 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors. Welcome to the meeting of the Arlington School Committee. Today is Thursday, March 10th, 2016. We begin with first a note from Janet Chappatt to the school committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, all the members of the Arlington School Committee for holding a moment of silence in Raleigh's memory. It heartens and comforts me and my family to know he was held in such high esteem. Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of our wonderful public schools sincerely, Janet Chappatt. Nobody embraced and personified volunteerism and community spirit more than Raleigh. Also, over the past two weeks, we mourn the loss of Marilyn Flaherty, the former Pierce School Principal. And I've known her for a long time. She was a local legend who also loved her school tremendously. She didn't drive, and she lived on the avenue. It would either walk or take the 77 to work. One of the big logistical things that we did when we tore down the Pierce School and dispersed the kids out was had to find ride-sharing arrangements to get Marilyn to where her kids were at. And up until her death, you'd see her on the bus stop, and you pull over and drive her down the street to give her a little ride. A lot of people did that. And she touched the lives of many children, many adults in this community. So let's have a moment of silence to honor the memory of Marilyn Flaherty. Thank you very much. We have artwork from a couple of other announcements. We are all cordially invited, even though we're not the most diverse group in the world, to the Arlington Diversity Coffee Social, a special event welcoming educators of diverse backgrounds. Tuesday, April 12th, from 4 to 5.30 here at Arlington High School, sixth floor. So I assume the usual location is in this room, and there'll be nice coffee here. And there's an RSVP here. The Superintendent's Diversity Advisory Committee, Miriam Stein and Robert Spiegel, the human resource officer, have expended this invitation, which is on your desk. And it also goes for people within the community. We have artwork grade two contour line self-portraits. We have a lot today. The second grade is over here. Second grade students learned about the different types of contour lines, and then created a self-portrait using each of these styles. The types of self-portraits they drew were contour lines, lines that outline and show what the form is, continuous contour, or continuous line drawing where the pencil is not taken off the paper, and blind contour lines are drawing made by not looking at the paper and where the pencil is not lifted from the paper. Experimental watercolors. The experimental line project was inspired by the performance artwork of contemporary artist Heather Hansen after viewing a video of Hansen creating her beautiful abstract drawings while moving through a choreographed yoga flow and trying some yoga stretches of their own. Second graders listened to a variety of songs and made lines on paper with oil pastels that represented the song to them. We have kindergarten Matisse collages, I assume that's them over there, after reading the story Henry Scissors by Jeanette Winter, kindergarten students learned about the artist Henry Matisse. Matisse thought of his scissors as a paint brush, which he used to make organic shapes and arrange creative collages of painted papers made from his assistants. Like Matisse's assistants, students began this project by using watercolors to paint their paper as they would cut shapes out of the following week. Grade one is first grade. OK, in the back. First grade students completed a process oriented our project that incorporates lines, textures, and plenty of experimentation and discovery. Students began the project by talking about the many different types of line and we brainstormed different types of lines and turned them into repetitive line patterns with sharpies on a piece of 8 and 1 half by 11 paper. The next class we discussed the complementary and secondary colors and students experimented with mixing these paint colors with abstract paintings. Grade four surrealist zentangles over there. The lesson online pattern and composition was inspired by the surrealistic artist Salvatore Dali. Surrealistic paintings are dreamlike but have components of ordinary everyday life. Fourth grade students began the project by looking through magazines to find the character they could feature in their artwork. Then they added zentangles, series of line patterns, a group together to add contrast to their work as they draw a colorful and whimsical surrealist scene. Grade five observational object drawings, which are over there for this assignment. Fifth grade students chose an object and drew it five different times from five different angles. Students then experimented with different drawing mediums, such as sharpie contour lines, oil pastels, and colored pencils to see how their object looked depending on the material it was rendered in. Grade three animal zentangles for this project. Third grade students started off by brainstorming different types of line patterns in their sketchbooks. Next students looked at reference photos of animals to help them begin their drawing. Once the animal was rendered, it was time to zentangle with thick and thin sharpies. A zentangle is a series of line patterns, artfully arranged together, and they can be very relaxing or zen to make. Students finished their animals zentangles by adding a colorful background to create a contrast. Grade four observational hand drawings over there. Hands can communicate a lot without a person actually saying anything. Fourth grade students, the peers recently completed an observational drawing project where they posted their hands in three to five different ways and rendered them as best they could. And grade three color wheels over here. Students in grade three learned about the color wheel and the importance of color theory. In grade three, we discussed primary, secondary, and complementary colors. Primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. The secondary colors are the colors mixed from the primaries. They are purple, orange, and green. They're complementary colors or pairs of colors that can be found across from each other on the color wheel. We combine these colors, make gray. And therein is our art lesson for the evening. We now go to public participation and buried underneath all the art papers is the list. Sarah Glover is first to be followed by Greg Christiana. Sarah, come up to the microphone, please. I'm just gonna remind everybody that public participation is limited to three minutes and we do not respond in the public participation time. Thank you. Thanks, it's nice to see you. Good evening. My name is Sarah Glover. I have a daughter at the Thompson School and I am pleased to serve on the school council at the Thompson School. I come to you tonight for a couple reasons. First, as a recovering school board member myself, I got to serve on the Boseman Public Schools Board in Boseman, Montana. So I have sat in chairs similar to yours. And I also have had the great pleasure. My work has been for much the last 15 years has been to work with school boards. So I've just worked with a lot of people who are in situations that are similar to the kinds of decisions that you all are in the midst of and that we are in this community. So I just wanted to share a little bit about that and I hope this resonates. It's not a talking at or to, it's just a sharing things that have kind of come out of personal and professional experience that I hope are useful. So I offer three things that I've kind of seen work. One is to really, really strongly reaffirm the mission and just keep coming back to that and use that as your true north for your own conversations together with the community, with kind of the turbulence that is surrounding like why are we all here? Which is to provide an excellent education for our kids. The second is a lot of people have found it enormously useful to establish a set of core beliefs or principles within which to make these decisions because it's just hard to balance everything and maintain perspective. And if you have that together, sometimes it can be really helpful. And the third something that you guys do really well it seems like is just communicate like crazy. And I think John Cotter or somebody, a change leader says, communicate as much as you think you need and then multiply it times 10 and then maybe you're getting close. Like there's so much communication just to keep the channels open. So hopefully those three things are helpful. This true north of the mission and how important that is. And it's, and you guys can teach us how to do that and the whole community about how to embrace the mission of providing an excellent education to kids and how to make that manifest. The second reason I come is again around this idea of kind of principles and core beliefs, I sent a letter to you guys last summer, I guess, from the Thompson School Council with maybe a draft set of principles that could help. And I would just love you all to either revisit those principles or other principles. Sometimes it feels like these conversations are a little bit about an education system that reflects the past versus an education system that embraces what our kids need to know and be able to do today and in the future. And so just to figure out where are we headed? Not preparing for what we've seen in the past but thinking about what kids need to know and what opportunities we have to create a new and better system here. Thank you. And I would call your attention to our overarching goals which are in our policy document. You might find them interesting. Can I turn the AC off? Off? No, I'm sweating as it is. Greg Cristiana, followed by Jane Arneson. Hi, Greg Cristiana, 82 Ridge Street. And I'd like to talk to you tonight about Blackjack. I graduated with a math degree from MIT and when I went there in the 90s, I knew some guys who would train for hours and hours counting cards. And what they would do is they would travel in teams to casinos, sometimes across the country to Vegas, for weekends and they'd make lots of money playing Blackjack. Unfortunately I wasn't one of them. And the thing about counting cards is that it shifts the odds just 1% in the player's favor. And that's all it takes, just 1%. It makes no guarantees about what happens on any given hand, but it guarantees long-term success. So as long as you can absorb those short-term fluctuations, you're assured success. I've been studying the enrollment challenges and McKibbin's forecast through this lens for the past few weeks. I've been working with computer scientists, software engineers, parents with statistics backgrounds from Harvard, MIT, Google and Microsoft. And we've been assembling tools to study various enrollment scenarios. We'd like to share these tools and insights with you. The, as you all know, the kindergarten registration started this week and kids have to be assigned to schools. We want you to go into this game of chance with every tool at your disposal to ensure the long-term success of our kids. It's clear to me that administrative solutions don't get us all the way there. But they can be a key part of a larger, long-term solution. We know math on our end and we know how to write software, but you all know the schools, the teachers, the students, the policies. Let's bring our complementary skill sets together. And there's one last point I'd like to make. I've worked on a lot of projects which have met with strong opposition from smart, reasonable people who thought it was too hard or unrealistic. There are countless reasons these projects can fail, but in my experience, there's only two reasons why they succeed. First, all the right skills are brought to bear and applied in the same direction. And this means teams that are not working against themselves. And the entire community can and should be a team in this situation. And number two, a relentless mental discipline to achieve the desired goal. And that means no distractions. I believe we can do this together. Thank you for all your hard work. The more I study the enrollment problem, the more I appreciate how difficult your task is. We as parents and you as school committee members, it's our job and privilege to serve our kids above all else. We're here to help and keep this process moving quickly and responsibly in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Jane Arnishin followed by Sarah Stockwell. Hello. So this is my first time at a Arlington town meeting, school committee meeting, and I'm speaking spontaneously. I came as an Arlington resident for 20 years who's never had a child in the Arlington schools but I have been following what's been going on and all the work you've been doing with the overcrowding. And I wanna speak for the Arlington Center for the Arts as part of the community, knowing that all of the things that are under consideration might force a relocation of the Arlington Center and for me as a resident. The schools are very important, but so are all of the other cultural activities in specific many that the ACA brings to Arlington and I wanna make sure that if they have to be relocated, a space is found before any action is taken and I feel really hopeful that you all will do that. I know how hard you've been working to accommodate everybody in the community, but arts are very important so I wanted to speak up for it. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah Stockwell will be followed by Juliette Moore. Can I see you brought a B plus with you? I did. I brought some accessories. Oh. My name is Sarah Stockwell and I'm a parent of the Thompson School of Two Girls, age second grade and fifth grade, but I'm here actually to talk briefly about the Arlington Education Foundation's 21st annual trivia B, which is happening on Sunday, March 20th from three to five p.m. It's a great community event. I'm also speaking to all of those watching out there. It's free. There's kids activities. There's beautiful B cookies. There's fun kids walking around and B costumes. And it's really your chance to have fun and be part of a team and help build the community. It's a low key event. It's happening at the town hall, which I don't think I mentioned yet. And in the past we've had over 20 teams representing the Arlington town. And in the past we've also had people from the school committee and I was very pleased to hear that Jennifer and Paul and Jed will be on another team this year. Last year it was a small individual group team that won. And perhaps this year someone new will win. We also have fabulous costumes, as you can see here. And we hope that you'll join us and come to the event. And then just for a quick, since I've also, this is my first time at a school committee meeting. I am a parent, as I said, at the Thompson School. And I'm really appreciative of all the work that's been done thus far to help push the process forward and thinking about how to meet the challenges of the school enrollment. My fifth grader currently has 29 kids in her class. I know that's not the first you've heard of that. But we're really excited about the prospect of using the Gibbs School and the other ways you're looking to solve this enrollment challenge so that perhaps my second grader will see a year of a new high school and maybe even a smaller middle school. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak tonight. Thank you. Juliette Moyer followed by Tamuri Yantah. Hello, Juliette Moyer, 14 Wellesley Road. I'm here tonight to both show my support for the tenants of Gibbs while also urging you to move forward as quickly as studies permit for a September 2018 opening of Gibbs. The ACA told the enrollment task force on Tuesday night that one of their biggest challenges in considering a move from Gibbs is the fate of their summer camp in the summer of 2017 when if it is the chosen path, the Gibbs School would be under construction. In meeting with the ACA, we were very pleased to hear them say that their camp is mobile and can be packed up and moved to another suitable location. We've heard countless times from members of this committee that members of this committee are eager to help the ACA. And we urge you to work with them to find a place in an existing public school building for their summer camp in the summer of 2017. In addition to ensuring that the ACA has space for one of its biggest revenue-producing programs, this would provide the ACA with an opportunity to market their programming outside of East Arlington, building name recognition and facilitating ACA's transition to an alternate location. In our involvement with the school enrollment parent group, we've had the opportunity to hear from many parents across town. We're concerned about the growing feeling among parents that ACA may be an obstacle standing in the way of what is necessary for and in the best interest of Arlington's middle school students. What is in the best interest of Arlington's middle school students is to hit a September 2018 date for Gibbs being online, if at all possible. We also wanna assure the ACA and this committee that we believe the community is ready to help financially. Lauren Ledger, co-founder of Arlington Eats and member of our student enrollment parent group has offered to help design a crowdfunding campaign and we think revolving it around the summer camp would not only be successful but would go a long way for a goodwill amongst the parent population. Assuming the feasibility study points to give school as the middle school solution and assuming it reports that a September 2018 start date is feasible, we expect that members of this committee and any potential members of this committee will continue to work with urgency to hit this date. Thank you very much and I appreciate all your work. Thank you. Timor Yontar, followed by Phil Goff. Hello, is it on? Yeah, this is for table. It doesn't make any noise. It broadcasts out to the rest of the world. Got it, okay. Hi, you're probably tired of seeing me by now. I'm Timor Yontar, Bates Road, Precinct Seven, Thompson Dead and member of the Gibbs community. Wait, what do I mean by that? Okay. See this vase? That's beautiful. I made it and several others like it at the ACA. It was an excellent pottery class taught by Mike Stratakis, who is the proprietor of My Brother's Place Pizzeria in East Arlington. Also, my daughters, last summer they did ACA camp. They had Harry Potter, Dr. Seuss and Star Wars themed camp. They had a great time. Now, this mug. It's from Leslie Ellis, where my daughters went to preschool. They both did two years there and had a great time and it prepared them really well for grade school. And I have also this art. My daughters do after school at the Arlington Rec, at the Gibbs Gym. And among other things, they take art classes there. So as you can see, our family has direct ties to a majority of the Gibbs tenants and we like the Gibbs tenants. From my perspective, yes. The contributions of the Gibbs tenants to the town are valuable. And I view the current situation as not as an either or, but as a both and. So speaking as a parent, I do support the conversion of Gibbs back into a town school as soon as possible. I believe our students need it. I believe it is the best option to relieve middle school overcrowding. And a delay of one year would mean that the town's current third graders, including the artist of this drawing, would be spending that extra year in an overcrowded oddison spilling out into modular classrooms. And at the same time, I also support the tenants. I would like to see the community help them with their transition. I hope that the relocation goes swiftly and smoothly. And we, my family, we look forward to doing ACA classes and camps at their new location. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Phil Goff. Hello, good evening. My name is Phil Goff. I'm at 94 Grafton Street. I have a eighth grader, it's about say seventh grader, it's going quick, eighth grader in the oddison school and a third grader in the Thompson school. I just wanted to quickly show, express also my support for the potential of maintaining the ACA at the Gibbs building. I think it is a great amenity in the neighborhood. I also, one, two, wanted to express appreciation for the work that this committee and others in the school department have done to work with the working group to find funding for the modules at Thompson and the potential for design fees for the expansion at Thompson is great. Fantastic for me. I wanted to talk mostly about the Gibbs building and the potential use of the Gibbs building as either a sixth grade or a full middle school for East Arlington. I have her, I wanted to say that I'm the co-chair of a neighborhood group called East Arlington Livable Streets Coalition. I know lots of people, we have a big email list and I've heard from a number of people about the interest in the Gibbs building, not just from an educational point of view and reducing the overcrowding at oddison, but the opportunities that that could bring to create a renaissance almost in walking and biking for the neighborhood. My understanding is the committee or some members of the committee are tending to lean more towards using the Gibbs building if it is in fact used, whether the ACA is there or not, as a sixth grade facility rather than a sixth, seventh and eighth grade facility. I wanted to speak in support of the latter. I can appreciate and understand some of the reasoning for having the building for sixth grade only. I know teachers enjoy staying together, there's that certain camaraderie, there's programs that we don't necessarily want to split up between two schools or equity issues, I get that, I understand that. What I would like to try to convince you is to ensure that another key criterion that's used in any decision making and evaluation of whether it's sixth or full middle school are transportation issues and especially walking and bicycling. I handed out, I didn't quite have enough maps for this very large and prestigious group, I didn't realize you were that large, that's the map, right there, Paul, thank you. As obviously you know, very few students right now because of the distance are walking or bicycling from East Arlington to the Ottison School, clearly it's more than a mile for cycling, there's some difficult connections, it's up a hill, et cetera. We all know that the MBTA buses are packed, many of the kids, especially primarily from East Arlington, they're being driven. What I would like for you to think about is a middle school, a full middle school at the Gibbs Building, the number of children within East Arlington within a 10 or 15 minute walk, as you can see illustrated in that map, is basically the entire neighborhood. So you have an entire neighborhood that lives within a 10 or 15 minute walk of that school. I can envision on nice days, you're gonna have 80, 90 plus percent of the kids, the sixth, seventh and eighth graders, walking or bicycling to the school. I think that's a positive thing from a traffic congestion point of view, from a children's health point of view, and as I'm sure you know, there are studies that show the benefits from an academic point of view and a public health point of view for children who are walking and biking to school. A sixth grade, the Gibbs Gym, yep, last 30 seconds. Sixth grade at the Gibbs Gym would be nice as well, but if you think about the amount of kids, only about one third of the kids in the total sixth grade would actually live within walking and bicycling distance, you're gonna have a lot of transportation problems with school buses, with MBTA, and most of the kids I fear are gonna be driven from the heights and from Turkey Hill, adding to congestion, not only in East Arlington, but especially through Arlington Center, the Route 60 Mass Ave intersection is just gonna see probably a couple hundred more cars in the morning. Again, this doesn't absolutely mean that the sixth, seventh, eighth grade is the solution there, but please keep that in mind as a primary criterion. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we now go on to an update on the social studies curriculum, Dr. Bode. Yes, I would like to invite Denny Conklin, who is our new K-12 social studies director, and I know that you've been wanting to have him come to the committee since he started at the beginning of this year. Yes, do you wanna sit down or? You need to walk around, I guess. Yeah, but no, I agree. Put the mic. Mic is essential for the viewers at home. Yeah. You can hold it. Make sure you hold it. You need to walk around with the mic, if you want. That's a lot. But yeah. Anyway. You need one of those. Well, for us, it seems like he's been here a long time, but I know that for the committee, some of you've had a chance to meet him, and it's an opportunity this evening for the community to meet you. So welcome, and thank you for being here. Great. So I just want to thank all of you for having me here tonight. It's been, I don't know, six or seven months since I've been to Arlington. It's been fantastic so far. Just to, if you haven't known a little bit of background about me, before I got here at Arlington, I started off my teaching career at Framingham High School, teaching 9th, 10th, and 11th and 12th grade there. After that, I spent some time working at Facing History and ourselves, doing professional development for teachers, doing coaching on curriculum throughout Massachusetts and Vermont, New Hampshire, and then I was lucky enough to land here this past summer. So what I'm hoping to do in this presentation for you all today is give you a little bit of a glimpse into where we've been in terms of history and social studies in the district, where we are in terms of history and social studies in the district, and where I hope we go in the future. So you can see here from our lovely logo, Arlington runs on history. Knock on wood that we don't have copyright lawsuits on our hands. But I see history as a really, really important part of our students' education in Arlington. So hopefully this works. So I've turned into my third grade teacher that didn't know how to use technology. Is the battery okay with that? Make sure that thing isn't. There you go. So throughout the year I've worked with different members of our history department to think about what is an adequate mission for the Arlington Public Schools History and Social Studies Department. You can see it highlighted up here. I think one of the most important components of it is having students experience history and social studies in a really authentic, hands-on, meaningful way. A lot of that is through experienced learning activities. A lot of that is also through perspective taking, which I think is such a critical part of learning about history and social studies, knowing that any given historical moment or moment in time is viewed by a different person in many, many different ways, viewed by different individuals in many different ways, and helping students make connections to today. One thing that I've really focused on this year in talking to teachers about, and I think is really important is this last part here about cultivating students' abilities to engage in civil discourse. I think that if social studies education can give students one thing, I think it could be that. Civil discourse, having students know how to listen to each other, how to talk to each other, how to have conversations with each other, I think that certainly students aren't getting this in the media, they're not getting it in social media, and a lot of times they're not getting it in the community that they live in. So I think that if in social studies and in history, if we can model for students what civil discourse looks like, if we can have students tackle challenging issues using current events or in history in a respectful way, and have students develop that skill in civil discourse, I think that's one of the best gifts that we can give our students through history education in the district. Forward. So with that, one of the things that we've worked on this year is identifying academic skills that we think are worthy to be discussing and focusing on in history and social studies, and things that are very specific for history and social studies, historical thinking skills or historical mindsets. So you can see that the academic skills that we've targeted as being very important to develop in history, reading, writing, of course, research, collaboration, note taking, and then the historical thinking skills that we've deemed are worthy for history education to target on. So evidence, having students back up to things that they say and the opinions that they have with evidence, this idea of continuity and change, realizing that there are recurring themes throughout history and social studies, but there are also new inventions, new things that rise up throughout history, historical perspective, which I mentioned earlier. Ethical reflection, I think history more than anything, invites students to think about different choices that were made in history, tough moments and tough decisions that had to be made in history. And the last thing which I think is also very important is civic participation. For not having students think about their role in society and the role that they play in the role that they live in, then I don't think we're doing an adequate job in preparing students to enter into society. So where have we been in terms of history and social studies in the district? This is my quantitative slide with lots of numbers and statistics, which Matt Coleman would love me for doing. If you look at history enrollment, last year at Arlington High School, we had 13, 29 students enrolled in history courses, which is pretty phenomenal. That goes beyond just the core courses in the history department, that goes to the AP courses that we're offering, the elective courses. Sometimes we have juniors who are taking two history courses, seniors that are taking two or three history courses. So we see a very robust enrollment last year and you can see in the parentheses that this year that's gone up to 1344. And we see that continuing to increase with next year's enrollment. At the high school as well, we had 302 students last year that took AP history classes. This year that number is 333, so going up as well. And then some really impressive scores with our AP history courses. For AP US history classes, we had 146 students taking that last year with 84% of students scoring three or above. And then if you take a look at our AP psychology scores, 93% of our students scoring three and above. So this speaks to the robust enrollment we have as well as the really solid job that our history teachers at the high school level are doing in pushing students in their AP scores. Also where we've been just some observations, I made in my studies throughout this year. We definitely have some solid curriculum maps in place K through 12 in terms of history. There's a lot of work previously done by teachers, by my predecessor Kerry Dunn in kind of labeling assessments, essential questions, important resources. So we have some nice curriculum maps in place, some great partnerships with local organizations. I've been in contact with Jason Russell House, Arlington Historical Society and really trying to continue to foster those partnerships. I think it's what makes Arlington really unique in a lot of perspectives. In terms of the elementary school, despite teachers having limited time, I've been blown away by all the things that our elementary school teachers are juggling, all the subjects they've teaching, the initiatives in each school, and they still make time for social studies instruction. And it's challenging and it's difficult, but they see it as important, they see the student enthusiasm towards it. So really great job in the elementary teachers in trying to squeeze that in. I've been really impressed by our secondary teachers and the content knowledge that they've brought. I know that that was one of the things that Kerry Dunn really focused on in professional development is making sure our secondary teachers have a strong content background. I think we're really strong in that regards in terms of what our teachers can bring to the table. So now where we are in terms of kind of what I've been doing so far this year. First off I started the year with doing some district surveys in elementary school and secondary, asking teachers what they thought were strengths of the curriculum, areas of improvement that they wanted to see, professional development that they wanted to see in order to be able to have a stronger social studies and history curriculum, resources and supports that they needed. So got a lot of data and a lot of analysis of what the teachers said in the surveys. And afterwards if you have questions about it I'm more than happy to talk about that. I was spending a bulk of my time doing classroom visits and walkthroughs. It's fantastic that now I've gotten to all the elementary schools, gotten into multiple grades and all the elementary schools. At the middle school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at the high school walking through classrooms on a weekly basis. To me and my job if I lose that classroom connection, if I don't know what's going on in the classrooms then I've lost that passion that's brought me into this profession in the first place. So I really want to make it a point to know what's going on in the classrooms and to know what teachers are doing. Communication has been really important to me. Weekly grade six to 12 memos that go out to teachers about PD opportunities, announcements and different other opportunities for students. And then monthly newsletters that go out to RK through five teachers in terms of highlighting social studies curriculum and things that are going on. One of the important pieces I've tried to do this year is I think our high school teachers need to know what's going on in the elementary school and I think our elementary teachers need to know what's going on in the high schools. So these new letters and memos have been a great way to show pictures, have summaries of what's going on as the teachers know. Professional development this year, we brought our secondary teachers to the JFK museum. We've done PD with primary source. So continuing that strong Arlington tradition, a very strong PD for our teachers around history and social studies. In terms of new initiatives that we've started this year we did a review of seventh grade textbooks much to my alarm when I got here. I saw that our seventh grade teachers were using textbooks for world geography from 1994. A couple of the classrooms that I was in were using atlases and resources from 1978 which is a really big issue for me in terms of world geography. So with the support of Dr. Bodie, Dr. Chesson, the administration, we started a review of new textbooks. Got a lot of samples and the seventh grade team in consultation with me and other teachers. Pick that one up there, discovering world geography, copyrighted in 2014, so it's recent, which is wonderful. And it's also more closely aligned with our seventh grade curriculum. So right now our seventh grade teachers have three or four different books that they're using when they go to the different continents. This has everything in one book which is fantastic. So hopefully with the approval of the budget we can move forward with buying new textbooks but also pushing us forward to digital textbooks. So I have a class set of books but mostly the subscriptions are gonna be online subscriptions that students can access on their iPads, Chromebooks and at home as well. We've started a review of third grade books. So teachers in third grade have been using Massachusetts our home. That's out of print so we've been looking at the Massachusetts story. So currently all of our third grade teams have this bundle of resources that they're reviewing. One of the fantastic things about the Massachusetts story is it has a lot of great supports for ELL students, a lot of great supplements for ELL students which with changing demographics in Arlington I think that's a big strength. Another thing that we've been focusing on this year, six through 12 has been the establishment of proficiency benchmarks. So the sets of skills that I went over earlier we've broken down those skills and we've tried to figure out what does it look like for student to be proficient in historical thinking and evidence in understanding change and continuity and understanding perspective and history. So our six through 12 teachers have been working together in our department time in their PLC time to come up with these proficiency benchmarks in history and social studies for all seven of those academic skills and all seven of those historical thinking skills which I know all of you had ahead of time a sample of what's going on with our civic skills and those benchmarks. So our hope is that it's a really great tool for teachers to assess where students were at at the beginning of the year and that our teachers can know and parents and students can know what does it mean for a student to be at grade level in their history skills and in their understanding of history. So those are continuing our eventual hope long term is to roll those down to the elementary schools and that'll do a lot of work in making sure that we have nice vertical alignment in the social studies program that students are experiencing K through 12 knowing that we have students thinking about historical perspectives in first grade all the way up through 12th grade. And like I said, we have a nice increase in enrollment in AP classes this year. Another thing that I've spent probably too much time working on this year is the history and social studies website for the district. So if you take a look at it, ArlingtonSS.weebly.com this is a screenshot of the front page. It's all the social studies place in one place. You can go for the high school and the middle school see faculty profiles for each one of our history teachers. You can see curriculum maps K through 12 of what's going on in history and social studies. There's a great student gallery work where you can see all the different work that students are doing in terms of history and social studies. And I try to keep it really updated with news and announcements as well. So it's a nice one-stop shop for teachers. The eventual hope to grow this is to have a password protected teacher resource center where they can look up best practices, pedagogy strategies, other different things that can be useful to them. October. Also what's going on in our K through five schools and things like you've left here are probably the experts. And I think all of you probably know some of the things that are going on. But these are just some snapshots of my travels throughout the district so far. There's some pictures up here from at one of the elementary schools, fourth graders doing their immigration unit and doing immigration posters for specific stories of individuals and their immigration stories. And the middle picture you can see there is one of our fourth grade classes that was doing a Socratic seminar. And that blew me away to see fourth graders doing a Socratic seminar and watching them, they were more engaged, they knew the rules and what to do in a Socratic seminar better than some of the ninth graders I've seen do a Socratic seminar. So that's a really big testament to the teachers that we have that are pushing our students and the kids were so excited about participating. Then some pictures here of some of our Thompson students doing their mock town hall meeting at town hall, which Mr. Hayner, you helped facilitate and the students love that. And I love seeing the students get up there and present their different warrants and their debating of them. So things going on in the elementary schools at the high school and the middle school, up top there you can see our annual mummification of Cornish game hens. To help students get hands-on experience in ancient Egypt. Some of our AP psychology works. Our AP psych students took different TV shows and different characters from these TV shows and they use psych principles to think about the cognitive and psychological development of some of these characters on TV. Down at the bottom you can see our eighth graders doing visual note-taking strategies. So it's no longer just outline format bullet points but using visuals to help students understand and take things away from readings. Then at the bottom some of our high school students went to the Ted Kennedy Institute and they participated in a mock simulation debating immigration bills in the fantastic Senate chambers that they have there. So part of the SIM simulation that they have at the Ted Kennedy Institute. And then one of the great things I was talking about civics before, integrating civics and the current election into teaching are six through 12 teachers. I was really impressed with myself. I put together this lovely spreadsheet which automatically tabulated and got me totals in all sorts of formulas that as a history person I'm not good at, but I did it. So we had our six through 12 students spend three days learning about the candidates in their schools and then eventually voting on Super Tuesday for the primaries and you can see some of the results that came up there in terms of how our six through 12 graders voted. The bottom pictures are elementary school students setting up little voting booths for them and they voted on their iPads. So having students understand the role that they can play and what role civics plays in their lives is really great to see. We're gonna continue to work on that as we build towards the election next year, making sure students have an awareness of what's going on. And then I have to brag about our different organizations and our clubs that we have our national history day students that you can see they're just competed in the regional competition this past weekend out of the 13 teams that we had all 13 won awards. 11 out of those 13 teams are now advancing towards the state competition. So phenomenal work of our advisors, Alison Sansedita and Jason Levy who spent a lot of time with those students that are a mock trial team which competed at the Massachusetts Bar Association. They advanced to the sweet 16 round. They lost advanced team by just one point but a big shout out to Joe Sansedita who's the advisor for that team. So just some great things that our students are doing in the district as well. So kind of moving on kind of where we're going now in terms of socializing history in the district some district-wide short-term goals over the summer we're gonna be working with teachers to plan some common election 2016 election plans so that we can have some degree of consistency between what's going on and how teachers are teaching about the election. So what's going on in second grade at Thompson is kind of similar at least to what's going on in second grade bracket. We've started a cultural pluralism committee made up of different administrators different teachers throughout the district to talk about different moments in the curriculum where there might be difficult conversations for teachers around race and religion. So this comes up at multiple points in the history curriculum. So hopefully working together as the experts teachers that are dealing with this on a daily basis to in the long term come up with some guidelines so that teachers if they have these kind of prickly moments around different cultural issues they have something that they can go to that can give them a little bit of advice or some guidance on how to approach those situations. Short-term elementary school really working on horizontal alignment to making sure that second graders have some degree of uniformity of what they're learning and what they're doing. Our third graders have some degree of alignment in what they're doing. So we're gonna be working on scope and sequences for units to try to help get some more consistency school by school. But we're gonna be revising parts of the secondary curriculum. A big focus of second grade as you might know is Japan but we're gonna try to extend that so students are comparing multiple cultures and multiple nations. So they can kind of have a wider experience doing some co-planning with ELA making sure that we can have some interdisciplinary units as well. If middle school very excited about possible seventh grade textbooks we're working on revising the sixth grade curriculum which is fantastic. Sixth grade curriculum as you may know is a study of ancient civilizations. Right now that curriculum goes chronologically. We're revising it next year so that it's taught thematically. So that we have these geography themes or these world history themes like geography, religion and art and students are gonna be comparing multiple civilizations Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt at the same time. Instead of just kind of the siled approach where they learn about Mesopotamia, they take the test, they move on. They're gonna be able to see that all of these things are going on at the same time and I think it's gonna be much meaningful much more meaningful learning for sixth grade students to see all those comparisons at once. High school continuing to expand our AP courses offer different AP courses. Very excited next year about continuing to expand our co-teaching model between a general educator and a special ed educator in our history classes. So we can really include our special ed students in the mainstream history classes as much as possible and we have some really great work going on at the high school with co-teaching right now and model that we feel like is working very well for students. Just highlight of sixth grade revision. We have some teachers that are testing it out this year. Right now we have two teachers that are testing it out and piloting it. So they're comparing geography right now for all these different civilizations. I sat in the other day and I just saw before my eyes how effective it was. I couldn't believe the inferences that students were making. They had researched different rivers and bodies of water in each of the civilizations and then they were making inferences about how that affected trade, how that affected protection during war and it was just connections I saw students being able to make that they might not have been able to make going chronologically through the curriculum. We're gonna skip through this slide. And then kind of long term where I'm hoping to go with the district, with social studies and history. District wide again, this vertical and horizontal alignment. Thinking about how we build a nice sequence of social studies and history, grade K all the way through 12. I think it's really important as we start to look at curriculum revision that students see themselves represented in the curriculum. So whether that's thinking about women's history, whether that's thinking about LGBT history, whether that's thinking about immigrants and their role. I think it's really, really important that as students are learning about history specifically that they can see themselves in the story and the narrative of America and in the world. So focusing on that as well. The history frameworks are gonna be revised based on all indications I get from people I know at the Department of Education. So really making sure that we're aware of what's going on with that. Just from people I've talked to, it really seems like we're moving away from content based standards frameworks to skill based ones. So keeping an eye on the Common Core and the C3 standards and making sure that we're kind of ahead of the ball on that. The revision that we're doing, continuing with thinking about texts in the middle age, community outreach, continuing to revise elementary curriculum, integrating primary sources for elementary schools. Middle school, one of the big things that we're gonna try to look at and address is right now there's a big gap between fifth grade and 10th grade where students have no US history at all. So trying to figure out where US history units and case studies can be dropped in that time period where we can drop in some units on civics so that it's not such a long gap. So that's gonna be more of a long term thing. It's gonna require some teachers changing what they're used to doing, which is always a fun thing to ask teachers to do. And really focusing on a case study approach to history I think is the better approach. When you have this argument over breath versus depth, I'm personally more of a person that says depth because it lets students dive into a really small moment in history and make a lot of other connections to other moments in history. So thinking about that, at the high school level, looking at more towards common assessments and late teachers having some common grading to calibrate the way that we're all grading and making sure that students have a more even experience in high school. So that is it. I just wanna thank you all for your support of history and social studies. Really excited about the work that we've done so far this year, the work that we have ahead of us. And if you have any questions I would love to take them. Mr. Heiner, first off I wanna thank you. It's a phenomenal presentation, really great. Quick question, I was born in 1945 and in American history we never made it to 1945. Now we've added 70 more years since then. We're a very young country compared to the rest of the world for history. How do you get it all in one year with meaning? Yeah, I mean right now at the high school we have US history separated into two years which is nice and I think it's a luxury that we have. I think we still have some curriculum shifts to make so our US2 class, when I taught US2 in Framingham we got all the way up through Obama's presidency. Wow. Which was kind of a wacky thing for me to be teaching about the election of 2000, September 11th, but what I've realized now is that our high school students were just entering kindergarten or not even in kindergarten yet when September 11th happened. They have no idea, some of them don't have memories of this. So I think that again goes back to kind of our responsibility as history educators to get them there, but that goes back too. I mean I think that students have to have an understanding of the Middle East during the Cold War to really understand why we are at the way that we're at today with ISIS and different things that come up in history. We have to have students have an understanding of the goal for the ramifications that had. So making sure that that US2 history can be honored and that we can have students do that, it's important. One other question, it's a personal thing of mine as well, the Vietnam War and other things. When I started teaching in the 70s, it got a quick rush through and because it was still a hot button item, those issues, current issues throughout the world and stuff like that, you mentioned before that, do you feel you need to train the teachers in giving an objective approach to these things? I think so and I mean I'm lucky that I feel like I have a really good staff that is good at that, when it comes to issues of religion or going into the election next year, I think that in a lot of the cases, the teachers that I talk to go out of their way to make sure that they're not being biased. But it's challenging, the first time I taught September 11th, I grew up right outside New York, I had neighbors that were involved in that and the first time I taught it, I found myself much more emotional than I would have ever guessed I was gonna be. So I think that it's a challenge, it's an area of reflection for our teachers in their practice as well for thinking about to what extent is their own identities and their own perspectives play a role in the way that they teach and interact with students. I think that's a constant thing we have to have teachers ask themselves. Thank you. Mr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Conklin, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to meet you. The excitement that I'm getting from just hearing you and watching this reminds me of when Mr. Coleman, Matt Coleman presented to us for the first time as a new department head and how energetic he seemed about what he was about to do and I get the same sense from you, sir. A couple quick questions. I saw a play in Cambridge not too long ago, 1984 and some of the issues resonated with me as to how do we instruct, how do we teach our kids about history in terms of what is truth, what isn't the truth and specifically, and I'm glad you mentioned Middle East and the conflicts we're seeing there for so many years and the college campuses that we're hearing about with divestment issues and things like that and bringing people on to college campuses to talk and to talk freely about these issues on both sides. How, as educators, how in the district can we promote free discourse and civil discourse and also keep in mind, okay, this is history, this is the truth, this is fabricated. So this is the point where my historical nerdy side comes out because one of my favorite things with history education is this idea of corroboration and corroborating sources and to me that's one of the most exciting things that students can do is to get a bunch of sources about the same thing, read all of them, look for bias, look for perspective and then try to come to a consensus on what it all means. So I think that's one of the things that plays into this idea of civil discourse. I think part of it is challenging students to sometimes in debating argue a viewpoint that they actually oppose because it forces them to research another perspective and another viewpoint that they have and even though they don't agree with it, I think this idea of building historical empathy is something that's really important as well. But again, that only goes like so far. Like if you're talking about the Holocaust, you wanna understand in a way like why Hitler did the way, the things that he did, but by no means you're ever gonna say like what he did was good. So kind of this idea of empathy, historical empathy, I think only goes so far. There's sometimes where you can draw a line to the sand and say what happened to Birmingham, Alabama to African American kids is not something that is appropriate and you can corroborate as many sources as you want. That's still gonna be the case. So I think that that's part of the challenge of history too is figuring out, like you said, what are the actual hard facts and then what is actually the debatable parts about history and it's always exciting because all these new sources are always coming out and sources are being declassified and we're getting new views and new lenses into the past. Thank you, keep up what you're doing. This is excellent. I'm so glad to be hearing this. I remember as a preschool kid in 1976 voting Carter forward and my kids were just doing that with the primary here and they were so excited about it and the sixth grader that I have brought home a list of issues and he had to put his top five or top three, top five issues and we compared his parents, if our issues matched his issues and it was great and we loved it. Thank you so much. Dr. Allison, happy. Thank you. I echo the sentiments of my colleagues. I wanted to speak specifically about the textbook subscription. First, I remember my daughter's now in high school and I remember how excited she was when she finally brought home a textbook that was not older than she was. And she would just be thrilled to know that we're getting new textbooks. First, for our audience out there, I looked up how much so the textbooks that he's talking about, I think for the seventh grade are gonna cost us $12,000. I'm wondering, can you speak one, to how long the digital subscriptions last and two, how many years of our schools still need replacement? Is everyone back in 1970s like seventh grade or where are we? No, I mean, the state of our textbooks is pretty good, I would say, in our own public schools. In terms of the seventh grade ones, it will give us, each classroom will get 30 copies of the actual hard in-person textbook and then it'll be a six-year digital subscription. So by the end of those six years, there's definitely gonna be another addition out and that'll be a good time for us to kind of renew that addition and see what else is out there. I think one of the challenges is that something like geography and specifically thinking about human geography within that and the study of people's movements has changed a lot and the study of it and the way that we're speaking about and then researching it is very different. Whereas in our eighth grade World History I class, the way that we're thinking about the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance, yes, there are different perspectives and advances but it's kind of mostly staying the same. There are any different whistles and bells into it. So that's why I think the seventh grade World was the most urgent one to replace is because it is a field that develops so fast. I think after it, our high school textbooks are in pretty good shape. I think that one of the great things is that we have teachers at the high school and the middle school that don't solely rely on the textbooks, which is a wonderful thing because textbooks in themselves are biased by the people that write them and by different agendas and whatnot. So even if we have high school US History II textbook that stops in 2010, I think we have great teachers that are bringing in primary sources, speeches, letters that are kind of bringing things up to date anyways. So I think that textbooks in themselves are a nice reference point for students it's a place to get some of the information but the supplemental materials that I see the teachers bringing in I think is much more valuable in the end. Thank you. Dr. Seuss. Yeah, I'm very lucky. My son's passion is history and he's been very lucky to have really fabulous teachers and now that I see sort of what's coming I'm even more excited about it. I just have a quick question. So he's in ninth grade and he already started talking to me about historiography type of stuff which is at the historical perspectives and I was sort of wondering when and I was surprised that I was so young because when I went to school we didn't learn that as young. When do you sort of start teaching that there are sort of different periods of time where we look at these historical perspectives in different ways? I think that part of it is coming up right now in your son's class because I guess in my world they're around World War I. Yeah. Going into the rest of the revolution, World War II. So I think that in those classes it begins to come up when we get into the contemporary events. That's kind of, it really comes into focus I think once we get to 10th grade in US history because we see in the study of Christopher Columbus different ways that Columbus was written about. Some of kind of our American heroes or founding fathers are being looked at and written about in very different ways. So I think it really comes into play then that certainly I think there's a lot of focus on it when we get to the end of the Civil War and reconstruction. I'm thinking about how reconstruction was written about and how there's the phone, not the phone or school, there was the, I'm blanking on the name right now when I wrote about it, but different periods of history where reconstruction was looked at as a failure, looked at as a success by W.E.B. Du Bois and today we're trying to make sense of it. So I think US one is where that really starts to focus itself. Okay, cool. Thank you. This has been fascinating. I've loved this. When I first started teaching in 1983, I came to the realization that I had students who didn't have any real living connection to Martin Luther King, who was a major figure in my life growing up. And I remember vividly the day he was killed having grown up in the 60s. And your remarks about 9-11 and the impact of the generation going through now is being very different, that they're living in a society that has been impacted by it, but they don't have that real solid foundation memory of it. And the teaching of recent history as history seems to be a very critical part of this. And I'm really glad you're recognizing this. A couple of questions. One, I noticed that Sanders did one among the secondary schools, but Hillary Clinton did well in the elementary, do you have any reason for those trackers? So you won the town, so. No comment on that. And you were talking a lot about civil discourse and civics. And I know that town meeting is a positive force for that, but are you finding any impact from this political campaign on your discussion of civil discourse with students? I mean, I think that the current political campaign, just talking to all my teachers makes it seem even more urgent that we have just conversations about civil discourse. It's funny, because mentioning Dr. Seuss' comments about historiography, I had a conversation with a colleague today that I'm just fascinated to wonder about how historians are gonna write about this election cycle in the future. And I think that's a fun thing to ask students. 50 years from now, are we gonna be talking about this election as a bullet in the radar, or is the turning point where just things completely changed? So I think that this is a perfect reason why current events offer such an interesting once for students to be able to think about topics like civil discourse, and then to be able to compare them to other events that happened in history. I mean, the election of John Adams was also very contentious. It was kind of one of the first mud slinging elections. I mean, it was very early on in the country's history, but you can make a lot of parallels. You can make a lot of interesting parallels between Donald Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, or Andrew Jackson, and our teachers are doing that. And I think it's fascinating for students to be able to be thinking about those things. It makes it even, they understand why I'm learning about history. So I think it's great. My readings this week have been largely surrounded by the dissolution of the wigs and the parallels. It's fascinating. This is really a great year to be teaching this stuff. And a personal note, I'm a former New Yorker. I came up here in 89 for grad school. Where'd you grow up? Rockland County. OK. In Nyeak. Oh, I know where Nyeak is. My family, my grandfather lived in Montvale. My father did too. So it's right across the border. Oh, yeah. If you remember Nyeak, Triello's pizza, fescar of nuts, or whatever. We don't hold it against him. We definitely won't hold it against him. But you're not a Yankee fan, are you? A huge Yankees fan. Whoa. That's it. That's it. Can we have some nice civil discourse on that talk? Are baseball allegiances? It's the ad group of Mets fans. So it's pretty easy to take the Yankees from a different perspective. Any other questions or comments for the chairman? Superintendent. This was a fabulous presentation. I think the excitement is really very strong. But the thing, he quickly went through the mock trial and the national history competition. Our teachers are inspiring students to work for months after school in the evening to prepare for these competitions. Six months, our students in the middle school worked and congratulations to Allison Sancinito and Jason Levy for being advisors to this group. But they did fantastic. You must be so proud of them all. We are. I'm really, really proud of them. Super proud of the students. I was judging national history this past Saturday. And since I work for Arlington, it has to be blind. You can't know the district that the projects come from. But it was so obvious to me which ones were Arlington ones, because the theme this year was exploration and counter and exchange. So students from other districts to these very straightforward like Apollo 11, Lewis and Clark. And then our students are doing like Grimm's fairy tales, the diphtheria vaccine, looking at the passage of women's rights bills in international charity work. So just the topics that our students were exploring were so beyond any of the other ones that I saw from other districts. Again, a big testament to Jason and Allison, but just the level of inquiry that our students have in the district as well. Dr. Allison Ampe. I just wonder if we could get any of the kids to come in and maybe be at the start of a meeting. Yeah. I think great practice for them before they go to states. That's true. They're going to states in early April, right? Yeah. The other part, too, which I think is really important for people to hear when Allison wrote me about the results, she also talked about how the kids were also recognizing and cheering on students from other communities. And I can't tell you the number of times I hear coaches and people from the districts talking about behavior and just the general way that the children are presenting themselves. And we should, as a community, feel very proud of these students because they certainly represent us well. And the same thing with the mock trial. Our teams did well. And they prepared for six months. And they got to the final 16 and then lost by one point to Boston, Latin. So they did a fantastic job. Fantastic. Great. Oh, you thrilled the Civic Skeeks among us. And you have to do that to get elected to these. Thank you so much. Thank you. You've got to come back again. The superintendent's budget for a school committee. Well, this is the evening in which the school committee should vote on accepting the budget as their budget. And at this point, we've had a lot of discussion over the last few months. We've had public input. And I think at this stage, I don't know if there's anything that anyone wants to talk further about the budget. But at some point, we'll need a motion to move that forward. Once the vote is taken, it now becomes the school committee's budget. And that budget will be presented to finance committee in two weeks. What? Oh, one week. Next one. Dr. Allison Ampe. I moved to approve the budget as submitted by the superintendent. OK. It's a motion by Dr. Allison Ampe, second by Dr. Seuss. Would you like to speak to your motion? I wondered if everyone might like to have a chance either to ask questions or just to make comments on the budget. Brief ones, because I know we're running a little behind. But if that's OK. I will entertain any comments, questions, amendments, or other forms of discussion from the committee. Mr. Pierce. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. After hearing from Mr. Conklin and in hearing from the administration, my concerns and issues relative to updating our books and curriculum and the necessary part of that has become much more clear to me, feel more comfortable with allocating those resources to that end tonight. So thank you for that. Mr. Heiner. I want to thank Ms. Johnson, superintendent, and everyone else that did all the work on the budget and the stress and the issues that had to with the cuts that you had to make or recommended cuts and things of that nature. Saying that, I still feel that the initial budget that prior to those cuts and the thing should be the school committee's priority and the finance or the town meeting come back and do it. My no vote will only be based on that, not a reflection on the work that the people have done. I mean, that sincerely. Dr. Allison Ampey. I have one question and one comment. Oops, I actually had a question for Ms. Elmer. I'll ask it and we can, if I'm not sure she's coming back. Cheers. Cheers. OK. Maybe I'll make my comment first then. So I'm not disagreeing with it. I'm kind of echoing what Mr. Heiner said. I'm not disagreeing with the choices. I will vote yes, because we need to pass the budget and move it on. But I wanted to add, again, my disappointment that there's so much that we must forego funding. I'm especially thinking of the additions to the SLC program, the extra teachers at the high school, the music director, and the makerspace teacher. And just for people at home and stuff, everything that's read was cut. There's not so much on that one, but there's a lot here. There's a lot here. There's a lot there. Not all of those are full-time positions. Some of these are our curriculum materials and things. But still, it gives you a sense of, because we were not able to obtain the extra funding, there is a good chunk of things that we were not able to do and will diminish the experience of our students next year and probably for years to come. I'll ask my question when she comes back. OK. Dr. Sillis. Yeah, I want to. Dr. Alice Namby wasn't here when I last sort of praised her for turning around and with Ms. Johnson what was to be a absolutely devastating falling off the cliff situation to something that's just really painful. So kudos to you for that. You're not to be blamed that we didn't get farther, obviously. I mean, because you guys did a lot. And so I want to thank you for that. We did a lot with very limited resources. The high school was particularly sort of forgotten about this year. We were not going to see a big increase in our students next year, but after that we are. So unfortunately, we have to go and look at the high school in much more detail next year, as I'm sure you got. Everyone knows. So I'm disappointed that high school classes are going to be very big. Lots of free periods that students would like to take classes. Elementary and middle school classrooms are still going to be very big. I think a lot of parents understand the elementary school numbers. They don't really understand the classroom size of the middle school because it's dairies by class. And so it's really helpful to look at the number that are over 25, which is hovers around 25%. So yeah, I'm disappointed. But I'm glad that we didn't fall out the cliff. Diane Johnson. If I may, I'd just like to make a clarifying point because many of the administrators have taken this question. There may be a mistaken perception in the community that cuts are being made to the base. This is not true. Everything that we are doing this year, we will do next year. What is not happening is that we put forth a very extensive proposal, which you can see in all the budget documents, to do what we think we need to do to continue on our trajectory of excellence. And those things were cut. We are not making reductions to what we're doing this year. And I think that's an important distinction to make. You know, we are not, and for those of you who may not remember, the dire FY11 budget, which was my first, what a way to start, when we were making real cuts, that's not what we're doing. We're not growing the way we'd like. We're not doing everything we want to do, but we're not cutting at this point. Dr. Allison Ampley. Ms. Elmer, I'm sorry, I had a question for you. It was ill time. You want to pull your mic? Okay, so I'm looking, I was just reviewing the things that we have. And one of the things that we were not able to fund is the classroom expansion. In the early childhood classroom, we're not able to fund a half-time teacher. And I just wanted to be sure, will we still, I know that there are mandates that we have to provide, not just education for special education students for preschool, but then there has to be a number of regular education students with them in the classroom. Will we be able to provide the appropriate capacity for both class, you know, both types of students if we don't have that extra teacher, half teacher? We will, but it will limit the scheduling. So, you know, we have options like five day versus three day and whatnot. So that is where we're going to be limited in what we can actually offer. So we won't be able to offer the variety of coverage that we had hoped to provide by adding that additional teacher. Okay, great, thank you. Any other comments or questions before we vote? I mean, the budget is our hopes and dreams and our values. And I don't really think that we're keeping up with our hopes, dreams, and values. We're not making cuts per se, but as the population increases in our own community, we need to adjust our services to meet an increase that population, we're not keeping up with it and class sizes are creeping up. And the level of service I believe is being reduced. I recognize the need for passing this budget tonight is the best budget we can pass under the circumstances, but I don't think it's one that we should be voting for with tremendous joy, but more out of a sense of realism. Hearing no other discourse or discussion on the topic, I'll take a roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Mr. Pierce. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Ms. Darks. Yes. Dr. Seuss. Yes. The chair votes in the negatives for the reasons I expressed. If the vote had come to me and it was required to pass the budget, I certainly would have voted for it, but it doesn't make me happy. And I think that we need to reflect communally on happiness with our ability to move forward. Ms. Johnson. If I may, Mr. Chair, in past years we voted the totals that can be found in section four on the summary page, the budget transfer summary lines, and we voted the amounts for elementary, secondary, special ed, curriculum and instruction, administration, and other. We have not voted it as one number. Is there any desire for the committee to break those numbers out or to adopt them as all? I'm looking to the committee. Dr. Allison Ampe. I was going to make a motion that we're voting to approve the numbers as listed on page one of one of section four. I'm not going to read them all. So the motion was to adopt the budget in its entirety without a need to go into the budget. I think that that reflects the role of the committee. Thank you, sir. Any other questions or comments on the budget? Hearing none, we get to discussion on the Gibbs School. There was a meeting of the School Enrollment Task Force. It was Tuesday night. I've been out of meetings every night this week of losing track. In this room, I was a spectator. I sat in the back, the superintendent, Ms. Starks and Mr. Hayner were participants along with Mr. Thielman, who is not here tonight due to a work obligation. Ms. Starks, would you like to describe the meeting? Sure. I think that most of the discussion on Tuesday night was about the motions that had been made the previous School Enrollment Task Force, which was to get some information and some costs about getting more detailed cost analysis of both either adding on to the oddison or renovating the Gibbs. And the superintendent brought forth two proposals, one for each of those from HMFH. And those were approved and it was moved that we move ahead with those. On top of that, I also wanna say thank you to the finance committee who agreed to split the cost of those so that each of us only has to pay about $25,000, a little slightly less on that for those and that we should have those in about six weeks, I think. So once they start and they will be simultaneous so that we will have both in six weeks, which should give us a much better handle on what kind of costs we're looking at. And I know that those were included, I think everybody saw those. And then the other piece of information that we talked about and discussed, which you also have was a timeline that John Coles put together just to try to make sure that we all understood kind of all of the different pieces that we are looking at as far as school buildings and the timelines for them, as far as the middle school, Thompson, Minuteman and the high school. And he tried to put on there and we tried to think about some kind of alignment of what we call a financing timeline, which is kind of when do things have to go to town meeting? When are we looking for debt exclusions? And we started to have some discussion about that as well. I don't think we came to any real decisions on that. I think that the earliest we would look for a debt exclusion would be June, but we will also recognize that that is fairly aggressive given that we're not gonna have actual cost estimates on Audison for another six weeks, so we don't really know what the amount is, that we are still kind of waiting on information on Minuteman and we also still don't have our hands around the cost for Thompson. So hard to go out and ask for money and we don't really know what the amount of money is. So there was some talk about whether that debt exclusion could actually happen in June or if it might end up pushing out because of just getting data and what we can do with the data we have. And if we don't have the data until April, can we really turn around a debt exclusion vote in a month, a month and a half? Do you have a copy of the timeline that was presented? Yes, it was sent to us. It was sent to us, yeah. Oh, okay. So that's kind of mostly what happened. We also, the superintendent also spoke briefly about the, there was a K to six proposal that I brought up here at our last school committee meeting and she also discussed why that proposal wasn't as useful, I would say, as some of the others. I specifically took away from that that two of the major reasons why it is not really a viable option is one, it really doesn't help with the overall issue of space. It doesn't really get us to the amount of space that we need when we are kind of at our worst. And the second thing is it would cause a massive redistricting without any grandfathering, which is something that we had kind of as a school committee promised to parents that we wouldn't do. So I think when you look at those two things, it kind of made it so that that in and of itself wasn't really a viable option. So I kind of think that was the kind of the outcomes. I don't know. Mr. Heiner. Okay. Ms. Stax covered it really well. I would like to commend the superintendent on that report on the K to six. I think she convinced everybody. The big piece that I took out of that was the dramatic difference in program. And that Mr. Toskey turned around and said that he remembered when we went to the middle school concept and it felt very positive about the program that was there and he did not feel comfortable about changing it and going back. Well, he said he didn't want to be any part of the political aspect of changing that and telling the town that the report was excellent. And I hope that's going to go on the webpage for other people to see it's clear. It's very convincing in my mind on that. The other aspect is that Mr. Cole, when creating that timeline, and I think he said it several times, that his intent in doing that was to show could it be done with a plus and minus for September 18? The answer was yes. When he said plus and minus, it might have a glitch somewhere along the line, something they don't control that might knock it out that the starting time might show up in the following February or January of 18. As far as timeline regarding debt exclusion, Mr. Stocks is absolutely right. We are not going to have these numbers for six weeks, but they will be my understanding and I'll stand corrected by Mr. Stocks if I didn't get it correct. The intent is to bring back the prices for two, the enrollment committee task force at that time, we'll look at that, discuss it I think the intent is to make a recommendation to the special town meeting at that time. If they then go forward and accept it, it is a very, very short time. I think at that point the decision will be made if we're gonna, when we're going to look for the debt exclusion. Part of that debt exclusion in the discussion last night and it isn't directly connected to this is all the other things that are coming up and whether to put them as separate votes at that election or whatever. As it was said last night, that's left for the political aspects and several members went offered to run for school committee randomly to the hills right away on that aspect. Dr. Allison Ampe. I had a question about the Audison and Gibbs feasibility studies. I think I understand who was responsible for requesting it but my question is partly who's designing it and specifically, we haven't seen it and I wanna be sure that these studies are comparing apples to apples. For example, the Gibbs comes with an additional gem. I wanna be sure that if we're talking an Audison edition that we have adequate gymnasium space for all the students who will be in a expanded school the same for cafeteria space, the same for media space and for both things but I wanna be sure that those, we're not just providing classroom additions in the Audison side, we need to provide everything we need for a school that would be the size that it would then be because I don't wanna have a number that's artificially low for an Audison side and then we go, well, we have to go that way because it's so low but then it turns out well, we forgot to include the extra gym, the extra cafeteria, the media center, all these things. There was considerable conversation about that Tuesday night including if we go with an Audison option, the cost of the town of doing the necessary work on the Gibbs anyway to keep the building intact and the discussion is that there's a lot of money that needs to be put into the building if we don't take it back. So those numbers have to come to play but one of the discussions was about the educational specifications which the superintendent and the architect will ensure, excuse me, are aligned for both proposals. Dr. Seuss. Yes, thank you. A few points. One is one of the problems with that sixth grade model as I understand it is that the proposal had some sixth graders at Audison and other sixth graders in the elementary school so it created that kind of inequity, that particular proposal that was put out by Mr. You came in sixth with It was just like a create, not the kind of inequity that we try to avoid in this district. That was one serious advantage of that. The second point is I'm really heartened that we're going forward fairly soon with the design of the Thompson edition. I understand that we're gonna, although we won't pull the trigger so to speak until we have a better understanding what the numbers are in the fall that we're going to really come up with a design. And I wanted to remind everyone that the school committee when we voted on this did not vote for only a sixth grade, sixth classroom edition. We specifically voted to look at the project as a whole and then thus to consider the common space, maybe using the music room as a second gymnasium that's just maybe, or some other idea and that that's just not forgotten as we're planning something that we plan the entire project. And the third point I wanna make is that if we end up going with the Gibbs option, which is looking likely, we are gonna have to decide fairly soon what model of education we're gonna have in there. And so I wanted to know where we are with respect to getting a teacher input to have we reached, have we heard back from the Needham people to know if we can hear from them about their model to just inform our decision-making process. Dr. Boley. All right, let's see you start. Yes, we have heard from teachers. I was over at the middle school the other day to begin the discussion and engaging teachers in the thinking of this and I thought it was a great discussion and teachers had some small group discussions like I expect that that will continue. And at the point we get to that as a discussion item at this table, I would like to invite some teachers to come and speak to this issue. As far as when that will be, it's going to depend on timing of where we are with that. And I think that we'll have a better idea once we go through the two studies and take a look at the numbers. So as far as reach out to the Needham, I have done that. I have spoken with the principal and again the principal would be interested in inviting us over to see the school which I have already told her I'm definitely going to take her up on and whether I take a couple of teachers that might be a possibility as well in that process. A couple of sixth grade teachers to also observe. Would you be interested in speaking here or is that not? Would you be interested in speaking here or speaking to the community? Well, we talked about that. I'm not sure at the full school committee meeting maybe in a subcommittee meeting which would be a little bit more informal in terms of a discussion. That might be a possibility going forward. The decision, assuming that is the decision to not surplus the Gibbs building any further than this year, then the decision about which grade is going to be there really has an urgency and a significance when we actually get into the design and the design phase of this. And I think that goes to the discussion of the debt exclusion override. I don't believe we would be beginning a design phase until we have money identified. So this is not going to be happening in the next couple of weeks, but I certainly think people thinking about it is a very good idea. As it was, I think a good idea to explore what it would mean to have eight K6 schools. And would that solve the problem of enrollment growth and how would that affect us educationally? And that report is on the Task Force website which can be linked from our website as well. Before we go any further, I just want to make a comment here. The reason why we put this on the agenda was sort of my insistence at the last meeting because I wanted to scope out our options in terms of what we need to do. I feel a sense of urgency on the topic of moving forward because any kind of delay is going to result in a year it could result in a year backup of any solution for us which is both costly in terms of providing modular classrooms and making do with insufficient space and in terms of the impact that has on our students and our staff. So I felt a tremendous sense of urgency in this. I felt a lot more confident after I saw the timeline chart that Mr. Cole presented with a timeline that would open the Gibbs as a school in 2018. So that the Task Force is viewing this with a certain set of urgency as well. The one thing that they did ask is that we not make a decision until the financial reports come back. The other thing is is that in subsequent two weeks the only vote that we would need to make on our side is a vote to take the school out of reserve. In other words to vote that this is not a school and reserve anymore that we needed for school department use. And that vote would need to be taken between now and June. But as long as the sense of urgency is communicated through the rest of the folks who are in this discussion, I feel comfortable waiting in that vote until the reports come out at their request. Mr. Heiner. Just on the two things. On that point in order for the town, the select one or whoever does it to extend or not notify the people there, we have to do our action first. So we can't wait until our last meeting in June to do it. That's all I'm saying. That's right. And I agree with you to wait until the appropriate time. The other thing I would ask Dr. Bodie through the committee to work on a cost estimate. This was also mentioned briefly at the enrollment meeting of the operating costs of doing audits and may not be that more difficult. It's just an expansion it is. But whatever options we're looking at at Gibbs, a six, seven, eight, a six, is there going to be a difference in what the year to year operating costs is going to be that will be different. On other words, additional. Some of the teachers will move down here, but we are going to need principles and administrators and things like that. That's going to be added. But to show us as part of our decision making or and for the, I don't know if that's relative for the enrollment committee to make a decision on, but we need to know the, this is going to be an addition. Mr. Foskett mentioned to our operating budget going forward in the fugitive. So if you could put that together, I can't make that request alone. But I think it's important for us. Dr. Bode. Actually, I've already done that. And it's a preliminary one because it's a very difficult one to really get into the FTEs in terms of traveling or what a teacher be splitting between two buildings. And some of that depends upon again, whether it's a grade six or it's a six to eight. I'm looking for a comparison on the six, seven, eight and the six. Yeah, that is something I can delve a little bit more into than I have already. I'm not perfectly honest. I'm not sure I'd be entirely confident until you actually get there. Gentlemen, tonight mentioned one thing that we may own a piece of the cost of transportation for sixth grade is coming from the Lexington line. Well, we will, we currently bust students from East Arlington. Right. If we did a six, seven, eight, most of East Arlington is in the Gibbs walking area. Well, six, seven, eight would not, we would not have that in our budget. We would not need a bus. Right, is what I'm saying. But if we went to just a six model at Gibbs, there are people that would be bused from other parts of the town, which may be a wash from what we're doing right now for six, seven, eight. Totally a wash from what we're doing right now. Okay. Director Transportation has already looked into that, has actually picked out the sites and has looked at the timing for each site in order to get on it. So I know it's a wash. I know it's a wash. But if that's included in the statement that it is that it balances out from six, seven, eight or the six coming from East Arlington, because these reports are gonna go to the public. That's all I'm saying. You're sharing it with us right now. As long as it's part of the report, I think it's important. That's all. Dr. Allison Ampe. Two things. One, as you build that, we need to, when you're comparing the six, seven, eight versus a six only model, you need to be looking at the inefficiencies that are going to be inherent because you're going to have two smaller irregular-sized populations at the different schools and to either maintain class-size equity. You're going to be adding extra teachers. I mean, unless you have miracles and people just go bing and they go perfectly split, which will not happen. So that's one thing we need to be talking about. And that's actually a significant chuck of money more than the busing. The second thing is, I understand we're not in charge of the leases that we're not the people who communicate, but I just want that someone has looked at the leases and there is no causes like what I'm thinking of with our contracts. I mean, I know they're personnel and stuff, but about notification deadlines or anything, I just want to be sure that we're not going to be tripped up on a deadline. There's like, we have to notify before a certain amount of time ahead. Part of it too, in the analysis, besides the FTE cost, is what are the programmatic trade-offs? There are neither one of the, neither one of the decisions is benign in that area. And of course, to your earlier question about the studies in terms of what kind of space we would need to have at Odesson, that is definitely part of the studies. We want to take a look at our core spaces and to make sure that they are at a size that would be adequate for that large population. And then just one other question I had as we look towards modeling different things. I wondered if it's possible to loop teacher, if we did go with a six and seven, eight, if it's possible to do any looping of people like the assistant principals, maybe counselors or nurses, so that there's some grown-ups that would travel with the kids to these people. Like they do right now, some of the principals travel with the cluster. They rise with the student as they go in years. I'm just thinking of what gives them some more. As do the guidance counselors, yeah. Anyway, just, it's a thought. Dr. Seuss. So I guess I'm still not sure about the timing. So we have to make, the school community has to make the decision about educational models, sixth grade versus sixth through eighth. When do we need to make that decision by? Really not until we go into the design phase in terms of when you need to make it now. Next fall? Well, that depends upon when we're able to have the funds to go forward. Well, suppose we have a dead decision in June. You know, then we have the funds. When would we need to make the decision? Probably that's in the summertime. So we need to make the decision by the summer. So I think- Go into the design phase. So ideally we need to make the decision before we leave for the summer. Because- Possibly. Ideally. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why there's sort of a urgency to hearing from as many voices as possible to help inform our decision-making process. Yeah, okay. I think we have to know that we're going to the GIMS before we leave. Well- I know, but we have to- You would also have to do the calculus of the politics of that. Would it make a difference in an override vote for the public to know what the school committee's decision was at that point? Mr. Heiner. I would be very nervous of holding that back. Yeah. In other words, we're gonna go- Please send and give us money in there, but don't ask us what program we're gonna put in place. I mean, again, it goes back. Town meeting says yes to whatever proposal the enrollment task force brings forward. That's when the clock starts. And how quick we want to do it, it starts there. If we're looking to put a debt exclusion in the end of June, the beginning of July, then yes, we should vote on the program before we leave. Absolutely. If the decision is made to do a debt exclusion on the presidential election, we could probably wait until September, October, and that changes the whole thing. But there's a politic involved in that too with people. The other part is that if we start, if the intent is to finish whatever renovation is gonna be done for September of 19, there's an additional cost of modulus for another year. And probably additional modulus because the population has grown to that much more. I'm speculating there is gonna be another year of modulus that we would not have. That's a fact. How many more are addition? I don't know. So all these things, all these variables keep going in. But the first, we can talk about it till we turn blue. Nothing starts until the town says, the enrollment committee says what they want, recommend, and the town approves it. That's when the clock really starts for all of us. You make an important point in terms of making a decision sufficiently ahead of an override so that we're being open and transparent. Absolutely. We've done, this committee has done tremendous work. And I know that all the members of this committee have gone out and done outreach. Community relations committee's been all over this. We've had big events. We've included a lot of conversation. And I anticipate that we'll continue to do that. So I'm sure that under Dr. Seuss's leadership we will do diligence with the community and let them see our thought process and let them make comments and suggestions going forward. Dr. Allison Ampe. I just wanted to say, when you say that we don't need to know until the design phase, if I'm understanding Mr. Kohl's chart correctly, that starts in June 30th, so. So we need to know. It starts immediately after the vote of the override. My point is just, it's not like it's next fall. So if the money vote gets pushed, then everything gets pushed. The whole thing. So if we don't go for the override in June, the whole thing's gonna push that, whatever that date is. No, not necessarily, no, not necessarily. If we go for it in September, which was Charlie Foskett's suggestion, it wouldn't, but. It still pushes it out a couple of months. I mean, the whole thing is is that. We gotta wait. Rather than have a discussion on scheduling a decision on the configuration of the gifts. My suggestion is, is that the incoming chair put that discussion on the first meeting in April, because at that point we will have seen the. Interim report. The interim report. We'll know what the numbers look like. We'll know for sure where we're probably going with it and then can start having the conversation if it's appropriate. It also absolves Mr. Pearson, the discussion. I just tried to buttonhole, but which way is gonna vote and I said, forget it. Yeah. Looks like that. No need to lobby, Judd. Okay, anything else on this discussion? I think that we've been enlightened. Next is the monthly financial report, Ms. Johnson. It's been very, a very brief time since the last report, but I was able to get together all of the usual financial reports, so we're caught up in that. There's actually only one weekly payroll that differentiates the prior general fund report from this general fund report. So at this point in the year, we are showing a small deficit, but we've yet to reduce any of our encumbrances. And we have pretty significant encumbrances in HVAC contracting, boiler contracting, snow removal, all of which are looking like are coming to a fairly rapid end this year. Right, exactly. I haven't taken them out because I don't wanna jinx ourselves into a six foot storm. So, but I do feel that there will be, we will gain some ground. We're also rapidly approaching the end of the purchasing cycle. All purchase orders are due into the business office for the general fund by April 15th. So that'll be it for purchasing and we'll have a better sense of what we can liquidate and what we can reduce. I think at this point, we're gonna close that gap. I don't know if we'll close it all the way, but I think it will be less significant than it currently is. Yeah, yesterday would have been a wonderful snow day. Mr. Peterson. Mr. Chair, thank you. Ms. Johnson, as this is probably gonna be my last hearing of the monthly financials in the quarter, I just really would like to say thank you on behalf of the community, thank you for educating me as a member about what we face every day here in terms of resources. I think you've done a wonderful job in getting the books in a better way than when I started here six years ago. So I really thank you for that and I appreciate everything you've done since I've been on the committee. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dr. Sears. Sorry, I have a pedestrian question, but I echo the sentiment as well. Does it look like this year, we will either add to our special ed reserve fund or take away from the special ed reserve fund? That is too soon to call. Because I would not be, it would not be my recommendation to put a large special ed reserve aside when in fact that would cause us to go into our other reserves to borrow from one to the other. The special ed reserves remember are under the control, will be under the control of town meeting and so they're much less accessible and much less flexible. So in a perfect world, if we can close the gap with reducing purchase orders and spending being under what we expect, I would love to put some money aside in a special ed, but at this point, I wouldn't want to speculate that that'll be possible. We do have the $200,000 from the prior year that we will put into the stabilization at this spring's town meeting, but I'll be keeping a close eye on that. Okay, great, thanks. Okay. That was painless. Superintendent's report, Dr. Boting. Well, one of the things that was on the agenda was to talk about the task force, but I think we pretty much exhausted that. So I just wanted to give a couple of little updates, one of which we've already talked about in terms of history. And, but let me just mention first, where we are with Stratton. I received the list of bids today and that for Stratton, the Stratton construction. And I'm, at this point, there's gonna be a process that goes through, but what I can say is that I'm pretty pleased with where we are. We're certainly not having the surprises we had with the modular. So I think that that's terrific. So that process is going forward. And I don't know what the timeline, Ms. Johnson might know, what would be the timeline and which will actually appoint, make the selection. They will probably put together a timeline at Tuesday's meeting, the next meeting of the Permanent Town Building Committee. And have a group go through the bids, yeah. So probably by the end of this month we'll have someone in place to go forward with construction drawings and the whole process. Just good. I also met yesterday the top manager and I met with the person who is the new vendor for the modular classrooms and that project is going forward. I'm confident, at least he has expressed confidence so hopefully I'm confident that the modulars will be in place by August 2022 in order that they're ready to go. It's a different time frame that we had, but I think that we can make this work. We also were talking about the Thompson modulars and what we're working on costs right now and which kind of units. If I may. Mr. Heiner. The last Permanent Town Building Committee because of that August 22nd, the 20th time there was a little concern about moving materials. They initially, the idea was floated and I don't know if it's been shared with you to move them into the gym temporarily. Yes, we might be able to move most of them. That's not clear yet. It depends upon what the construction company needs to do. If worse came to worse, we're going to hire movers and move them into the auto shop. We, they shared that, that was the initial thing and they were looking to, I don't know if they had to get back to either one of you about that they were going to speak to the onsite. They were going to make that part of the bid or something to leave the gym alone for that summer. I don't know. It's supposed to be. It's supposed to be. We're looking to save cost and save people having to trudge it all downtown and then move it back. Yeah, we don't want to do that. And if we don't have to, it does put a little bit pressure on the teachers that their boxes that they're going to pack up are going to sit in the gym and they're not going to be able to set up their classrooms too much later in the summer then. We perhaps thought that could be the case. Anyway, thank you. Anyway, it looks like even with that little hiccup that went on that we're still going to be on time and moving forward with everything. So I just wanted to give a quick update in athletics because this was a terrific season that our students had. We had four teams qualify for the state tournament and which was terrific. And a lot of these teams are young teams. The girls basketball was their team seed and they went into tournament. Unfortunately, they did lose but it's always a sense of accomplishment when you can go into the tournament. It really is. And the boys basketball made it to the division to North quarter finals. And the Madrigals, let's just talk about students supporting each other. The Madrigals opened the game with singing the national anthem. The girls hockey team made it into the tournament and they lost their second tournament game. And the boys hockey, they were the first seed going in to division one, North quarter finals and they just lost last night to St. Mary's. But they had a terrific season and they all should be very proud of the work that they did. And I know that their coaches are proud of them, their teachers are proud of them and I'm quite sure their parents are. So it was terrific and now we're gearing up for spring. I also wanted to mention that since we're in the theme of history tonight, there is a non-profit in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Council for Social Studies and received a letter that next month on April 4th, several of our Audison Social Studies teacher are going to be recipients of an award. These teachers are Chris Mahoney, Andrew Garrity and Eric Bakke. And they will be recipients of the John Riley Award for teaching excellence in geography. These are three seventh grade teachers and so this is an award presented annually to educators in Massachusetts who have demonstrated exceptional ability in the field of geography. So in reading the nomination papers, it is clear that their professional involvement in activities such as workshops, curriculum development and other activities rank among the very best. So this is yet another award for a teacher in quite in the last month for teaching excellence. So we're very proud of them and congratulate them. And let me just double check. I believe that's it. Thank you. Our next item on the agenda is the Consent Agenda. Anyone want to pull anything off of it before I read it? Is this you? Dr. Allison Ampe. Can we pull the trips out? Okay, the trips. The foreign, I'm talking Japan, France and I guess the France. The Japan trip, okay. And France. And France, okay. So the Consent Agenda, all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless there's a member of the committee so requests in which a grant the item will be considered as normal sequence approval of accounts payable warrant. Warrant number 16129 dated February 25th, 2016. Total amount, $687,193.31. Approval of regular school committee minutes, February 25th, 2016. Approval of, okay, the two foreign trips are the ones that are off. So approval of eighth grade annual model Congress trip to University of Pennsylvania, March 31st through April 3rd, 2016. So moved. Moved by Mr. Pierce, second by Dr. Seuss, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, that's unanimous. Dr. Allison Ampe. So I pulled, do you want a motion? I mean, just talk. Let me explain why I pulled them just because I'm remembering that because of some of the terrorist actions that have happened, not recently, but not in the distant past that some school committees have actually gone to the extent of pulling foreign trips and stuff. And I'm just wondering how do we assess, I mean, I personally feel like the parents are the best ones to be making decisions about whether they think it's safe for their child to go, given what they're reading about in the news and stuff. But I pulled it just so we could talk, do we think this is something we should, as a committee be doing, should we maybe be sending a notice to the parents just, we hope, we want to make sure you're aware of the news and things and that this is being taken into consideration. I don't know what the right answer is. I just thought we should mention it. And I'm not sure. My gut reaction is these things can happen anywhere, anytime, and in fact, if we were talking about this a couple of years ago, it would have been much safer to be in Japan or in France and it would have been to be at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. So no place is exempt, no place is safe. And I think that if we stop traveling in, terrorists win. So parents are aware that their kids are going abroad and things happen no matter where they are and it's up to them to make the decision. And I think that we should offer the opportunity. Okay. Any other comments or discussion on the two trips? So Dr. Allison Ampey, would you like to make a motion? Yeah, I move to approve the trips. The two trips. Move to approve the trips to Japan and to France. Second by Dr. Seuss, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's done. Mr. Pierce, we're now at subcommittee in liaison reports and there's a whole bunch of readings coming from the policies and procedures committee. I guess that's pre-retirement. The pre-retirement last push. Whatever. Last push, yeah. I want to compare myself to like a big fireworks finale but this is kind of... Fireworks sale. What you kind of see here. Stuff that I've wanted to get done over the last six years and over the last month. Okay, starting with... It's probably your pay at surge pricing. This is not calling for any votes tonight. This is first read for these following policy changes. JEB is entrance age on kindergarten and first grade. As you know, we've had for many years here in the district a policy for age five by August 31st. For kindergarten, age six by August 31st for first grade. Over the years, we've heard parents come to us asking for exceptions or rationale or reasoning on that. And we felt it as a subcommittee necessary to include a first little preamble section on that policy, JEB, which is the Arlington Public School to believe a strict cut off date for the start of kindergarten, first grade, benefit the education on social emotional needs of the student throughout his or her K through 12 years. Considerable discussion and research, such as the early childhood longitudinal studies sponsored by the US Department of Education has been conducted on this issue of school readiness. For this reason at this time, the APS will not entertain petitions to accelerate the start date for a student based on age and the rest of the policy remains. Okay, Dr. Seuss question. Just a recommendation to add maybe one more sentence after the thing about school readiness to sort of quickly say what the childhood longitudinal study says, and I assume given our previous discussions of what they say is that admitting kids earlier doesn't do, is not the best option. And so just one sentence saying that and then say for this reason. I envision having another subcommittee meeting my last one on the 21st and I'll get an agenda to you Karen as soon as possible. So it's an advance of our. Oh, and then you dump it on the next person because we won't finish it. Right. Right. Should I keep going? Keep going. Just explain the rationale of all of what you're doing. Next one is BDFA school councils, right? I think that was the next one in my queue. No. That's the order. Yep. It's in Novus. I'm taking it in any order you want. Sure, BDFA on school councils, we discussed updating it to reflect the current practice which is and the useful practice for school councils to elect their members preferably in the fall. That way they can be a part of the planning process of the school improvement plans and have been participant of that discussion. So it would be adding in September of each year preferably encourage schools to hold school council elections in September of each year preferably no later than October 15th as this will assist the school committee in its budget planning process. And that we as a school committee encourage at least six school council meetings per year. And I think, oh yes, in the beginning, which is to outline the purpose of what school councils are at the very top and head of the policy and everything else will remain the same. Okay. Okay, moving on. Let me just make one word smithing thing. Yeah. It troubles me to hear the wording of hold the elections in September of each year preferably no later than October 15th sort of conflict. So yeah, I'd say beginning of the school year no later than October 15th. Okay. Just so you're not saying September but no later than October. Great. No, that makes sense. What's the next one Nova says? Next one is IJNDD email distribution list policy. Right. This one we deleted the first sentence regarding the APS fulfilling its technology mission in part by offering distribution lists. That's not our mission in technology currently. Right down below a couple of paragraphs we add the following. The posting to official school distribution lists will be limited to faculty and staff. And that is the only changes revisions that we made to that one. Check the spelling of the faculty. Got it. Absolutely. Next is ACAB-E sexual harassment. Yep, we just deleted and updated that by taking out the old signature lines of people who are no longer in those positions. That's great. About the rest of it's the same. JICG tobacco. We're deleting and removing this policy. It's kind of redundant because we have one already and we're gonna be adding to that. I don't believe it made it into our policy manual. The student who came here last year talking about the vapor or the e-cigarettes, other non-tobacco but smoke products are going to be listed in our other tobacco policy. So we're basically consolidating and deleting one. Do we know if those electronic cigarettes and stuff are banned from public places like all of the tobacco list? We didn't have. From the state, I'm just curious. Okay. Banned here. I understand because we're making the policy and we do it but all tobacco products are banned from all public places in the Commonwealth. But it's not a tobacco product. That's why I'm asking if it's... They've defined, you know, the definition has been broadened and in fact, Arlington Board of Health will allow the sale of vaping stuff in town. Thank you. So that's a tobacco. Then we go to visitors. Yeah, on file K.I., we add the beginning during the school day, no persons, except parents, guardians of children. And then at the very end of that paragraph, add visitors shall sign in as dictated in each school's entries procedures. And EEAA walkers? Right. Safe travel policy walkers and riders. We added the sentence in the first paragraph when safe to do so, the Arlington Public Schools encourages walkers because fewer vehicles promotes more safety. We thought that made sense. Paragraph two, we deleted the exception to the above provisions is made under terms of the school committee policy on open enrollment because we don't have that policy anymore. So we got rid of that. Just Mr. Heiner. Hey, it's been gone through council this last one on the walkers. I'm just concerned about any potential liabilities but us making a statement about walking. Thank you. It has not. I can certainly talk to our town council about that. Sure. He's been very helpful. I've spoken with attorney Heim about the warrants and the electronic signatures. He said it's just a procedural thing. We don't need to have a policy on it. And he gave a checklist of things that we should do if we want as a school committee to have that option available to us. Okay. Because I know that was on the agenda for our subcommittee to look at. I think, is that all for- Physical restraint, JKAA. Yes. Okay, so this is something that Mr. Siegel presented to us and Rebecca Bryant who came to the last meeting who is our council for school policies from Stoneman, Chandler and Miller. She recommended to update our JKAA physical restraints policy because of some recent changes. So this reflects that and that comes straight from attorney Bryant. Okay. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure being on policies for six years. A lot of work, yeah. Thank you. Dr. Seuss. I just have a question. I remember, and I don't remember the name of this document, there's a document somewhere that council had looked at a bunch of policies and made recommendations. And I was wondering where that's housed or how people can access it. As a school committee or as the public? As a school committee actually. Okay, yeah. As you leave, the institutional knowledge doesn't go with you. Yeah, so that was done by Stoneman, I believe, two years ago. And it's a very useful document for the next policies and procedures subcommittee because it talks about other policies that we could do some tweaks and revisions too that we haven't gotten to yet. So Attorney Bryant sent it again to me. I will send it out to everyone. So you have that to go on. Okay. And Karen too, so she can. Dr. Allison Anthony. Yeah, sorry. I was suggesting to send it to Ms. Fitzgerald so that she can have a copy. Thank you. Anything else under policies and procedures? Again, we're gonna be meeting for the last time as this constituted subcommittee, I believe on Monday the 21st to go over these small changes to the policies. Yeah. Thanks, Karen. Thanks. Thank you. The budget of Dr. Allison Anthony. We passed the budget. Yes. We also, Mr. Hainer joined me at Ottison on February 26th and we had a really good discussion with the Ottison OPEC parent group. There was about 20 parents there just about the budget, the budgeting process and all their concerns but they didn't really, I didn't hear any questions. It really changed anything we were doing. It was just, it was more informational. Just one other thing. Mr. Hainer. The, Dr. Anthony had invited any other parent from any other school that wasn't able to make their own and we had an elementary parent there as well so that connected, it was a good turnout. Yeah, it was a very good turnout. Excellent. So. Is there anyone who has a report for District Accountability, Curcule Instruction Assessment at all? Hearing non-community relations, Dr. Seuss. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. Skipping facilities. Oh, facilities, I'm sorry. Facilities, go ahead. So we obviously, we have not had a meeting. We've been mostly meeting as the school enrollment task force. It sounds like maybe after the next school enrollment task force we might want to have a facilities meeting so that we can talk more about some of these differences between sixth grade and sixth through eight and kind of hone that for the whole committee but that'll be after. And the next school enrollment task force meeting just so everybody has it is on Tuesday, March 29th at seven o'clock here. Let me just say that the whole K, sixth through eight or grade six or whatever. Discussion could wander into budget, could wander into facilities, or into the curriculum group. So it just has broad reach which we'll be up to Dr. Seuss to propose an allocation for. We're leaving you full plate. Actually can I make a point about that? So there's an assumption I'm taking chair but you know, procedurally if anybody else wants to challenge me, you know what I mean? We have no policy on this. We do. But anybody can sort of submit their name and I also wanna say that we have an identified vice chair but if anybody wants to submit their name for that position they should do though and we had a volunteer recently for secretary but again if somebody wants to submit their name because we will be voting on this and if there is disagreement, you know, we'll discuss it. So just to make a. I think I was just gonna point out I'm not sure that Mr. Schlickman's aware that we revised the policy when you were off the board about succession. I'm not disagreeing with. I read the policy. I mean the updated one though. Okay. Okay. But it isn't as clear for the other two, is that right? Right. I'm sorry? It isn't as clear for secretary or. It's. The secretary's always been a free for all. Right. Yeah. Usually we have to beg, borrow and steal a secretary. We had somebody volunteer myself. Awesome. But no, there's no report from district accountability. We haven't met since the last meeting. Okay. You can talk to secretary. Okay, so now we can. Now I'm totally lost. Community relations. Community relations, okay. So we met a few weeks ago. A few things, we discussed a few things. The calendar survey and I wanna make a comment, a suggested change to that but let me just tell you quickly what we, the other things we talked about. We talked about meeting next time to discuss the district dashboard because that's something that was sort of on everyone's plate and we haven't dealt with it. We talked about maybe having some small coffees with a superintendent to talk about educational vision and goals in the district. A lot of parents are sort of curious about what's going on. Just like an opportunity to ask questions. And then we also talked about sort of what kinds of open public meetings we might wanna have in the future. And there was a feeling that this year has all been about enrollment issues so it's really hard to do much else but that we wanna sort of continue this tradition of having sort of community discussions about really important issues in our district. So going back to the calendar survey, we took out some language. We took out any reference to religious holidays and otherwise it's pretty much the same. I do wanna suggest, given new information that I've gotten, that we add to question five that the current rather than the current Arlington High School, the current middle school and Arlington High School start time is eight because as I understand it now and I didn't before, if we made a change, we would make a change both for middle and high school. We make that change. We should also then say that we're not only asking Arlington High School teachers, we also need to solicit input from the middle school teacher. So again, adding middle and, I was wondering if we could make that sort of change here before we. I don't see why not, Mr. Keener. On number five. Number one, we're one of the latest starting secondary schools in the state. Number two. For now. It's moving. It's all changing. Our athletic director, and I presented this several meetings ago at EDCO, did a presentation with other athletic directors stating the, when the later a school starts, the later they get out after school sports and coordinating with the league, it's become more and more difficult as the starting times, reflecting on the the ending times and the after school sports. So I think it's very, very important that if this question is going to go in here, that somewhere along the line, that these are advisory, a lot of people think when they give input in a survey, it's going to be etched in stone, the result. I understand we're not there, but I'm just concerned this one right here can have a big effect on our programs. That's my only concern and connecting with other systems. I have no problem. I think the idea of starting late in all the stuff that I've read is very beneficial to the students, but it's the athletics. All the literature points that direction. I agree. The constraint that most districts have if they are looking to do this tends to be transportation. And given that we're not constrained on buses for this. Talking about the athletics. I understand, but I'm just saying I want, the biggest constraint that we have if we're an independent organization, doesn't exist that other districts are struggling with and the reason why they're pushing their high school times early so they can free up the bus to go drive. Well, I'm sure you can. Yeah. Thank you very much. I'll defer Dr. Bowie first. Dr. Bowie. I think I mentioned a month or so ago that the middle sex league superintendents have been meeting and we're not quite there yet to bring a proposal, but everyone understands the issue of athletics. And so if we move forward with some proposal, we have all agreed that we will make it work with respect to athletics. Don't we have some competition outside of the league during the season two? They would have to adapt to the middle sex league. It's really a league play. I just wanted to bring this forward because with that, our own athletic director supports the concept. The only issue was that coordination. That was all. And I want to share that with the committee. So I noticed as a, I realize I read this now as not a parent of a student in the school and not a teacher in the Arlington schools. So we are not soliciting this from anyone who is not a current parent or teacher because that's not a choice anywhere. Like in the demographics. Right. Yeah, I think that's. So I just wanted to make that clear. Okay. All right. So we don't want community input. Yeah, but you've got one of the seven votes. Right, right, right. We don't make any changes with that. No, I know. I'm just, I'm just, no, no, there's just a question to make sure because if we did want community input then some of the demographic information you'd need to add more choices, that's all. But no, no, no, it's fine. It's not a, just wanted to clarify that. That's okay. Dr. Seuss. I just wanted to make a point about surveys in general. I don't think you do a survey so that you don't make the decision. I mean, the survey can be informative and it can not be. It couldn't turn out that it's all muddled from a particular or it can turn out to surprise you and that there's a lot more support for something that you might have thought initially. So the survey is just to solicit, we're not promising necessarily, and we say that to make any changes. Obviously to make changes. A lot of decision makers are going to have to be involved and we're just looking to inform that process of decision making because we are considering, you know, making changes but we're not, love to see. Sounds good. Executive session minute review subcommittee, Mr. Heiner. This was a second grade, do we need to pass it? Oh, we need to pass it, yes. Sorry, with the small amendments, if that's easy to do. I just want to make a comment. It's in the stark question. This is going to be sent out through our notification system because people can subscribe to the distribution list is not going out through that. Okay, good, okay. So I shouldn't get it, it's a good test. Well, tell me if you do. I will. That was clearly thought. It's a good catch. Okay, all in favor of approving the survey. As amended. I was just going to clarify, and for the teachers, it's going out through the association, that vehicle. Okay, cool. Just a point I didn't mention of a four of them, the Hanson is present, the Bay E.A. is our A.A. we're at the meeting tonight. We're a half. A bundle up. We're happy to have you. You're a bundle up. That's because she's next to the air condition. She's next to the vent. She needs to respond. All right. And I'm down here by the hot air. In fact, I'm generating it. I'm missing. Executive session, oh, we got to do the vote. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, exactly. I know you're moving on. You're moving on. All in favor of approving the, oh, the motion from Ms. Seuss, Dr. Seuss seconded by Mr. Pierce to approve the survey. As amended. As amended. Right. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? And that is adopted. Can we do the discussion minutes? I'm ready. Are you ready? Yes, I am. Everybody else ready? Yeah. Everybody else? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Thank you. Attorney Heim reviewed all the minutes that Ms. Fitzgerald put together phenomenal binder. We met, we discussed several issues. They're minor. I then met with Ms. Fitzgerald yesterday for an hour and a half. We went through them all. It's going to be a little bit more cumbersome getting them to the body. We're probably gonna break them apart and share with us with you all all the minutes that recommending for release. They're gonna be the easiest ones. We're gonna have to meet first in executive session to approve them. We've been lax on that. And then with everybody, it's our hope to get them to you in a bundle. We're probably gonna have to do this over a series of several meetings to get them all done. I will also be preparing. I don't know whether we're going to ease. Attorney Heim said it doesn't have to be a policy but knowing this group, maybe we should since we've only done this twice in the five years that I've been here to recommend a regular procedure after we have an executive session, the next meeting to approve them and decide release at that time or a few to date to hold them on a regular basis. So we won't be having this going forward. I cannot, I commend Ms. Fitzgerald any higher than I can, fantastic. Putting this together and doing all the work that was going forward. Excellent. I was on the committee when we hired her. We're gonna hold that. We've only had a great decision then, you know. Warren committee. Everybody get paid again. Excellent. I like the happenings after school. And Dr. Seuss was with me, so. Learning the reps. Oh, good. Yes. Good, good, good, good, good. School enrollment task force. I think we've drawn that one out. Any school liaison news? Mr. Pierce. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a great meeting the other night with the Dallin PTO. We talked a lot about our enrollment challenges and I asked them to tune in. I'm sure many of them are watching vividly. One of the things that I wanted to bring up and perhaps just elicit from the superintendent from the committee is the foreknowledge of all this and that this didn't come as a surprise and that we weren't blown away. I mean that we were in the process of planning for Audison changes well before just this year. And I just wanted that because some members of that PTO body felt that they were bringing this up as something that they knew about years ago. It was on the horizon. Audison was gonna get too crowded. And here we are today thinking about deadlines of June two months ago from now or so. How can we speak to that? The forecasting, the census, the birth data and what we can learn from this process going forward. That's basically what a large part of the meeting was about but they were very pleased with how the district is going with not losing sight of curriculum and instruction during all this planning and facility planning process. And we talked a little bit about that and I'm sure they're heartened to hear about the history presentation we heard about earlier tonight. Any other liaison reports hearing? Ah, Dr. Jesus. Oh, just to tell you that in a week and a half I'll be at the townwide PTO meeting. Talking to him about whatever they wanna talk about. Okay. Yeah. Enjoy it. Dr. Starks, yes. I would like to get Dr. Starks, but I'm not. Yeah. I attended on Monday the social emotional learning task force of the MASC. So MASC is putting together a task force to try to kind of put some heads together around social emotional issues in schools. So it was pretty well represented overall. There were about, it's think that they got about 45 people who were interested overall. I think there were about 20 of us there on Monday who could make that meeting. And we basically did some brainstorming, some thinking about, we talked a lot about what we're seeing in our different districts. We talked about some of the things that we were hoping to see. And in the end I think what we came out with was that there are going to be four subcommittees to this task force. One on advocacy, one on resources. Someone who'll pull together what resources there are already and kind of grants and money and things like that. A group on policies and legislation and another group on mission and direction. And the first, that last group, mission and direction is gonna try to start by coming up with a mission for the group. My sense from meeting there, they are very focused on trying to make sure that social emotional wellness is kind of a K to 12, something that's kind of integrated into the curriculum kind of throughout. And that we as school committees share what we're doing, what we would hope for, share our best practices, talk about what people already know is happening. I guess there's changes being made to teaching requirements for teachers licenses. There's gonna be more social emotional requirements in there and just trying to really get our heads around it. And I think really the best part of the meeting was that there was a lot of stuff that we decided social emotional was not. So they decided it was not about special education. It's not about substance abuse. It's not about families and what's going on. It's literally about what is it that we're seeing in kids? Why is it and what is causing the fact that we have so much more anxiety that we have kids who don't seem to know how to deal with each other and deal with adults and trying to kind of wrap our heads around to the school committee members. So it was really, I thought it was really, it was a great meeting. The person who was facilitating it was amazing and she really kind of pulled it together and kind of really pulled it through and in two hours I felt like we really got a lot done. So I put myself on the mission direction and policies and legislation subcommittee. So as that moves forward, I will try to keep people up to date as to what MASC is doing on this. But I'm really excited that MASC is starting to have kind of some working subcommittees where we can all go, even if you're not like an officer or something that we could put our arms around some of the things that we know we're seeing and that we can share those things and really come together. So I thought that was pretty exciting. MASC's always had working subcommittees and you should be getting in the mail or email on MASC or you can download it, load it off the website, the subcommittee form for appointment formally to the standing subcommittees. And I encourage you to do that. I also know that MASC has hired two new field reps over the past couple of years who are both very energetic, very responsive and have sat in our places, both Dorothy Presser from Linfield and Tracey Novick from Worcester. Yeah, Tracey Novick. We're outstanding, I think outstanding people and really good advocates for us and we're very fortunate to have these folks advocating for us, Mr. Pierce. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Starks, I am so happy that you're doing this and taking the lead on this. A couple of meetings ago, I was talking about the Cape Cod issue with the meditation and how a lot of parents wanted it out of the schools and I said, no, that's exactly what we need to be doing and we talked about it with Ms. Omer. So definitely please, please, if you can look at that as a model. Absolutely. Also like, I don't understand and maybe you could educate us later but how could it not be, if social and emotional, what is it not? How could it not be drugs and alcohol abuse if kids are at home seeing this with their family or with their neighbors? How could it not be them coming from a home with dysfunction in it? How could that not be in play when you talk about the social and emotional wellbeing of kids coming into the school? Or are you only talking about it within the walls of the school? We're trying to talk about it within the walls of, well, I mean, they didn't say, they do wanna get to what the root cause is and some of that is more root causes. Right, right. But I think that what they were saying was they're not talking about drug and alcohol abuse student drug and alcohol abuse. That that wasn't something they were focused on. That is, again, a different, that there were things that we had to decide that we weren't dealing with and kind of push that to somebody else. But that what we were trying to think about was what is causing what we're seeing and what can we do in the schools to kind of help and where is our responsibility and what kinds of things would we like to do? Like, do we feel like it's more, do we need more outreach to parents and teaching parents about, and sharing with parents what we're seeing and the changes that we're seeing and is it more working with them, or is it, there's just a lot going on and kind of how do we work all of that in for every student, not just, and that it's not just a small population, it's the whole population. Oh. Okay, a doctor at Elmer. Or just a mom. You know, the women in this table are so well educated. But no, I would just add the safe and supportive schools. Oh yeah. Link under the DEC because it provides district wide assessments, which is what we're going to be undertaking if we succeed in getting our AEF grant, we're going to be undertaking that. And it looks at all the six different domains, leadership, professional development, resources, community, curricula, and whatnot. And the state task force helped develop those frameworks. So I mean, there are a lot already in there. So that would be a great resource for that. Oh right, and that's exactly, I think that that group that's talking about resources was talking about things like that, open circle. You know, there's a ton of things out there and kind of understanding what they do and where they are and kind of how they work together. I would say it's one area that the DEC has provided a lot of guidance and support in, so it would be a great resource to go to. Yep. And it was late. So it's been my impression that there's a lot of money out there for drugs and alcohol stuff. And I've gone to several different meetings where I thought the conversation was more broad about general problems that teens were having or pre-teens. And it turned out, no, no, no, we're getting money just to talk about drugs and alcohol. And I was like, wait a second, what are these other problems? In fact, the numbers seem to be going down for drugs and alcohol, but they're going up for suicidal thoughts and cutting in all sorts of terrible things, you know, other things. So it's like, why can't we talk about that? It's like, well, it's not funded. I can't talk about that. And so while I think it's valuable to talk about those things, I really like that there's now real tension being put finally, too. So I'll show you the motion. Great. Is on our announcements or any such wonderful discourse from the committee? No. We will be fielding a team for the trivia bee. Do we have anyone submitting pictures for the website? I submitted one. Members, yes. The headshots. Headshots. No. I need a reminder. You need to send me a reminder. You can take your picture with an iPhone here or a little digital camera. No. Send me a reminder. When you send everybody the reminders, because we get them all, we can get them up, and we can have one of them. I have one. Mr. Pierce has a very nice photo on it. Oh, he's a great photo. Yeah, mine is pretty crap bad compared to that. That's a gorgeous. Is that a headshot? We should all get fancy. Gorgeous. No, is it a headshot? Yeah, very much. You know, the Thespians always have nice headshots. I didn't get a call back from the movie that I watched. That's too bad. Did you want to say something about Arlington Eats again? Is that this weekend? No, it was last weekend. I actually don't actually, Lauren was here, and I don't know how much they raised, 250 people around who attended, and they raised a whole bunch of money for silent auctions. And my husband's band was fabulous. And so it was the biggest venue they played. So, yeah. OK, we are coming to the point where we go to the executive session. Yes? One of the reasons it talks about approving executive session minutes. Would you like to make the motion? I know. I'm just saying that has to be excluded, because we're not ready to do that. So I don't know if there's any other reason to go into executive. Oh, we're not. We can't. We're not ready for the executive minutes. Oh, no, Mr. Spiegel needs it. Mr. Spiegel would like a brief executive session. Well, we will take a brief time at all. I don't know. We've got a lot of faces. This is new. Caucus. Caucus. I did. You sent them to Karen. I thought I was supposed to send them to Karen. I sent you my preferences. I did not. Sorry. Sorry. I just sent you over the language for five, which is just those two cents. What? Fifth question? OK. Those two. Yeah. Wouldn't it be fine under the first one? Yeah, just mention it's unit C in those shots. That's all. That would cover. Yeah, you can do it today. Oh, we need to be specific in one or the other. Yes, you can stay in some seats. Sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to CC you. I just sent to Karen. I don't know. I was supposed to. I was going to take you on. Sure. I probably sent mine first. We can do this. Yes. OK, here we go, ladies and gentlemen. The motion will be to conduct, moving to executive strategy, to conduct executive session, to conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with unit C or contract negotiations with unit C if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Is that all we need to do? Do we need the second line? That sounds like an upgrade. That's the only reason we're going. That's it. Unit C. OK. Roll call, Mr. Hayner. Oh, wait, who's moved it? I moved. Motion by Mr. Hayner. Second by Mr. Pierce. Roll call, Mr. Hayner. Aye. Mr. Pierce. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe, Ms. Starks, Dr. Seuss. Yes. The chair votes in the affirmative. All the women have doctorates. Life is good. Thank you very much. We will not be returning. We will not be returning.