last year was the first time that you did the composite. So yeah, to get the full composite scores on all of them that we just implemented that last year. And they only started implementing it at their grade also last year. Last year, okay. So that was one of my questions and comments. And then the other is a follow up to Ms. Morgan. Well, it might be a, the requirement might be that we share information just for students who are scoring well below. I'm wondering if there's been any conversation around sort of best practice around reporting. All of the scores were below and well below. So how that gets shared with families. Yeah, I think that that's a great question and we need to explore how that is happening so that all lines of communication are open and that so families are aware of how their children are performing and achieving. Because, you know, the difference between below and well below is one number. So. Thank you. I'm just to add that they will be getting it with the progress reports, the regular progress reporting time period. So folks who are flagged will get it within the 30 day notice, but everybody will get their results when we send out the first, whatever the progress reporting period is. For elementary, it's three times a year. Okay, so every student will have their report. Yes, they're gonna send those home. When they get their progress report. I just wanna make sure I'm understanding your question. Are you're saying that every student who gets tested using Dibbles, you're asking about information being shared with their families about performance three times per year. Right, so the new legislation from what I'm understanding from you is that the well below must be informed. And I'm asking if perhaps best practice might be different than what the law requires and what Arlington is planning to do. For all students, not just for the well below. Correct. I think if I understand correctly is she's wondering instead of just telling the people whose students scored well below, maybe we wanna inform the people whose students scored below and well below. Or well below. Right, that's just that they're so, or what's, where's the cutoff that it's good to inform. And then I'll just tag on. What is Ms. Elmer saying is gonna go, like is even a kid who's in the 80th percentile, is it's gonna be on their progress report or no? The document is to go home, but I can follow up. So, yeah, as a future agenda item. Yes, you can. No, we have new regulations that went into effect July 1st, 2023 on literacy screening. We should get our presentation on how we're implementing that. What do the notices look like? Examples of the notices that are going to families. What, this issue of who's getting the results and when. And, you know, there's an opportunity to have a conversation, if you're in the well below, we have to provide an opportunity to have a conversation. How are we accommodating those? Who's attending those conversations? How are we set this up? How are we complying with these new regulations? Sure, okay. Can you send me an email just with all of that so I can make sure that it gets into one? Okay, good, thank you. Okay. I just will add that there's a district notice going out tomorrow about this. That notice will still go out just so that families are informed of what the process is as of today, so that the letters that schools have, there's some schools that have since some letters are already notifying families of this process and the district letter is just to make sure everyone is aware of the information. So that notice will continue to go out. I do think the presentation that you're asking for makes sense, especially because this is a new process for people and I think if there are ways for us to update what's going to be sent out tomorrow in a way that better meets the needs of families then we'll do that. Yeah, sorry. I think, okay, just to tag onto it because we're in this topic, I guess my other question along the same lines is are we just sending out the scores? Are we sending out the scores and resources for the parents or recommendations of what they, are we just dumping them with the problem or are we giving them some tools to help or at least telling them that we're doing everything we can. But I mean, if I was a parent who's got this letter and that's all I'd be like, well, what do I do? So, okay, I think we're gonna talk about this more later. Everyone's, Mr. Schwetman. And Mr. Fielman. I didn't go yet. Oh, yeah. I do have an answer to that. So there's a home connect form that goes out in addition to the letter and it helps the family understand the particular skills that a student was tested in and what their achievement score was and within the letter, there are also resources attached to it for families to follow up on in terms of meeting their child's needs. And that could be a resource that's in the actual letter but also schools are following up the phone calls through emails in order to help families better understand how to use the resource that they're getting along with the home connect letter. Great, awesome. Thank you. Okay. Do you wanna go first? It doesn't matter. Paul's gonna have better questions than I am. So, I mean, that a good way. So thanks very much. This is very comprehensive, clear, transparent and I appreciate how this is presented to us. It's a good step in the right direction. Very good step in the right direction. My question, the SGP, do we have trends for that anywhere? Do I? We can get, that one's a tough one. Yes, but yeah, what are you looking for specifically? Like how we've been over the past several years. Do you, I mean, the reason why I'm hesitating is you wanna look at the mean of how you're doing over the past couple of years or? Yeah, like mean 10th grade, mean 11th grade. I know you're not, yeah, I don't know if that exists. It is, they give the categories and what I'm curious is you can look at it based on cohort, like how this cohort did with their growth over those few years, you can look at it as the mean, you can look at it as the grade level. I'm more curious, like what would be of interest to you? How they did 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, like that same group. I don't even know if that's coughing. Sure. I mean, yeah, you don't seem to be that excited. No, no, no, no, it's, I'm actually fighting back a cough right now. I talked really fast because I was so worried about coughing. So it's one of those things that it's not, that one's not the hardest one to generate. That's an okay one to do. Okay. I think I'm just with all the sips and everything. I mean, is it okay to get it and like? I'm not, I'm not asking for it tonight. I'm not, I mean, I was giving a deadline. I just want to know, it's, I mean, I'm just throwing it out there as something that I just would be curious about grade by grade, yeah, how each group is doing, you know, is it consistently 50% for, you know? We've done well with growth over the past couple of years as a metric. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. I mean, one thing it did jump out at me was the high school was slide 17, the high, yes, 16 or 17, I guess it is. The high school ELA was a 50 for 10th graders, was SGP was 50 and the state ELA was 49.5. Then math was 58 and the state math was 49.6. So I just, I thought the ELA would be higher. I don't know why. I'm biased. You're talking to the wrong person. Yeah. No, I'm looking at you saying why did I say that, but I said it. So like, what do you, does anyone, do you have any thoughts on that? I don't, I mean, I, when I presented last year with my prior role, this isn't, the math teachers are a hardworking group. Like they've done a really good job. I mean, all the teachers are, but I know them well and they've, yeah, they, yeah. I don't know if Mr. Coleman is the person who can speak to this. No. I'm not. I just did. Yeah. I'll try to jump in and say that. I think that that's a, that's an interesting data point and we need to do a little bit more research to find out why that data point is the way it is. I agree. There needs to be a little more depth. We need to figure it out. You need to deeper dive into it. And that's what I'm kind of hoping to provoke. You know, like, I'm sure you're talking about all the data all the time, but I'm just curious. Has there been any discussion about this data point? At the high school, yes. Yeah. But I don't think that there has been a final kind of thought around what the cause is behind the reason why the data is not a little bit more. Better. Can I get a comment? Oh my God. I was just speaking. Yes. So I think it's worth noting that SGP 50 is typical growth. And it's also worth noting that if you look at math trajectories through the whole district, K through 12, we see improvement in math. We've done a lot of work in math to invest in coaching at the elementary level over the last many years to have school level coaching at the elementary level. We've done a lot of work that I think has resulted in improvements in math at the secondary level. And so if you're looking at SGP for 10th graders right now, given the pandemic, everything we've done in the past and the fact that we have very stable gaps, if not increasing gaps in ELA in other parts of the system, increasing at the elementary level, stable at the middle level. And some of what you're gonna see at the high school level is the fact that all of those students are students who have gone through that system with those curricula, with those gaps at either stabilizing, improving through middle school levels. So I would say that's a reflection as much of 10th grade ELA as it is of the system. And would also point out that an SGP of 50 is typical growth. I saw the math difference. And so I wanted to point it out. I didn't know it would go in this direction. I didn't, you know, the other thing I did in our student representative already brought this up. So I talk about this too much, but in slide, it was slide 36, did catch my eye in the pre read, which was I wanna make sure I get the students in ninth grade were less likely than the average high school student to report their mental health was not good. Sometimes most of the time are always while students in 11th grade were significantly more likely than the average high school student presumably to report this sort of thing. So that is, I mean, that is an interesting trend. Yeah. Is it high school students average in the whole world or are students? Our students. So ninth graders are less likely than our AHS student population. All right, no, no, that's what it is. So it's not, it's not a comparison. Yeah, no, no, two hours. Oh, no, it's not compared to the whole world. Or what? I didn't think the whole world, I thought maybe, okay, thank you. That clarified that. I don't have any other questions. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. Okay, that growth makes me wanna talk about it. Okay. Okay, but before I go, before I go there, I have one cohort that I'm vitally interested in that we're not looking at right now that has cried out to me is for, because you can get a hint at that looking at the accountability data for the high school. Because they report out for kids who are in a four year and five year cohort. And by doing a little subtraction, you can see the kids who are being reported but aren't within that cohort, which means that they weren't in the high school on their first day of ninth grade. There's a substantive difference there. So that when I'm looking at kids who are taking five years to graduate or some of the other markers of kids who need more from our school system in order to succeed, that looks like a disproportionate transfer in cohort. Yeah, could be. And I'd sort of, and I'd like to sort of have us thinking about that as a cohort of students we identify and look out for. If your analysis of the data confirms my hypothesis based on what I can see from the public data. Okay. Now, oh, school improvement plans. I just want to make sure I want to lay it out here because I have read more school improvement plans than almost anybody in the state because I was responsible for reading about two dozen of them, more than two dozen of them every year for 20 years. Oh, it's just, you know, in a high stakes district alone, where it really is a high stakes thing in the states looking over your shoulder and looking for under performing schools. None of our schools here are under performing or even close to it so that there's a lot less stress and pressure behind the school improvement plan. So there's less of a sense of urgency and more of a sense of being in that growth mindset. So it's a whole nother operation and I'm acknowledging that. But when I'm looking at a school improvement report I just want to sketch out right now. So we're clear that when they're coming through, I sort of want to see a continuum between the data being presented, the action steps, and a desired outcome or a goal based on that. I want to see those tied together. I don't want to see things coming out out of left field in any of those three categories. I want to be able to see that logical trend and see that consistency. The high school has done a wonderful job of this. I think they've had the best school improvement plans in the past couple of years. Growth numbers. I'm going to give my little quick lesson on student growth is that for students there are those five categories of very low, low, typical high and very high. But that's a percentile score. So every one of those numbers is a place in a distribution. So for every year, every test, it's a distribution in your, there's an equal probability of a student being at 20 and a student being at 80 across the board. It's a flat distribution. However, when you're looking at schools, you are now getting a distribution of this data. So you get a distribution of means, which means that you've got a standard distribution that looks like this. And by definition, that mean of this, the mean of the means is going to be at 50. But the standard deviation, depending on whether you're looking at district or school, math or ELA is somewhere in the five to seven range. So basically, if you're over 60 as a school or a district in your mean SGP, your two standard deviations above the mean, which means that that's extraordinary versus being just sort of above average growth if that number was tied to a kid. So that distinction, I want it clear to everyone that when we're taking a look at the oddison numbers and their numbers are in that 60 range is that's not sort of mediocre. Well, they're doing a little better than expectation. They're the tale of distribution. You're doing extraordinarily well in the growth. Yep. So that's sort of one of my pet peeves because nobody understands in any presentation I see from the state, all the state data is saying, well, the state number's 50, well, it has to be 50. And there's no expectation that a school is going to be in 80, 90 or 100. You'll see the distribution is really crowded around here so that that x-axis when you're putting the growth numbers on the x-axis should be tightened up to really focus in the 40 to 60 range because that's where schools are gonna be popping in. So I'm concerned when schools are at 45 which seem like normal growth for a kid, it is. I'm really ecstatic if I'm seeing 55. So that's just sort of my presentation bias. And I think that we really wanna emphasize that when those numbers show up in the 50s and it's not mediocre, it's well in the 50s. It's really pretty good, okay? Thank you. When I first started doing this job at Lowell, I had my boss who was always squawking about the colors I used in my presentations. The one thing I like just for peace, love, and harmony in my eyes is that when we're doing the graphs is sort of try to do a continuum of colors. So when we did the doubles, you went from blue to red to yellow to green. I'd sort of like sort of a more red, yellow, green, blue or something of a continuum which helps to identify what's going on. But if that's my biggest complaint on this presentation, it's spectacular. I think that there's a lot of really good information here. And I hope that the people who are watching this because there's nobody behind you in the room but a lot of people sit here and watch us on TV. I hope that people are understanding, one, just how well we're doing as a district right now and two, just how committed we are to doing analysis of what's going on and building on strengths and becoming even better. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so now it's my turn. Like Mr. Schuchman, I wanted to make a statement first, just I'm looping back to slide four, which is where you did the quick reminder of focal groups. And because of a discussion I had had with a community member in the past couple of weeks, I had talked to our superintendent and I just wanted to point out for our audience at home or millions of viewers that it's important to understand that the district is tracking and monitoring lots of groups, many more than these focal groups. It's not, we're not just looking at five groups and ignoring everybody else. It's just, these are the groups where the concerns about attendance, school experience and stuff also relate to academic achievement and specifically they're having academic achievement, which is below the rest of the students. So I just want to be clear that if family has a student who doesn't follow to one of those focal groups, it doesn't mean that they're not being looked at and being assessed. For example, our Asian students can show up as having problems with some of their school experiences are belonging, but they're not showing the same problems with achievement. And so that's why they're not in a focal group. So that's one thing. The second thing is for slide 12 under monotomy preschool, it says insufficient data. We don't, nobody tests preschoolers, right? Okay, so it's like, it's not just insufficient data. It's like, we don't do that. Can I say why I left that on there? Isn't that how the state? That's how the state. I'm always guilty of this too. Like I always forget about monotomy. It's a school within our district. So I just want to make sure it was honored. Insufficient data makes it sound like we should be testing them, but we didn't or something. To me, it's like, yeah, they're not tested, they're preschool. And then finally, actually Liz, can you pull up slide? I don't know, 18. Okay, while Liz is doing this, I'll just talk through my concern. I just wanted to point out that slide 18, 19, 20, well, not some, yeah, 20 to 20 also, all of these show achievement gaps, right? We're seeing disproportionate differences between and lower achievement in different groups. And I think it was mentioned a little bit, but I think it wasn't, I want to be sure our audience at home understands because right now we are doing a big work trying to put through the override so that we can address, better address these type of achievement gaps and get our kids so that they're all just one little line with dots all, you know, all the different colored dots on the same, in the same spot. And let me find my other question. Okay. I'll just skip to one. Then just talking about the absenteeism and this may be a Dr. Ford Walker, I'm not sure. Is there, what do we do to find out why these kids are absent? Are they actually sick or are their parents sick? Are they not able to get to school? Or, you know, what's happening? What do we do? Yeah, I mean, I have ideas in terms of how we can do that moving forward. I do want to invite anyone else, I mean, the other administrators in the room to talk to how it's been done in the past and Liz, maybe you can help out with this as well. But I have ideas around how we can find out some answers moving forward. You all have anything? Okay, Liz, do you have anything? Yeah, I can jump in. For the schools that have had a pretty significant impact on chronic absenteeism, the easiest answer is relentlessness. That when a student is absent, that they track the trends, that they keep track of when a student's absent, they follow up with the family to inquire about why. That, you know, we do things like home visits, we show up to the home to talk about what the challenges are to getting to school, and we work to address it and to emphasize the importance of schooling. And that where we don't do those things, we don't see a decrease in chronic absenteeism. Now that's been incredibly difficult for folks to do over the past couple of years because chronic absenteeism skyrocketed during the pandemic and immediately afterwards. So it was at its sort of all-time worst, I would say last year and the year before, and has started to slowly decline. And so it's gonna be easier for us to use some of those shining examples with other schools to say, here are some of the things that work to decrease chronic absenteeism now that you don't have such an extreme onslaught of chronically absent students. And I'm sure, I know Dr. Fort Walker has ideas about this. So as we work with the schools, we can give them some really strategic ways to go about reaching out to families, being persistent and consistent in the strategies they use to amplify the importance of school. A couple principles this year have been really purposeful about saying when school starts, what the expectation is around school start time, and have been really successful in improving tardiness rates, for example. So those are just a couple strategies that we're gonna try to spread and share out more of, but that's what's going on in schools where you see an improvement in chronic absenteeism. And then the only thing I'll add in is also in addition to continuing with some of those strategies, partnering with our director of communications and family engagement, to make sure that we have a really tight handle in terms of some of the cases that are ongoing chronic cases, really figuring out what the challenges are and trying to help families work through some of those challenges in order to get kiddos to school more frequently. And then finally I'd say, looking at our student support team and looking at that model and looking at how we can think through how to identify cases a little bit sooner before we get to the chronic absentee mark is something that we're gonna be prioritizing to moving forward. Great, thank you very much. So, Ms. Morton. It seems, it's new information to me that the way that we follow up on chronic absenteeism, which seems to be potentially quite predictive of some of the things we're trying, like is sort of, isn't really standardized across buildings. Are there, do we have plans to, I mean, it's one thing to be like, well, these people are doing this and getting these outcomes, but like, I mean, at some point is there, are there plans to be more directive over how this is done and maybe more directive over like starting school on time every, like, are we gonna get to a place where it's like, no, like, we're gonna do this because it's like really, really important as opposed to just sort of, like, hope that- I'd like to clarify that we've been directive about it in the past as well. We're seeing stronger and more consistent implementation of those expectations now at the start of the school year and with some of the new resources that Dr. Ford Walker just mentioned are better able to support those expectations this year. Great. Any more questions? No. Thank you very much for your presentation, Dr. Ford Walker, for your answer to your questions. Thanks all for the time. And we hope you feel better. And next we have the superintendent's report given by Dr. Ford Walker. Okay, great, thank you, Liz. So I'll start off by sharing that our EL Expeditionary Learning pilot is, I don't even wanna say pilot, but our implementation is currently underway and we have two great levels at every elementary school participating and the teachers who are participating in the implementation are going through a series of professional development learning opportunities where they're working together to digest the new content and the new expectations and work their way through this new curriculum. And I'd like to say that I was in a coaches meeting a couple of weeks ago, actually just last week where I was able to hear directly from some coaches who were supporting teachers in implementation and they were commenting on some of the experiences that they have been able to observe and participate in because they're co-teaching with the teachers and a number of them commented that students are excited about the curriculum and also using different language that they're hearing modeled throughout the classroom in their one-on-one reactions with one another. So that's exciting to see in here. So that's going pretty well. Also, I'd like to share it that the district is the recipient of a $10,000 safe and supportive schools grant awarded by DESI and there will be more details forthcoming on how the grant will be used. Also, I'll say that the Teaching and Learning Department had a successful rollout of our professional learning platform which is an arm of Power Schools, excuse me, Power School. Power Schools, the platform that is the hub for many things connected to districts such as evaluation, support for educators as well as it's a platform that helps with managing employee opportunities. So jobs are posted there and people can go there to apply for the positions. Also, there was an arm of the platform that we didn't start using until this year which is the professional learning platform and so essentially all of the offerings that are taking place on the six early release days that exist throughout the district are there and educators can log on and sign up for courses as well as find PDPs after they complete the course there in the platform. So it's making the process a little bit more seamless and manageable for educators to maneuver through and also I'd like to say that we have a number of course offerings that are teacher led opportunities and some of those examples that you see listed here are being offered by some of our APS educators. Moving on, Arlington has been selected to be a 2023 Mass Saved Climate as a Mass Saved Climate leader, being a leader in that particular area is something that's exciting to us and something that we are looking forward to sharing a little bit more about as well moving forward. Also, last month we celebrated two new electric buses on town day and this picture that you see here is with Dr. Holman and Steve Angelo from Transportation and APS cutting the ribbon at the bus ceremony, which was an exciting time as well. Dr. Holman shared her evaluation materials earlier this week and that was the Google site that she shared that had a ton of information there and I don't know if she's finished with uploading her other documents but I'm sure you can stay tuned for more from her around that. And then finally, I'll share that we received additional student at Dalin in grade one which has led us to posting a new paraprofessional position for Dalin in order to support that classroom with more staffing and that is the conclusion of the report. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry. So I have a question for the chair. Do we have a timeline for our evaluation? Yes, I will send that out. Okay, I was just where I'm like, this got presented to us and I didn't know. Okay, and then the other thing, I just wanted to make a comment. It's not in the update but I just wanted to share my concerns about bracket being closed today and the making up the time on learning and I feel like a whole day was missed. So I guess my personal expectation is that there will be a day where the students and teachers at bracket will have school. I feel like in my three and a little bit years on the school committee recently, there've been a lot of like individual school cancellations and it's just starting to be a concern for me and I just want to share that. So thank you. I had two things mine are relevant to the where they were in the update. And although I am as somebody with an elementary student and I get we can't control water mains but boy is this really hard on, it's really hard. I, we, Dr. Ford Walker, we were like on the everyone APS like distribution list. So we got a chance to see the excellent communication that you sent out to all of our staff around the professional development signups and I just thought it was really, really good, really clear what they needed to do. So I just thought that was super impressive. So thank you for your work on that. And then what was the other thing in the update? Oh, so between when we last met and now I went to back to school night at Stratton and I have a fifth grader and it was really exciting to hear his teacher who is phenomenal and who apparently told the kids in the class at the beginning of the year that she had no idea what she was doing rolling out this new literacy curriculum and she wasn't really sure how it was gonna go. And then three weeks into the school year for her to stand up in front of parents, she was so enthusiastic, so clear, had like, she had examples to share with us about what this was gonna look like, the book that they were reading, the things that they were doing. It was just, it was really exciting to see that and to hear somebody speak so with a lot of enthusiasm about what they were doing in the classroom. And I know that, like, she's awesome clearly, but I know that she's able to say that and be enthusiastic because she's been well supported by the literacy coaches, by your office, Dr. Ford Walker, and all the way up. So it was a really fun night for me to get to hear that. So thank you. Great, thank you, thank you for that feedback. And I point out your back to school night was not on a school committee night, so it was not. It was a miracle. Yeah, no, it was great. So it was just like. I think somebody got a calendar out and did some work and it was very impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to explain for Dr. Ford Walker, this has been a problem in the past and we've tried to make sure it, I mean, we've asked that it not happen and I'm pleased that this year, things are much more on track. Thank you. So next, we have election of the MASC delegate to the MASC delegate assembly. Do we have a nomination? Hi, nominate Mr. Schlickman. Do we have a second? Second. Second. Enthusiastic. As long as it's not me. I'm sweating this so much. Mr. Schlickman, do you want to speak to your nomination? I will just express my appreciation that Mr. Schlickman is very committed to the MASC and participating as a delegate and attending the meeting every year and we appreciate you spending your time doing that on behalf of our committee. Okay, any further comment? I'll just comment and say thank you in that our resolution supporting MECO is resolution one this year and I anticipate it will be universally acclaimed by the delegate assembly. Okay, all in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so that's a unanimous vote. Does anybody want to be an alternate? No, we have to. Nothing can happen. I feel like we take that up in the event that it becomes a problem. And then. MASC asked for an alternate, so, you know. I might actually go. So, I nominate Kersi as the alternate. Second. Second. Third. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye, I guess. Any abstentions? Any, nope. Okay, that was also unanimous. So, apparently I'm the alternate. I don't know if that means I have to present the other side. Okay, so next we have a vote to approve the APS and AEA MOA, the memorandum of agreement. And I think that was about grade three. I think we can't do it. We don't have it in novice. There's something in novice? Oh, okay, it wasn't, it's not in what I have. Okay, sorry, let me find novice. It doesn't show up as a document on the side. I didn't know it was there. Okay. No, I mean it shows up if I click on it, but it doesn't, you know, usually it has a little symbol that there's something to download and it doesn't show up there. I wonder if it's because that could be. It does, I'm not, yeah. Can you look at, you can see it up? All right, I mean it's here, so it's, motion to approve and authorize. Okay. It's, what do you mean if it's not public? Does it matter if it's public or not? I second the motion. Okay. Motion to approve and authorize the chair to sign the memorandum of agreement between the Arlington School Committee and the AEA. We're talking about the one dated September 18th, right? Yes. That's in novice, right? Yes, right. Okay, it's a stipend for cafeteria duty for Odyssey and Gibbs. That's the one we did in the second section last time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So we're just re-voting something we've done already. Yes. I'm just making sure it's properly noted if we've notified the public, so, okay. So any discussion, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so that's unanimous. Next we have the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 24072 dated October 3rd, 2023, 860,315 and 89 cents Arlington School Committee minutes of September 21st, 2023. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Yes. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Nope, so it's unanimous. And now we have subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget, Mr. Cardin. I'm gonna give me a minute, I'll pull up the minutes. I remember what we talked about. Oh, can you come back to me? Okay, community relations. The school committee will be having a school committee chat on Tuesday, October 17th at 9 a.m. Ms. Giddelson and Mr. Thielman have agreed to host it. Thank you very much. And as we discussed in the spring and the community relations subcommittee and then shared with the full committee or modifying the format a little bit. So Dr. Holman and Ms. Ford Walker will also be in attendance and the focus topic was the heterogeneous grouping initiative and then any other high school topics. Facilities? Mr. Thielman. Facilities, we meet on November 2nd at 5.15 p.m. It says in the invite 5.15 to 7, but we're not gonna use the whole hour and 45 minutes. So, but we're gonna receive a number of reports that we talked about at the last time and talked about other things. So all are welcome to attend. And, you know, just regarding what Ms. Ekston raised earlier, this does relate to facilities, I think the, you have to have 180 days unless and safety emergency snow days they're actually equal. So I don't know what happened at the bracket is equivalent to a safety emergency but we ought to find out if it is because if it is the students by law I think you have to make up the day. So I think we just need to clarify that. Okay. That may not be a happy thing for people to hear right now. So, but I think we need to clarify. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know. I just don't know. Policy and procedures. Just on the bracket situation, we vote the calendar so that if there's an adjustment that if we go an extra day at the bracket that just sort of happens if any other adjustment or tweet comes on there we'll need to vote that. It's just another complication in the whole thing. Yeah, it's not anyone's fault. No, no, no, I mean. It's the water main that broke. You can't run a school without water. But there is a safety, there is in the law that's. Yeah. Yeah. Now we've got stuff to do. I got Doug Hyme's last email that we can review on the file that we postponed for his review. He sent it back. So we'll have to set a date for next meeting. Well, we don't have a date. Okay. And we don't have a date, but we'll have to go and set one. All right. Okay. Building committee. We're meeting on November 14th instead of November 7th because another event is taking place in time on the 7th. And then on the December meeting we're gonna meet in person in the new school. And then this committee asked before about a tour. I mean, I'm sorry. The committee asked about getting information about us in our move over there. And so what I think we're gonna do is arrange a tour towards the end of October for the school committee. We don't wanna do it until the end of October because we have people working overtime right now and it's just, there's just not a good environment to kind of add us into the mix and make them work longer. So give us a few weeks. We'll give some dates. We'll put out a doodle poll. We'll figure it out. And if you send us any information we need to be aware of or need to do in order to prepare for this. Yeah. We'll do that. I think the best thing is the tour. Yeah. Then it's just a good visual. Okay. You skipped me. Did I skip you? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I did. Oh, boy. We were doing pretty well. She's the best too. She runs the best subcommittee. Ms. Morgan. For your meeting. See, that's mostly just being a brat about being skipped and I didn't even look it up. We are meeting on. Do you want me to wait? I don't, no. We're meeting on October 23rd at 2 p.m. We are talking about the sixth grade, not science, whatever it is, overnight experience. And we're also talking about special education programs with Ms. Elmer. So actually, either one of us, Ms. Giddelson, because you're the CPEC liaison, could you, would you be able to let them know that that agenda is posted for the 23rd? And we're gonna get a report on sort of adjustments, additions to programming. So if you don't mind letting them know, and that'd be awesome. Thank you so much. Mr. Carton. All right. Yes, now I'm ready. So we talked a little bit about the special town meeting. There is a recommended vote of the finance committee, but there's a potential issue with the wording of the warrant article and the timing of town meetings. We may push that off till April, but we're not sure yet. We revised the budget calendar. I will give that to Liz to distribute to all of you. Talked a little bit about a funding mechanism to support speakers for the CPEC. Hopefully that will come out, come to fruition through the new welcome center as that gets established. Michael went over the budget office staffing. That was a useful handout to also give that to Liz to distribute. Thanks. Great. Thank you. And any liaison reports, announcements, or future agenda items. I already got the one that was mentioned. Anything else? Seeing none. Okay. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Yes, aye. Okay. We're all done.