 Welcome to the regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee today is Thursday December 19th 2019 joining the committee tonight oh first of all Jeff Thielman is not able to meet us on time he may be joining us late and joining us tonight are Julianna Keyes from the AEA and Manjo Moore from Arlington High School student representative. Doesn't look like we have any public comment any any public comment from the audience no all right so the first item on our agenda is actually the approval of the Pathways Academy plan we have Michelle Gujain the executive vice president of McLean Hospital and Laura Mead to present please come up to the table and the microphone doesn't work in the room but it works at home this is broadcast on cable TV so just make sure as each of you speak you move the microphone or keep it in between you oh is the Karen Isley cord all the way out the cord looks a little stuck thank you all right so we haven't done this for a long time we haven't had a new school open in Arlington for a very long time before I've been here so you just wanted to give a little bit of overview of what your program is it's Arlington operations and we can go from there okay thanks thank you very much for having us this evening we appreciate you putting us on the agenda let me just give a quick overview of what McLean services will is the plan to be coming to Arlington because I think that will may answer some other questions you may have about the school and our other programs we were very fortunate to find that there would be a property like Jermaine Lawrence available to be able to help us expand our services we at this point are over subscribed and there is way more good work to be done and we just have run out of space so particularly for residential care and the school services and their campus has been built to be able to do that and that is a big thrill for us because we're in 1890s buildings that were not built for what they now do and that's always creates a challenge so the opportunity here is to relocate pathways Academy which is why we're here tonight but also to relocate two areas of residential programs from our three East continuum these are residential programs that are built around the dialectical behavioral therapy kinds of techniques which are educationally based socio-emotional learning curricula with classroom types of organizing features for kids with goals and those children will be on the campus as well probably a very important feature of that whole program is all of their educational needs will also be provided by the program they will not be in the Arlington school system so I know that was an issue with the previous folks because they they had different programs our programs are all inclusive and we feel very strongly that the educational needs for these adolescents primarily who will be in our care for about six to eight weeks we will take care of their educational needs as well in one program right at the center and at the Jermaine Lawrence campus so that will be what we'll be offering for them and we expect this will be in the range of 30 to 40 individuals these are not large programs so that will be all taken care of on site Pathways Academy is another opportunity for us a school that we have had on the Belmont campus quite successfully for a long time this will finally give them their ability to have their own building and to be able to expand potentially some of their services and certainly to be able to rearrange them in a building that will be much more hospitable for educational services so Laura Mead is here with me tonight she's the educational administrator for pathways and she'll describe that program thank you so Pathways Academy is where a small school maximum of 32 students we average about 27 we serve students age six through 22 I would say typically the youngest is about third grade in reality and we do grow it up to 22 and we are a kind of a small community so each classroom has four students one special ed teacher certified and one what we call a school counselor is like a teacher's assistant and the students do the regular kind of academics a typical core academics the typical electives that you'd see in any school the one thing that we add differently in terms of classes is a social pragmatics class which the students have is like a direct core subject and then we also infuse it in everything we do so the nature of the students that attend Pathways are students usually with disorders on the autism spectrum that need a lot of social skills support and so we teach it directly and then all staff are supporting it at all times throughout the day the other kind of piece we bring in a sensory integration where we have in between every 45 minute class a 15 minute sensory integration break the goals for sensory integration are developed by our OTS and all staff support the students in working and it's kind of a time for kids is just break time playtime but for those of us working behind the scenes and the students that are getting to know their own needs and what they're working on it's what they need to do to get ready for the next class to kind of sustain sustain them throughout the day so we have a in general the population is for the most part college bound but it's not going to be a typical you know leave high school at 18 and head off to a four-year we do have a lot of dual enrollment when we have older students who might be at pathways for an extra year after 12th grade they might take a community college class a couple days a week pathways another and that's a great way for us to help them transition into the world of higher ed great are there any other any questions from the committee just a clarification so so about 30 in each program is that Sunrise so that is it's not like you said 32 is your limit and 30 is yours approximately right yes for the two residential programs okay and it's a space and equally divided or is there there's greater need in one one of the programs than the other so the way that we are envisioning it would be that pathways will have their own building that will be the only programming that will be in their dedicated building and that was selected because of the larger areas that could be made into classrooms because a lot of the space is already more sort of dormitory focused in a way so what we'll use the we'll have a boys program and a girls program and they'll be in two separate buildings and then there'll be another building that where some of the other programming where people will come together and office space will be so it'll be pretty spread out but within the confines of the Jermaine Lawrence campus there yes trainer today in senior we have two programs a day program and a residential program I didn't misunderstand school the school is a day program is a day program yep and if you started the residential part of it not yet no so that's coming okay yes thank you just want to clarify pathways isn't going residential I understand okay I went to one of the community meetings and I was wondering you clarified it thank you yes I think when we had the community meeting we weren't sure exactly which of the residential programs how this was all going to work out at this point I think we've got a pretty clear sense of what will work well in those in those buildings and be able to have the appropriate mixing and separation for folks if I just clarify yeah tonight are we approving both programs or just this the pathways program tonight and then coming back for the residential program later I don't know I'm asking I believe the request is for pathways school yeah for the approval of the center's educational component of the residential program that's not provided by pathways then you'll have to figure out whether you need to come back to us for that or not but that's right that would be separate okay in general that's handled through the program and we've been handling within the hospital services because the length of stay is so short like a hospitalization you use a vendor for tutoring so when we have students placed in a hospital setting that there's most of the hospitals have vendors and we pay directly that's not our purview yeah that would be okay great thank you if I said dr. as an amp you were next yeah so as mr. Cardin said we haven't done this in decades so my questions aren't implying anything about your program it's just I think we're tasked with evaluating and approving it so that's what I'm trying to do one question in your program description it says most students at Pathways Academy have had negative experiences in programs with strict ABA philosophies and benefit from our system of social pragmatic learning in natural consequences I was wondering if you could discuss that a little bit more because I don't understand you know nowhere else do you explain what the natural consequences are how what's happening with the students sure we find that and as I think all educators find ABA is a wonderful tool for so many students especially students on the spectrum but there seems to be kind of a subset of kids that are dealing with so much anxiety that aren't able to do better just in order to earn something that they're actually already doing the best they can and that when they're in a structure where if they don't earn a certain amount of points they then don't get a certain kind of reward or something similar like that and I realize it's a kind of a strict ABA interpretation we find that they will say well why try it all and just shut down or maybe it's not a thinking process it's just a shutting down so we use a natural consequences pragmatics approach where everything is a learning opportunity so literally if a student comes into class swipes everything off the table we look at that as staff and we think what do we need to do differently it's not about the student adhering to our expectations in the moment it is what's their behavior telling us and what can we do to help them be in a place where they feel a little safer and then when they're calm we can say and it might be let's go for a break or do you need to let's go shoot some baskets all sorts of different strategies that we can do because of our small ratio and our small school size when they're calmer we can say you know I could tell you are pretty upset when you you know swiped everything off the desk what's another way you can let me know that you were really tired and you weren't right you know if we find out that they were tired what's another way you can let us know our goal is to have kids use words and be able to ask for a break whenever they need it and a lot of people will say well if kids can ask for breaks aren't they just taking breaks all day like the whole day is a break but we actually don't find that a lot of times transitioning from programs that weren't successful where they didn't experience success it takes a little while to trust that if they asked for a break they really can get it so there is still some acting out but we see the acting out go way down because we're really able to just pull back our demands when the students are struggling so we call it a social pragmatics approach because it's it's always kind of relationship building conversational what's another way you can let me know using words which are more socially expected when you're having a hard time I think what I was coming it sounds like what you mean by natural consequences is not what I've heard of in parenting is natural consequences where you know if your student I mean if your child says well I'm not going to study then the natural consequences are you fail the test or something and that's I was concerned about that then the other question I had two other questions one is in terms of the social learning it sound the curriculum that you gave sounded excellent I just wondered it seemed like each week or month there was a new topic and they were never came back again you know it's like bing bing bing bing and it just seems like especially from the students that you're describing that wouldn't they benefit from coming back and revisiting the same topics right for the most part the social pragmatics goals and objectives in the students IEPs are the main ones they need to work on so those were always coming back to it might not be part of the class literally the class lesson but kind of what they're working on what staff are working on with the students all the time we do hit the same themes every single year so we have a lot of kids that say I don't need to learn about conversation we already did this but they actually do and so we have to change it up and make it interesting but it is over time they do keep kind of coming back and can I say real quick about the natural consequences I actually forgot to mention that it's a it plays a big role in terms of the social skills if we have a student that acts out and we might have to ask other students to leave the room if we can't move the student because we go to great lengths to not put hands on as all of you do as well here and we're really trying to say like well you know John might not want to spend break with you because you told him I hate you and so helping them see the natural social consequences or we're gonna spend time you're gonna work with a teacher away from the group because the group didn't feel safe when you threw your chair so that kind of thing and then my final question is just if it as a day school how are your students getting to and from the school they're transported by the district so we have a lot of little mini vans with the school bus thank you okay I'm just trying to understand the structure so essentially what you're doing is running two programs one of which is residential and one of us a day program serving similar population the populations are similar I would say that some of the techniques that get used actually probably are similar but with different kids slightly different age group and different expectations of what the goals are going to be for how they're going to be helped well granted the kids in a residential program have a higher level of need but you're you're working within sort of similar domain okay yeah yeah I think the other thing is is because our behavioral health approach to things you know I think a lot of these things we're describing them as fairly siloed and what they are and people have a variety of interventions that are possible and we're fortunate that we have professionals and one of the things we often see is that the programs work together and that we have a depth of ability to work with people with obsessive compulsive disorder or kind that kind of very specific need that has a very specific intervention with it can often be very usefully deployed in a place where they're they can work with the faculty as well as the other clinicians that are there now the residential students are going to be members of our community what is the advice you would have for us as members of the community as well when we meet our neighbors so in a good question I think that these people who are in a residential setting like this these individuals choose to be there there is no one there because they've been placed there or committed there anything like that they are there because they want to engage in a pretty rigorous form of treatment and educational and skill building and all of that so they are very much just like any other individual who's made a commitment to try to improve their skill sets their behaviors and these are individuals adolescents young adults who have found that basically they've got pretty much normal intellectual functioning all of that it's just that their social emotional development or their impulsivity or their inability to sort of keep keep their lives in an organized progression has been come to a point where they really want to dig in and do something about it and that's what these programs are all about they're very immersive they are well very well staffed with professionals and educators and people to really work with them and those high staffing ratios and and we have them through day and evening and night coverage as well everything is fully staffed for us with awake staff to be able to really use the time wisely and to benefit for them I really see being a welcoming community be important part of the supports that will enables your students to progress which is why I'm really interested in our role is in our length and to be partners with you your work because these are our kids too even if they don't originate in our length and they're they're now our neighbors and people we have to care about thank you yes I just want to add that these folks had a open forum meeting at the park have community church for the neighbors the perspective of the time and I'm happy to say that the fast majority of the people were very there were a lot of concerns brought forward that night and I thought they did an excellent job responding to them and the feeling that I got was the community's very responsive in a positive way and having this program brought there adding to that we met about a week ago and you met with myself dr. McNeil miss Elmer and a director of science Sam Hoyle who's here tonight as well and we talked for about an hour and we were very impressed with their programming and in fact there was a lot of questioning about the specific science lessons that we're going to be offered to students and one of one of the things that we have all agreed is to the extent that we can share professional development or share resources we are certainly going to try to have that kind of partnership as we go forward so from the four of us met with them we would recommend the approval of this program all right so I don't have the state law open but under the state law and under our policy and we are delegated responsibility to review the program and make sure the curriculum is adequate I forget the exact language I think that ever comes up again we may want to have a subcommittee think we had the timing issue here but we want to have a subcommittee be more clearly delegate to the superintendent to do what she actually did in this case so fortunately she did do it and and did that because we're not really qualified to review the curriculum so can I get a motion to so move the program second all those any for any discussion just one quick question sure when you use the word district are you referring to your district or to the Allington school district by sending school districts the sending school thank you just covered the money part all right any further discussion okay all those in favor I guess any opposed or abstentions great it's unanimous thank you very much for coming thank you very much welcome thank you welcome Tarlington yes all right so next up is the elementary budget presentation welcome to the principles yeah we have all seven principles here as well as some of our directors they'll come up and they'll introduce themselves we have as director Sarah bird we're here the last Susan Bisson for literacy for digital literacy and Sam Hoyo for science good evening Dr. Michael Hanna on principles stratton elementary and all seven elementary principles are here tonight but I was elected to give a brief summary of the budget priorities document that you've been presented with this and I just wanted to thank Dr. Bode and Dr. McNeil for giving us such ample time and space to talk as a collegial group about budget priorities both talking to us from a district perspective and then really listening and cultivating our conversation from a school level as well so thank you to both of them and their leadership and thanks to the school committee for the opportunity to have this conversation about our schools we're grateful deeply grateful for the continued support of our work as well as the opportunity to provide leadership in a district that values a very high quality educational experience for children from all that we've experienced in Arlington and that comes from a many years of being principles here in Arlington this fact has been unwavering we'd like to open this year with a short expression of appreciation for the financial support of our initiatives from last year both to the school committee and to the town of Arlington we have a story to tell and it begins in FY 20 in the first year of this multi-year plan when school funding was provided for many things and we'd like to highlight these three particular areas that we found especially important to our work already this year this is increased staffing for specialist faculty so faculty in art music physical education and library additional staffing for assistant principals in the schools and then additional instructional coaches to support curriculum and instruction so first the increase in specialist staffing has had two significant impacts for student achievement first students have accessed and become more proficient in the four traditional specialist programming areas of physical education music visual art and library media second grade level teams including special educators now have weekly progress monitoring and instructional design time for all the students in a given grade the addition secondly this set the addition of assistant principals to the school based administrative team has had a deep impact on the programming for students both directly since individual students and environments can now be much more supported with an additional administrator but also indirectly because now the principal has the opportunity to give the school consistent instructional leadership and not simply act as a sort of reactive backstop to the twists and turns of typical busy days in schools so the professional culture in schools has improved significantly because of this investment and then finally instructional coaches are responsible in our view for the most direct immediate and effective impact on instructional improvement the opportunity to have collegial feedback and challenge in practice from a trusted colleague is aligned with what we know to be the most effective approaches to instructional improvement that we know of so this year the elementary principal team continues to approach budget requests with a multiple year view so rather look at FY 21 in isolation we once again considered the district priorities requests from our faculty our leadership emphases funding commitments from last year that were able to be provided and the resources that we have and need to and need to support students and teachers and demonstrating success and high achievement so the staffing model that you have in the table in front of you we're presenting considers the day-to-day experience of our students and teachers and also the district priorities that we are supporting as an administrative team but of highest priority on the list our equity among all schools as it relates to literacy instructional support and then the addition of the hiring of additional assistant principles we believe the overall needs of our schools are also continuing to grow as enrollment increases so what will be important to continue to consider are the need for increased administrative support due to continued student growth and daily building demands including building safety and maintaining the efficacy of our supervision and evaluation system so with increased student enrollment of course comes increased staffing which comes increased supervisory responsibilities also aligned high quality instruction that supports significant and ongoing curriculum reform and improvement and finally continued focus on safe and supportive schools which includes a continued development of social emotional learning programming and an improvement of practice centered on cultural proficiency so we believe that the items listed are the most immediate need in terms of staffing requests to do all of these district priorities and meet district goals we continue to support the multi-year plan in the ways it addresses other areas such as materials and obviously professional development and learning some additional programming requests that would strengthen curriculum and instruction which were also of which we're also supportive is an additional ELL faculty an additional library media specialists digital learning specialists social studies instructional coach along with a science instructional coach another and another literacy math instructional coach as mentioned before this seems from the research to have some of the most profound impact on instructional improvement finally also a physical therapy assistant assistant and a half-time team chair at the elementary level one last request is to highlight the continued need for a review of staffing at the classroom level and within our special education department these line items are in the multi-year plan and we ask for your continued support in maintaining low and equitable numbers across our schools again thank you very much for this time we'd love to take some time to in the conversation to answer questions and also speak about the experiences in our schools that may underscore the importance of each of these staffing requests great thank you very much is anyone who would like to start with questions I can start for a change if I'll start so one thing to know is that your enrollment this year is only up by 30 students over last year yet we added three sections or four we had four or three three or four classrooms for only 30 and that 30 increase because of the way things fell but I just want you know I would expect that to continue to the increase to be in the 30 to 40 range and then to start to trail off as your classes of 500 move up because the class of 590 looks like it's going to be an aberration and will probably settle in the 530 to 540s so as you're looking at staffing next year I do think you need to take a more serious look at making sure there's some equity across schools so in some places we have 70 students we have four sections at another school we only have three sections we probably need to flip those to three sections even though the four sections is a nice to have simply because the enrollment growth is not going to justify adding enough teachers to keep that small level if we want to do some of this other stuff so just something to think about as you're actually planning each individual building my other question was about the assistant principles what specifically where would these 2.0 FTE be added what's what's left I think so Thompson is actually in the budget this year but you didn't hire so is that included again or what's what is the 2.0 candidates and my colleagues I think you know some great candidates from that small pool so yes I also think that at some point given that I'm a school of over 500 at this point there's no halftime evaluations there's no halftime issues and I also know that my colleagues are feeling that and you guys can speak for this yourselves having additional time with their assistant principle maybe making it more consistent upping a bit here at one school or another so that you can get three days instead of two or two and a half so the positions are not necessarily just geared towards one particular place or only one person at one place I don't know we really do believe that the school should all be building towards a full time assistant principle we know that that's not something that can happen all at once that it is something that we need to do through the multi-year plan so in that to ask for those 2.0 FTEs we would be requesting full time at Thompson and then building two full time at Dallin and at Bishop Stratton has a full-time assistant principle Hardy has a halftime assistant principle and a halftime team chair and while sometimes that does present other kinds of challenges it is a full-time very capable person who works very hard so that's something that we could look at down the road and then also you know in other schools as well okay thanks so in the five-year plan we had only budgeted only plan for half a principle at each school so going to full time and I understand things change we're not wedded to the five-year plan but that would that would take something away that we were actually we don't even have enough money to cover everything that was in the plan right so I think as you're prioritizing what is it that you want to take away it sounds like you're deferring digital learning specialists so is are you saying these assistant principles are more important than adding a digital learning specialist to each building well I think what we're saying is that you want to answer I think that's a fair question right in to to I think we would need to really spend some time to prioritize I mean there's quite a few yeah requests that are laid out over that five years to really prioritize what that would be I think would be a collaborative conversation between us some of our curriculum directors Rod and Kathy is there why were you thinking no I mean that position come to mind so yeah because it's not in the it's not in the priority list now right so it's the digital learning specialist and he is down in the here's some additional things the coaches right with the coaches so so you see you see I do think it's a fair question of the the additional staffing requests or positions that we recognize important for our schools where would we prioritize assistant principles on top of some of those yeah that would be a conversation we'd want to have with directors and what you're hearing tonight in the previous meeting was what are the the things that emerge that from the the second year of the plan I want to remind you that the second year the plan had over $2 million worth of ass so there's always a prioritization and some things move forward and as we have in past years we will look at all of these things and have to prioritize and they're they're tough decisions they really are because they're all things that we think that are important and we will go through this process together when we bring the budget to you I personally think we should have more than 2.0 in the in the FTE's for assistant principle I think that the impact has been very positive and as we increase the number of demands just that go there's just things just always creep up in terms of more demands and more demands I think that it's a it's something that's important for schools so this will be the work of January and it's helpful to hear your feedback and some there your comments I think are very helpful in terms of thinking about this but we will have to do that because our number the amount of money that we will have incrementally to you know to put into positions will be limited yeah I was focusing on it because it is a change from what's in the five-year plan so it is significant yeah all right other questions so I was I you know as I said to the middle school and high school in schools when they were here only a week ago it seems like a lot longer I didn't expect that we were gonna sort of take the five-year plan and say here's the FY 21 column okay good check check great have a good night you know and be gone in five minutes so but I think what's interesting for us is to reconcile between the two and the piece that is there's a pretty significant investment in FY 21 in the SLC programs and in expanding inclusion programming so there were pretty big asks for that and this might be a question for Ms. Elmer as well which is fine I don't see that fully reflected in this ask I see the 1.0 special education learning specialist but I don't see you know it looks like there was a pretty like there was you know about 180,000 in the five-year plan that looks like for inclusion and then increased staffing in the SLC classrooms at the elementary level and I'm kind of curious where that went and I and to Dr. Bodie's point I understand that like we're not you know we're we're working through that but I'd like to know why we're not why we don't three three to one is kind of a big change lot fewer people so in the narrative what you emphasize was assistant principal and literacy so I want to know so literacy I assume is the 2.0 or 2.1 reading staff right so so we're the 2.1 available what would that look like at each school what kind of reading staff would you have we're all looking at each other because there is a breakout of that we had thought that that was in the the link was in your document but if not we can provide that as far as like breakout oh at each school yeah I'm get I'm getting some of it from the from the teacher's document but it's I'm sort of having to read between lines and yeah I don't see that okay that'd be helpful yeah yeah and I think the piece of looking at the structure of the reading program is something that we all like to do across the board for a lot of the different areas in which we work which is trying to you know come to a place where we're looking at it like that that support being more equitably distributed and that we have a process in a way of doing that so that we are seeing that over years we can build on that process and make sure that we're giving the same well not exactly the same but you know supporting resources between our different schools that are equitable if I could say more generally you know there's a there's a real sort of shift in in our thinking about the role of the learnings the reading specialist and the general education teacher through the leadership of the superintendent and assistant superintendent this year we have really had a supported emphasis on the practice of the general educator supporting that and and how they can do what they need to do to engage more brain-based reading instruction that's really getting traction and so our reading specialist has won't won't be simply to have more people to pull children out of classrooms to do reading instruction but also to be in a way instructional coaches to our general educators and how to do things in a tier one framework so we're really excited by the prospect and just the momentum we've already gotten in this way under this and then just one more I know Matt Coleman's not here but I know in the past he's often advocated for equity between literacy and reading and mathematics as being sort of complementary skills and I know it's also a particularly weak point in several of our MCAS for our low low income and some other other categories and so if we boost the reading do we sort of leave math behind or are we in a good place with math. One of the things that's been really positive is remember now we're staffed with a full-time coach mathematics coach in all of our buildings so that's still relatively new. Not full time but that each of the buildings has. Each of the building has a dedicated yeah math coach and we're we've just finished up three years of pretty intensive curriculum rollout with professional development so I think the emphasis for the past few years has really heavily been on mathematics and the having a dedicated staff member to continue that work of professional learning in the math coach really has set us up to be in a pretty good place particularly you know we'll continue to follow our achievement scores to see if that's reflected there as well. I think early literacy and the work that we're doing with early literacy particularly around how we're using assessments and how we're watching students early reading skills unfold over the first few years of learning. We're recognizing that the need for you know reading specialists right now and having some equity in their case loads to and with the amount of students that we have it is important important for us to address and there I think the reason why it's hard for us to just spit out exactly what the 2.1 looks like I think for some of us it looks like a .3 there's right we're trying to ensure that we have flexibility in our buildings to so that students aren't missing reading instruction in their classrooms and so that those few people can do work across six grades you know for the students in our school. And I think there's a big part of what we're thinking about with the reading teachers that connects back to what we were talking about with our specialists and that big ask last year so we've we if we can get more people dedicated within our individual buildings and not having to travel not having to have schedules that you know so that will help them to be more part of that programming that we're developing so we just have this incredible experience that we have these dedicated people in our buildings we've totally turned the schedule into something completely different that is having this incredibly positive impact and now we have all this dedicated common planning time and data team meeting time and and all of these people who are really focusing in and the goals within those meetings are often to go back to your question mathematical and basis right and so as well as the literacy piece but when we do have you know to make these decisions and I think we're very very much aware of how we have to make decisions it's all very important right but that we really are focusing in on that reading piece as being the place that we need to put those time the resources the money so I just have a follow-up all around the math intervention piece so talking with a parent they're apparently in something that mr. Coleman is said unfortunately not here but there is apparently in a math intervention model at the title one schools that's not available at the other schools can you talk about that and also in the context of equity you know I talked to a parent who is not at a title one school and was unable to access that program describe what that program is and yeah yeah I can speak to that so that's right in schools at title one school that benefits from a full-time math instructional interventionist they are part of all those general education weekly progress monitoring meetings when the focus is mathematics obviously and at those meetings we're now able to design very targeted together instructional supports that that mr. deck then is dispatched to do so it's very planful it's very focused on very specific students with very specific achievement goals and so that that is a rich opportunity is definitely the case we you know this is you know some inequity loaded into the nature of title one and having targeted schools that that aren't all seven elementary schools and that's the case in Arlington as it is in every district in the country and so to try to you know match that through other funding sources is certainly yeah laudable and and I have to confess that I haven't acquainted myself with with how that is imitated or looks and sounds in other schools but I think that when we're when we're weighing it it's not just because it's a district priority to be focusing on literacy instructional improvement but because of the the discreet and really highly trained instructional intervention frameworks that are part of reading instruction whether you want to be certified in horton gillingham or in wilson I mean these are they require just a level of instructional support that's tied to brain-based assessments that as yet you know we don't have that kind of discreet instructional support in math instruction and maybe is as our get smarter they'll be able to to do just that but that's why I think we have this this emphasis on getting a group of people who are trained in those discreet reading areas to be in the buildings okay and the one instruction as that is in the list would be split at other schools math sorry math and interventionist that is the list would be split between the other the non-title one schools or what do you know what that role would be feasting on that title one grant I'm not sure how we it hasn't been determined yet but it would be generally just trying to trying to get again it's incremental staffing each year the in the five-year plan if you remember and they were instead of talking about literacy and mathematics the goal was to have a literacy coach and of course more than one sometimes reading teachers and building but then also a math coach and a math interventionist and so as we're doing with lots of things we we're trying to build that but you can't do it all once and that's we recognize that too one of the things we also have in the schools which are math practice guides this was a program started I don't know what was it ten years ago quite a while ago nine in which we have people who are trained to come in and support the early grades in it's a form of math intervention they're paid on a different rate a tutoring rate so there are ways that we've been doing it to try to accomplish it in a little bit less expensive way but these I have to say the people we have doing it are excellent and in fact some of them have actually gone into other positions so like many of these things I think in it'll it'll still be we're still figuring out exactly where it will go just to follow up about the reading intervention we heard last weekend have been being updated a lot about what we're doing in the early grades and kindergarten and first grade with different kinds of assessments which is really exciting it's a big part of the superintendent's instructional goals for this year which is is great and so I guess my what I'm curious is is do you do you see the need for more reading support and reading specialist as a result of these changes or or not yet or you know because what I guess my what I'm wondering is is you know we're sort of in this like nascent stage with some really you know exciting interesting evaluation of our very earliest readers and so I'm wondering you know are we gonna come back next year and say oh my gosh we actually need like you know we we are identifying so many more kids that we need so much more reading support or so I guess how is that ask going sort of hand-in-hand with what we're doing in the earliest grades if anybody could speak to that yeah I think that's what we're all thinking about too it the investment right now in reading specialist is important because of that very point everybody's learning something new about early literacy instruction and our reading specialists have had this you know experience for you know some of them for 10 plus approaches for how do we grow for new week awareness phonics and other skills for our students if we got to a point where all of a sudden we saw even more and more students I think what we'd want to put our money on is professional development and professional learning for our staff because really what we want is our students to be receiving what they need in their classrooms as much as possible so I think we should keep that conversation iterative let's come back to it but right now I think that what's important is that we have adequate intervention staff to meet the needs of our earliest readers and provide support for our classroom teachers who are really interested in learning more about reading instruction and trying to provide students what they need that's a good point though it is and it's something we've talked about a lot it's that what do we need right this minute and then what do we need to help support us in that vision going forward because it is it's true what we're talking about is that the classroom teachers are the ones who need to be able to do this work primarily but it's an interesting thing the way classroom teachers are trained in the way reading specialists are trained you know I was trained as a reading specialist but that was such a long time ago that we didn't talk about any of this stuff and now the way people are coming into this as reading specialist they have this kind of experience in the work that they're doing but a general educator does not have that that's not part of our teacher preparation programs and the teachers are eating it up they love it but it's going to take some time to get to that point where people are feeling really comfortable and confident with the work that they're doing because we want everyone to be present in that environment of their classroom getting what they need so it's a long and a short term kind of thank you. Any other questions. All right thank you all for coming we appreciate you're all being here. So just to emphasize that we should get that document if the extra document that they said was attached that we didn't get is that there's another there's a link to a digital document just to make sure that we get that. And now we have the AEA presenting on their view of elementary needs. Ms. Nolan is going to present right. Thank you for coming tonight. We have the AEA I really appreciate you having me so I just want to preface before I share that we know that there's a lot of there's a huge monetary impact in terms of what we're asking for but when we go to our membership we ask what the priorities are right now there's two kind of big overwhelming overarching themes. It has to do a lot with support staff and looking at the number of students in small group as well as whole group settings. So when we look at monotony preschool we just there's a return of a seventh preschool class and at this point in time with that increase in class size comes the need for an additional behaviorist and an additional speech language pathologist. At the Bishop and at Dallin we are asking for additional teachers of English language learners looking at our goal of cultural competency as well as just looking at different ways of instructing students with these types of needs. So looking at potential opportunities to push into classrooms as well as to pull out looking at parody across the district looking at a full-time learning specialist to be added to the peer school right now that is the only building at the elementary level that has only two learning specialists we're looking for three. There's a real need across the district right now for additional support when it comes to occupational therapy. The caseload demands have increased district wide. In order to meet those demands we will need an additional 1.0 FDE occupational therapist at least. Class sizes are a real concern with teachers right now. There are a lot of demands in the classroom in terms of student learning needs and so with increases in student class sizes teachers are finding themselves more and more extended. Sorry. So teachers are really advocating for teaching assistance to support in the classroom in grades one and two with 22 or more students and in grades three to five with 24 or more students and just looking at the general needs of students across the curriculum when it comes to just having more chairs and more students in the room. Additional team chairs at the elementary level. Compliance is a real issue. We know that our last CPR there were some issues with compliance and looking at ensuring that each building has a full-time person who can make sure that compliance happens with the paperwork and with the meetings. Looking at increasing BCBA support in the district. We have a lot of students with social, emotional and behavioral needs and right now we have three BCBAs district wide that are doing the work of many and so looking at increasing that support so that students can have behavioral plans that respond to the challenges that they have in the classroom setting. Our teachers are reporting that they are having challenges with the great body shop curriculum in terms of the materials that they have available to them that they're not updated at this point in time and that updated materials are necessary for them. We're asking for an increase in terms of the social work in terms of social workers. We're finding that students are having more and more social emotional needs that they're bringing to the classroom and that responding to those needs warrants more staff who are able to not only respond to crises but also to provide direct intervention as part of a schedule service. We're looking for an increase in the amount of learning specialists district wide. We are trying to be a lot more creative in the way that we provide services to students both in small group settings as well as in whole group context and so the idea being that if we can increase learning specialists we can have a lot more creativity and collaboration happening between teachers when it comes to responding to student needs. Similar to the request when it came to the elementary principals we're looking for an increase in reading specialists. So yes the goal is always to have students get what they need in the general education classroom setting but there's also a recognition that with Bakers passage of dyslexia screenings is going to be a real thing for students in younger grades that our RTI our response intervention resources right now are not adequate to respond to those needs and there also is a recognition that right now reading teachers are also servicing students on IEPs at times and so if we want to be able to really capture and catch those kids who are at risk early on and do those interventions we're going to need more people to help support that and then the last piece has to do with projectors. It may sound silly but there are teachers who are actually having to move projectors in and out of rooms. It's not super feasible to always have to leave your room to go get a projector. The other piece is that there are safety concerns when it comes to cords hanging around the the rooms. So teachers have asked that if it would be possible to actually have them mounted in the rooms so they can actually project what they need onto a wall without having to leave the room or to have cords kind of dangling around everywhere. So that's what we are asking for this evening. I know I went through that really quickly but I don't know if there's questions or concerns. Great thank you. Questions. Have we seen the technology plan yet? Did I miss that? No. Yes I'm just wondering about the projectors and if they're in the tech plan or not or sorry. We have done some upgrades of projectors throughout the district. Actually not this past summer but the summer before last. We went through each one of the schools at the elementary level and replaced all projectors with new ones that had the HDMI cable and so I mean there's always going to be work to do with that. And so we have presented our we did present our technology plan last year for the three years so I can make that available for you. No I can go back and we did it here right? Yes we did. I can research that. Sure but we're always like we meet regularly with the union. They have a technology meeting so we are aware of the various needs that Marion is talking about. Thank you. I think there's just a concern too that some of the newer technology that we're getting isn't necessarily able to connect with and be fitted with old infrastructure and so looking at for example we went to Google Chromebooks you know if you have Apple infrastructure they don't work together right? So looking at how can we take what already exists and make sure that any new ads also allow us to teach in a way that's effective. You know and Julie just kind of whispered a point to me also is that not only we're asking for classroom settings but also for the small group contacts a lot of those you know smaller interventionist classrooms are the ones that are forgotten a lot of times when it comes to various needs whether even just comes to space needs in general. We think about class sizes oftentimes we don't necessarily think about you know when these kids leave a room to go to a small group setting are there actually spaces for them to do that and effectively and then also looking at you know access to projectors and technology in those spaces as well. Oh I just have a question. The great body shop I thought was entirely taken off the teacher's plates is that not true or classroom teachers. Yeah it just says that the upper grades what? It's the materials and in fact we've ordered them. No but is it is it this one seems to indicate that classroom teachers in grade four and five continue to teach it. I thought it was completely changed. Is that true? It's been doing P teachers the nurses doing some of that. The nurses are doing some of that. Our classroom teachers doing it in fourth and fifth grade. So that's during the team time. So the team time at K through three they have the extra specials but in grades four and five that's where we discussed they're going to have the chorus and they have the digital literacy. So the teachers are still teaching. Teachers are still teaching. The units have been taken off. We recognize that we need the materials and in fact. No no the question was who's teaching it in fourth and fifth. It's classroom teachers. Classroom teachers yes. That was a question. I thought it was three. It's been taken off entirely. Right no I get it. Okay so this is accurate it's just different than what I'd heard so I just wanted to verify that. Can you tell me a little bit more about how a BCBA interacts with a classroom teacher and a BSB in your building. Sure so a BCBA typically would be thought of as a tier three intervention right. So students who have considerable behavioral social emotional needs that begun go beyond the needs of or beyond the capacity of a tier one or a tier two. So typically speaking the BCBA would oversee as part of their consultation duties a BSB who's working closely with the general education teacher to collect data on students in order to create plans. And so there's two kind of elements to our asks when it comes to the behavior piece and I know that Julie had presented last week. One concern we have is that BSPs right now don't have generally considerably more training than a teaching assistant when it comes to the behavioral intervention piece. And so we want to make sure that those people who are on the ground are really well equipped to work with students. But the BCBA's role tends to be mostly in terms of data collection through assessment behavioral observations and then working in consultation and concert with general educators special educators the BSPs and school counselors. So when you see the BCBA's they typically when it comes to an IEP grid would be indicated in the A section which is consultation and so they are stretched thin in terms of having to you know run between buildings if there's a crisis they're not somebody who can immediately be there to respond. And the idea being that if we really want to have meaningful data collection processes district wide that then results in meaningful behavioral interventions we need to have the oversight and then also the training so the oversight from the BCBA's and then the training when it comes to the BSPs who are then able to actually implement it with teacher support. Does that answer your question? All right. Are there any other questions? All right. Thank you very much for presenting. Thank you. Okay, so the next item is the calendar. And we wanted to approve the grade one through 12 start date of September 8th. Karen, we want to approve the grade one through 12 start date of September 8th. The February vacation starting the week of Monday, February 15th, 2021 and April vacation Monday, April 19th, 2021. Mr. Heiner. On this calendar there's also two or I think two maybe more non-school days. They're dealing with something else that's going on. So I was wondering, since that was not mentioned in what you just stated, the motion, should we take note of that and we're not approving those days at this time? Correct. We're only approving the start date and the two vacation. The reason I mentioned it, they printed on the document that we received in Novus. That's all. I just want to make it clear. We're not approving the document. Right. Thank you. The document is not relevant to the motion. Thank you. It just provides the dates that we want for the motion. Thank you. Should we not also approve the kindergarten start date? Sure, we can. It's a little bit more complicated because that's just the open house date. Okay. But just for families, our expectation is it's as is written here, where it's open house date on September 8th, the ninth half of the class goes all day, 10th, the other half goes all day, and then the 11th they all show up. All right. So does somebody want to put together a motion that says all that? Okay. I move to approve the start dates for grades one through 12 and kindergarten as listed on the document that we were supplied with in Novus. Additionally, we're approving the February vacation date and the April vacation dates also is listed on these documents. Second. All right. Any further discussion? Yeah, I'm certainly going to vote to approve this. This makes a lot of sense. I know there's a committee talking about calendars. I am not inclined to make any approval of any further changes of the structure within the calendar until all factors at the calendar are considered, including starting before labor day. I do not want to mess with the holidays till we look at everything. I'm not going to do this piecemeal. So I just wanted to say in an open meeting in a public forum, because this is an agenda item to stake out my position in this. So it's clear going forward. Any further discussion? All right. All those in favor? Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes. Can we ask that the administration put post these dates on the website? Especially the kindergarten one because people have to be planning. May I? Sure. We're going to be sending out information and announcements about the opening of kindergarten registration, and we provide that all at the very beginning. We'll have it on our website. We'll try to communicate as much as we possibly can. I'm just thinking of families who are often planning their vacations, and they need to know that their kid is going to have a little more vacation than they are. I mean, the kindergarten ones. Well, we're hoping that they all come on September 8th. Right. But it's that 9th or 10th day that I mean that September 9th or September 10th that they'll have to have correct. They would have to have coverage. That's true. It's true because their child may not be in school on one of those days. They won't be in school again. I think the portion of September 8th too. The visit is pretty quick. The visit is quick. Yes. But I will add, of course, it doesn't necessarily work completely, but the after school program students that are in those programs are still eligible to be in those programs beginning on the 8th. And just one further note. I mean, you should still continue to develop the calendar and when you're ready, hopefully in the next couple months to come back to us with the draft calendar. What we have done in past years is usually in January and we moved it up this year because there's been some question about it is to do basically this in January, probably nothing more than that. And then later in early May, come back with the other days, which are, you know, the early release for the middle and the high school as well as conferences to the extent that we can put them in because we're going to have to give some more thought to that next year. So anything that we currently have in the calendar is also to brought back at that time and to Mr. Schlickman's point there, you know, anything that we would have as a other proposal should we have something would would be taking place during these next few months before that calendar came. All right, thank you. I appreciate that we got this done now. Going forward, I don't think this is early. I think actually even going to November or earlier, even having these dates a year ahead would be nice. Not it doesn't have to be the whole calendar, but just the start date, the end dates, the vacations are all helpful for plant families who have longer term plans than we can we can definitely do that we get added to the list for even in October because I think we'll know certainly by then what what's going to happen with those issues. Right. Yeah. All right, next up is professional development day. Dr. McNeil. So I'd like to wish everyone a happy holidays. Thank you. See everyone watching the millions of viewers. Okay, so I'm here to present on our actually as part of our district goal to increase the cultural literacy of all district staff. And this is one action that we have done annually for the past three years is to have all day professional development day for all staff in November that is dedicated to cultural literacy. And this year the theme was equity and inclusion. I do want to make one note is that in the district goal I did air and putting in 10 hours of professional development and it should be it should read eight. Because after this particular day, the building administrators will follow up with more professional development at their individual buildings. So I just want to state that. So on November 1, our professional development day today, I mean, this year took place on November 1. And in this particular presentation, I will be able to give like a description of the day, share information about staff feedback and identify themes from the open responses that came from that survey that I sent out the staff that I do every year in order in order to understand how to, you know, continue to improve their experience and make sure that it's relevant to their practice and give next steps regarding training for this year. And that includes the building administrators, planning, additional professional development throughout the year. So this and this is based upon previous feedback. So this day this particular this year, we actually started planning last spring. And I put out an email to all staff inviting any staff member that wanted to participate in the planning to be a part of a professional development day planning team. So we began to meet once a month to discuss and review the feedback that we got the previous year in order to understand how to make this a much more enjoyable, engaging and relevant experience for all staff. So part of those part of the things that was highlighted in that survey was that staff wanted to have more choice. They wanted to have time to work together in a building team or in their grade level teams. And so we tried to provide that type of flexibility. And another important component was to also center on what's going on here in Arlington and provide various pieces of data to to for staff to reflect upon as they go throughout the day. And so I think that we were able to accomplish those three things this year. And part of that was also inviting staff members who had various things that they wanted to share and teach to their fellow colleagues in a workshop format, and invite those individuals to submit a proposal of things that they would like to facilitate. And I think that that went very well. And that we got a lot positive feedback as it related to that. So we had a combination of outside speakers, speakers from the community, and also district staff. So our keynote speaker was Dr. Liza Tolucin. And she was is has also is known to the community because she has had parent forms at Thompson and Brackett that went very well. I actually attended both of those forms that she had last year. And part of the focus of those discussions was talking about with parents how to enter into a conversation about race. And I think she did that very well. And I thought that she would be in the professional development team felt that she would be a great selection because you always she already had that connection with the community. And I will highlight that Alison Elmer was on the professional development team as well. So she's welcome to chime in on any or make any comments. So the keynote speaker was Dr. Liza Tolucin. And then in the afternoon, staff went back to their buildings and they participated in professional development led by either by their building administrator or an outside facilitator or someone from the district. So part of this presentation is including the feedback that we that that staff provided. So we had 317 staff respond to the survey. This PowerPoint, you know, gives like some of those highlights of the feedback that we received. And however, collecting the feedback, I wasn't able to parse out the individual feedback for the regarding the specific morning workshops. I can do it, but it's going to take a lot more time because they're the way that the data is presented is very intricate. So it's going to take a little bit more time in order to parse that out. And then we're going to use the feedback that we got this year to plan next year's district wide professional development day. So this is just giving some statistics of who responded to the survey. Most of the individuals responding to the survey were content area teachers. And most of them were elementary. And we also wanted to see based upon the people who responded to the survey, how long they've worked in the district. And we see that the majority of the people who responded to the survey had worked in the dish have worked in the district zero to five years. Just based based upon the demographics of our teaching force or instructional staff and our professional staff were predominantly a white district. So 285 respondents were white. And we also surveyed to see what the how people identified gender wise. So most of the individuals again, this is this is a result of, you know, the demographics of our professional staff in the district. So 272 respondents were female. So this slide shows the how people felt about the effectiveness of the message that Dr. to loosen provided in the morning. And we have overwhelming positive response where we had 19.8% agree and 75.8% of the respondents strongly agree. So these next slides, as you can tell the the blue is strongly agree and the red is agree. The orange is disagree and the green is strongly disagree. But staff responded to various prompts just to give an example. The session and this is regarding the individual morning workshops that staff attended. So this is like the overall perspective from staff of their of their experience of participating in the morning workshops. So one of the prompts is I learned something new. I felt I feel inspired to make a change as a result of the session. So all very positive. And that was pretty much the theme. As they responded to other prompts, the speaker gave an engaging presentation. The materials and the slides presented were useful. So as you can see, oops, I'm sorry. You know, as we flip through these slides that really pretty much given overall perspective of how staff felt about their morning workshop experience is all very positive. And then getting into the afternoon session, we had over 70% of the staff felt that it was productive and met the goals of our met the theme of the day, which was to focus on equity and inclusion. And then these are and we also had an open response. So I provided staff an opportunity to give additional comments. And these are some of the themes that came out from those comments. Some of the staff and I didn't put this in here, but some of the positives comments were like staff who have been here for some time. They said that this is the best professional development day they've participated in in their like 10 year or six year experience here in the district. So that was very, it was very, very happy to hear that. So some of the things that, you know, were also positive that it was a great day, provided choice with a good mix of local and outside expertise. The keynote speaker was excellent. It was an excellent menu of workshops. We had over 31, like I said before. And, and there's some of the things that we need to think about, like, we had a mix of two hour and one hour morning workshops. And so, you know, I was surprised actually to hear this and very kind of happy to hear this that staff wanted the workshops to be longer in order to get past the theoretical point that the speakers are making and get into really some of the strategies and practices. They felt like they needed to, you know, have the workshop go a little bit longer so they can dive into those strategies and practices. Time for lunch needed to be increased, which I do agree. We tried to pack a lot of things into the day and, you know, just trying to do that. We definitely need to give staff time. And I think not just to eat lunch, but to debrief about their morning experience and meet with one another in a very relaxed setting. So I definitely take that. And it was definitely very valid. And also to provide, and I think that if we provide more time for lunch, that will take care of the next bullet, which will give staff time to debrief about their morning and talk with their colleagues about their experience and start to contemplate, like, how can I take this knowledge that I acquired in the morning and, you know, incorporate it into my practice? So I just want to acknowledge that this was a team effort. I definitely want to acknowledge it always starts at the top with, you know, Dr. Bodie was very supportive and it's, you know, gave us the space and the agency in order to go about this and plan this work of this day. And so it definitely could not have happened without her. And then just a list of individuals that, you know, food service, the director of food service and the food service staff, we have bus drivers and the director of transportation. So I just want to just make sure that I put this in the presentation that, you know, the high school custodians, all the building principals, all the building administrative assistants, I'm sorry. You know, I just want to highlight those individuals who just it just would not have happened without them. And it was truly a collaborative effort, you know, deputy director of information technology. We had high school teachers. We also had a student voices video where we captured some of the experiences from the students that we presented in the morning that got very positive feedback and the high school teachers, John D. Tomasso and David Moore were big, you know, help with, you know, producing that. David Ardido, the director of visual arts, he also helped with that. The high school assistant principal, Bill McCarthy, helped with the wombs and getting all the technology in place. We even had like our students, Brayden Quinlan and Grace Walters, who was an intern to help produce the student voices video. And Brayden helped on the day of the professional development with the, you know, technology. And then also our professional development committee, which was representative of these individuals took time. They were not paid. They came, they took time, they volunteered their time to come after school and have me participate in meetings and then do various tasks to help support the day in their own personal time. And then also the ACMI youth coordinator, Kevin Wetmore, and all the staff who actually presented, who presented. And I have a list. We have Hannah Dingman, Dad Dingman, Dr. Janger from the high school, Sarah Marie Jetty, Pam watch Flavin, who was the director of children's services at the Robbins Library, Heather Smith, Jessica Nye, Sarah Bird, Jeannie Wall and Rebecca wall, Christine Capalto, Aaron Heinemann and Graham Daly, Margaret Credo Thomas, John Masook, Kristen DeFrancisco and James James Paris, Brian Buck and Melanie Costendakis, Kate Fractal. And then we had partnerships. And we also had some organizations who we partnered with who also helped with the presentations, Massachusetts partnerships for youth, the ideas, which are the initiatives for developing equity and achievement for students, the Metco Inc. and understanding our differences, which is also organizations. So all in all, it was a great day. It was a very positive experience overall for most staff, which I gathered from the feedback and we're going to continue to work on this particular goal throughout the year and, you know, take that momentum forward and take it into next year. So that concludes my presentation and I open up for questions and comments. Mr. Hinner. Thank you very much. It was excellent. The amount of people that participated, what percentage of our total staff was that? Do you know our fan? He said 317. Was that the entire staff who responded to the survey? Yes. No. It was a little less than half. And I noticed that there were a lot more women responding than men. Well, because just to demographically, we have more women that work in the district. Would you know the percentage? Not offhand. I guess we have to look that up. That's been an issue in my... I don't know the exact percentages, but predominantly. I mean, we know. I mean, it's predominantly female. Less than the elementary level. Am I correct? Far less male. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Ellis-Nampy. Thank you. Two questions. One, it would be helpful to see a list of some of the types of individual presentations. I can give this to Karen and she can provide this for you. And this has a total list of the workshops and the titles and the description of the presenters and an agenda in it. So I brought this along so I can make a copy and pass it around. Yeah, because I know there's a lot of parents concerned about the work that the district is doing on this and that gives us more that we can talk about. Absolutely. And then the second thing is, could you flip back to the slide on how many years have you worked in Arlington? Sure. Yeah. So I just wanted to bring this one up because I thought it was very interesting in the setting of just hearing the requests for more instructional coaching and stuff. Yeah. Looking at the number of teachers who are zero to five years working in Arlington. And I thought it was interesting, two respects. One, I think it kind of shows where there may be some need. I understand some of these teachers may have worked somewhere else first, but from what we're hearing, I think a lot of them are coming in fairly fresh. Second, certainly they're new to Arlington and how we're doing things. Second, I think in terms of recruiting for teachers, I think the fact that we have this, we're developing a robust instructional coaching staff and ability to access. And I would think that if I was a new teacher looking for a job, that would make a district look more attractive if, you know, I can come in and it's like, okay, I've got somebody, you know, if I have any questions, even if I don't, I have somebody coming in there and, you know, they can help me get to that student who I was worried that I wasn't able to reach. So that's all I wanted to say. Just to clarify, though, these are just of the people who responded to the survey. Right. So I don't know how that right. We don't suspect it's somewhat reflective of and as somebody who does a lot of surveys for their job, you might like you sort of were like, oh, well, it was like just under 50%. That's really quite a good survey response rate for, you know, something like this. It demonstrates that people were interested and, you know, the survey was, you know, created in such a way that they could do it quickly. And, you know, whenever we get like 50% survey response, I actually feel really about that. So I don't think it's something you should be cringing about. Thank you. Oh, just it sounds like a great day and that people learned a lot. I would just sort of emphasize what you heard from the feedback of having opportunity to digest things and talk to each other and sort of look if there's places in the future to sort of bring back some of the lessons to read, you know, just to create opportunities for teachers and staff to sort of engage with each other on these issues. Absolutely. Future times. Yes. Yeah. I just want to mention, first of all, Dr. Meeniel did a terrific job on this day. It was really excellent. It was an excellent day. I think everyone felt that they learned something from it. I think our keynote speaker was particularly impressive. And one of the things that's great is that she's going to be coming back to Arlington for three sessions, one in March, April and May in the evening for parents. And of course, we'll certainly invite all teachers to go to it as well. But it's a great connection to have with her. And we're even planning some more things for the following year. So I want to thank you for all that you did to make it as a great learning day as it has been. And I think the other part of this is that when you do professional development or even when you do when we're talking about literacy earlier, these are not one off. These are just sustained constantly providing the professional development, whether it's social emotional learning, work we're doing literacy or math, you just have to back it all up with PD. But challenge, of course, is the quality of the PD and then the time for the PD and all of that. So we do a lot more job embedded PD than we've done even, you know, five years, 10 years ago. And to to Dr. Allison Ampey's point about, you know, attraction of coming to Arlington. We really do a lot to support new teachers. Could we do more? Yes. We have a very robust mentor program. So it was a great day. We'll continue doing the work and build on what we learned from feedback for next year. Absolutely. That's one quick question for me. Do we have a theme for next year or when does that get? Well, we have to convene our professional development committee and then we'll have to. I think I would like to also one thing that I think the reason why people are responding to the surveys because they're actually seeing the changes that are being made. So since the first year I came, you know, I got the feedback and then we incorporate those changes. And so we're continuing to evolve. And so part of that is also identifying the topics. I would like to continue with the equity and inclusion, but maybe go ahead and like do a little bit more merging with SEL and seeing like really getting into the various strategies and things that teachers can do within the classroom. So like really get into the instructional part. And so but again, I'm going to send out, you know, a survey and see how we can, you know, do some testing around. I know, right? That's going to be something that's going to add to the complexity of it is the, you know, just and just the way that we're going in society is probably going to be a very stressful election day. So we have to make sure that we are we plan around that. So yes. Great. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I will pass around. I can. All right, Mr. Mason made it in time for your presentation. He had capital planning before this meeting. Yes, sorry that went well. Yeah, it went well, very productive, but we have to couple more meetings before finalize the plan. Next meeting is January 2nd for that. But tonight I'll report not about the capital planning, but about the financial reports. This is for the financials through November 30th. And so as usual, we have our general fund report. This report is the funds from the town appropriation, which conclude, you know, monies from the state that is allocated to Chapter 70. With this, we're projecting a surplus of $485,000. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be a surplus. But there's still this is what we currently know. And there could be some unknown expenses that will hit and as well as some plans that we may try to complete this year. On that report, if understanding the revised budget column is the current budget with year to date expended with the encumbrances, which we're currently contractually obligated to spend out and then some project expenses that we know, which lead to the available budget. That surplus is once again driven by a budget when we created that budget by, you know, out of the district tuition balance, mainly. We also have the grant financial report. It's called grant accounts on the memo, but it was the change of the grant financial report. One thing to know, all things are moving as planned. Through this, though, we did receive an additional $22,500 from METCO. METCO did receive additional $2 million to support the program's transportation needs. And they allocated per pupil. So that's what's where appropriate enough for transportation for that additional funding. And we also have the revolving fund report included. One thing to note is when I was preparing today, I did not catch this error, but it's a minor error under the circuit breaker. Under the revised budget, it says $2.3 million. And then under the total revenue, it says $2.6 million, which circuit breaker, how we budget for is the funds that we received this year, last year, we'll spend it this year. And the $2.6 million is what we received. So it was an error that carried over and was not corrected. So if you look into the projected completion, there's an actual credit balance that is not accurate. It should be actually zero, because we've encumbered all of the funds to spend what we collected last year. Any questions? Mr. Hayner. On the sheet that you gave us, line 81205 student activities supports stipend? Yes. Let me begin off by telling you, I'm going to be just discussing negative numbers. I apologize. But what is exactly a support stipend? Those are for extracurricular activities and clubs at the high school. So I'm just curious, shouldn't we know ahead of time what the programs are going to be? Correct. So when developing the budget last year, there was a methodology that I used coming in so late. The methodology was based on the actual data that I knew at that moment, which was based on FY18. So we allocated the expenditures based on that, the expenses in FY18. But kept it at level funded for those type of expenses. One of my favorites, snow removal. That's not within your understanding. I realize that slips and slides. I'm just curious, we have it under one item there. It's custodial snow removal. And then later on, contracted snow removal. Doesn't the town do the snow removal or are we required to do our own? I understand the sidewalks for the custodians. I understand that line at a mere. But I assume the contracted one are the streets aspect of it or the parking lots? Is that what that is? So the contracted services, we contract the services for parking lots. We do that independent of the town. The town doesn't provide that service for us? No, not at the moment. Okay. But we also, we bought a new vehicle in the fleet that helps with the plowing. So currently three schools are internal. So facilities and custodial workers are participating in the snow removal. Thank you. Line 83804, athletic services. Is there a reason that that's showing a negative number? Once again, it goes back to that budget technique. Thank you. And I'll comment that, you know, we'll be working. So Jose did really great work working on this report. He's a new school accountant. He's been here for about two months now. And we, he's caught on really fast. We're going to do some adjustments so you won't see as many negatives in the next report because we did do some adjustments, but for some reason it did not pull over in the period snapshot that we looked at. Okay. Under instructional materials, textbooks, computer supplies and computer software, I assume they're going to fall under the same statement you just made. They're on the, I'll begin with line 85103. Instructional materials is showing 155,000 negative and textbooks is showing 236,000. We are actually spending 32% higher than what we spent last year at this point. So I'll review that and give some information. I'm looking at the textbooks. I thought our goal was to go towards electronic books and things of that nature. Is this the workbooks and things of that nature? No. And that's a very good question. So in order to make sure that we have equity for all students, we buy class sets. So the class set stays in the classroom and then you get the electronic version of the textbook so that students can access it at home but that if there is a student that does not have that type of technology or access to technology at home, they can take one of the classroom books home. I think that's great. I just want to purpose it by making that statement. So instead of alleviating the budget, it's... I hear you. I think you're also seeing and I would have to go in and itemize it but we've also had to update our social studies curriculum based upon the new standards. So that has been and also updating our science textbooks at the middle school level. So this would also go to the computer supplies and the software. To keep it updated. Right because we have a process where teachers find online tools that they would like to utilize in their classroom and so we're always evolving in that particular area. Sounds great. Last item 88501, capital equipment furniture. Is that just replacement of old stuff? Yes, correct. Well it would be replacement of any item that would be considered a capital item or furniture item. Right. So it may not be replacement of old things. It could be something that's new. I don't know the exact items. Well I mean we budgeted $4,000 and we're looking at a $59,000 expense right now. Something must have been discovered from when we budgeted it to today. Well that partially is understanding what we spent in previous years and that's a line along the line that we that was spent last year. So in 2018 it was minimal and 2019 we spent about $60,000. So if we are going to do the same which are not 100% sure yet. Right. That's what that would be and it's usually for like if we purchase we have more students in the building so we have to buy new cafeteria cables. That would come out of those lines. So setting up different classrooms. All of those would be in those expenditure lines. Thank you. One question at one point. A question is about professional tech services. So it looks like we reduced the budget but then now we're spending over. Is there something that happened or is there just more needs than we expected? Can you tell me the line number please? Yes. Professional 83101. That reduction is in the was a carryover. So something that was spent in prior year that had the budget overstated in the original appropriation. We're moving it out. It wouldn't be applicable for this year. So that's why it's removed. We're now spending more than budgeted right? Well we have a projected expense expenditures of so the logic behind some of the projected expenditures if the expenses hasn't happened some of the things are items that I know that occur but in addition looking at prior year trends and understanding that in 19 we spent at a certain level. Right. So I'm just making the assumption that we will spend again at that level unless there's a deviation here. Okay. And then the point is I realize at some point it might be nice to see variance numbers percentages sort of at the end of the year maybe or something to just because I know you can sort of go down you look at these big numbers and some are very small but but some small numbers may represent quite a big variance and so it just might be nice to see that. Now would you like to see the variance based on a percentage variance I think would be helpful based on what's expended against to date versus where we were last year at this time. I mean to me it sort of feels like an end of the year report sort of you know that would be nice to see kind of. So right now just to give you I look at when you ask me questions I have a different report that helps for certain questions in terms of variances from where we were at last year to where we are at this year. Right. So if I look at overall we're point sixteen percent above what we did last year which is really low I would think it'd be a long line of two percent. Yeah that's right on actuals but then within categories they might be very different. But I will take that and I was planning on meeting with the budget subcommittee and hopefully that we can discuss different formats of what you would like to say. Yeah. So again this is more of a format formatting of the report thing but one thing I am still struggling with is the general fund expenditure report relationship with for example the the grant or actually the robbing fund report is a better example. So if you just look at to a lot of other schools which is partially funded by the circuit. When when how do we know our total spending is down or up right. Do you know that now I mean so the six million dollars that's in the general fund expenditure report for the tuition out of district. Yes. So would that be six million plus the two million in the circuit breaker. Yeah. So yeah. We separate. So the general fund report is only the funds from general funds. If you want all funds report that would be something we can discuss about having that adjusted. So we can do the report with all the funds that are related to. So if circuit if tuition other schools is down by say 1.2 million which is what it's showing here. You've fully taken the 2.3 2.6 million of the circuit breaker spent that and all of the savings occurs in the general fund. Correct. Yeah. Well because we can only carry over circuit breaker. Right. No no that's the way that's the right way to do that. I just want to make sure that that's the way you are doing it. Correct. Any other questions. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Superintendent's report. Oh sure. I forgot one thing. I have to give acknowledge it to my actually she's brand new in the district. My administrative assistant Asha Daniels who worked very hard on helping with the organization. We actually she identified with the help with the working with Denny Conklin a new tool we could use in order to make the choice possible for staff to sign up for the professional development day. So I just wanted to I need to I definitely needed to be remiss if I did not identify her. She gave. We definitely want to keep her right right. And so she was exceptional and just coming into the district and took on this task and did a great job. So thank her. Thank her on behalf of all of us. Yes. Right now. I really don't have much tonight. Other than this is a very large item and that is where we are with the high school project. Last night the building committee met to make final decisions on the twenty four point seven million dollar gap between the design development costs and what the budget was. So just to remind people what the process is. We went through a schematic design and from a schematic design. A budget was developed which is what we went to the voters with. But what happens during that process. Is that the design gets more developed. More detail and then it goes off to cost estimators again. And when we're off to cost estimators again they found a gap between our budget and what they're seeing in the market today. What's going on today and is that we have a lot more big projects both public and private. And the bigger the projects are this is an inverse relationship that there are fewer sub contractors that are available to do these more complex. So it's a market force in terms of competition on these. So just in the last six months to eight months we both. The cost estimators for our design team. Our CM CM our contractor as well as our OPM. Because we've had cost estimators from all three look at this. And they did a lot. They did a lot of work to to to align their costs as well and came to a consensus on what the gap was. So this was a quite a long process for the committee. I think in the last six weeks the committee itself met five times. But there were a lot of other meetings that occurred that are subcommittees of the of the building committee. So it was I think a lot of credit to Mr. Thielman who ran a great meeting last night because it was it's a difficult thing. It's a you're making some very important choices and you delve into the research on these and a lot of discussion. But on most things we had consensus on the on the choices. So there were some hard decisions that had to be made. And we don't know yet whether we will have to do some more some more decision making as we get to 60 percent documents and construction documents will get to 90 percent. It has been the experience of other projects that yes that could happen. And so we will we will deal with that when that comes along. So none. So right now in turn I'll talk to what was reduced. But the architects are going back to prepare the documents they have to submit MSBA which will be done sometime mid January. But it doesn't change our timeline. We are still going to be beginning with the pre construction right around the February vacation. In fact we will have a forum to for the community to talk about all of that in February. And we're sort of working on what the date is early February. And then the construction is still going to start. There'll still be more work to be done on construction drawings and going out to bid and all of that. But the the actual construction is still planned to be started next October. So in terms of some of the big items you know that they range from millions of dollars to a particular item to $6,000. And it was a big big array. But one of the things that the committee felt very strongly about is maintaining our commitment to sustainability to all electric to still moving forward on net zero. And so there's a lot of research and discussion about what effect would happen from reducing the geothermal wells. The committee decided that we are going to have geothermal wells. It's just we're not going to have as many as we had planned. I think originally it was like 330. We're down to 133. 130. But in the analysis of the savings in terms of operating costs, it really wasn't a big spread. So we did reduce, but we're maintaining that. At the moment, you know, we put in the footings for the lights on the fields, but we have in the conduits, but we the poles will have to wait. But we did keep the turf fields in the project at this point. But there were some things that that had to not be in the project. And maybe we will vote on alternate lists later on, but such as the Minutemen bikeway or the East stairway East ramp, which is the ramp between the school and the CVS. So there were those were difficult decisions, decisions about glazing and with kind of brick we're going to use. But the thing that's really important for people to know is that it was a very thoughtful process. There was great consensus on the committee and the committee remains committed to the goals of the project having an excellent facility. And we're going to have to stay within budget. And it's going to try to reach all of the sustainability goals that we had had talked about when we were presenting this to the community. So I think everybody had a hard time wrestling with these people spent hours going over spreadsheets and in discussions. But that's where we are. And then I think tomorrow we're going to work on a press release on this and that's where we are with the project. We're still moving along. And the chair of the committee is here and he may want to add something. And Dr. Allison Ampey is here too. I think we have to touch on all the committee. Every member of the committee and the administration spent hours and hours and hours looking at spreadsheets, looking at the design, making sure we protect the spaces for students. So there were no reductions in common spaces and that was a proposal at one point in time. No reductions in common spaces, no reductions in the number of classrooms, no reductions in places where, in programmatic spaces. But I think everybody left the meeting last night pretty tired from the process and feeling like this is something we had to do. No, the committee, as we said at the beginning of the meeting, the committee's job now is to make sure that the project is aligned with the amount of money the voters allocated for the new school. And that's our job for the rest of this project is to make sure that we are within budget and we're delivering a school that meets the needs of our kids. And there were a lot of different opinions. We welcome the public input, but there are a lot of different opinions in the group on which way to go and we took votes and, like anything else, the majority votes. How did the battle of the Bunton burners come out? Well, they're in there. Well, they're in there, but we're going to do some more research as to whether we can do it a different way. But we still need a flame. We just don't need the election. We had an impassioned, right, a teacher here, very good teacher, came and gave an impassioned plea for the Bunton burners. So they're in there. But then there were other opinions about the burners by members of the committee from their own experiences in high school. I just want to point out for the public when they look at the list of things and wonder why did we make some of these choices and ask about consensus. I think it's important to understand that once certain choices were made, the other choices became inevitable, because we couldn't afford, you know, once we made some really big choices, everything else couldn't be done because we just didn't have the money. I mean, we couldn't do that and stay in the project. So there was consensus because we knew we had to meet the budget that we've been set and we were respectful of that. But I don't think anyone, there's many choices on there that we made that I don't, even the best possible world, we wouldn't want to have made any of them. But we had the objective of having a quality building and that maintaining the educational program and we were able to maintain, we were able to meet those objectives. But I just want people to understand that it wasn't consensus that we felt like all these things and it was good to get rid of them. It was just, we needed to make budget. Ms. Morgan? Well, and also am I right in saying that we couldn't have gone to the voters with a larger budget project in the hopes of preventing making these. The way the process works is that you have to go to them with the project you have, with the amount of money that that project is going to cost. So there was no way, you know, to go and to prevent having to go through the process that we're going through right now that. Unless you wanted to double your triple your contingencies, which would have been hard to get through the MSBA. They probably wouldn't have accepted it. And even if your budget was coming in under, even if your estimated come back under what your project budget was, you would still have to go through this. It is a required part of the MSBA process. They're trying to make sure that you're analyzing everything and getting good value for your money, whether you're having to shave your money down or just look at it and go, well, do I really want, you know, do I really need this or is there a better way of doing it and saving our voters money at the end? We have a number of things, a number of seven or eight items. I don't know what is alternates right now. We have to take a formal vote on all the alternates at the January meeting. I think we probably should do that. And so then, but that, you know, so the connection of the Minuteman Bikeway that is an alternate. And I believe there's a number of things on that list that we could do at the end of the project. Should we have the money? Well, one of the things that's complicated in the decision on alternates is they come into two categories, one we had to prioritize and the other is where you can go out in a different bidding process. So it's very complicated. But to both of your points, the educational functionality of the building was predominant. And so when you have to change the type of metal you use on a facing wall or, you know, these are the kinds of decisions could get really quite granular. And of tile. And the tile, we had seven feet tile on the corridors. We moved it down to five feet after talking to other principles that were in construction projects. Every project, big projects out there right now for high schools or even elementary are facing the same thing because it's the market in which we're going out right now. Which I don't think we, well, I don't think that it's changed so much in the last eight months that we couldn't have anticipated this level of change. But, you know, everybody made a, a lot of research went into this to make sure that what we would be choosing would not affect the main goals of the project and certainly would have good warranties and make quality building. And the last thing I would say, this is a time for our last meeting of 2019. And I just wanted to wish all the community and the parents and our students most joyous holiday season. And, and wonderful wishes for next year. And I think that, you know, from the school department's point of view, we leave this, this calendar year with a lot of gratitude to the community. We're able to talk about the high school project because of a June override. As you heard the elementary principals tonight, we were able to really, really change some of the important things in the elementary because of the override in June. So, I want to acknowledge that and to again say thank you for all the positives that have come to the schools this year. Great, thanks. Consent agenda. All items listed are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless the member of the committees have requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant, warrant number 20114 dated 1217, 2019. Total amount, 1655306.86. Approval of minutes, regular school committee minutes of 1212, 2019. Approval of trips, Naga Okakyo, also Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and Nara, Japan homestay July 4th, 2020 to July 14th, 2020. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Unanimous. Okay. Policies, BE, BEDB and KFE. Mr. Chairman, I move approval of BE on second reading. Second. Is there any discussion? Just want to read one. This is the one that just, just as 19 meetings. Yes. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Unanimous. Mr. Chairman, I move policy BEDB with the amendment that I have presented to Novus adjusting the language for the 15 minute rule to include the phrase unless the chair determines that scheduling a presentation is not necessary. Is there any discussion? Mr. Thielman. So here are my thoughts on this. I think I'd like the fact that you've amended it, Paul, so thanks for doing that. I think the, two thirds means five people when you have seven. So that's right. Seven times 0.67 is 4.9 or 4.69, so it's four after six people. So that is, you know, high bar to me. Or polite group. I know, but I have, there was a period, we've had great chairs in recent years and actually most of my time on the school committee, the chairs have always been reasonable, but there was a period of time where it was a little difficult. I was about the committee there. I know, but we missed you. You're the only one on the committee. Yeah, I was. Let's remember that. I know, I know, so I'm scarred by it, but the, so I have to go back to that time because had that rule been in place, there would have been on this issue, there would have been a lot of games. A lot of games. I can just imagine different things happening during that time. I think I were here. So with this group, this is very reasonable and it basically sends a message that we want our presentation to be short, so we have time to talk and the chair has to use his or her discretion, which is a good thing. But there may come a time when new people get elected to the school committee who, you know, have an axe to grind or an agenda and then it manifests itself through this rule. And I'm just gonna caution everybody on that, but that's what happens. That's why we have a policy, some procedures committee that meets regularly. Yeah, well, that's right. Yes, Mr. Hainer. I hear what you're saying, Mr. Filman, and I would tend to agree, but I also realized that a majority of civilized people can change the rule at a later date if there's a problem. Any further discussion on this, Sus? Oh, just that it seems like the problem that would be created is someone asking for more time and the chair sort of being in transit into that. And it just doesn't feel that big of a deal. I mean, people still get 15 minutes. There's still quite a lot of time to present material. So I feel like the risk is fairly modest. I say to my young staff, you haven't lived through a recession yet. When you do your viewpoint of the world might change. Yes, Dr. Alton Ampe. I've watched many of the meetings that Mr. Filman is talking about and I agree that there can be issues or could be issues with the wrong mix of people. And I share his concern, although I appreciate the changes that have been made to this. I am a little, I'm wondering about the written reports. Okay, the written reports may be received, that's fine. It's the shall not be read aloud at the meeting that concerns me that what does the chair do? I mean, I know how it happens in town meeting, right? You get stopped. And we don't have, we don't run things that way here. And I feel like it's, I don't know. I'm again, worried that this is something that could be misused later and be held up by policy and. Mr. Shulman? Yeah, I think that in this point, presentations to the committee are done by employees of the district almost exclusively. So we are as the employer giving instructions to the staff of the district. So I'm sure they're gonna look at this and comply and somebody being aware of our policy and our desires isn't gonna come in with 10 pages of single space text and start reading it to us. I think this more provides direction and expectation than something where the chair is gonna come down with the gavel, which might happen, say in a town meeting setting. May I respond? Yes, go ahead. So I would just point out that the presentation that we had today by the elementary school principals pretty much fit this description. And I'm not knocking it. I thought it was helpful. I think when you're presenting as a group, when you have one person being your spokesman, it is, or spokesperson, it is easier to have something written. And so you're not going off message. So you're properly conveying the words of the group. And I like having a copy of it so I can see it. I also like seeing PowerPoints so that they can be done different ways. But I'm just, I'm, and I understand town meetings very different. While I'm chair, I would interpret this much more narrowly. I would interpret this much more narrowly. So a PowerPoint or a speech does not a written report. Just because it's put in novice doesn't mean it's a written report. That's how I would interpret it. If there was a written report, if there was, when we've seen some of them sometimes and they were reading the whole thing, that's what I would interrupt somebody. But these types of things that are basically just their speech that's put into a report that's written down and put into novice because they gave it to Karen, that I wouldn't consider a written report. But that's just me. Another chair might interpret it differently. You're right. There is a risk of that. Yeah, we have considered those reports when we talk about evaluation materials and stuff. I mean, they count as a report out. So. We're not making a presentation. We're doing a legally prescribed task of the committee in which we're required to state, read only the words that are in the evaluation document in that case. So obviously state law, Trump's policy. And in this case, it's not even a report. No, I meant that when we're asking for evaluation material, when as objectives, we say we want to report on something and a lot of times it can be something that was pretty similar to the elementary school principles thing. I mean, that's the report. I think that, look, nobody who's been a chair when I've been on the committee, obviously, I was off for five years on a nice little vacation during stormy times. But I've not known a chair who's unreasonable in terms of folks coming before us. What we're trying to do is have people presenting professionally to us. There are times when you need to read text because it's important, but I think best practices would call for a visual and and more rehearsed presentation up for the most part. Don't disagree with that. Mr. Hanna. I'm just concerned. We're worrying about yesterday going forward. I have faith in this committee. I'm a talker, try to limit it. And occasionally I'll get a look at, look from the current chair and previous chairs and get the message. So I think it's worth going trying it with trying it. Yeah, I mean, I don't anticipate people raising a point of order at the 15 minute mark if the chair didn't notice or the same thing if somebody's reading a presentation or somebody came with a terrible PowerPoint. I don't anticipate somebody raising a point of order and challenging that. There may be a future member that does that and we may need to reconsider it. All right, any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Any abstentions? I'm gonna abstain. Opposed is no, not I. No, no. No. I don't think Karen won. I don't respect for those who serve with me during that period. Mr. Chairman, I move file KF-E fee structure for rental school buildings for second reading adoption. Second. Any discussion? All of them in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Abstentions? That one's unanimous. Okay, subcommittee liaison reports and announcements. Budget, Dr. Alton Ampey. We will be meeting on January 9th at 8.30. Policies and procedures, Mr. Schuchman. We just adopted the policies. Great. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Accountability, Ms. Morgan. We need to meet in the new year to tackle the SOA plan. So who needs to be, I have no SOA plan, obviously. So who do, who, can I ask who do we need, who do we need to kind of corral to get going on that? Well, I would prefer that you wait a bit because we are tackling it. Great. In fact, we've even talked about it and it's a whole administrative team is on it. So what we were thinking is that we would be working on it probably January, early February, and then involve giving you our draft. We'll go through a couple of sessions, bring into the, you know, your committee, bring into the school committee. It's due April 1st. Okay. So let's, we will meet at some point in the new year to talk about the SOA plan. Yeah. I mean, I think you can meet to go over that schedule in a little bit more detail and not have any draft or any framework for the plan, but maybe just go over it because it's a very tight schedule. It is, it is, we're gonna put some more meetings in as a result, but not to your committee. Our. Community relations, Ms. Seuss. I need to do a doodle for mid January, I think. Facilities, Mr. Heiner. Only to report that we'll be meeting, I'll be meeting with I and possibly my other member will be meeting with the PTO with Dallin on January 28th at 7 p.m. Great. Legal services, nothing, holding committee recovered, calendar committee, anything? Yes. So we met with the community on, what was that? The 11th, about 50 people showed up. We, some small group discussions and sort of shifted the process a little bit midstream and then brought out people to larger discussions, larger points people wanted to make. We also received about a hundred notes. Is that about the right number? From parents in the community, indicating their thoughts and their preferences. And then the counter committee met on the 18th to sort of digest all this. And we sort of looked at it. All around here was all the big pieces of paper that people had written on. We discussed the comments we received. We only started looking at some of the comments that were written on email. Basically, I think to do this right, we need more time. We also discussed how we could reach out to groups in the community representing religions and cultures that we don't, we didn't haven't heard from yet, just to hear more about what their concerns were. And the current thinking is that we will come back to the school committee with a recommendation April, something, I mean, spring. It may not be implemented next year. Maybe the recommendation is we wait a year, but sort of the idea is we just need more time. We are looking only this year at religious holidays and also hopefully the look of the, that's gonna be one meeting basically at the time of the look of the calendar. Any discussion about where when we start it's been deferred to next year. So that is not being discussed right now this year. There's not gonna, the spring recommendation will not recommend anything about start time before or after Labor Day. So that's where we are now. Calendar format. Format, yeah, I sort of tried to say that, but maybe I said it partly. Yeah, so again, just to, my perspective is if we're going to change the start date, we need to give parents a year's notice. So we need to know by September of 2020, if that's what we're going to do. So we can't defer it to start discussing it in September 2020. May I, the start date is a contractual issue. So we're gonna be into the negotiations next year. A contract would not be ratified probably till May. So it would actually be two years out. We would not be looking at a change next year or the following year, because of just the whole process of negotiations. Okay, so that's fine, but you had also said that there are some teachers that are upset about ending on June 28th. 29th, the following year it would be June 28th. So there is, if that is the sentiment, there is an opportunity to have a side conversation with the union, make that one change. Yes. It doesn't need to be tied to everything else. We're not gonna pay them more for starting on Monday instead of Wednesday. It's not a small discussion. What? I mean, the law allows impact bargaining on an issue of concern. I would recommend, because it isn't something that's gonna be settled in five minutes or 10 minutes, that if we're going to do this, we should do it as soon as possible. That's all. And I don't know that we want to do it, but I'm saying, some teachers have told people that they wanna do it. Some parents have said they'd be open to it. Some parents are opposed to it. So I, again, it's a big issue, but I don't see just putting it off until the year that it doesn't really matter that much. This is, these are the two painful years. Go ahead. Dr. Esonanti. I was just gonna point out that we don't know if the community wants us to do it. Right, yes, yes. I understand. And that that's. It's a contractual issue. And we have a process where we go through negotiations and there was discussion with the union about what we wanna do prior to negotiations. And we have the, we have the second vice president of the AEA here. I wanna just say something along this. All I can say is that we're happy to discuss this in negotiations next year. We are not interested in reopening the contract before that. Okay. That's the message we got. Yeah. All right. There we go. Okay, Mr. Chairman, one other thing, I just wanna point out that in 2021, Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on Monday, September 6th. So if we are open on Rosh Hashanah, we are having our first day of school on Rosh Hashanah, which I think is, is a terrible message. We did it one year and to have families having to make the choice between religious observation and going to school on the first day, I think is not the direction I want the district to go in. In 2020, Rosh Hashanah starts on sundown on Friday. So we only have one of the high holidays in the 2020 and 2023 Rosh Hashanah begins on a Friday night. So, you know, the impacts differ across the years, but I certainly would not want to be open on September 7th, 2021. Okay. Election Modernization Committee, anything new? Well, we did meet recently and we will do on the 17th. To discuss warrant articles before town meeting, there will be a couple, one potentially on changing the way town meeting members are elected to make it so that people with the most vote get the longer terms that may or may not be contentious. We'll see. There might be a ranked choice voting on the warrant and there'll be something to ask to, I've talked to this last time, to extend the time to do this committee and change some of the membership and some of the, and the voting requirements and stuff like that. So, some. Great. Thanks, guys. Superintendent, search process, Mr. Shipman. We had a meeting at five o'clock this afternoon. Mr. Kutcher, the executive director of REM ASC came to talk to us. The item of interest that was the focus of our discussion was very specific. Hello, Mr. Mason, I'm about to go and use your name here. So, bear in mind that something is gonna be thrown at you. I just wanted to give you a warrant if you were just looking too happy over there. We talked about the type of things that need to be in an RFP and what our desires were and Mr. Kutcher said that the things that you want to put into an RFP or facilitation of focus groups, analysis of feedback, online surveys, developed decision criteria, position descriptions appropriate to the community and that our timeline to be most advantageous, which is what we're trying to do anyway, is to open the search on Labor Day in close in October. You said that's the best way to get the highest quality candidates. Now, we looked at previously, we distributed some RFPs from other districts and Brookline was an example for two reasons. One, the discussion of what they wanted from the search firm was good in the opinion of Mr. Kutcher. However, it had a very negative component as well in terms of the hoops in the RFP. He said the requests for documentation were onerous at the point that nobody wanted to respond to the RFP because it would have taken him four days of work assembling the documentation for all the requirements. So that would provide some information is where to go. That we would like to have a draft RFP by the 13th of January and on a motion approved by the committee, the chair has been asked to draft a message to Michael Mason or his designee telling him what we would like to include in the RFP and get an initial draft RFP so the subcommittee can look at it by January 13th. And that is the report of the superintendent search process committee. Great, thank you. Liaison reports or announcements. Liaison reports or announcements. Nope, future agenda items. So you had asked a bit about, or you, somebody had asked about inclusion about special education and the budget. And I had asked Dr. Bode also about the lab inclusion report recommendations and any budget impact. And I was hoping to get a report on that before we do the budget in February. So that's still something we can look into. Anything else? All right, disband legal services subcommittee. We had discussed we don't need that any more. I'd mention this to the chair since that's consistently been saying nothing to report. I don't, and I'm asking the body this, would we prefer the word suspend as opposed to disband? I don't know if it's going to take anything to put it back or whatever. Yeah, it's not one of our, I think standing subcommittee. So it would disappear anyway. So I moved to disband the legal services subcommittee effected second. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor? All right. The unanimous, and are there any executive session? Nothing. Okay. All right, motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Have a nice holiday everyone. Happy holidays. Have a good day everyone. Have a nice holiday everyone. Enjoy.