 Good evening, everyone. Today is Thursday, August 13th, and this is the organizational meeting of the school committee. This is a short meeting. We'll conduct the business of organizing the committee in adjourn until 6.30 when we will proceed with the first meeting of this term. To start, I want to say that I'm grateful for the support of the town, the reelection of Dr. Seuss, Mr. Hayner, and myself as a community. We face many challenges, including a rapidly expanding school enrollment and the challenge of meeting the growing capital and operating costs associated with our student population. Arlington is not an apathetic town. This really was a tremendous vote of confidence for the three of us, the entire committee, to have run uncontested people I think genuinely appreciate the work that we're doing. I'm proud to serve with such good friends and capable colleagues. I'm thankful for the support and partnership with townside officials and it's gratifying to see people elected to town meeting and competitive precincts by pledging support for the schools. We face many challenges, but I know I'm surrounded by great people who are up to the task. We begin by electing our next chair, Dr. Allison Ampey. I'd like to nominate Jeff Theilman, Mr. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor of electing Mr. Theilman as chair, say aye. Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. Mr. Theilman. I nominate Dr. Allison Ampey as vice chair. Second. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor of electing Dr. Allison Ampey vice chair, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Dr. Allison Ampey. I nominate Mr. Heiner as secretary. Second. Second. Okay. Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That is unanimous. I'm looking for a motion to approve the subcommittee and liaison assignments is presented. Moved by Mr. Theilman. Seconded by Dr. Allison Ampey. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion is approved. I'm looking for a motion to authorize the chair and the chair of the warrant committee to sign the payroll warrant motion by Dr. Allison Ampey, second by Mr. Cardin. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion is approved. Policy BDA directs the newly elected chair to read aloud the standards and norms of the Arlington School Committee and he will invite each member of the Arlington School Committee to publicly sign the document. Mr. Chairman. We the Arlington School Committee acknowledge that a school committee meeting is a meeting of school committee members that is held in public and not a public meeting and that we will make every effort to ensure that meetings are effective and efficient. To that end, we acknowledge the importance of subcommittees and we and the superintendent agree to utilize them to focus on specific topics in depth and to prepare for presentation to liberation and possible action by the school committee. We the Arlington School Committee set forth these standards and norms that we will all commit to abide by as individuals and as a committee. Represent the needs and interests of all students in the district. Exercise leadership and vision, planning, policy making, evaluation and advocacy on behalf of the students in district, not in managing the day to day operations of the district. We will conduct our business through a set agenda. Emerging items will be addressed in subsequent meetings through agenda items. Provide full disclosure. Each member will provide input, encouragement, express concerns and positions rather than withhold information from other members. When a committee member feels that there has not been full disclosure, an objective process for revisiting the issue will be used. Maintain an open environment where each member is empowered to freely express opinions, concerns and ideas. Committee members will work together to clarify and restate discussions in order to strive for full understanding. Keep an open mind and accept that they can change their opinions by recognizing that they are not locked into their initial stated positions. Make decisions on information and not on personalities. Committee members will act with the best information available at the time considering data, the superintendent's recommendations, proposals and suggestions. Committee members will strive to make the best decision at the time. Debate the issues not one another. The committee will engage in critical thinking, expecting all committee members to freely offer differing points of view as part of the discussion prior to making a board decision. Not taking a lateral action. Committee members authority is derived only through a majority decision of the committee acting as a whole during an open public meeting. Attend public meetings well prepared to discuss issues on the agenda and will be prepared to take decisions striving for efficient decision making. Strive to have no surprises for the committee or superintendent. All members will receive the same information on all topics in a timely manner. Strive to reach decisions by consensus discussed with respect to disagree without acrimony. When a consensus is not possible, all members will publicly abide by the majority decision. Understand and respect the chain of command as it is. The committee will take on all concerns, roles and responsibilities and direct others to do the same review and revise our standards and norms as needed as part of the committee's self-evaluation. This was adopted by the school committee on March 22, 2012. Signatures, please. All right, Mr. Shlickman. I will sign. All right. Len, do you want to sign for Dennis? No proxies. With the standards and norms for the Arlington School committee signed by all members present, the work of this organizational meeting is concluded. Motion to adjourn by Mr. Heiner. Second by Dr. Allison Ampe. All in favor? Opposed? We are adjourned. Congratulations to our new officers. Welcome to the school committee meeting of April 13, 2017. We are going to begin with a moment of silence for two people. First, we are going to remember Greg Wright. Greg was a custodian. He was a custodian at the bishop's school for 20 years. A custodian at the Arlington Public Schools for 20 years. And most recently, he served at the bishop's school and he passed away about a week ago. And that was shocking to the faculty, staff and students at that school. We also want to take a moment of silence for state senator Ken Donnelly, who died more than a week ago. Ken was a very good friend of the Arlington Public Schools and our students and our teachers and someone who was devoted to the town and the entire district that he represents. Let's take a moment of silence for both of those men. Thank you very much. Yeah, let's go ahead to Kathy. I just want to add a couple of words to that. I have to say that Greg Wright was just a wonderful human being. Quite beloved at bishop's school. And in fact, what was particularly shocking is that that Sunday evening he had been working with principal and parents and staff in taking down the play equipment and props. And then passed away later that evening. Ken Donnelly, you were absolutely correct. He was a huge friend to the Arlington Public Schools in so many ways and in proper ways people don't even know. The last time I saw Senator Donnelly was at the state house when he took time out of his very busy day to come and be part of the commendation of Brackett School. All of the schools that had received that honor this year met at the state house and both Senator Donnelly and Sean Garbly attended as well as Representative Rogers. Also earlier this fall we had an event in which Odyssey Middle School was celebrating diversity and the pictures are still somewhat still on the wall in which we had pictures of our students plastered over walls on both sides of the school. It was Senator Donnelly came and just sort of slipped in to be part of that event and it just meant so much to everyone that he would come to these very special times for students and staff in our schools and he will be long remembered fondly and with much gratitude for his work. Thank you. I want to recognize Lucy Bogus who was a sophomore member of the student council. She's involved in a number of activities and she's the vice president of the sophomore class so welcome you're welcome to participate and I may call on you so just get ready. Okay, public participation, any public participation, anyone want to say anything? Okay, great. So our first person on the agenda tonight is Paul McKnight and Paul is going to talk to us about a survey of sophomores and we're eager to hear that. Come on up. And thank you to Dr. Bodie for giving me the time to address you. I asked for a few minutes just to fill you in on the administration of the OECD test for schools which happened in March and I have spoken to the school committee, I believe it was last year in the context of being a member of the English department this year I've been doing my administrative internship at the high school and one of those projects, one of those roles was administering for the first time in our district this test that is modeled on PISA which is the international student assessment and which again which we essentially did for the first time so this is essentially an adaptation of a presentation that I created and gave to a handful of interested parents who were the parents of the students who were selected were invited so again the quick the very quick rundown of this is it is a test that is modeled on the PISA which I'll speak about briefly it did involve a random sampling of sophomores being 61 sophomores who ended up taking the test it is a two hour test the academic portion of it in three subject areas reading math and science because it was an online test the administration of this was done over in four separate sessions in the same computer lab it was briefly interrupted by a snow storm the March 14th storm and again the results of this test will be available to us and the report will be available to us in September but just to get into a little bit more detail about those this so this initiative begins with an organization called America Achieves they have several educational reform school improvement divisions and programs one of those is something called the Global Learning Network which we are I believe now a part of because of this participation and the focus of that of that America Achieves Global Learning Network is to invite and encourage American schools to participate in this assessment as a way of learning about their students making international comparisons and national comparisons and then as a way of driving perhaps some school reform and reflection we signed on as part of an initiative with the Commissioner of Education and the Department of Education Elementary and Secondary Education that was invited the first I believe the first 30 districts who agreed to participate in this essentially were got to administer the test for free so that was part of our contract and that decision based on this is what I've been told by Dr. Bode and Principal Janger is that it was we were interested both in terms of the data we could get about this as well as the access to the learning network and the resources professional development resources and organizations, institutions that come along with that but that participation required again testing a sample of 85, 15 year olds as I said it was 61 so the actual threshold is 80% of the target number that you give us that they give us so I included a link but for your for your interest if you're on the piece it is very of a rudimentary explanation of this assessment that is conducted what I learned about it is conducted every three years by the organization the countries that are involved in the organization of economic cooperation and development rotating through math, science and reading and the I also included a link to a document that the testing organization shared with us that has sample questions in each of the subject areas which are very interesting to look at because in some ways they're very different from some of the standardized testing that our students take via MCAS the main difference between the OECD test for schools and the PISA is the PISA really only provides aggregated international data so school in Finland whose students sit this exam they don't learn anything about their individual school it only provides a national level of performance so the OECD test for schools is designed to provide schools with information about their own district, their own students performance however not as I'll point out later students do not get individual score reports but another difference again is that it can be administered at any time so we could administer this test annually every two years, every three years, never again it's up to us whereas the PISA administration again is on a fixed three-year schedule so I just included on the slide in the presentation to students and parents just some of what one of the sample questions looks like what one thing I notice is it's very inter-disciplinary and it's very much about applying knowledge and here's a science question that's very much also about reading and there's a graph that goes along with this and the questions asked for interpretation understanding of that graph as well as questions that are about what might happen again again if like a predator some element of this chain was disrupted etc so it really asks for a lot of speculation and application and theorizing as well and this differs from some of the other assessments that our students have taken in that again it does require a little bit more problem solving so it may not look like the subject matter knowledge that they get in class but either combining that with other subject matters so again some of the reading components can involve science and math topics and also the two hour cognitive exam is followed by a ten minute questionnaire about students effort which is I think is actually going to be very important because the students don't have an individual incentive to perform the one thing that the test then asks is how hard did you try and would you have tried harder if it counted those kinds of questions and I believe that information becomes kind of correlated with the data it also includes an extensive 30 to 35 minute questionnaire that asks students about demographics you know their backgrounds, home life things that they see in their reading habits things that they see going on in their school school climate and instructional practices and again that information becomes part of the data that is reported and as I mentioned students do not receive an individual score nor do we receive individual scores for them so again a quick breakdown of what it looks like it took about three and a half hours to administer the selection of the students it is random it begins with that we narrowed it down to 15 year old sophomores we made a few exclusions on the basis of students that we felt that either for social emotional or cognitive reasons would not be able to complete the test students were not screened out on the basis of their academic achievement or ability or even special education status it was really sort of more extreme cases that roster was submitted to the Northwest Evaluation Association who does the technical aspect of the exam and then they spit back to us a list of 85 students and essentially say test these students that list was updated this was handled through a on their recommendation a passive permission option in other words those 85 students were then I sent them letters I sent their parents letters notifying them they had been selected and the parents received permission slips and if they wanted to have their students excluded from the test then they needed to return that permission slip by a specific date or otherwise let me know so if we didn't hear from parents we assumed that they were okay with the testing I also followed up by email with students and parents just to make sure that there was a lot of communication and as I said in the end we did test 61 students some didn't make it because of absence I would say about 10% of that 85 did defer or did opt out or 10% didn't show up again to get some by this this was not done with a lot of fanfare in the school because again we weren't testing a large group of sophomores all at once teachers were notified daily lists were sent out but it had minimal impacts or disruption we did send out Dr. Jagger sent out a community news post announcing that this was happening parent there were parent and student letters and I prepared parent and student information sessions the one recommendation was the rather corny pizza for pizza and when you offer students pizza they will come so I actually had about maybe 10 parents show up to learn about this before it happened and about 25 of the students came after school to learn a little bit about the test so I also have included a link to the data report that is published with this is fairly substantial it's over 150 pages of charts and graphs and tables one so some of this is just sample data that is not our school where it says your school but it will tell us again in the different domains science and math how our students compare with students in other countries around the world and with other schools in the United States it will break those scores down even further in terms of how our students will perform again here as far as different levels of reading comprehension some other data that a test like the MCAS will not provide us with information such as based on the student self-reporting how they describe themselves as readers, do they read extensively do they read a lot when they read do they skim do they read deeply and then correlate some of that information then with how they perform so perhaps I think we found I think this chart suggested that students who read a lot but maybe more superficially actually perform better than students who read less or maybe somewhere around it's a little blurry for me than students who read less but more deeply so and then questions that we'll talk about how our students perform based on their how they correlate that with information about school climate how they feel about their relationships with their teachers whether or not there is a sense of order in their classrooms so again information about teacher-student relations again comparing that to the highest and lowest performing levels of schools in the United States so it will be interesting to see where our school ranks there as I mentioned our results are going to be compared with the 2015 administration of the PISA and I believe they're still working on that comparison so that the information the report will be available to us in September it's as far as I know we have not created a plan as to how this information how this report might be used and that there will be a lot of parties who would be interested in seeing it the science department the English department the math department I'm sure will be interested in looking at the scores so there are all sorts of possibilities of data teams we can certainly share that information with the public with the community it's possible that we will look at information as we plan for the high school renovation and think about the way we want to do instruction in a new school and see if there are information from this that we can use and again this does provide us with access to professional development resources and conferences which we will be invited to even before we have received this data so we will actually at the high school level encourage teachers to take advantage of some of those experiences and these organizations are ones that are really focused on a deeper level of learning and 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and then also executive function and recognizing the interplay between the cognitive and interpersonal domain Thank you Paul let's open up for questions. Anybody have any questions for Mr. McKnight? Go ahead Kirstie I had one question about the age of the kids who were selected you said 15 year old sophomores did they have to be 15 in March? I believe that they had to be it was between 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months I believe there was there was a there was a range because otherwise you're kind of skewing for the younger kids in the class and I was just wondering about that okay so there was they they set a range I believe 15 years to few months and the software did the randomly random selection automatically looked at birth dates and selected on the basis of that okay oh by the way one thing to add to that the only one thing that was not random was an equal representation of by gender can I add one thing to that we did decide sophomores because there could be those ages and it was really to have a common curriculum experience as well as within the age that's correct that is correct yes it didn't necessarily have to be sophomores it could be 15 year olds so it could have concluded freshmen as well but we thought having the curriculum experience of the freshmen and part of the sophomore year was important okay one more and then in one of the slides you talk about how the results can be used to compare to other schools and I'm wondering what are these other schools you know how are they select how many are there how are they selected what are they like how much like us are they how much different that's a very good question I think there would be I'm not sure of the answer to that I do believe that there are several hundreds schools within the United States who have participated in this it may be more than that so we are only we are only looking at a a sample of a sample in that sense of American schools to see how we compare with those so it's yeah we're being our performance is going to be compared with the other schools who have signed on to do this what information that is provided what explanatory information is provided in the data report may help to answer that question if there's average in terms of school size, location we did provide all that information in terms of the enrollment at our school what type of school we were thank you okay in terms of cost benefit analysis because obviously there's a cost in terms of doing this work within the schools in terms of staff time, student time how did we weigh the cost versus benefit of participating in this assessment what was the argument that persuaded me to move forward with the high school is that in addition we'll look at the schools in this country it's looking also how Arlington High School is doing in a global educational world because what we want to be able to see is whether our students are how our students are doing in these more complex problems that are in this exam which from what I understand are probably a little bit closer to what we're looking for in the 21st century than what we are currently assessing at the state level it's also just a wider it's just a wider comparison but I think the most compelling thing is really looking at how our students do again and how they apply their knowledge to new and complex problems what does OECD stand for and who are they it's the organization of economic cooperation development so I believe it's organization about I can't remember the exact number somewhere between like 16 and 23 countries throughout the world that have been associated as part of I think most of them are fairly developed countries and one of the things that they wanted to work on was to look at the way to come up with this this one formal assessment that they could use to kind of compare students with from one country you know around the world to measure their performance and my last question is will the data from this assessment be shared with the committee? of course of course it will be and Paul has agreed that he's pretty much going to help lead the way next year in terms of the data and how the data is going to be in the next year in the next school this is also initiative and supported by the department of education in Massachusetts because Massachusetts does very well in fact ranks number one on the NAPE and certainly other measures as well but they really want to take a look at how the Mcast 2.0 is a little bit more in that vein and it will be interesting for us to take a look as we look at the questions of the Mcast 2.0 to the types of questions that we're seeing here see the thing is that the high school we're the high school assessment for 10th grade I don't think this has changed substantially from the last few years and it won't change at all what we're seeing is really the new version in K-8 so if we're moving in a certain direction how can we have a little bit more dip sticking into really how we're doing and I'm expecting that we're going to do well but if we're not in certain areas then this is good information for us in terms of what we want to do with both the curriculum and as well as pedagogy any more questions anybody want to see questions ok thank you very much for coming thank you very much for giving the opportunity our next we have Larry Weathers and Cory Bavuso who are going to give a presentation and an update on what's happening in science and prior to the meeting Larry gave us a bunch of materials that we're going to use that you want back at the end of the presentation right oh yes please alright thank you again for inviting us to share with you our challenges and our successes so some of the slides I'm going to show are repeats of last years with new data in it that show you know where we've moved to so first I'd like to introduce to Cory Bavuso she doesn't need an introduction as a teacher because she's been here for about 10 years but she was at a point where she decided to stretch and take on some challenges and we knew that we had a brand new elementary science curriculum with no additional support so Cory has been doing a yeoman's job of working with the elementary teachers providing professional development for them helping them to figure out ways to organize materials and ways to ease the content into the lives of the elementary school teachers and to start with some writing examples and notebooking and so she's been engaged in that and we've been just very happy about the fact that the elementary teachers are supported in their science curriculum now so when we get to a few elementary things Cory we'll talk about what she's been doing and we'll go from there so what do we do here Karen is this a left right thing yeah okay our mission and it's right from our department literature we really want to make science in all our kids awareness it's that kind of a world and they need to have the habits of mind of thinking about science to be critical and that isn't any different than it is in any other discipline it just takes it has a different language and there are some different practices so we have been focusing quite a bit on the last one here science specific literacy and reading and the mathematics necessary for career and college readiness so I have distributed examples of some of our writing and I'll come back to those in a little bit but those are examples from grade 3 where Cory has started working with the elementary science notebooking through grade 7 and 8 where we have books on cells and books children's books on science topics fiction books on science topics where kids are expected to use the terminology explain the principles as if you were talking to a 5 year old we have a new publication this year it's called Science Weekly in the 8th grade where the kids they read a science fiction novel and then they comment on the science in it about the reality of it or the fantasy of it and have to make some judgments about that but all of this again is getting to get kids to express their thoughts to clarify them in writing and to really think about embedding that kind of habit in their normal practice there are examples there from our 11th and 12th grade elective of archaeology where some of you may have seen the lawn being dug up now and then and hopefully nobody stepped into the holes but we mark them quite well where the kids have been digging and picking up artifacts and they found I forget they're in the pictures of them in those journals that you see from cow bones to porcelain and whatever that are you know in the order of 100 years old and they catalog these and describe them and they're going through all the standard techniques of archaeology and this journal is created by the students I think you'll find it's quite high quality writing and this is fitting for one of our capstone courses so I'll move on quickly so we have new standards they came out a little more than a year ago they won't be tested until next year and so we're still we're still getting into the groove in a sense of figuring out how to shift over to these standards we've started that process and this is for the elementary and middle the high school will probably be tested a year later although we don't know that for sure you want to talk about this Corey? Sure, so thank you Larry for the wonderful introduction my pleasure I was really excited to be able to go into a third grade classroom to prepare for a running up PD session for the third grade teachers I was going to help them look at how they could increase the amount of science practices that they were including in their lessons and how they could use science journaling and note booking to do that so in my research since I actually had never been into a third grade classroom before I went and observed in Dallin and the kids were so excited and enthusiastic just getting to measure beans and cut they were dissecting seeds and things it was really cool just to see how bright eyed and bushy tailed the third graders were so that was really exciting for me a little bit different than high schoolers although high schoolers they're excited about science too so the kids were doing a lab about what are seeds, what's the function of seeds, how do seeds grow and so one of the activities is a seed soak lab where they put the seeds in some water and they observe them growing overnight and we were looking at the change in size and how could we tell how much bigger they had gotten and the kids figured out that we should look at the mass and so we were comparing the masses before and after and it was just really it was really neat and then they have all of these opportunities to write about what they think is going to happen in their journal, take notes on their observations explain why that happened and sort of using science vocabulary to do all of that and so after having seen that I did a PD session for the third grade teachers and we modeled this activity with those teachers and talked a little bit about I don't think Larry has put them up yet but the eight science practices that are part of the NGSS how you can actually address each of those eight science practices by no booking and so we went through a bunch of examples we're looking into a resource that's provided by the eBEC which is the what's it stand for East Bay Educational Collaborative East Bay Educational Collaborative and they have kind of a different take on note booking where they have some preset up graphic organizers for kids to be filling in just to let them focus a little bit more on the science and a little bit less on copying terminology and writing out sentences and it's going to be up to the teachers to decide how they want to weigh the pros and cons of having the kids create their own notebooks which is really cool and really powerful and how but they also have a limited amount of time to do their science so we're sort of looking at how can note booking help and then what are some of the different options for note booking so these are the practices what we used to call inquiry skills but the word inquiry meant so many different things that now call them practices but these are the skills that scientists use as they do their normal work we're trying to have the kids model those and really do them you know in this whole FOS program and as we're increasing our use of writing in middle and high school in science we see the kind of when a student can explain what they see and think about something in writing not only do they improve their attention of it but they clarify what they're thinking is you know by the time they go through a few drafts it starts to get clearer in their mind so we're really seeing some effects of that so some other things you know it this is not about the writing but we really want to integrate technology more and more thanks again to the AEF for providing some infrared cameras these are two examples of student hand prints you put a hand down on a table and then you photograph the table afterwards and you see where it was warmer where it wasn't the photo on the right is a hand underneath partly underneath a blanket so you can see probably up the arm you can see the heat being radiated and down below that it's more of a uniform temperature so kids are exploring science principles through visual technology and things that we can't see normally so and again the writing component in the eighth grade you see examples of the children's story books, the technology review, the cell books we have this going on in every grade and it's growing moving to the high school we have a lot of courses we have some great we're increasing our digital options although in a discussion today we acknowledge that sometimes as new digital options come up they aren't as they're not silver bullets we have to figure out how to use them effectively and it's a new strategy for teachers the journal of amateur field archeology you see the issues of that here and continuing that every semester that goes through archeology produces one of those journals totally by the student this is another area of increased involvement one of the practices back a few slides ago was modeling and we have really been starting to delve into how do we use models more effectively they're used all over the place in science and in politics and in economics and whatever and the students should have more experience with that so this is an example the intergovernmental panel on climate change worldwide group that was instrumental in the Paris Accord used the model that we're using now and it was developed at MIT and several weeks ago the environmental AP teacher and I took six students there for a training session and so some of this is them using that modeling it's in a UN kind of environment you know where there are countries that are negotiating for climate change or the factors that will affect it you know how much what are we going to do with taxes and what are you going to do with commitment towards studies and this and that and so the model runs through you can see on the bottom left here it's a very very precise model and it uses you know of course it's a model it's not the reality but it puts in the student data and it actually makes a calculation of how much you've changed the climate how much you've lowered the climate the temperature increase and it's a robust model this is the model that was used at the Paris Accord and so we brought those six students back and they are now implementing that model in all of the environmental classes so they're being the leaders so we want to continue with our modeling efforts in all kinds of ways we have some great awards this year so National Teacher of the Month for January, Daniel Radd our archaeology teacher and that was from the American Association for Advancement of Science the producers of Science Magazine and then sitting next to me Corey Bavuz so some of the regional science associations give awards for excellence in teaching Corey received one and she'll actually get the award in a few weeks but she was already acknowledged for it in the Outstanding Science Educator and we're proud of that so this is just a run down of our courses and as you can see our electives are numerous and they're capstone courses we expect the kids to use all the sciences when they take one of those electives and our AP program keeps growing last year I showed you the first four lines of this and now as we are enrolling kids for next year and we're not done yet I'm projecting that there are possibly ten sections it will certainly be nine and it's looking like ten right now so what that's saying down below you can see our requests for these courses are greater and we're not done yet because enrollment is still going on so we're proud of that and at the same time we want to be watchful we don't want to overdo AP courses where it's not appropriate we want to see how students manage them we don't want them to take more than they can manage and we're trying to be watchful on both sides of that the scores are growing last year I reported you know various courses and the percents of threes, fours and five and this year you can see it's grown a little dip but sometimes it's cohort related and it's hard to look at just for one year but we're proud of the environment going from 46 to 73 and everybody in biology was three, four or five so sorry I didn't realize that this would be so small so last year I showed you the left two groupings of graphs bottom graph is all students, top graph high need students and going from 14 to 15 we increased quite a bit in our proficient category and this year from last spring we dipped a little bit but if we look back four years it just goes up and down there's a little cyclic pattern to it so we're keeping track of that we analyze the data we look for ways we can improve there's still room to grow there and I always show this graph I know that class sizes is by research shown not to be a real significant indicator of student success but it is in terms of student accidents in class in lab classes so one of our continued goals is to really watch the class sizes in laboratory classes you can see that after after 24 here it starts to rise and by 28 it rises significantly so that's one of our challenges and our concerns for a number of reasons staffing room availability building adequacy and all that we want to keep our eyes on that so that's the nutshell so if you have any questions questions anyway I'll be at the chemistry classes the labs well we have some that are oh how many students we try to keep the the kids who are who choose the advanced level as opposed to the honors level we try to keep those smaller those tend to be in the low 20s 20 to 22, 23 which is a good number and we're happy with that but in order to do that the honors level sections are more and those students can generally handle that but sometimes it just gets more than we have the facility for so some of our honors level classes are up to 30 are they doubling up at the stations your labs on set up for 30 students are they no I'm just concerned we have tables on the side that act as lab stations I'm just concerned on a safety basis that's all for the groups of four and I know in some of Corey's anatomy classes the sections are huge and we've had to bring in extra tables as lab stations so those are don't misunderstand me I think the programs are exciting the growth in them I can remember science more or less I mentioned tapering off the enthusiasm was there at the elementary level and because it became very almost static at the high school level I think we're growing I think it's fantastic just by looking at the environmental the astronomy the the other courses really congratulate you I'm just concerned about safety yes in the lab so are we we do all the things we can we make sure our safety equipment is there we have it checked we we watch the desks we try to arrange things so that the lab areas have a little bit more more motion ability and without kids kids can bump into each other's elbows in a basketball court let alone in a science lab thank you we're trying to watch that thank you where are we on the rollout are we fully rolled out is this the first year what's the status we are rolled out fully from first to fifth grade this was the first year for fourth and fifth to have their kids but did third all third teachers had them last year third grade and second some second and some first we have a demographic adjustment we're continuing to make for example as our school population grows if we look back four years ago or so almost every elementary school every most of the elementary schools had three classrooms per grade level now probably more than half of them I would say have four so as those numbers move along we're having to buy extra kids so we just bought in a sense a half roll out for next year so that all those buildings that have four classrooms in a grade will have adequate numbers of kids so we're still doing that and it'll take it takes a little while for the teachers to adjust to the new plans practices to be more inquiry oriented and so even though the equipment roll out is just about done I think the teacher growth is still progressing and it will for a few years is there more PD plan for that I did hear some discomfort from some of the teachers about what they were supposed to do with the kids and the PD not following not being timely with when the kids see how we definitely have a lot of PD yes absolutely great I have volunteers or stipend stipended positions from teachers from each of the grades one through five and our first goal is to get together this summer and start looking at some resources that we can put together to help make everybody's life easier and we have a website where we're going to start compiling all of these things that we come up with on revised scope and sequences snapshot lessons anything that we can think of that will sort of streamline things for the teachers and then in the fall the same group of teachers hopefully will again get a new stipend to help us plan PD and so they'll start looking at what things would be the most useful and then being able to try to put things together where we can model those skills and support the teachers a little bit better that way by sort of asking them what they need so we're calling them teacher leaders and so science teacher leaders and so that hopefully will help a bit the other thing we're exploring is we would rather have our teachers working with the kids directly on content and not fiddling with counting the straws that are in the kits or the wheels or whatever so we're exploring models for that and there are a number of them out there some costs more some costs less and we're looking at ways that we might be able to work with some partners that will help to refurbish those kits bring them back to the teachers have them ready to go take that time away from the teachers you know the nuts and bolts work and have them working with the kids more thing that I think more about than anything else because I think that you guys are doing a great job but you mentioned facilities and context and that we're embarking on a high school project and we're also opening up new classrooms and new science classrooms over the Gibbs and we're going to be able to have a little more space to work with at the bottom. So I guess my question to you is just maybe a 30 second off the top of your head wish list dream vision for what science classrooms might look at at our links in a high school after we're done with the building project that's a good and challenging question only because there are a lot of options and of course our wish list is that we're going to be able to do a great job. I want to know about the candy. That's what we should be doing and we have been going around visiting schools that have recent building projects West and Winchester and others and trying to get examples we're seeing things that are common that are that look really good and it's from the MSBA and there are constraints from dollars and we have to see what we can work with and but it's going to be a whole lot better. I mean programmatically we can define things that we think we need in terms of our curriculum going towards the MSBA because it's not a number alone just based on enrollment counts so I'm encouraging you to really be thoughtful about how you're mapping out your hopes and dreams. I'm glad to hear that support because that is what we're trying to do. In fact we were trying to start to not implement but to select a new curriculum at the oddison so that when the move to the Gibbs occurred we'd be ready to go with some brand new stuff. We're starting new standards then is occurring we've got new rooms so why not have a new curriculum and what ended up happening is that because the standards and science are so new the publishers you know there's that lag time and they're just coming out with the new programs and so we we were zeroing in on one we thought was really pretty good and two weeks later another one comes out that looks a whole lot better so we have slowed down that process so that we can just let that lag get beyond us a little bit and so that by maybe next fall we'll be ready to make some recommendations that way because we thought that there are too many good things coming out right now that if we just chose one now we probably wouldn't have necessarily the best option. And I know that a lot of people are working at tradition I hope the one that we don't keep is the pillars in the middle of the lab. We're so nostalgic about that. What would we do without them? Like in the Fenway park well the utilitarian part of those is we hang skeletons from them we mount projector shelves on them but half the kids in the room can't see the teacher. Larry Curry thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. We're going to pass your materials to the left. Oh yes. This is fun stuff. Thank you Larry. Great. I'm glad you had it. If you ever want to see more of it let us know. Thank you. All right. So we now have Dr. Bode's update. Thank you. You're on the air. I have quite a few things I want to update everybody about. The first bullet of course are always update about buildings and let me just give you a quick thumbnail sketches of where we are. You heard we're talking about the high school as we look forward to the project beginning we're in a sort of a slow to go fast kind of mode in that we need to have the owner's project manager selected that we're in that process now. The first proposals, the proposals I should say the first proposals will be due I think May 8th and we will go through the process and bring our selection to MSBA in early July. Then we will begin the designer part of the project in selecting the designer and then after the designer selected that's when it's going to really start moving quickly and the work that Mr. Weather is talking about in thinking about the curriculum what kind of space would be best suited for the curriculum how many classrooms we need for the science all of that is going to be something that's going to be key in what the design of this building is going to be so that will be happening next year for sure. With the Gibbs we are moving forward quite well in the planning for the renovation. We have as you know Gibbs Advisory Committee which met again last week and Ms. Starks is on that committee looking at designs and I think this is going to be a little bit longer process and probably anticipated as we try to figure out what is the design and color schemes that everyone feels really good about so we're in the process. Stratton I did a tour of this last week just to see where things stood and we are about 75% of the way through the actual goal is to have the classroom wings available to teachers I think it's the 22nd of June and I think judging from where they are right now I think that's quite possible what will happen once the teachers are able to start moving boxes is that the part of the building that is the cafeteria the so the kindergarten area too and the gym that will now be cordoned off and that will be the focus of the summer work so that everything is ready for the start of school I will say that the new windows in the building really make a huge difference in terms of the light in the building those of you that are familiar with the corridors particularly the bottom floor which is always so dark it's opened up completely in terms of light and I think it would be great for the committee to have an opportunity to go visit as well in fact is there a date for the permanent building committee is meeting for next Tuesday early for us to do a tour of our regular meeting then I don't think there would be an issue with school committee members going on that I know one that is going but I don't want to speak for John you can talk to John I don't think there would be a problem with that I don't think so either I can ask about that Thompson it's Tuesday night and I think it's at 5 I'll look it up for when they are doing the tour Thompson's deal is going up it's not completely up yet we requested a revised schedule and that will be delivered to them I believe our project manager rejected this time schedule because they crunched it and he said they said they are going to make it on time in fact they even indicated they are going to be three days early and he said show us a schedule that has all the subcontractors committed to do that because before you finish Thompson I have a request for you so before you I'd like to suggest the possibility that I don't want it to happen but have plan B ready just in case so we are not in a reactive mode in the middle of the summer and if possible bring it to us before the end we already have plan B figured out for the school I don't like plan B but we have a figured out plan B does that include using the library I hope not most likely yes it depends on what happens with kindergarten and what I do with buffer zones over the next couple of months it's complicated I'll talk about that in a minute enrollment numbers for kindergarten yes I think our biggest issue in terms of plan B is less about the school it's about what to do about parks and rec since we did not know whether we were going to need the modulars and for how long we would need the modulars next year we're under contract for a year which actually turns out to be a blessing in disguise because in moving parks and rec programs out of Gibbs they need a place to be and they have two programs that are going to utilize the modulars so one is their preschool program and the second is their after school program one of the really increasing pressure that's happening district-wide is the need for after school programming and right now the park and rec program has 40 children in the program turns out the majority of those are a little over half those are Thompson children so it will be actually quite convenient that it's there but that program will probably be fine it's the daytime preschool that will be of issue as we try to figure this out but we are there we actually have been talking about this for a couple of months as we've been concerned about the time schedule then the Hardy that will be discussed at town meeting at the special town meeting which is April 26 and there will be the vote in terms of whether we can go forward the town meeting will vote appropriation and whether we can go forward from there but the idea that we would be sort of paralleling the same kind of process we've gone through Thompson so that it will be a year out and Hardy would have six classrooms the following year starting in September so those are the quick updates and where we are with all the projects actually even though Hardy is not actually active it has taken up considerable amount of time this year and sort of planning so we are at town meeting ready to go with a plan Any questions about building before Dr. Wood, what do you guys think about? The preschool, am I understanding correctly that they're building they're renovating another building that's separate from the schools or is this a different preschool? It's different Yes, there was two preschools This is Parkland Recreation Program Any questions about buildings? Part two Just so you're aware I've been collaborating with other people writing a statement about the Alling to Public Schools position on immigration immigrant students and refugee students I sent that out today I sent you a copy of it but increasingly over the last few months the concerns are growing about what is the position of the Alling to Public Schools with respect to information about immigration status We do not collect that information during a registration process It's not a question we ask because the law is very clear that students can be educated in this country regardless of their immigration status that was decided by the Supreme Court back in 1982 and we certainly abide by that we are also And rightly so very constrained by the federal regulations around how student information can be disseminated and essentially is that we do not give out student information There would be only very particular circumstances when that would happen and it would require a subpoena But in addition to that I wanted to make sure that people understood that even if we found out inadvertently that the immigration status of a student we do not contact any federal agencies with that information and I think that's important for people to know So that is out there but in addition to that we've also found some resources and actually some of the resources that we're sending out to parents as well So that's there and I think it's important for people to really understand that we are a school district that is committed to educational equity and to respect and the dignity of all of our students and families and that is something that we're talking about we're talking about transgender students students with disabilities whatever students we are committed to creating a safe environment for those students So that some more I want to since we're talking about Tom Meade let me just also let you know that our moderator Leone will be announcing the first day that budgets will be taken up on May 3rd The other articles that affect the schools May 3rd is going to be the day that we're going to have budgets we might want to talk about that's the night that we want to have the time that the school committee gives their report to town meeting so that's something we can think about I also want to tell you that we have at the printers right now the budget book and report to town meeting and in fact we probably could get that out to you in the PDF form it's such a large document we have to wait really to get it onto a site so that we can give you the link rather than give you the whole document but it's essentially parallel that what we had in past years with all the budget information as well as reports from every principal and curriculum leader about the highlights of this year and I did want to mention in light of this question that Mr. Schlickman asked what is the cost benefit of the kind of effort with respect to this kind of testing when you are a school and a school district that is always looking to improve then one of the ways you do it part of that loop is the loop of assessments looking at the data and then moving forward with the kind of changes that are necessary and I think that the work that we're doing in this area is recognized in various ways as you can see we have two science teachers who are recognized for their work by the way while she is also helping elementary she's still a teacher in the high school and teaches I think three courses in high school but in the book that we're giving into town meeting we also can report that the high school received the gold medal of distinction again in U.S. News & World Report Best High School Rankings this year H.S. ranks 16th among the Massachusetts school up from 19 the year before and remains in the top 2% of schools nationally in terms of ranking number 193rd nationally so it's we're recognized for the work we're doing that's not our goal is to have high rankings our goal is to be able to provide the best education we can for our students in an environment that is welcoming and warm because we don't want our students also to be so driven that they are anxious to stress students we know that that can have a very serious consequences when that's your environment in the school and so another thing that we'll find out from that survey that was just done is getting some a little bit of a dip stick into that those kind of questions also I want to also give you a quick update actually I'm going to ask Dr. Cheson to give you a quick update on what we're testing right now so we are just about done with Audison in the ELA and are halfway through the elementary as we recall grade 4 is doing the test online and grade 6, 7 and 8 at Audison are all doing it online we have had a couple of very minor technical issues we had one that is considered minor in its perspective about 1200 students were testing we had three that had technical issues I'm sure for their parents and those students it's not considered minor but we have worked through it we did find out today that one other district had one student who also had the same technical issue so it's our belief that this is a Pearson issue but we put something what happened was the students put in their testing information so we had three students out of about 1100 who had that experience that were all testing on the same day we found out another district also had one student who had that issue so even though our tech department spent hours and hours trying to track it down it happens so infrequently that it was very difficult and they did change one or two things but they really don't think those were the problems but the teachers can actually monitor online if a student is progressing through the test they can't see the student's answer but they can see oh Johnny's on question 3 Susie's on question 4 so as a result since that student's work wasn't being sent up to the server we're now asking teachers to check at regular intervals to make sure that they see that every student in their class has answers that are going up to the server because had we checked that and it can only be done at certain intervals 25 kids that are testing in a class as each one is doing one question you know you're getting this rapid revolution of screen so you have to kind of pick a moment in time and go through every student but that will help us to at least catch if this God forbid happens again it did not happen after that day nor did it happen since that day nor did it happen last year at all so as it is many things as technical that happen with technology you know we have to kind of plan for the worst case scenario and hope for the best so the three students were testing and their test one day one day is worth of testing so not and actually one of the students only half their test didn't go up and the other two they're to complete test for that dating go up so did they have to repeat or were they excused they have we reached out to the principal reached out to the parents and the parents chose in both cases to have the student redate the test the unfortunate part is we could mark the test being not completed but with a technical issue but that's not going to provide parents information regarding that students ability to you know to handle the test so they certainly could have chosen to do that but what would have happened to the student would have received zeroes for that day it's not like the system has a capacity to only grade one portion of it we prepared or has desi provided us the translation of mcast two into what it was before against the standards and stuff these are we going to have a year without are we going to be able to compare this year with past year I'm sure there'll be a crosswalk and you can they haven't provided it yet we have not received that yet but how we have been notified that there will be four levels last year if you remember there were five levels there are this year there will only be four levels that's going to cause our own issue with that but my concern is that we don't have we're in a trial year and it's understood and you experience a technical issue but it happens with all things but we put so much educational time into this we have used it in the past as a tool of comparison I would be very nervous if we now have to start a data collection as year one again well I mean again there were crosswalks last year to there was a crosswalk in the sense that they gave you a park score and then they told you what score that would have been in MCAS so that we can certainly compare that information but what will be more useful this year is that I anticipate that they will be releasing the questions that they use to give students a specific rating and last year for park that was not released so that in of itself will be an advantage to us that we did not have last year we were just trying to put you on the spot but you're the one will this be available at the beginning of the summer so that the teachers will have an opportunity as they have in the past and do the analysis right now they're saying that we'll get the multiple choice results just about the same time we got them last year which is about the end of June beginning of July not everybody took the test online and that's why it's better than October and November okay a few more things yes quick question given the findings on the electronic testing this year do we have do you think we have we'll have the capacity going forward to test electronically across all grades next year yes we've come up with we haven't didn't have a sufficient staff in order to be able to do that this year we're coming up with what we would need to do in terms of how we're going to have that there are individuals across the district that could be trained to provide the level of technical support that we weren't able to do this year okay enrollment we have been looking at our kindergarten enrollment and as of the other day we are close to 460 students we are ahead of where we were at this time this year I we have about 70 students that are in buffer zones who are not siblings and those assignments will be sent out by the end of the month perhaps even at the end of next week but certainly by the end of the month and one of the reasons for getting these out is that we also want parents to know what school they're in so they can do programming I know that what we're doing at Thompson and Hardy because those are Arlington public school programs is that we are well actually we're going to do something new next year and the letter is going out probably today or tomorrow we're actually going to put in a kindergarten program at Hardy for sure and possibly at Thompson it depends whether we have we need to do it at Thompson so what we're going to do is it will expand our after school program by about 20% so the kindergarten students will be in their own room for the first part of the after school and then we'll be integrated into other programs after that it's a it's a decision both to create more space for after school programming but also to introduce kindergarteners to an after school type of program in a way that's a little bit more gentle and slow to get used to so that's happening I don't it's a little bit harder for our other schools to do this because it has to do with licensing of space but the buffer zones we've had a surprise and one surprise is at Pierce where the number of kindergarten students has really increased enough that we probably could have three kindergartens there next year which has been a spiraling effect in terms of how we're going to use buffer zones to try to be strategic so we're waiting for another week of data before making some decisions but hopefully that will all go out very soon but 460th this time tells us to certainly be in the high 400s if not go over 500 again this year I want to give congratulations to the cast and the performing arts department for crazy for you it was spell binding it was the only way to describe it it was one of the most outstanding plays that we've put on here at the high school in years but I think one of the things that was really interesting and commendable is that through a gift of one of our chief supporters of performing arts college before we were able to get the original choreography for the play and as a result some students learned the choreography and then taught all the other students so we didn't really have a official choreographer this year we had our students doing it and they did an amazing job I'm not an expert but I gotta tell you that adds that much more to it they were in sync throughout that whole performance that I saw on Sunday afternoon it was spell binding it was just fantastic what you saw was the original play that had been performed because sometimes there's an adaptation in a high school but the thing that was amazing is that we had the talent two leads of sophomores yes now coming up on the next month Beauty and the Beast will be at the middle school the last weekend in April and then the following weekend is the Arlington High School Pops at Town Hall both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon so if any of you are interested in tickets we probably can work something out for sure let me see if there's anything else here okay thank you okay so we'll catch up and be at the consent agenda by 810 so don't worry about that I wondered if you wanted to talk about the vacancy in stopping and is this in superintendent's position it's posted yes you want to confirm that the job is posted and we congratulate Dr. Chesson as superintendent of the Grottendonstable Grottendonstable school district I spoke to the chair of the search committee and I said all these great great things about Laura so we're very excited for you we're sad for us and we're excited to see you take on a super tendency well thank you and I look forward to a successful completion of negotiations in Grottendonstable as I keep telling Mr. Mr. Spiegel you know I haven't signed my contract yet so a mere, mere detail yes great thank you any other questions I'm sorry I couldn't okay so school committee calendar so I took something that Jennifer Seuss put together and I also put on the back three pages three pages all the policies that I could think of that have deadlines and I went through the policy book and that you know election of school committee officers school committee subcommittees the date language is an exact quote from the policy itself so it's how the policy reads a couple of things to point out the district wide goal setting process by May 15th the superintendent submits the goals of the school committee policy revision and review there's a policy that says by June 1st the committee chaired by Mr. Kardon is supposed to report back on which sections of the policy manual it intends to examine during the next 12 months we have to take into account the fact that last term we voted to do a policy review with MASC policy CBI lays out the role of the committee in engaging with the superintendent on her goals our practice has been that the curriculum assessment committee works with the superintendent on identifying standards indicators and elements of the evaluation so that's which district goals will be the practice goal and student achievement goal there's a template that we created over the past couple of years then there's budget adoption the policy reads that we're supposed to approve the budget after presentation to town bodies so that may be something that lens committee has to revise there's a report on minority hiring there's the approval of the school calendar curriculum adoption which doesn't have a date but that's usually when the principal comes to us and presents the program of studies or revisions to it second meeting in October assignment of students to schools and then the school choice vote by June 1st so those are the policies that I found so if the policies and procedures subcommittee or anybody else goes through this and finds some policies that I didn't catch just send an email to Karen and we'll just add to this and make it kind of a document that future chairs can use as a reference to thank you the calendar is something that Jennifer had put together and I just sort of you know tried to drop in you know different dates based on policies so if people think something's missing or want to change something I want to add something just let me know so any discussion on the calendar it's very much a draft and it's a work in progress and it's always going to be a living document so one thing that we should have added to either one of the September dates is a review of the capital submissions what was requested okay for capital planning we had talked about that they go in and that we were going to review them first or second meeting yep okay great point you had something else? the only other thing is that I'm looking at May as being a potential retreat in that this is also town meeting season and it's probably an exhausting and time consuming time starting the last week in April that if we do it in May we should be doing it towards the end of May just so we're not doing it until we grow out a couple of nights of town meeting and here at night and doing the other things that we need to do to get through that is probably our busiest time of the year yep that's coming up so I was going to kind of pull anything else on the calendar may I see day on the hill is April 25th we've had that on the agenda in the past I look at last year's agenda anyone attending? I don't know what's going on at the state house but people are meeting at the Masonic temple and I spoke to Margaret Thomas when they had met go on the hill they started somewhere else and when they got to the state house they got lost because they were re-rooted in some of the hallways so if you're going to meet find the path of the day to get to the people I'm not going to be able to make it this year I'm not going to be able to make it either I don't know if anyone is able to make it this year okay and then the retreat so did we have a retreat last year when we talked about goals? I don't remember we had it just for clarification we're talking district goals we're talking superintendent's goals we're talking both I think we need it but I also agree with Mr. Schlickman it's a very tight time of the year I'll put out a doodle and see what's available alright any questions on anything? whoa excuse me so when and how are you going to slide in which goals are going to be reported on you know I know you've got the placeholders for reporting on goal number whatever things like that so my thinking was that once we approve the goals for the year then I would come back I would work with Dr. Bode I would come back to the committee and slide in the different goals and then we would discuss it at the retreat we would discuss it at a meeting or at the retreat just so we're clear on the goals the way that everything works in terms of the policy which we've had a lot of different discussions on there's different perspectives on it but this is the policy is so the meeting on the 11th I'm sorry the district goals she presents the district goals on the 11th which could mean a preliminary discussion on the 27th if she's ready if not we just get them by policy on the 11th and then we have a first reading on the 25th and then an approval of those goals on June 8th once the goals are approved at the same time we've got a at that meeting and I think it's best to come to us with a recommendation on the what we're going to measure Dr. Bode by according to the policy and correct me if I'm wrong I'm asking the board we were talking about revamping or replacing the tool to meet the needs for the upcoming one so I guess that we put that back to his committee as well yeah but I mean you know here we are it's actually a policy okay the evaluation forms a policy the goal is curriculum if Mr. Cardin's committee wanted to take a look at that you can but I mean there's a limited amount of time here and you know and we've been through this long discussion about the timing of this and you know the policy okay so so I'm going to just sort of keep this as a guide and maybe refer to it every meeting just as a gentle reminder that this is what we've got coming up okay so we may not and if we can't get a retreat in then we're just going to have to talk about the goals in the regular meeting and that's all there is to it alright I'm impressed any questions okay and then all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion these items unless a member of the committee so request in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval warrant 17158 total warrant amount 456000 074.25 dated 332.17 approval of minutes aye opposed the motion carries subcommittee reports you guys are just appointed so no one's got a report I don't think nope okay just to tell the board I made a request to the new policy chair to set up a meeting because I have a couple of things that I'd like presented and just wanted to share that with everybody good idea any announcements I'm not back the warrant committee everyone got paid that's still active we had talked about or I suggested having presented her maintenance approach so that's not on your schedule it could mean fall we don't have time for it this spring but a maintenance approach okay she did a presentation to the board of selectmen but she did it to the B.O.S. you want that Lynn in spring of the fall? whenever okay thank you under liaison real quick edco the last meeting of the year of school committee was last week and the KC&I attended we represent probably half the school committee members that have showed up the last couple of meetings we discussed what's going forward what we're going to be talking about next year the board met for a meeting last year the end of the year discussion of events and what they plan on doing for next year Audison parent group OPEC met last Friday there was a presentation I'd like to commend to the guidance people to the superintendent they did an excellent job and did a Q&A with the parents and under announcements Patriot State Parade will be held on Sunday April 23rd unlike a lot of other towns it will run down Massachusetts Avenue from Brattle Street to Adam Street looks like soccer and a thousand things okay anything else so if you're going to march let Karen know just she needs to kind of report who's going to march Mr. Schleckman's going to march Jennifer okay okay yeah with respect to Ruthie Bennett I've already talked to her about this she is going to look at the calendar and see which Thursday she could do it great alright folks so we move into executive session and as I understand it we're going to come back out and make a vote in public session so we've got to let the camera people know that so motion to move into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held in an open session may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held an open session may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted approval of chief financial officer John D'Anesio's contract approval of draft executive session minutes of March 30th 2017 do I have a motion so motion by Dr. Allison Ampe second by Dr. Starks whoa why not you have a terminal terminal so we have to take a not terminal I mean it that way wait Ms. Starks yes yes the motion carries unanimously 6-0 we are now in executive session thank you we are returning from executive session and one of the things we have to do in this meeting is approve the contract of our new chief financial officer John D'Anesio John D'Anesio I need a motion Mr. Schlickman a motion to approve the contract and authorize the chair to sign second by Mr. Hayner any discussion on the contract with our new chief financial officer the contract goes into effect on July 1 his first day of work with us so any questions great we're going to take a roll call vote by policy Mr. Carter yes Mr. Starks Mr. Schlickman yes and Jeff votes yes okay so it's unanimous 6-0 vote we have a new chief financial officer once he signs the agreement yes yes so all you got to do is sign it we got a deal we have a new chief financial officer starting on July 1 you ready for this motion to adjourn second any discussion there is none on that motion all in favor say aye aye all opposed it passes unanimously thank you very much everybody