 Okay, welcome to this definitely amplified somewhat technically challenged meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, November 30th. We've been delayed a little bit because we're still getting our new space up to speed, although we're still happy to be here. And I would like to start with public comment. I believe we have two people. The first one is Mr. Joel Obermeier. And you can. Yeah, you come to I think please. Yeah. Yeah, and actually let me let me I forgot we haven't had public speakers for a while, so I forgot to read the blurb. So why don't we restart? So for public members who wish to speak to the committee, there'll be 20 minutes of public comment. If you'd like to sign up either remote to speak either remotely via zoom or in person, you must email Ms. Diggins by 6 p.m. Thursday the day of the meeting, depending on how many people to sign up. Time allotments may be reduced, but will not exceed 30 minutes. And the number of speakers anyway, it won't count for this time. But I also want to point out that we don't we hear complaints about the school committee or the superintendent, but we don't hear complaints about specific personnel. So um, yeah, mm hmm. That one. What about presenters. What about presenters? You have to see the screen. So we'll just have to move people to the side and then swap them. We can use our own. It might be a little bit off, but I think what it's I think what he's saying is see how there's short mics and long mics. The long mics are not working. So we need anyone who needs to be heard needs to be sitting at a short mic. So what if we move? Yeah, what? Let's wait. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Yes, we're just going to move the short mic. Okay, let's just swipe all the way. I see. I see. Clearly, I did not understand the meaning of the word short. It's hard to tell the difference. It's okay. I've been in. All right, let's try this again. Third time's a chance. Yeah, sure. For sure. Yeah, that's a good idea. So I used to work for national public radio. And so we had problems with audio equipment all the time. And we would never start without a sound test. We have a reverb tonight, which is not typical NPR. It sounds more like rock and roll radio. There's a short mic over here too. But so do we want to move or should I know if you're working if it's working now, don't move. That's fine. I'm not trying to subject everyone to what I'm going to say like four times. It's really not. It's not that good. Okay, I should start now. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, what? Okay, so I'm just going to hang out. Okay, thumbs are up. We can play. All right, those were all freebies, I guess. All right. So my name is Joel Obermeyer. I'm from East Arlington. My daughter, Marissa, is in the Gibbs in Learning Community One. My daughter really, really likes science. She's really unhappy in her science class. And that's because and she reports that the substitute science teacher currently in her LC while very well meaning and I'm really not here to say anything about the science teacher. That's really not my goal at all. But you know, she doesn't have science background. And we've heard from her and from other students that there's not really strong control of the classroom from a disciplinary perspective. Again, I'm not I'm really not trying to say something about the teacher. I'm more talking about the educational experience. We've heard from other parents in LC one that their children kind of dread going to science class because they don't really see you know, they don't nothing good is happening there. And it's making them hate school. And that does continue today. There has been some progress in dealing with we haven't had a science teacher since the beginning of the school year because of a health issue. And it took more than two months for us to see some progress on how science was being handled in this one class. We have seen a little bit of progress over the last couple weeks. The district science coordinator who's here Dr. Hoyo is now creating lessons for our children and posting them online, which is certainly an improvement. That said, Dr. Hoyo has not been able to spend any time actually teaching in person. Again, this I'm not trying to blame her at all. But so there's been no direct instruction taking place with a qualified science teacher. And I suspect I suspect Dr. Hoyo would agree that posting subject materials online is no substitute for having a living breathing science teacher who knows science in the class. And I just say that one of our concerns and I'm involved with a group of maybe 22 parents who've been in touch with us and kind of been part of trying to figure out what to do about this. You know, this district has a strong belief in equity right at the moment through no fault of their own one fifth of the students that gives that's all of LC one, which is more than 100 students are getting 0% of their science classes with a certified science teacher while four fifths of students are getting 100%. And I know the district really cares about equity issues. That is the definition of inequity. We're also particularly concerned that our children have a positive association with science learning. As many of you know, probably better than I do. Middle school is a critical time for girls when it comes to science learning, math and science. It's an age where girls confidence in science and their interest in learning is fragile. And you know, this has really hasn't helped. That's for sure. And I guess I would say all at almost every stage where we've been involved, we parents and by analogy as parents and students have been told that the problem may be solved soon. We should wait another little bit because maybe there'll be a teacher substitute or something together. And you know, that hasn't happened. And I on Tuesday when we met with I'll need you to finish because that's been three minutes. Okay, all right. So look, we understand that there is you know, we're going on to find a qualified substitute permanent substitute. And we don't I don't doubt the sincerity of and the work that's going into this. I just think we're concerned that this is one more short could be one more short term wait for something yet fixed. And there is a way available to have a longer term solution, even if there's no permanent substitute, which is that there's four LC science, the four science teachers for five slots in the Gibbs, and it is possible to reallocate so that each LC has a science teacher for 80% of the time. And our impression is that that's a lot of work. It's inconvenient. And we'll cry negotiations to do it with the teachers. And what we really want to make sure is that if this delay happens longer, like a few weeks longer, we actually get into that longer term mode to make the solution happen. Okay, that's finished. Thank you. Okay. Next, we have Mr. Soji Takahashi. Good evening. Thank you for your time. I'm Shoji Takahashi. I have an eighth grader and a sixth grader. I live near Straton Elementary School. I echo what Joel has said. My daughter is extremely unhappy with the chaotic environment of the classroom. It is making school not fun. And it does certainly bleed out to other courses as such. There's a lot of disruptive behavior. People, students watching videos, a lot of loud talking is unfortunately poor classroom management. We are now at the end of November. I think if I counted right, we had 58 days of LC one, not having a science teacher, 58 days. That's a lot. And that's almost 100 students. I understand that this is not the first year that this has happened. In fact, my son two years ago had the same situation. And I understand from other parents that last year there was also this situation. And I do not understand why this hasn't been examined or addressed three years. That's a lot of students. The APS mission and vision talks about equitable educational community. They want our students to experience growth and joy. They talk about innovative learning for all and providing the necessary support. Those are all in the vision and mission. And this does not meet any of that. I want to point out in the presentation for the Gibbs today that was posted. It said improve instructional equity. Again, this does not meet that at all. I want to call your attention to page five of the slides of the Gibbs under the table that said social emotional. There happened to be something that caught my attention. It said 46% bracket now at OMS students think that the climate of the school at Gibbs is poor. That's a lot 46%. So we call your attention to that. If you look at the data that presented in the packets for OMS and Gibbs, I would like you to consider examining the data on the assessments for science. Perhaps you can request to examine LC one, the students who have gone through LC one and see how their assessments rate compared to those who had experienced full time teachers. We understand that there was an assessment done recently. It was incomplete as of our meeting. But Dr Hoyo had mentioned that LC one science was scoring 74 compared to the other group 78. Again, I think many of you like myself understand statistics. So averages are averages. But that's half a letter grade, right? Just on an average. That's a lot. You know, some people say that's only four points. It's going to be 10 seconds. And then they've been misleading communication, I think as Joel has has alluded to. So we just want to call this to your attention and help you to examine the issues. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Okay, and I also want to mention, so we have three student reps today with Mo Hagenbach, Amy, Kola, Kola are you and Graham Minnick. And do you folks have anything to say today? Yeah, okay. So to start off today was the first round of the wellness workshops. And at least from my experience and from what I've heard, they went really well. Like always, winter sports also started this past week. And things are getting going. Teams are practicing. We're managing the weird space, the state of like the locker rooms, the gym. It's funny seeing the wrestling team practice like in the cafeteria. But it all worked out. Speaking of the cafeteria, we had homecoming. And that was in the cafeteria. And it went really, really well. We sold more tickets than last year, because we didn't have a cap on how many people could go. And the space turned out really, really nice. Also, students are getting adjusted to the new schedule change regarding lunch and Xbox. Great. Thank you very much. And I also want to note that we have Ms. Julie keys here as our AAA rep tonight. And Ms. Dr. Ford Walker is unable to join us today as is Ms. Goodelson and Mr. Mason and all for various other family or illness reasons. So we now move on to the OMS school improvement plan. And I think you folks can sit there. And if there's more than one of you, I'll have to share the mic. I know Mr. Merringer has a lot of exciting and positive news and initiatives to share going on at our middle school. It's exciting to be here and talking to our middle school teams today. And I know that they are excited to share some of the initiatives that they have rolling. Mr. Merringer, it's all yours. I will steer for you. Excellent. So I know that Dr. Homan has already given me the heads up to keep it a little bit brief. So I did a couple run throughs and I was a little bit over time. So I'm going to try to go through the 26 slides as quickly as possible. My name is Brian Merringer. I am the principal of the Audison Middle School. And tonight I will be presenting our improvement plan. So just a quick agenda. We're going to start off with looking at the Audison vision, a few facts about the student body at the Audison Middle School, some data that we received through MCAS. Then we're going to pivot and look at things that we think can be improved at the Audison Middle School. And what are the corresponding goals that we'll bring about? We hope the improvement that we need at our school. So just to let you know, we have three, we have a motto with three things that we call excel, empower and engage. And it's really what we try to look and teach our students. We want them to be engaged in their learning. One of the things that we want the Audison graduates to do is to be able to go to the high school and be independent learners. We also want to empower them, make sure they can advocate for themselves, make sure they're confident, know who they are as they go off into high school. And lastly, we'd like them to excel whether it's either in the classroom or out of the classroom. So extracurricular or with academics. Just to let you know, we have 943 students. We will have 944 as of Monday. We seem to be getting a couple students trickling in every week. I would like to thank the school committee and central office for expanding the amount of learning communities that we've had over the past few years. And so one of the things that has happened is that we've gone from seven and a half learning communities over the last five years to 10. And so we've had a little bit of I'm wondering if the mic is working. We think it's good. Okay, good. Why don't you push it just a little bit away from you? There we go. Little bit better. I didn't know. I felt like that might be something that was happening. So anyhow, we are based with learning communities. We have 10 learning communities. And it's comprised of an English teacher, a math teacher, science teacher, social studies teacher, special educator and a counselor. And as we've said, we've really appreciated the support of both the town, the central office and school committee so that we have smaller class sizes and small learning community sizes. Overall, if you look at some of the metrics we have, so one of the metrics we looked at and we look at every year is the MCAS results. And this year, our accountability percentile was 98% last year was 97%. In fact, of, you know, in the accountability data that they send out, there's over 1500 middle schools and elementary schools and we tied for 18th. So we're very happy and very proud of our students and what they're accomplishing. And I think it goes and a lot of credit goes to the families, to the staff and most importantly to our students of doing really well. Overall, I think kids are getting a good quality education at the Autism Middle School. However, the vision and one of the things that I think really we've talked about in the five year strategic plan is where we can improve and where we can do better. And if we're going to really be honest with belonging, growth and joy, I think what needs to happen is we have to make sure that our focal groups are making the same grade and the same mark as their peers. So if you look at students that have IEPs, students who identify as Black or Hispanic, our students who identify as LGBTQIA+, our multi-language learners or students who are considered low income, they are not achieving at some of the levels of their peers. I put in here a couple of slides of MCAS. These are seventh grade math slides, but I could have put eighth grade math slides. I could have put ELA seventh eighth. I could have put science and technology. There is a clear discrepancy between some of our focal groups and some of our other groups that we have here in the middle school. So what are the some things we want to do to correct this? One is we need to be more data driven. So I'd like to put data into three buckets and how we use them here at the school. One is district data. That's MCAS, youth risk, behavioral surveys, panorama. They tend to be data sources that you take once a year. It then takes months to get back. It's bundled really well, but it usually doesn't allow us to make adjustments in the actual timeframe that we need to. They're nice and they give us some valuable information, but it's not like we can take that data and change something in a week. The second thing we have is building data. These are things that we can call ourselves, whether it's grades or attendance, and this is more helpful if we see a student and we run attendance reports all the time, we can meet with counselors, we can try to find out why students might be missing school, why they're not doing so well with the grades. But what we really want to focus on this year is the classroom and student data. So what we want to make sure is that all our students are getting a similar experience. If you go to eighth grade civics, for example, it was really created by the eighth grade civics teachers who are presently teaching the class. You can see that they're almost in lockstep and doing a wonderful job of presenting. Students get a very similar experience. They are able to get together when they have similar tests, break down those tests, find out where they can improve and where they can be better as teachers. What we need to make sure is all our curriculums are aligned and so that every student is getting the same curriculum, but what we also want them to do is have similar common assessments so that they can not only look at how better to do things, but we also want to have the lens on the focal groups. I think it's one of the biggest thing in the strategic plan is making sure we're really looking through any assessments that we're given in real time and looking at the focal groups. So our first goal without reading it is just making sure that all the curriculum is aligned, but more important is that we all have common assessments, teachers are meeting and we're making sure that we have the same data. So this year so far we've had data teams that we've gotten together. We've met with curriculum directors. We've met with teachers to make sure we're going through data. I really want to make sure that we're, the Odyssey Middle School is giving similar assessments and that we're really breaking things down in data and making sure that we really can answer questions, not only how kids are doing on MCAS, but how many kids can write a strong concluding paragraph, how many students can do a certain lab. These are the things that I think in real time will really help us look at focal groups and close some of the achievement gap. Goal number two is increased participation techniques. We met with the ILT, which is the instructional learning team this summer, and we started to talk about what makes a really quality lesson. And one of the things we said is that students are learning important skills, concepts and content. The other thing that we said is it's important for them to be doing certain tasks and lastly, they need to be invested in their learning. And I think what happened with COVID is that a lot of our group activity, a lot of our pairing of students, we got away from because we were forced to put desks and rows, be six feet apart, we gave students computers and I think we did a great job and I thought the staff was outstanding. But I think we got away from some of the engaging activities that we've done before. And so I think what we've said is we wanna make sure our kids are really invested and engaged in their learning. So we've had ILT members go in and look at engagement levels and classes. We're gonna have all teachers go and look at engagement in various classes. Then we're having ILT members go into classes to follow focal groups and to find out if there's any difference between the engagement with some of the students and other students so that we make sure that everyone is getting a similar experience but is invested in their learning. And so our hope and overall goal is that the increased learning that students will know is that this will also close the achievement gap. Our third goal is reorganizing of the counseling department. So we were kind of surprised that when we went through some of the data, we've about 200 students on IEPs at the Odyssey Middle School. 116 of them receive social work services. This is a lot greater than traditionally how many students would be receiving. Now I know it's the end of a pandemic so you're gonna have kids who are gonna have more social and emotional needs but it's still very high. So what we've done is reorganize the counseling staff. We've always had seven counselors but before three were responsible for getting IEP goals and working with students in special education, well the other four were focused on a lot of the general education students. This year we've decided to split that so all seven of them have students who are having IEP goals and having general ed students. And we're hoping by moving students over seven counselors that will be able to meet the needs of a lot of our students who are in special education. So we're tracking the students and how they've been seen by counselors. We're progressing towards student goals and we're reviewing a lot of the data because our number one thing as we've said is we want independent learners for the high school so we want students to be able to work on goals and from there be able to adjust well and meet their goals so they can become more independent. The last thing is family engagement. So I've always thought that middle schools are a little bit of disadvantage with family engagement in the fact that most people love their elementary neighborhood schools. There's children go there for six years. They usually walk to school. You know your neighbors, you know the people in the front office and then you transition to this large school. The students kind of want you a little bit away from you. And so sometimes I feel like we don't have the engagement that you would have say at the elementary school. So we're trying to look even though I think we do a good job of sending out weekly newsletters. I think the teams of teachers do a very nice job of making sure they're in communication with their LC students and parents. I think our website is much improved. We are looking to have a sense of belonging and to invite more parents in and I think it's incumbent on the school to make those first steps. So we are going to have more monthly coffees with parents to invite them in. Sometimes it will be general, but sometimes it will be specific topics. And we're also going to do a better job of getting our multi-language learner parents in. I find that for many of the multi-language learner families, there are certain things that happen in a school. For example, access and weed attesting that to get them more up to speed would benefit them and to really make sure that we're inviting them more into our community. I also want to provide some videos and some quarterly things to make sure that it's easier for people to access. So I'm hoping I wasn't too long. I was trying to give the cliff notes right there, but I will take any questions that anyone on the school committee asks. Okay, thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Okay, Mr. Schluckman. Not a question, but a comment. I think that you're doing extraordinary work over at the Odyssey and your presentation focuses on where you're looking to go. The results in your building have been stellar and I admire the way you're trying to build on it. Thank you. Great, thank you. I will share that with the staff as well. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, I just want to echo what Mr. Schluckman said. I mean, accountability at 98% and 18th in the state out of a thousand 500 is just amazing. And I mean, traditionally middle schools are where school systems often have the most difficulty because of the, I mean, for many, many reasons, but that's just amazing. So congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Pretty easy. Yes, we're going to, I would like to take something out of order so if I can have a, I need someone to make a motion to put everything until the discussion about, I'm sorry, about the approval of the field trip to the Carnegie Hall on the table. Motion to table the items prior to the field trip. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. That passes. So we're going to do the approval of the field trip to Carnegie Hall, Ms. Wei. Good evening, everyone. You need to be in a microphone. Yeah, we need you to come. So we should discuss the field trip first and then we'll have her surprise. You want to discuss first? Okay. All right, great. Okay. Because we just came from the gig as we'd like to play a scene for you. Why don't you describe the field trip? If they have any questions, I can ask and then it's great. Okay. So the Arlington High School Performing Art Department is planning a trip. It's hoping to plan the trip to bring as many core students as possible to Carnegie Hall in New York to do a workshop and concert in April, from April 24th to 27th. And in addition to the core students, our Honors Orchestra is invited as a guest ensemble by the organization to perform as a guest, an instrumental group. During this workshop, so students will be able to have experience to work with renowned conductors. Also, they would perform two world premier choral pieces along with two or three other high school students from different states. So there will be two full musical days. The first day, we plan to leave on the Thursday afternoon after school, so we're not missing school that day. And then Friday morning, they will start rehearsing actually at Queens College and with the conductor. And in the afternoon, they will have a free time and then do a little bit more rehearsal. And they get to watch a big Broadway show to see. And the next day, they will do the workshop again in the morning and afternoon. We'll have a little relaxed time before their concert actual show time at Carnegie Hall at six p.m. And the next day, we'll have a, so then after the big concert Saturday, we will bring them to have a little city time in New York City, then have lunch and do a trip to see the special liberty. Yeah, and then we'll be actually taking the bus back that evening. Any questions? Mr. Flickman? This is an international travel application. That's the wrong form. So because we can't, we do not really have a proper form. We can use that form because that's the form we have. I mean, having been born in New York, I know there's a cultural difference between New York and Boston, but I mean, real, no, this is a really a worthwhile trip. And I'm really excited for the Arlington students. And we just got this information, like which schools we'll be partnered with. And this organization has been doing this for a long time. And they've done it for more than 10 years. And I think that's it, right? Yeah. Ms. Walker has done this trip before with the previous school district. So she, she, you know. So how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Right. Or you get out of 57th Street, you know. I'm overproval of the trip. Do I hear a second? Second. Does anyone have any further comments? So just the usual question about if people can't afford the 1500, $1,600. Right. Papa, the Performing Arts Parent Association will partner with us to do as much fundraisers as possible. Last year we actually did a lot, like this is actually a perfect timing. We will do musical telegram. And yeah, last year I played violin with the Tuba students on a Sunday morning and traveling around Arlington. And same thing with our upcoming concerts, they will do, we will work really, really hard and to raise as much fund as possible to encourage students to participate. Thank you. Any further comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so that passes unanimous. I hope I forgot any abstentions. No. That passes unanimously. Thank you so much. And now our surprise. That was a wonderful surprise. Yes, Brian, you lucked out. Okay. Can I have a motion to take the rest of the items off the table? Motion to remove everything from the table. All in favor? Aye. Okay. I send the kids home to school night. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So now we have the Gibbs improvement plans. And again, I invite you to the small mic over this. Welcome to the Gibbs team, middle school number two, our sixth grade school. I am excited to have three administrators, two building administrators and our science director, Dr. Hoyo here to present the work that they'll be doing this year. As with Mr. Merringer, I'm driving. So if keep an eye, somebody on the slides. And if I'm not in the right spot, just give me a prompt. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for having us. I guess Dr. Hoyo and Mrs. Griner will be singing. Tough act to follow. Oh, really? Tough act to follow. I am Madame Pierrot Maxwell, the principal at the Gibbs school. I am Stephanie Griner, the assistant principal at the Gibbs school. Sam Hoyo, I'm the science director for the district. Excited to be here to present our school and program tonight and discuss a little bit of what's been happening at the school last year and where we heading to this year. So the agenda will cover the vision of the school, give you a bit of our state, not only in the district, but across the state of Massachusetts. We'll take a brief look at the MCAS data. We will briefly discuss the five year plans that our district is working on and we have three goals and then you'll have a chance to post questions if you have any. Okay, so the Gibbs vision. Our vision is not just for our students. It is for our parents and partners too. We pride ourself on being understanding, unified and unstoppable. Just unplugged it. Uh-oh. No, I don't think so. No? Somebody else is just unplugged it. Yeah, it's just unhooked. It's good, we're good. Just talking a little closer to that. That's yours. I'll come real close. I said I shall work. Okay, I'm gonna start over with the Gibbs vision. It's going great. The Gibbs vision, our vision is not just for our students, it's for our parents and partners too. We pride ourselves on being understanding, unified and unstoppable. If we don't understand, we can't be unified and unstoppable at meeting our goals. Gives it a glance. So the Gibbs school is unique in that we are the coming together point for our seven elementary schools and it's a big transition going from, for most of our students are in the same classroom all day to now transitioning between five to seven teachers and revolving and really thinking about our castle competencies, really thinking about who our trailblazers are and one of my favorite things that Mrs. Griner always says to students is once a trailblazer, always a trailblazer. So really imparting that onto what we do. And we, starting next week, we'll have 472 students. We're getting some new students next week. Gibbs data for MCAS. As we look at this, we always are looking one year behind the current class with the MCAS because we're a one year school. This year we're blessed to have the director of data who will be supporting us and getting us some data in real time as we start to move forward continuum of Gibbs to look at data. In the spring of 2019, that's the first time Gibbs students took the MCAS and we didn't require any assistance or intervention at that time. In spring of 2023, after weathering COVID-19 storm, we still were not requiring assistance or intervention because 75% of our students were meeting or exceeding the targets. Very exciting. The US News and World Report has ranked the Gibbs School number 25 out of 492 middle schools in Massachusetts. When Madame started, she doesn't know we looked this up, but when she started, we were 39th in the state and so we've moved from 39th to 25th under her leadership. She's pretty amazing. But we also know that we're not there yet because until we're number one, it's not good enough, right? And in the five year strategic plan, we did just that highlighting the five focal group where some of our students are not performing as well as their peers. So a big part of the plan is to really figure out how to amplify our TOA instructions to make sure that all of those students were identified as not meeting expectation compared to their peers so they can do better. So our academic goals, not only looking at how we servicing all of our students to maintain where they are, but also to make sure that our students in the five focal groups are improving on their learning and how they're accessing so we can give them more opportunity gaps to access their learning at the same rigor and to their fullest potentials. One of the focal groups are students with IEPs. Most APS students outperform their peers in the state. However, as you can see from the graphs, APS students with disabilities are still lagging behind their peers. Also in the math one. This is also true for our black students, our African-American students, as well as our Hispanic students in both math and ELA. So even though the district's five year strategic plan covers five years, every year we're going to select a group to focus on a specific goal for that specific school year because as you know, our students transition from year to year. So while we're looking at a five year plan to really improve the capacity of our staff, but we're looking at each group when they come in front of the staff, what are the specific needs to those groups? So this year we're looking at having three specific goals. One is an academic goal, looking at specifically writing in English language art. The second goal is about culture and climate. And the third one is a goal of family engagement. In the English goal, we are zooming onto writing because we looked at the last few years and actually across the district. Writing is an area where all students are not meeting or exceeding expectation. I believe as a school, as a grade, we are at 38%, so we want to improve that across. So that's the area we selected to work on our students. So our teachers are really learning some high leverage instructional strategies to work on improving the goals for those students. Our culture and climate goal is really focusing around creating teacher, staff, student relationships. As you know, the relationship between a student and a staff member is the most important predictor for student success, engagement, as well as that academic achievement. And so our goal is to make sure that every student at Gibbs has at least one trusted adult that they can go to be with in order to facilitate that growth belonging and joy. Gibbs also, third goal is family engagement, as well as Mr. Merringer has one at Audison. For us at Gibbs, the focus is on the family engagement since we are a one-year school. We want to focus on making sure that families that are coming out of a school that they've been to or at for so long, they understand the transition and how to communicate with the first experience of a middle school. We continue to improve our communication each year. This year we're hoping to start our communication with the elementary schools right after the winter break. We thought we would give you an update on the action goals where we are so far. In general, all the staff members, our partners, and especially the four core subject directors, the world language directors have been consulting on how we're creating the goal for the students. Writing is looking across all the subjects. We're not just looking in ELA. The students will get to be supported in improving their writing goals across the curriculum in all the subjects. And we are also in the process of revising the goals that teachers had a first chance of looking at. We received some feedback from them. The school council is looking at the goal. So we are really making sure that everyone has a sense of how we are improving. We're looking at identifying what professional development that teachers need to support the students in those opportunity gap we're looking to create for them. And we are specifically looking at two of the five focal groups to improve in addition to improving tier one instructions. We have been very fortunate as curriculum directors. Both Madame and Mr. Maringer have created a space for us to collaborate with both middle schools simultaneously so that we can create a cohesive middle school experience in terms of curriculum. So we're really thinking and working on that vertical alignment. The Gibbs ILT is up and running. Both myself and Ms. Moran, the social studies director are working with both Gibbs and OMS to think about high leverage instructional practices and how we are going to use that bringing them up from the elementary school through the middle schools to create a cohesive vision across the entire district. And then two of the four core subjects, social studies and science are having department teachers observe each other to really look at engagement, high leverage practices, instructional practices in order to make the experience better for our students. Some of the goals, like Dr. Hoyo just said, we continue to build a strong effective tier one academic instruction by bringing in the cohesiveness with all the directors in building admins across both of the middle schools. Also, as Mr. Maringer said, this is our second year at Gibbs where we're starting the new process with the social emotional services where we reconstructed our school counselors and social workers to function more as a cohesive unit so that all the four school counselors we have service kids through General Ed as well as kids who are on IEPs. And then the other thing that we've done this year is we pride ourselves on building community at Gibbs not only as a big community but as our smaller learning communities in the way we do that from bringing all the elementary school kids together is yes, we did our first nine days again this year which was a huge success with the support from the central office staff as well as all our teachers, Dr. Hoyo as well as the directors as well as some of our transportation drivers that joined us this year as well. And we still, among all these successes we still have some challenges and one of them is to really working on the transition. Every year we're working on refining the transition. I know Mr. Maringer earlier spoke of having over 200 children with an IEP. Those children leave seven school coming into Gibbs. We don't have the same identical services in the school so it's a lot of work for us to plan to be in communication from this December coming all the way till the children transition to make sure that we're doing a great job not stopping their services that it's a smooth process to make sure that they're receiving exactly what their IEP required that they receive as a transition to middle years. We also, I think nationwide everyone is aware it's really difficult to find teachers. Gibbs has struggled the last two years to chill position in special education and science as you heard earlier two of our parents were here presenting about the situation in our science department in LC1. And lastly, a time is out of premium always finding time to collaborate to make sure that everyone is understanding all the initiative that we're trying to roll out in supporting our district and maintaining our students improvement. So these are some of the challenges. Thank you for listening. If you have any questions, we're ready. Okay, any questions? Mr. Cardin. I'll start. So in the actual plan there's only two smart goals. The second initiative I think is missing. The second, the strategic culture climate is missing a smart goal. But just so the first one is these ELA standards that we've never seen data on. So I think if you're going to include something like that we need to see some data on where we are now. It says we're gonna get a 3% increase but I don't really know where we stand today on those goals. So just as feedback, next year if you're including those include some data about that. And then the third smart, the second smart goal is not particularly measurable. So I think again looking at what other schools have been doing, we're getting to a better place where we're seeing measurable goals but this one I don't think meets the criteria. And then just using this opportunity to comment I didn't address the parents because I feel like the situation in LC one is a day to day it is a day to day responsibility of the district to figure out how to solve that problem but I do have to state publicly now that at day 58 almost a third of the way into the school year we really should be all hands on deck. Mr. Spiegel should be calling his peers. He should be calling the schools, the education schools. We should be pounding the pavement to find a solution to this problem. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman. Let me sort of get in light of the issues with LC one versus the other learning communities I'd like to sort of get an understanding of the picture. How many learning communities are at the Gibbs? Five. So you have five learning communities. And each science teacher has one science teacher per learning community. And so how many science periods does each teacher teach during the day and how long are those periods? Four and they are 46 minutes each. So you've got four 46 minute periods. They teach five, one is a support class. Okay, that's good. But I'm interested in the four science. So the five times where there are 20 science classes going on there. Okay, I think that none of this is optimal and I understand how difficult it is to find certified teachers right now and that we're not in a competitive place because it has in costs in our location and most good science teachers, most people with a science certification who want to work are already working. So absent anybody graduating from a college program in January, it's not going to work. But I think that with 20 periods of science plus five periods of support, there's got to be some way to adjust the schedule so that there'd be some greater equity going on there. So I think that within an improvement plan, if because of the volatility of having one grade, only one grade and a new wave of kids coming in every year and then they're leaving the next year and another one coming in, that one of the things that should be mentioned in the school improvement plan is how do we deal with situations such as this? And I don't think that's on your hands. It's also district responsibility because district has responsibility for providing support and resources necessary for making this work. I don't know what the solution is. It's not my job to find it, but I think that there are things that we should be doing that would remediate the problem after 58 days. Mr. Thelman. We're on the same top. But first of all, thanks very much for coming in for the presentation. I know you guys put a lot of effort into this. My question is, so what is the plan to make up for the learning loss in science of these children this year? In terms of science instruction, once we resolve the issue. How are they gonna get caught up in what they lost? Caught up would be maybe for Dr. Coyle. We're assuming that they have lost instruction. The common assessments showing that while they are not scoring a 74% versus a 78%, statistically it's not all that different. And that's only one LC that we're comparing it to. I'm waiting for the other three LCs to give me data so that I can look to see across all five LCs as to if there is any learning loss, what that is. The teacher was working with a certified science teacher getting all of the lessons from one of our certified science teachers. I'm not sure there is a loss of learning. And I don't think that's to say that we don't understand the concerns and are working to address the concerns about the instruction in the classroom. But assessing what the loss is would be step one. And if there is any, and then figuring out a plan to fill any gaps that students might need in order to move forward with the curriculum. We are very hopeful. So I wanna also delineate like that what the GIVE team has presented today is a plan for all of the work they want to do this school year. And we are very hopeful that we're going to be sharing an update on this particular situation that puts a certified science teacher in the classroom very, very soon. And I'm looking forward to that update, but unfortunately we don't have it just quite nailed down yet and I don't wanna say things about an ongoing process and have them not be true. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. So I had two comments. One related to the science, obviously the learning is important, but I think what we have heard as a committee and what we've heard in the community is that it's also about the student experience, right? The experience in the classroom for some students doesn't mean all of them. We haven't done an exhaustive survey, but the student experience has been poor in science. They might be learning, right? Maybe they learned some science, maybe they've acquired knowledge, but what we're hearing is that the experience has been poor. So that also is going, you know, as you think through how you're going to address this, that's really important, right? This is the first time that some of these kids are taking science, right? They're going to science class. And they've certainly had great experiences in science, but we've talked to Dr. Hoyo, like the time allocated to science in the elementary schools is small, right? And her team has fought for every minute that they've gotten, but I think that that student experience is really, that needs to be part of the remediation strategy. And I'm sure that you know that. And then the question I had was that in terms of the goal around the culture and climate, can you tell me a little bit more about what you're looking? So we didn't hear much about the Panorama Survey in the presentation, which is fine. We didn't hear much about it from the Audison either. We heard quite a bit about it from the elementary schools that we've seen so far. But it looks like, you know, one of the goals is just to actually do the survey in November and May, which like, like, I hope we're doing that, right? I mean, so it looks like just have the Panorama Survey ready to go. You know, I don't know. I guess that's what you need the district to do, but I'm not sure what you're looking for there, I guess. So I would just like to learn a little bit more. That it looks like the resource is to have a consistent survey for the fifth graders. And then you need money to pay the counselors to review the survey in July. Is that what you're looking for? That would be for the next school year. For this school year, we've looked at the Panorama Survey. We're 90, in the actual SIP that's attached to this document. That's what I'm reading. Yeah, so on page eight, 90% of our former students reported that their teachers are respectful toward them. 35% have reported to felt quite too extremely connected to Gibbs adults, and 54% have said that they matter quite a bit too tremendously. So these three specific goals, the 90% we will strive to maintain, the 35% and the 54% we want to improve by creating more of an intentional connection for every student with a caring adults. So one of the strategy we're using is something called relationship mapping, where we are working on having teachers and students identify each other as how are they connected? Every adult at Gibbs school will have six to seven students they will be intentionally connecting with in addition to having them in advisory or having them in class. So this is how we're looking at finding out what does it feel look and sound like for our students when they feel actually connected to a caring adult? So that will happen throughout different activities we do, especially during advisory, but throughout the classroom, how the kids enter a classroom, how teachers start a class, what they do when they check in with individual students. So that goal will be measured. We recognize the current data we have belong to the former sixth graders. So what we're speaking about the panorama survey is that when our current students take the panorama survey this month coming in December, we will look at their actual performance and aim to improve that in the same categories because those students have already left Gibbs. So let's see in the fall, well almost winter now when our current students take the survey, how are they performing, what are they saying? We're going to improve their result. So because it doesn't make sense to, we can learn from the former students, but we need to tend to the students who are currently in front of us. So I understand that, but you should have that data from last year's students, right? Cause there were two administrations that you gave. I appreciate that they're seventh graders now, but this is the problem. This happens with everybody, right? Like Brian's talking about his kids who go to school here now, right? Half of them. So I mean, there should be some information about the students that you had last year from the fall, from the, you know, winter administration to the spring, right? You looking at the fifth graders currently in front of us what they took in the spring. No, I'm looking at the students that you had at Gibbs last year. That's their data right here. Well, it does, but it does, there's not a, cause what you're saying is, is that what's important is that change from fall or winter to spring, right? Like you're looking, you want to measure, you want to look at the same cohort in the fall and in the spring, right? But you should have that from last year's cohort, right? Like didn't they, they did, they were surveyed last year. So there should be some, you should have some sense of like. The eighth graders data. So Ms. Morgan, are you asking, did like for an assessment on the actions that happened last year from fall to spring and their effectiveness and what we're then learning from that in order to inform this year's goals. Does that make sense, folks? Yes, that's not how we looked at it, but. Okay, all right. But that's how you plan to look at it next year. Or this year, I guess. But we will talk to you about it next year. That's the funny part about the whole thing. Yes, that's how we look at it this year. Okay, all right. Great, thank you. And do you do any surveying of the kids about the first nine days of school? Yes, we do. You do, okay, great. That's very positive, very successful. Excellent, good. Thank you, sir. And I do also want to point out to the academic goals. The reason we selected, Dr. Herman, if you go into slide eight, I believe, just one second, slides 14, please. If you click onto the MCAS 23 ELA item by item performance. You're gonna have to give me a minute. Which one, this one? The item by item, yes, yes. So we, in selecting the academic goals, we look at English language arts. If you see that, this is the performance of our fifth graders last year on the MCAS for ELA. So if you look at those percentiles for Arlington versus the state. So we selected writing because if you look at the very bottom, those two standards, essay, writing, idea development, that's where our students as a whole are not performing as well. That is why we selected the writing as a goal and hoping that as a whole building, we will be working and improving our students' ability in their writing. So that is a measurable goal. And we will be, we are working with the teachers looking at high level practices to then enforce and focusing on supporting those students. All of our students, including to those of the five focal groups. And is your plan to compare to the cohort? Are you wanting to look back to the fifth? Yes, because the students in front of us now, that's their performance last year on the MCAS. Understood. It's just, it's a little different than what we see from some, like it's totally, like they're the same kids. So I think it makes a lot of sense, but I think what I don't know whether I will be here next year, but like if whoever it is, I guess the, you know, 2024 version would, they get very clear that it's like a cohort analysis as opposed to like a grade to grade analysis. Cause we're used to seeing a grade to grade, but if you're looking at the cohort, it's certainly defensible practice. Just, I just want to be like reminded of that. Yeah, great. Thank you. Any more questions? Okay. Just, I was wondering if you can talk about the experiences of students with IEPs and having multiple transitions because they're going, first they go from fifth to your school and then they go from your school to Onneson and I've heard concerns that this is a lot of bumps and a lot of people for them to be meeting and things over the course of a year and how that's going. I do think going from fifth to sixth grade naturally is a big milestone that affect all students, whether they have an IEP or not. So for our students who have an individualized plan, it makes it even for some of them more challenging. So one of the way we are working on making it less challenging is to, through the conversation we have during transition meetings, starting in January with the seven elementary schools is that we are identifying who needs more than just the basic, how we conduct transition for everyone. So for example, we'll meet with some of the parents, we've invited them and their trial basis to come to meet us during the summer. We're looking at the specialty if they're, for example, we have some students who may be coming from the behavioral program from Dalin. So we will talk to Principal Digman, we'll talk to their teachers. Last year we had two of our special educators go to the school to visit to see those students in their environment so to understand not only it's about what program we have or may not have at Gibbs, but looking at the capacity of our staff. What is it, what professional development they may have to attend to make sure that they're ready for that transition. But regardless, it is seven schools coming into one. So that by itself is very challenging and we only have one SLC program at the Gibbs School. So every year we have to be extremely diligent on learning about those students where they are to be ready. And it's a very short period of time and having them from one year and as soon as really understand how they operate then Mr. Merringer has to relearn the same things with them. So that can be, it presents its own unique challenges every year, it's never the same. Okay. Is there anything we could be doing to make it, help make it better for you and for them? We have hired last year Dr. Homan to the process for the budgeting and I guess ultimately you the school committee have given us a family liaison who's a big chunk of that person's job is to help us with the transition process. But it also still take time. We can't just send the family liaison. So we are working with our special coordinator sometimes maybe Mrs. Griner or I or the chair would have to go to get a sense for the school, have conversation, do some observation so they can then come back and plan. There is a great deal of plan to be done over the summer and I think that's where maybe we can capitalize because the teachers time end in June and they return at the end of August which so we have to identify some more specific work to be done during the summer. So when the teachers come we're able to cut them up right away to what they need to know about those trailblazers. So because for minute one they need to be ready for them. They can be ready for them two weeks later. So the first nine days, this is the second year of implementing it. One of the things we observe is that oh we can do something different for our children with an IEP when they enter in the first nine days. It doesn't have to be, we have tier one then even within that induction there needs to be a tier two and a tier three for those students because that's what the whole idea is about. So every year we're learning how to perfect that transition and working on communicating some of those things we learned to Addison so then it's not so new again for the children as they transition. So we like the meat in the middle of the sandwich because we are doing it at both end taking them in and then transition them into Addison. And I think this is why it's so crucial that the school have to be quite aligned with each other because we need to have conversation about everything to make sure that the students experience is not so bumpy as they moving from fifth grade to eighth grade. So I think this is one of the things that we identified early on when the committee was exploring what we were going to do with the Gibbs School whether we were going to have a small, another small middle school or a standalone sixth grade school. And this was one of the challenges that we identified that it being a one year school you mentioned the lack of a cohort model that we utilize in the Addison for our sub separate program. I did wanna clarify there's not that we have one sub separate program but what you were alluding to is that when each year we have to look at the student IEPs as they're coming up from fifth grade to determine what the services, what programming they require because you may have two students coming out of our program at Dowling and you may have three students coming out of our program at Stratton and nobody coming out of the program at Hardy that year. So each year, as you mentioned, we're meeting we're looking at those IEPs and we're making determinations of whether or not students require a sub separate math because they're at grade level but they have anxiety in being in that large class and they need a small group instruction for that or they need small group instruction in mathematics because they're significantly below grade level they're working on functional academics or whatnot and then create the schedule in the programming based on that. So that happens every year that is a challenge it's one we identified early on before the decision was made. Some of the things that Addison and Gibbs has done to ease that transition was switching to the same schedule because it was initially they went from a five day schedule to a six day schedule to a four day schedule. So over the years, some of those things have improved. We also do have not only our students staff's going to meet students but students come over to the Gibbs in advance and we have had increased visits during the school year for some students. That's something that we continue to work on because I think we would like to see more opportunities for those students to develop the relationship but I think that wasn't really anything I wanted to add to what you had to say. Thank you. And just to be clear, I'm just thinking about this that I worry that these kids are having these transitions and we're trying to fix it in each place and we're not looking at kind of the whole big picture of them going from fifth grade to seventh or even eighth. And I know we did have these discussions when we talked about having the Gibbs in this case. I just want to add that transitions was a big part of our joint special ed committee with teachers and administrators last year and we identified a lot of practices that we're slowly starting to put into place. Madame serves on that committee this year so like this is something we're actively working on. That's awesome, yeah. I think it's good for us to be keeping this in mind and just trying to improve the practice, improve the experience for all of our students and with IAPs. And then the other thing I wanted to say was just too, I understand there may be fixes in place and I very much hope that there are fixes in place for the science issues. If there are not, I just, I don't want to talk about it a lot because it's hard not to get into personnel or other issues and that's clearly not appropriate but I wanted to speak for myself at least that I am trying to signal strong support even if we need to make difficult decisions and decisions which might be controversial to ensure a better experience for these students. It's been almost a third of the year. That's a long time. I will just to make you folks feel better thinking back to my child's experience. We have had bumpy years and it's worked out but it's not a good thing and there may be things that we can do about it and I just wanted to be clear that I would be prepared to do what we need to do. So I think that's everyone on this. So thank you madam. Thank you everyone for. Thank you all. Yeah. Everybody who has school tomorrow is welcome to head out. I just want to make sure. Thank you. Miss Kees, are you losing to me? Okay. So next we have budget for the furniture questions. Okay. And Dr. Holman is going to discuss this. Should I wait a little bit? Yeah. We're going to wait a couple minutes just so everyone can hear. I'll go ahead and get started. So I will be speaking on behalf of Mr. Mason. I know you won't be able to tell any difference tonight. If I miss something or if we need to go back to him with some feedback, some not feedback, but follow up questions. I'm happy to do that and get back to the committee. So we have provided a list of the budget requests that have come to us from budget managers. It's not public and novice yet. It will be once we have this conversation. A couple of things that I want, but all of you can see it. A couple of things I want to note about this request report is that this is the result of a slightly modified process for this year. We realize that we're headed into a year where we're bargaining and that that requires us to think about resources and that's a big priority of the system. We have asked our administrators to keep that in mind as well as they request things for the needs to address the needs of their schools for next year. We've also asked them to maintain a really sharp focus on the needs of our students in focal groups in providing us with their requests for this year. What they are doing that's a slightly revised version of our typical process that we've done for the last couple of years is their first meeting with the business office officials, Mr. Various in the business office and Mr. Mason. And as a result of that meeting, thinking through what the needs are and if it is a significant need like a personnel need or a need that is a budgetary operating budget resource need that is in excess of sort of the typical inflation increase of 2% to their budget, then they submit that as a request. So those are the requests that you've received. You've gotten all of them entirely unorganized into buckets or filtered in the interest of transparency. Wanted you to see everything that everybody identified as a need, but I do wanna emphasize that sometimes budget, things are expressed as a budget need that could also be addressed with other means. And so there could be things in there that probably won't be high priority for us to consider, but that we want to really understand the need of the administrator. And what we haven't done yet, which we typically do before we do this report is have cabinet meetings, cabinet level meetings with the entire team and the person who's doing the requesting. And sometimes that process helps us sort of vet out different asks and clarify and refine them. And that's not something that we've had that we've done yet in this process. We were trying to reduce the number of meetings people needed to attend and the number of hours the cabinet team needed to spend sitting with every single budget request considering that this year it might be a slightly consolidated process because of the circumstances of negotiations and wanting to make sure that we're reserving dollars as for as long as we can. So I'm happy to try to answer some questions about these but again, I haven't sat with the budget managers who are asking for a lot of these requests and we are planning on coming back to the committee with a refined list, one that includes some prioritization of the requests once the cabinet team has had a chance to really take a look at them, think about what some of our highest priorities are with the needs of our focal groups are and do some sort of paring down. Does anyone have any questions? I have a question, I just have a comment. I'm looking forward to the refined list. We've been here before so I know how this is gonna go. I did wanna say though that this, the way that Dr. Homan, you articulated tonight around the prioritization around sort of bargaining and compensation and that that was the directive towards your staff and the alignment in how we're talking about that. You have said the same thing to me privately, you've said the same thing to me in budget subcommittee, you've said the same thing to the full school committee here, right? It's like this and it is very much part of the conversation that we had with the community and with the voters in November and to see those pieces all sort of like marched together, it makes it easy to be patient for the refinement process to happen. So thank you, that's all I have. As extend. I don't have any comments, I know this will get cleaned up but I just wanted to express my appreciation for the opportunity to sort of see what are all of the asks because I think that not everyone can appreciate how much more it would cost to sort of do things at the very best optimal way and the, I mean like the visual arts piece and just everybody thinking about what if money fell from the sky, like what are the opportunities that would be possible? And then we have to make some challenging decisions about what are our priorities and what are we going to do for next year, keeping in mind that we want to compensate our teachers as best we can. And just to that point, I would also say like, and these aren't all of the asks that we'll get, we'll hear from AA next time and I've been thinking through some feedback that I received from all of you about including the community more and getting requests and ideas for the budget into our process. I'm looking forward next year to hopefully having the working groups actually make budget proposals. And that would include the community's voice in the development of budget asks in a way that we haven't ever done before because we've usually asked budget managers for that. So I imagine that if we asked a lot more people who would get a lot more ideas about really amazing ways that we could serve the needs of kids and this is a bit of a snapshot of what our leaders believe that we need and we know that there's other things that we also know that we need. Mr. Cartman. So I did notice that there were a lot of projectors and other miscellaneous technology stuff on there and that reminds me of the importance to move forward with our instructional environment and technology plan. We know that we have funding to do that. We should get that going as quickly as possible. Thanks. Mr. Schlockman. Yeah, I agree in terms of having some sort of a systemic approach for maintaining and replacing technologies that ages out. But I'm very appreciative of having this document here tonight because it gives an earlier added insight into what we might be looking at in the future. And there's some really interesting things in that list. I don't want to comment further. I want to see it fine before I start making my evaluations of priorities but I really appreciate what we're looking at. Anyone else? My only comment, so I appreciate getting this and I understand this draft form. I do think it would be good because it's a public facing document that it had something about the fact, I mean about what you just told us here today now that people were instructed to give only asks for certain specific reasons because we're entering a bargaining year and that's where we're planning to put most of our funding. Because it doesn't, what isn't anywhere in here is the need to increase our teacher salaries and stuff. Even though we know that's something, I mean we have been really, really aware and working on for months now that that's something we need to be doing. It's not in this document and it would be good to have it there somewhere. I mean just that that's- Mr. Mason, I can make sure that's in the refined version. Anything else? Oh, okay, thank you. And next is the end of your report or do you want to wait until next meeting? I have notes, I can channel my inner Mr. Mason, I just can't easily answer questions. Okay, so I'm happy to speak to it. So the total spending for FY23, including spending funds from town and school committee appropriations, included local receipts and special revenue, that was over 143 million. So this is over 9.42% change increase from the prior year spending that was initially reported to be around 130 million. In other words, we're spending more money, we've spent more money in this last fiscal year than we did previous fiscal year by 9.5%, almost 5%. School committee's total spending was over 84 million. That was a change of over 5.4% from FY22. Major factors for that increase was that the teacher reported salary is over a 7% change from FY22. That includes salary changes, lane changes, plus added positions to the general fund. So that's the total aggregate teacher salary. In addition, that would account for elimination of instrumental music lessons or the increase in costs for that and FTEs for that. It would also account for the fact that we've also seen an increase in the amount, like where we place teachers because of the competitive job market. We were more often placing teachers in more competitive salary lanes when they first initially joined us, which also accounts for that change. There's also been an increase in professional development costs, other instructional costs to include curriculum materials, transportation costs, athletic costs due to the elimination of athletic fees in addition of additional athletic opportunities for our students. And an increase of 7% in operations and maintenance tied to higher utility rates due both to the new high school and other utility rates. However, operations and maintenance spending is down 1.36% from FY22. Other reduced spending overall was for special education tuition. Special education tuition was reduced by 11%. Since FY19, special education tuition has seen a reduction of over 31% due to reduction of added district student enrollment. Our total grant spending increased by 4.7% or about $200,000, which would include spending from ARPA related grants. We anticipate this to be higher in FY24 as we spend down the SR3 grants and ARPA grants in their final year. FY21, 22, and 23 had over $4 million spent each year in grants, which was compared to our normal spending of around 2.5 million years. We've been spending a lot more in grants these past several years. Our revolving spending has increased over 19%, which would include $165,000 contribution towards electric buses and an increase in food service expenditures due to increased salaries and food costs and increased participation in the food service program, which is great news, but also costs and resources. Town spending increased by 15.6%, and this was mainly due to AHS project costs and increase in employee benefit costs and a 17% increase for the regional school assessment compared to FY22. Does anyone want to try and ask a question or we'll just wait and we can ask, was that a, you wanted to or you're- That's a, I'm happy to wait. Okay, so people can also reach Mr. Mason offline. So at this point, we have a discussion of the school committee room furniture, which we can now talk about since I put it on the agenda. So really what I want to talk about is process. What I propose is that I can work with Dr. Holman and talk, I can talk to you folks. I also want to talk to ACMI and possibly some other groups to figure out what the constraints are. For example, ACMI has us all wired and I don't know if that's the only way of doing it or if wireless mics can be used and then have an understanding of what those are and then what we want for the school committee room and then we'll, we can figure out what kind of furniture we want to have. I want to do that as opposed to all of us just filling out the form that the architecture thinks because I think we need to, we should be driving this show. We shouldn't just be telling them, well, we're not happy with whatever because I think that's kind of how we ended up with this. So if that's okay with you folks, that's what we can do. I plan to have something for you either by the first or second meeting in January. And if it's not okay, the alternative I came up with is doing some sort of ad hoc subcommittee. So it's kind of up to you folks. Sounds fine. Okay. So I think just to clarify, the issue with this setup is that the room cannot be used during the week for other purposes or what? No, the problem, the furniture, we need bigger desks. We need desks really, I think. Or at least, and we need, well, we need desks that can accommodate chairs with wheels and stuff. And whether it has to be, you know, basically stand, whether they have to be permanent or whether they can be movable, that's where it gets into talking to ACMI. And those are- I mean, I don't have any particular issues with this setup. I think if you look at other school committees like I have over the years, this is very common. They actually end up, sometimes they just take over a classroom for the night. So if it's too difficult to unhook and we hook up the microphones, that's sort of an issue for the tech people to figure out. But as far as the actual setup, I'm not dissatisfied. Yeah, I would just say I'm not dissatisfied either, but I, you know, I think the whole group should talk about it and get to where you wanna be. The other thing I do really wanna make sure that it's, you know, we only come here once every two weeks. So I really wanna- If that, 19 times a year. 19 times a year. So I really wanna make sure it's usable by the staff and team during the day for meetings and activities and other things. That was the idea of it too. Right, that's part of where I wanna talk to people. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. First and foremost, this is our room. And we need to have a facility here that is both comfortable and workable. The space, the desk space is small because normally I'd be working with a second device because I'd be watching the agenda on one and pulling data on the other. And then you get paper and drinks and stuff. And we got it backwards. We've got fixed, stackable chairs and rolling tables. I think that the chairs should have wheels and the tables shouldn't be moving during the meeting. I've been in other school committee rooms too. And the fact is that if we're able to design this the way we want it, we shouldn't be taking a downgrade. I think that we need, we're in a white room with light gray accents. We need some color in here. It's tough to be in here in such a white environment. And to sit through a meeting in the stackable chairs just doesn't hack it. We need to design the space in such a manner that it's a space that we can be comfortable and work well in. And then we can share it with others who can use it but it really is our space and we need to define the space in such a way that it's gonna be productive for us. It's gonna be warm and welcoming environment for us. A comfortable environment for us. It's gonna have enough space for us to work without being sitting on top of each other. And I really, really think that instead of facing the subject now, we should have talked about this six months ago because the questions that we had in the old school committee room were, well, this is nice if we'd sort of like to have power so we can plug in our laptops. The things that we were talking about. We can't go backwards. I'm not talking about going backwards but I wanna state emphatically that I don't find the situation to be what we should be having for the governing body for the district. I think that we should be able to come up with something that meets our needs in a far better manner and I find the setting right now to be disappointing. Okay. I would add that I think that there is a lot to be said for what Mr. Schluckman is saying just because I'm thinking about when we're spending time doing negotiations, we're in this room for hours at a time and that's where you really want a better chair. I mean, some of us are getting older and it is not a good thing to be sitting in a suboptimal chair and we can't really like bring our own chairs in, it's a little weird. So I think we can talk about what the best thing options are and it sounds like everyone's okay with me talking with Dr. Holman and coming back and all we talking to you folks too and we will figure something out. Okay. Okay. So next we have, we've already approved the field trip, superintendent's update. Okay. We've had not very many school days since our last meeting because we had extended weekend. So relatively short update for you. We do have our fall climate and culture surveys out right now. The family window is going to close on the 4th of December. The student and staff window opens tomorrow. Staff and students will be surveyed in December until we get to our break and we are excited to announce that we have a little prize for the school that has the highest response rates. The students and staff at the school with the highest response rate will win a cookie party with Cookie Monster cookies. And we have thought about dietary restrictions and our wellness policy in thinking about this prize. We will have gluten free, dairy free options as well as any other options that we need for dietary restrictions and actually chose this particular vendor for a prize because they had the ability to make sure we met everybody's needs so that anyone could participate. Please, we really hope everyone will please take a moment to fill out the survey. I do want to iterate that families have the option to opt their child out. We have a form to ensure that that opt out option is able to be requested by any parents who wish to opt their child out. We will be following up with administrators to make sure that they understand how to do that and make sure that we don't ask any students to take this whose families have opted their child out. All questions on the survey are optional and skippable. If you don't feel like it's applicable to you or you don't want to answer a particular question, you may do that. We do in the surveys ask certain questions that allow us to disaggregate by student experience, staff experience, by our focal groups. But again, those questions can be skipped if they're not applicable to you. So we hope everyone will participate. So far, we already have the highest response rate from families that we've ever had with the exception of the year that we first did this right in the middle of the pandemic when I think a lot of people had ideas and thoughts and opinions to share with us, understandably so. I have recently started superintendent office hours with staff and visiting every single school and sitting with staff members who have signed up for 20 minute slots in either groups or as individuals. I did my first round of office hours with staff at Gibbs this past week. It was easily the best three hours of my week. It was a lot of fun. I got to hear all kinds of different perspectives and questions about how the district runs. And I'm really looking forward to doing this. It's the first time I've been able to do listening sessions with staff since the first year that I was here. So it's good to get back into that routine. The invitation to join district-wide working groups is still open. We will be sending out an invitation to students to join working groups as well in the next day or so. I'm actually hoping to get that out tomorrow. Students who join the working groups will also join a superintendent's advisory group that will meet in between working group sessions to talk to me about ideas they have for the district and for improving their experiences as students. So that will go out soon. And your enrollments are included in your attachments for the meeting. I'm happy to take any questions. Any questions? I had one just about the enrollments that monotony preschool have bumped up since, I mean, it's gone up by 10 since October one. And I was just wondering why that was. Yeah, I can look into that with our preschool team just to verify that those are real enrollments and not just glitches in our data. It does look like since the mid-October enrollment report and the last few up until now that there have been sort of slow bumps each time up. So it's probably that those are legitimate enrollments, but I'll double check. Okay, thank you. Well, at the preschool, it's based on when a student turns three years old. So we have a pipeline, they have to have, if they're eligible for an IEP, we have to have it available by the time of their third birthday, so. Yeah, we easily could have gotten 10 in two months. Okay, okay, it's just, I wish they were in under October one, just saying, just saying. It doesn't work that way with preschool. Yeah. Okay, how can't we have everyone have birthdays on like September 30th? Consent agenda, that's me. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be retained and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 24120 dated November 21st, 2023, 702,607 and 77 cents. School committee, regular minutes, November 16th, 2023. So moved. Second. All in favor? Yeah. Yes, yes. Any opposed, any abstentions? So that passes unanimously. Subcommittee leaves on reports, budget, Mr. Cardin. The report we're meeting sometime in December for the next meeting or after, I forget. I think before the next meeting. Okay. Community relations, curriculum, assessments, et cetera. Ms. Morgan. Nothing to report we're meeting in January, I believe. Facilities. We'll probably meet in January to talk about the money that was allocated by the vote for the technology and the strategic plan. Policy. No report. And high school building committee. We meet next week. Everything's going great. Okay, we're in the new building. We're in the new building. Nope. Okay, liaison reports, nothing. Announcements, future agenda items. Yeah, if we can put parking around the high school on the agenda. Okay. And do we have an executive session? I think we should, yes. Yes, okay. Executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiation with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. So moved. Second. Okay, does this roll call? Yes. No. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Yes, Ms. Morgan, Mr. Thielman. Yes. I waited to be called. Ms. Accident. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. And I also vote yes, so. And we are not returning after, no, we will not be returning after executive session. So we are now in executive session.