 So good evening, this open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of the emergency and the Commonwealth in order to mitigate transmission of the virus of the COVID virus we've been advised and directed by a Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends are a primary the open meeting lot to have all meetings and a publicly accessible physical location further all members are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely the order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded. So the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting ensuring access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law this meeting will feature public comment for this meeting now and from School is convening by zoom is posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join please note that the meeting is being recorded some attendees are participating by video by video conference accordingly please be aware that others may be able to see you take care not to screen share your computer anything you broadcast maybe captured by the recording all the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the novice agenda dashboard we recommend members the public file the agenda as posted on novice unless I know otherwise, shortly we'll be turning the first item on the agenda I will introduce each speaker we will provide comments in order all vote take it all votes taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. Um, so let's make sure that everybody can hear us. Miss Exon. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yeah. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Theoman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Good evening. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I can hear myself. Dr. Bodie. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Ms. Keys. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Elmer. Present. Mr. Mason. Yes. Okay. And I know that Ms. Bird and Ms. Rodriguez are joining us later. Correct. Dr. McNeil. That is correct. Okay. I think those are the only names. Okay. So the first item on the agenda is public comment. There were two people who signed up for public comment this afternoon. One is Ms. Amat, who has already been promoted. And the other is Mr. Gross, who I don't see yet. But if you're here under a different name, if you could raise your hand and then we can. Yeah. Okay. I will promote you. So public comment is limited to three minutes. And we don't, as a matter of policy, we don't respond to public comment. But, you know, questions could be answered later on in the meeting. So go ahead. Ms. Amat. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. And good evening. Can you hear me? I understand that the school committee will be reviewing the results of the November parents survey about how things are going. We're going in the fall of 2020. This survey took about two months to process. And although I believe that the conclusions have been obscured in the forthcoming presentation, the directive is clear that things need to change. I am here to ask the school committee to direct the superintendent to the committee. I would like to draw a full in-person option. Starting this spring. I would like to draw the committee's attention to some aspects of the survey results that will be presented. In the free response section, it asked, what is working well that you would like to see continued. Quote in person days was the biggest phrase in the middle of the word word cloud, in person school, person learning in person and school days, compared with three instances of the word remote and zero instances of the word hybrid. Remember, this question was asking what was working well. Starting on page 15, the survey questions are presented with some of the results highlighted in a large box and bold number is the percentage of respondents that answered favorably to the district's questions. It does not point out that in almost every instance, more than half of respondents answered negatively with either extremely, quite, or somewhat concerned. For example, one question was how concerned are you about your child's academic growth right now? The answer given and highlighted is that 42% of respondents were not at all concerned or slightly concerned. What this fails to point out is that 58% of respondents are extremely concerned, quite concerned, or somewhat concerned. The second example, how concerned are you about your child's social emotional well-being right now? The highlighted answer is 38% were not at all concerned or slightly concerned. It does not point out that 62% are extremely concerned, quite concerned, or somewhat concerned. The presentation of the survey results seems to be painting the current situation in a better light than it actually is. In fact, most parents are quite concerned about how things are going. I would like to see the presentation of the full survey results and not with this kind of editing and spin. Finally, not all respondents are concerned. There was one very direct question that asked if people would like more, less, or the same number of in-person days moving forward. This question was not included in the presentation that I saw. I would very much like to see the answer to that question. And I would like to know why it was left off the presentation. Was there a question that was left off the presentation? Was there a question that was left off the presentation? Was this deliberate? The school district asked families how things were going and families responded very clearly that they don't think it's going very well. Is that why it's taken two months to process the results? Is that why you're trying to bury the conclusions? Now is the time to start planning for the next phase that includes a full in-person option for this spring and the fall of 2021. And I am asking the school committee to direct the superintendent to make a plan for full in-person option that could be implemented this school year. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Gross. Sorry. Hi, everyone. My name is Jacob Gross. I have a first grader in the Arlington school district. And I'm like, I'm also in favor of beginning to think about a full in-person option with three feet distancing, particularly for after when the vaccine is widely available. I spoke at a subset meeting last year and I mentioned, you know, my daughter was crying because, you know, she's feeling very isolated. And at that meeting, it was again, it wasn't the full meeting like there is today, but there were five people speaking in favor of adding, you know, going back to at least a combination of fully remote and fully in-person. I think five people spoke on behalf of fully in-person at that meeting and zero people spoke against it. Recently, you're probably aware, President Biden, Governor Baker, both are in favor of trying to return to full in-person learning as quickly as possible, particularly for the youngest kids where, you know, sitting in front of a screen all day for a four, six year old, it's just, it's just not working. You know, I think a lot of parents feel that way. The CDC recently, you know, some people at the CDC recently put out a paper, I can send it if there's interest. Let's say three feet distancing is not been shown to increase community transmission. I think at very least we need to start planning and engaging the community and figuring out what a fully in-person option would look like when the vaccine is widely available with three feet distancing. I think this is something that I haven't heard discussed. Despite, as I said, the community reaching out last year and my reaching out personally to some of you, I don't think this is happening. I think the last speaker pointed out that, you know, there hasn't really been a survey question addressing this. And the one that was closest to addressing this was not, you know, it's not something that's going to be discussed today, as far as I can tell. So I know there's a policy, I don't really understand it, but there's a policy somehow for you guys not to respond to direct questions. I would very much appreciate if you would reach out to me personally. Again, I'm Jacob Gross. My wife's name, Anna Magracheva is up there. You know, I can get in touch with all of you personally. I would like to know what we're doing to engage the community to, you know, see if this is something they want. In my experience, it is something that a lot of people want, if not the majority. And, you know, to start planning for this when the vaccine is widely available so that we're ready to follow the lead of places like Cambridge, which is already ahead of us in getting the kids back to school and many other districts across the country. I feel that they can do it safely, New York and so on. So please, I look forward to hearing from you because I think this is something that a lot of us parents, especially if younger kids want to hear. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gross. So the first item on the agenda for tonight is the school year 20. It actually should be. Oh no, it is 2021. So this is our school year 2021 2022 school calendar. So this is our traditional first read. This is our first opportunity to look at the calendar. I imagine that will be in a position to vote on it at our next meeting in two weeks time. Dr. Bote, did you have anything that you wanted to say about the proposed calendar? You're still on mute. Just a few comments. Thank you. The one thing I will point out is that if you notice, we are recommending that school start on Wednesday after Labor Day next year. Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah. And if that was another day during the, in September or October, we would be having that as another school day. So the other thing I would point out, it's pretty much, let me just say this, there's probably not many changes on this. The expected winter break, February break, April break is pretty much following exactly as it has over the years. It's the end of the school year that I will point out. One of the things that is not on the calendar right now is how we're going to handle kindergarten screening in the 21-22 school year. For that matter, we do not have any days identified this year on the calendar for kindergarten screening. And I know that our preference as a district is that we are going to have, that it's preferable to do kindergarten screening at the end of June rather than waiting until the beginning of September. Now, that's not to say that we haven't done that past, in fact, for many years, we had a kindergarten screening that week between after Labor Day and the following week. And kindergarten started the following Monday. So I just want to call your attention to this. We may be able to come back to you with some plan for this year and certainly a recommendation for next year, a little bit later, probably early spring as we get a better idea when we will have vaccinations across the board for our teachers and staff. But until then it's, I just, I think it's would be premature to put that on the calendar for next year because if in September, because if we can do it this year in June, that would be our preference. Other than that, we always have the, the 180th day on the calendar as well as what the 185th day is, which would be having five snow days, experience during the school year. So you're actually correct, Miss Morgan. Today is just simply a first read of the calendar and that the reason we have that now is that many people want to know when schools start in the fall and what the vacation weeks will be if they're planning ahead. Maybe next year people will be able to take some vacations. I know they may want to be thinking about that this spring. That's all my comments on this. Great. Thank you. So comments from the committee on the calendar. Mr. Heiner. Just a quick question. Has the state given any thought to using remote, if we go back to normal education next year, in lieu of having a snow day, if we were prepared, could we use a remote day and be, have it counted as one of our regular school days? Good question. The commissioner indicated this fall that using remote days was limited to this year while we were dealing with hybrid and remote schedules and some districts certainly have some full-time classes. But no, unless there is some change in Desi policy for next year, we would not. I would like, I mean, I'm willing, I think it's important that we go through our state legislators and stuff and look at this again with the support of the school department. I don't want to do it alone. I just think this is important as a former teacher, I know those end days in June are not always productive with the heat and everything. And get the best education. Just something to think about. And I'd be willing to take point with the legislature and stuff of that nature if that's something that the school department would be willing to go forward with. As we may be facing another snowstorm next week, I don't know the dimensions of it yet. But I do know that while the majority of teachers, in fact, large majority of teachers preferred to have a remote day when the first snowstorm that we had, I think that view has changed at least for the moment because the amount of planning at the last minute for elementary teachers was quite significant. I think that if we didn't have the waitants, you know, if we knew ahead of time, we're going to get a storm that was going to definitely be a snow day. There might be some enough lead time, but when it's very it's a quick decision because you're hoping you're going to be able to be in school. I think that that is a problem in terms of planning. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampey and then Mr. Schickman and then Ms. Exton. Thanks. So first, I'm my video is going to be on and off because my internet seems to be flaky today. Second, I'm confused about the holiday Rosh Hashanah. When I look up on the internet, it's saying it's actually two days. I mean, it starts Monday night and ends Wednesday evening. I would like to get some clarification if possible about. How is that? Does everyone celebrate it this way? Does a very small minority celebrate it this way? You know, I don't understand and I'd like to understand. Thank you. Dr. Bode. My understanding is that, yes, there's some people do celebrate the two days. Our experience in the district is that very few do. And so when we've had a no school day on Rosh Hashanah, it is a one day, no school. And by the way, if people do observe two days, we have, we are, we are certainly able to see that that's part of their, their right to take that second day if they, if they so choose. Right. I guess the thing is that it's the, it would be the first day of school. And that's different than missing a day of school later on. And so I'm trying to understand. The. From the parents point of view and. The school. This happened a few years ago where we had a similar calendar issue come up where it was on the Tuesday. And at that time we did choose also to having no school on that day. Honestly, it's a little bit of a blur as to what year that was. But if we're going to be consistent with how we have been handling the, the no school days with respect to young people and Rosh Hashanah, then I don't think that we can be inconsistent with that, even though it would be actually the first day of school. No, without the holiday there. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Schickman. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. The reason why we do the holidays is that. There's a significant number of either staff and or students who are going to be out of school that day. And if there's a relatively low probability that you're going to get. A kid and a teacher together in the same room on any given day. It's to our benefit to close and hold school on a. 80% of the students are in the building and 80% of the teachers. The probability is 0.8 times 0.8 or 0.64. That the combination of teacher and student will be together in any classroom on any given day, which is the logic behind closing on the high Holy Holy days. We have always closed for one day and Rosh Hashanah. And the second day is, is an orthodox observance. And I don't want to go through the reason why. More orthodox believers will do a second day. But. Most folks do not observe the second day to a point where we, we'd need to close school. And the discussion I want to hit on are the asterisk days for school committee meetings. And it would seem to make sense to sort of flush that out now as they're on the calendar. In that the calendar is presented has one day in February. And I would like to suggest. For a motion and adoption. At the next meeting. I want to make sure that we have media school committee meetings. Three in March on the third, 17th and 31st. To compensate for only one meeting in February. And also shift our December meetings. I don't think we want to meet on the 23rd. To shift that to. December 2nd and December 16th. So those are the changes I'd like to see made on school committee meetings. And I would like to make sure that we have. For, for folks to think about over the. Next two weeks and because this is a scheduling issue, people can coordinate with the, with the chair, but that's the motion. I'll present in two weeks to make adjustments for the school committee meetings. Okay. Exactly. Sorry, go ahead, Dr. I just was going to clarify. So people listening understand. The, the asterisk days are. Are just simply what the normal. Sequence of school committee. It would be. How we set this up would be the second and fourth. Fourth day. So. It would take a school committee vote to change. What is the practice. The school committee needs. Well, no, the new policy is, is that it's five vote of the second and fourth. So that no matter what it is, we'd have to approve the dates. The tradition. In the default is yet second and fourth, but. The policy was adjusted so that it would be. Whatever calendar that we adopt. So. It's a necessary vote anyway. And, and I think that to handle our business. So that's the key. So I agree with that. The most important. Challenging portions. Of the, of the school year. The next thing. Thanks. Um, so. I just want to make sure I understand. Um, when you were talking about the kindergarten screening, are you considering. Doing it this June. For the incoming kindergartners. In September, 2021. The answer is yes, we would like to do this June and that would be something that we would bring to you because it's not on the calendar for this year. Our preference is to do it in June. Our preference is to do it in person. We did the screening this year. We did it remotely. And I think everyone agrees that an in person screening is profitable. Okay, so I agree that in person screenings are better. I have real concerns with taking any more days away from our current kindergartners and I don't know if it's for next year. It's something that we can do work with the September part of the calendar for the incoming kindergartners and then in June for the subsequent students subsequent year, but you know, I mean, we've had this, we've talked about 67 in person days. I am not comfortable taking days away from from the kindergartners. That you you can on exactly the issue that we're all facing. And by the way, I just want to say to everyone that we are planning a full in person next year. There, that's that is definitely our focus. And you're absolutely correct. You know, we, we try will try to be very sensitive to taking away time from our current kindergarteners and even time for our kindergarteners who will be entering in the fall. So all these, all these times in person are precious for these students totally agree. And then the other you sort of just said this but I just wanted to sort of point out that the calendar presented going back to the Tuesday early release days that were what were done previously sends a message at this point that the intention is to come back fully in September. That's correct. Great. Thank you. All right, anybody else on the calendar. Mr. Heiner and then Mr. Cardin. Just real quick. Do we need to take a vote to change the calendar for presentation at the next time. If we are in green in agreement with Mr. Schlippens days for change do we need to vote that tonight or is it just a recommendation to bring forward. I think we can, we can do we can vote to change that next time. Mr. Schlickman go ahead if you want to respond. Even more specifically our policy be a now states the school committee shall schedule 19 regular meetings during each school year. Regular meetings shall be scheduled on Thursday evenings with specific dates to be set by a vote of the committee at the time of the adoption of the annual school calendar. When we adopt the calendar, we need to adopt 19 committee days. Second and fourth is our tradition but there are going to be some adjustments. I'll make, I'll write up a motion for the, the days that I've proposed that will go that we can put into the meeting alongside the calendar so we can finalize that I'll send that that motion out in advance so that people can look at it debate it and comment on it and amended at the will of the committee but I think that the adjustments that I suggested the calendar will land us about where we normally are in terms of our workload and getting things done. Mr. Cardin. Thank you so just going back to the Rosh Hashanah holiday. It is a little bit more complicated than that I mean even reform temples have services scheduled on the second day so it's who who celebrates two days and one day is a little bit more complicated than that. I agree though that our past practice has been when we first started having no school days on these days. We did look at the attendance and the attendance drop off on the second day was not significant so the decision was made not to have the second day as a no school day. I think it's more sensitive with the first day of school being that day because there will be some kids that will need to miss their first day of school. So I think, you know as long as our team and our teachers are very sensitive to that fact. And you know it won't be all classes but there will be some kids missing in some classes so they should save the first the traditional first day activities to the second day. If the message gets out. Hopefully that will address a lot of the concerns that people have about their kids particularly their younger kids missing their first day of school. Thank you. All right, any other comments on the calendar. So what I was hoping that we could do tonight I get three to four questions about the first day of school by email week. It would be helpful for me if we could in some way that somebody feels comfortable making a motion to be pretty clear about what our first day of school is going to be for September 2021. It could be either that I think people who are really paying attention. I know that pre Labor Day start has occasionally been discussed those who are really really paying attention or like hey it's a contract year. Is this like a thing. And so anyway, I think it would be helpful for people teachers and families to be really clear on when the first day of school is. I hope there's anybody who is willing to provide me with some direction that I can say other than I think this is when it's going to be. Mr. Thielman. I move that school will open on Wednesday, September 8 with the understanding that we are planning for a year with fully in person education for all learners. Second. I think that's a good discussion. Dr. Alice Nampy. I'm sorry I'm still thinking about the Russian. Russia shana thing. I'm comfortable saying that we're starting after Labor Day, but I just want to think a little bit more about. I appreciate what Mr. Carter said, and I think his points are well taken. But I would be happier. Saying that we're starting after Labor Day as opposed to the officials first day. So I'll be voting against this. Anybody else. Yeah, I'm sorry. Mr. Cardin, go ahead. Yeah, I guess I guess the one question that I sort of agree with is that, you know, typically we put the draft calendar out and then, you know, if there's some uproar about something we missed we have the two weeks to solve it so. Yeah, I'm hesitating a little bit as well. Anybody else. I mean, we can, you know, I think that just the issue is is that we're like, we kind of keep waffling back and forth right at some point you got to kind of make a decision and I mean we can we can sit on the whole calendar for two weeks. And then we just have more people being like, wait, but are you going to go like, is something going to happen? Are we actually going to go and do something like, because they, you know, they don't ultimately believe us until we do something, but I'm only one person and I can't make motions. So I'm just, if we want to, you know, I don't know. Let's, let's keep talking about it. So I see Mr. Schlickman, Ms. Exton and Dr. Allison Ampey in that order. This is our first read. We don't make decisions on our first read. This is presentation. I mean, anyone that asking a question over the next two weeks can be told that the calendar that was presented for first read calls for an opening on Wednesday, September 8, and unless the committee decides to go in a different direction, that's when it'll be. Sorry, Ms. Exton, and then Dr. Allison Ampey. I guess what I'm trying to think about with the, the two days of Russia Shana is if, because it's the first day of school if we were to move the first day to Thursday. I guess what I'm trying to understand is, is the, is the committee concerned that we would then set a precedent that we would always, regardless of when those two days fall have two days off. Whereas, because that, because I do think a lot about the, the younger students missing their first day of school and that's a, that's a big deal. But I also know that in the past that's, it hasn't been a holiday that's had no school for both days. But I, I'm wondering what the big consequences are of moving the first day, you know, to the ninth and then the last day moves one day in June. Dr. Allison Ampey. In my experience, people are most concerned whether we're starting before Labor Day or after Labor Day. So, once we voted on this motion, I will be happy to present a motion. If, if for some reason this motion failed, I would be happy to present a motion saying the same thing but just that we are starting after Labor Day. Dr. Cardin and then Mr. Thielman. Yeah, so, so my hasn't, my hesitation about having both days off is that that pushes the start of school to a, you know, Thursday after Labor Day, which is just, it's very late. It requires additional childcare for, for people. So it's not without consequences. I'm not saying it's, you know, I've decided either way, but there definitely are consequences with effects on families that result from, you know, not starting until Thursday of the first week of September. Mr. Thielman. I mean, so we can we work, can we do some research? I mean, how will we resolve this between now and next week? I mean, who's going to, is there going to be a subcommittee meeting to do some research? I'm not quite sure how we're going to even resolve this. I don't, so that that's, that's one question that I have. The second question, if all we need, so I think there's three options. One option is we adopt the motion as I articulated it. The second motion is we adopt the motion that says we're going to start after Labor Day. The third motion is we don't do anything to do some more research between now and our next meeting, but we've had got it. We have to have a committee go and do this research and then we are subcommittee do this research and report back to the full group. So, you know, we got to do one of those three things. And I'm not a, I can't really, you know, in terms of what's appropriate for one faith or another, I can't, I'm not qualified to weigh in. So I'm going to take my opportunity to jump in here because I haven't really participated too much in this conversation. I think my concern is that we put ourselves in a position where things become precedent setting. There was a lot of work done around religious holidays, about a year and a half ago, that work didn't didn't bring anything definitive to this take to our to our zoom, which is fine. I am concerned about setting a precedent around taking two days for Rosh Hashanah. I'm also concerned that we are asking teachers to come in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the week prior and then saying, Well, you have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then on Thursday, we'd like you to come in and teach. It's just it's a very long time. And it's not what we've done historically and part of the conversations around the religious holidays on the calendar we're not about adding a second day for Rosh Hashanah. I personally am comfortable with Mr. Thielman's original motion. But you know obviously respect the will of the committee but I do agree with him that if we, if people want to look at other things then somebody needs to volunteer to take this on and and put it in a subcommittee and have a conversation and come back with a discussion in two weeks. Otherwise, we're just going to be back here paddling around the same thing again. So those are my thoughts, Ms. Eksten. So I looked briefly for other districts that are starting their calendars for next year and I think they're all working on them now so there isn't anything decided. And then the ones that had decided like the first day is not the seventh or the eighth or the eighth or the ninth. I mean I, yes, someone would have to think about, do more research, but in my brief research I didn't find the sort of definitive trending of how schools are handling the first day. All right, so I guess we'll, if there's no more discussion on Mr. Thielman's motion, we'll see what happens that with that, and then we can see where we go from there. And so, motion from Mr. Thielman, seconded I believe by Mr. Cardin. Ms. Eksten. Yes, Mr. Cardin. No. Dr. Allison Ampe. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Hayner. No. And I am also yes. So I believe that that motion carries forth three, if I counted correctly, you guys don't usually make me count that close. So. All right, so first day of school Wednesday, September. I'm not sure. I don't have a calendar in front of me. Whatever Mr. Whatever Mr. Thielman's motion said, and we will look at the rest of the draft calendar again next week. All right, the next item on the agenda is are the district goals. These were presented back in December. I believe goals three and four that the goal objectives are new for us. Just so that people watching understand, we have four overarching goals in the Arlington public schools that do not change year to year. And then underneath each goals. Some people call them sub goals. Some people call them objectives. Some people call them objectives. They have different names to different people. But there are, I believe on the sheet that Dr. McNeil has for us. They are all called goal objectives. And these are sort of specific objectives underneath each of our main four goals. And one of the roles of the school committee is to approve them. It is not lost on me that it is January. And this is Tim. And this is typically a process that we do in the spring and early summer. And given what last spring and early summer looked like, it was not something that happened. So we are in a position tonight where we are, are being asked to approve goals for a year that is in flight. And many of these objectives in talking to Dr. McNeil before tonight are very much underway and are being worked on very diligently by our teachers and staff. So Dr. McNeil, if you'd like to talk to us. And then if anybody has any questions about the goals, and then I'm looking for a vote or approval for these this evening. So Dr. McNeil. You quite correctly stated that in the fall, we talked really about the, the goals this year around curriculum, professional development instruction. And I think that we've all been living this this year. In terms of what we needed to accomplish in terms of having both a hybrid and remote academy program. And while you said that the, there are a couple of initiatives here with probably needs a little bit explanation on the first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. The first one goal. That's a real little bit explanation. The first one goal. Three one. It really is part of the professional development in terms of. The kind of tools that we have. Provided teachers this year in terms of online platforms. That they can't incorporate into their classrooms. And there's been discussion this fall about those. The next one, she could just give a brief overview of that particular initiative. Sure. So as I mentioned, probably in December, we recently just concluded the on-site visit for the tiered focus monitoring cycle B, which was formerly known as the mid-cycle of the coordinated program review or CPR. So they were just on site last week in 60 days, they will release their findings publicly and what will be known as a continuous improvement plan because we're tier two. It won't be a corrective action report because they've changed that model and as a tier two group, we are in continuous improvement cycle. So within 60 days, we will have that plan and it will be publicly released and so we will then be able to update you on our progress on that. Before I go on, I don't know if any of the committee has any questions. It might be best to sort of take each one of these as we go along since we haven't talked about them before. Sure. Questions on school one? Well, it's actually 3.2. Sorry, 3.2. All right, go ahead. All right. So it's no surprising that every year we have a goal around the high school construction and this year we do as well. The goal this year is basically by the district as we have in past years, work with architects, our OPM contractors around the construction and this year we're in the first year of construction and there's still our design issues that we need to continue to work on as well as phasing and some of the phasing planning occurred during the summer but honestly it has continued and particularly refocusing on that right now as we know more students are going to be coming into the high school over the next month. So that's an ongoing goal as to continue our work for the new high school. Then the goal 4.2 which is for the assistant superintendent curriculum leaders create and overview the elementary curriculum and post it on the district's website. This is a continuation of a goal last year and already there's been a lot of progress on that particular goal. The next goal 4.3. Can I interject something there? So that I don't want to confuse the two. The one I did make a slight adjustment to the posting or creating the curriculum webpages which we are in process of doing on the district website but I want to make reference to the video presentation that the curriculum leaders created for all elementary parents that we put onto the website that gives an overview of this year's standards that we are covering for each content area and that was something that parents wanted to know based upon the fact that we are in the pandemic and based upon the school closure that we had in the spring. So I just want to make sure that I identify that nuance. Thank you very much. Yes and I think that that was a very responsive responsive initiative by our curriculum leaders and you because I know that that has certainly been something that parents have been wanting to know more about and you want to just say for a quickly where they can find that on the district website. Yeah so if they go to the opening page it's listed. There's several things listed there but it is listed there and I will give you the exact title of it. It is listed as kindergarten through fifth grade curriculum parent presentation and if they click on the link it goes straight to the presentations and another thing that is you know very useful about this presentation is that it's broken up by grade level so a fifth grade parent that just wants to hear about fifth grade social studies can go straight to that link that's listed in the slide deck and they don't have to go through all the you know an hour and a half of listening about other grade levels and so and and they can continue to revisit it if they have questions you know based upon the time of the year that we're in so we we tried to make it as user friendly as possible and so hopefully parents are finding it very useful. Okay goal 4.3 is something we again talked about quite a bit in August and really early this fall and that is the plan to provide a safe and healthy learning environment all schools by maintaining heating ventilation and air exchange infrastructure and ensuring the infrastructure is working as a design capacity and you know there's been a couple of instances where we've had to to go into different schools and do some upkeep on on the HVAC. The last district goal for this year is a business office goal and I would ask Mr. Mason if you'd like to talk a little bit about this while he's preparing it the our chief financial officer in the business office personnel will evaluate standard operating procedures and develop a plan to modernize standard operating procedures to ensure efficient financial operations. Mr. Mason. Yes thank you Dr. Bodey. So this goal objective 4.4 is is currently we are evaluating all the standard operating procedures that are tied to finances for Kenneth and other related services that support district administration throughout the school system and over time trying to leverage different technologies as well as trying to see where there may be some overlap in the services between the schools in this office and trying to approve on that so that we can better support the district as a whole and that was the intent and we're going to come up with a plan for for how to serve the district this year and then implement that probably in the out years. So thank you. Does anyone have any questions or comments on these of these goals? If you if you were to approve the goals tonight we can get them uploaded to the district website. If you want to take this tonight as the first read which is the first time you probably seen all the initiatives in one document we can we can postpone that vote until the next meeting February 11th. So I guess questions first on goal 4 and then we can talk about what you guys want to do for process. So questions on the last part of the presentation. All right seeing none so proposals for or do people want to vote on this tonight do you want to take this as a first read and do it in two weeks time. Mr. Thielman followed by Mr. Heiner. I'm happy to move approval unless Mr. Cardin's committee wants to meet and go into further depth on them. Mr. Heiner. I agree with Mr. Thielman. Anybody else? Mr. Cardin? No? Yeah no we looked at some of the goals not all of them but I I think given where we are in the year unless anybody has significant questions or concerns we should just go ahead and approve them. Mr. Thielman. I move approval of the goals as presented this evening by Dr. Boat and Dr. McNeil. Motion by Mr. Thielman second by Mr. Heiner. Any discussion? Seeing none. Ms. Eggman. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schickman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. I read my agenda wrong and I skipped Dr. Allison Ampey's revisions to the budget calendar which I'm deeply apologetic for it does not denote the importance of that item so we are going to circle back and given the challenges of the budgeting process for FY22 given the significant uncertainty I know that Dr. Allison Ampey is looking for us to look at a revised budget calendar so Dr. Allison Ampey. Thank you. No offense taken. So we had a budget subcommittee meeting a few days ago and in it Mr. Mason shared that because of the long-range plan schedule and the fact that they have not actually given us a final number yet that this is making the creation of our budget for FY22 more difficult because we don't know how much money we have to use and his he and Dr. Bodie have discussed it at length and their thought is to create a shortened version of the budget document to distribute to the full school committee on the fifth with very that includes various prioritized buckets of items that can be added if funds allow but they would prefer that the formal presentation to the school committee be moved to the 25th I know that the long-range plan is moving is meeting next on the fifth so we may have a number that day the committee was comfortable with these changes given the circumstances and made a motion to recommend to the full school committee to amend the budget calendar to move the budget presentation from the 11th to the 25th and this this past so that's what we recommend to you and Dr. Allison Ampey can I clarify we're still going to have the budget hearing however on the 11th yes we will still have the budget hearing on the 11th which we are required by law we're required to have the budget hearing by law and we're required to advertise it two weeks ahead of time so it's a more formal procedure so we're just going to keep it in place all right questions or comments on the budget calendar for Dr. Allison Ampey okay seeing that I'm looking for a motion to approve the budget calendar as amended I move that the full school committee approve the budget calendar as amended second all right discussion seeing none Ms. Exon yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampey yes Dr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hainer yes and I am also yes all right thank you Dr. Allison Ampey monthly financial report Mr. Mason thank you Jane sorry let me get my stuff together so I can get my notes thank you we're blazing tonight yes just get scared here we go yes no I'm not scared um so tonight uh you know I provided you uh with the period ending reports for uh just uh period ending December 31st 2020 uh so the reports are a conclusion to normal reports the same general fund monthly reports which is the town appropriated budget for the schools in those expenditures the grant financial report the revolving and special revenue financial reports and the COVID-19 financial report I did provide the budget subcommittee with a draft um which it has slightly changed since that draft there was some adjustments and some information that I found after the fact um the total projected surplus which I always say that with the caveat does not necessarily mean that we will end at this balance or that we will have such a large amount um but this uh after kind of refining some things um and watching how expenditures have rolled out over the last period projecting that the uh the current surplus will um ended with 1.5 million dollars uh if you would note last month was around 2.6 million and the driving factors for uh the change was due to longevity one of the reasons was longevity uh payments um in December we make longevity payments uh if you had looked at your previous report I'm sure you're not looking at your prior report but the prior report didn't show a projected expense and that was an oversight on my part so I do apologize uh the longevity is uh was not encumbered or shown as a projected expenditure uh you most salaries we do have an encumbered process in place but for one-time payments we do not uh encumber those salaries and we do not have a I do in my my projection model I do not typically uh project salaries with a standard formula um as I do for other uh items on the report uh so in December 511 thousand dollars over 511 thousand dollars was posted for longevity which would include longevity payments to teachers clericals um administrators in the AAA custodians and paraprofessionals um also the reason for change in surplus is that the last month projection did not include a projected amount that we we were projecting for future testing for the remainder of the year for COVID-19 um after doing some refinement and now we're going to be going to we've gone to a pooling testing method for COVID-19 testing uh we uh I have included that in this projection there's about 350 thousand dollars um that's included it probably will be slightly more than that for pool testing um there's a chance that we may be approved part of the the state program uh that may cover uh most if not all of the costs um but still setting aside the funds um as a projected expense in this in this particular model um also another reason uh for the change is that uh we're expecting have to add a third bus for the medical program uh usually the medical grant has enough funds to cover the transportation uh uh for two buses on that grant and that usually covers one for the elementary and sixth grade and the other for seventh to twelfth and uh since we will be opening up the high school uh for in-person learning uh and still due to the social distance requirements that we're we have to abide by um an additional bus will be needed so that is being considered in this projection as well uh something that we might have to be mindful of depending on what the guidelines will be for fiscal 22 as well um the grant may not be able to support three buses if we still have to maintain the certain social distancing on buses if we have a full reopening uh also under uh administration salary and wages you'll notice that there's a larger amount that's being projected uh and that's tied to a possible transfer for the after on to after school program director and assistant director salaries uh the program currently is running on an operating deficit month to month uh meaning the and but they have had a current fund low fund balance and we do not want that fund balance to go in deficit uh due to uh lower enrollment is the reason why uh it has operating deficit uh because of the social distancing requirements uh from the um the program and still have to maintain the same uh a similar level of staffing um and that's that's probably the main reason why that the factors are showing that and but it's it would we also didn't raise the fees to cover the operating costs for the program this year it wouldn't seem right to do that this year um due to the times and it is important to keep this program running uh if you look at the report for the general fund the the big variances you'll notice is that the extended term substitutes is uh seeing a higher spending budget than we originally budgeted for due to the leaves uh professional uh tech services is also higher that's including that pool testing and other covid testing that has happened to date which we have set aside which possibly will go to the CARES municipal funding HVAC supplies is also showing a budget deficit due to spending more than what we normally do due to that this um our efforts to ensure that uh we keep the building circulating in the air exchange uh happening as intended in our reopening plan um and we also have their higher amount spent in instructional materials this year to provide more remote access to curriculum and in the online softwares and uh subscriptions and that's something we also will have to be mindful of when we're talking about the fiscal 22 budget yet to occur uh still a circuit breaker transfer that's over 2.2 million dollars and uh a transfer to move some of the municipal CARES exp elated expenses from the general fund uh we will still complete a reconciliation of that uh to move to the revolving fund report uh the grant funds grant report is is normal as usual there are some changes to the revolving fund report and how we complete the projection typically we would project uh how much uh we spend as much as up until the the approved budget and typically that's what our goal is to do and as well as what we and we project we anticipate what we anticipate for the revenue um however that I'm that's going to change on this projection uh I did say that in the previous uh uh mostly report presentations that I was going to adjust some of the revolving uh projections because the total revenue um is going to be reflected downward as we're not going to collect all what we what we anticipated so um I we're decreasing we're showing a decrease amount of revenue by about 986,000 um and that might look confusing on this report because uh the revenue is reflected as a negative the decrease will be shown as a positive and for the revenue um and we're also reflecting a decrease in spending about 258,000 dollars on the revolving uh the revenue decreases are mainly due to to the novel coronavirus um the families and student spectators um of our athletic teams are not allowed to tend games so we decrease the athletic revenues by 40,000 dollars which would normally we would collect from gate fees we reduce bus fees by 20,000 dollars we are only serving the uh students that were required to transport and we cannot collect fees for those we reduced the building rental fees for the surplus use of spaces when um when different organization uses our spaces based based on your the school committee policy we reduced that by 186,000 foreign tuition we had to reduce 325,000 based on our expected revenue and we reduced instrumental music fees by 26,000 due to a reduction in enrollment for the program reduced tuition in revenue for our students uh those are those are tuition that we collect from other communities that when they send their students to our district and we provide services for those students have graduated um or no longer being serviced in Arlington so we reduced that by 76,000 dollars uh the final report is the cobalt 19 expenditure report as you can as you heard from my previous points that I was making about the revenues that are are being affected by this virus um the these this report is just a report on the expenditure so it doesn't give you the total net position or loss of the district but the district has over spent has spent over 2.5 millions at the end of December 30 of 2020 in this fiscal year and just non related notes that I just wanted to keep you updated on is that yes the governor's budget did uh come out as to still going through that process for fiscal 22 um in the town of Arlington is expected to receive 23.5 and stayed at 23.5 million dollars in state aid um which is a little bit higher than over the 23.1 I received last year um and of that 14.7 million is chapter 70 funding which is about 1 over last year's chapter 70 amount um which was someone in line to what the town was projecting in their long-range planning model and also SR2 it was this it's part of the second round of the coronavirus federal fund federal relief funding um amounts have been released in Arlington will be allocated five hundred and four thousand four hundred and twenty dollars uh plus uh additional ten thousand dollars uh the department of elementary secondary education is providing for uh student mental health support and uh applications for districts will be be made available on February 5th and I we will apply for that and that funding will go beyond the end of the calendar of 2021 and a little slightly past uh end of fiscal year 2022 I will open up to any questions to be the chair thank you Mr. Mason uh questions or comments for Mr. Mason on the monthly financial report Dr. Allison Ampe I was just going to say thank you for your memo um that we got with the full school committee report I appreciate it it it was useful very useful anybody else all right seeing none thank you Mr. Mason um so the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report um and I wanted to take a minute before Dr. Bodie before I turn it over to her to share um some really exceptional news yesterday um Dr. Bodie was awarded the Bobby D'Alesandro Leadership Award from the Women's Educational Leadership Network the award has been given for the past 15 years to an outstanding women leader who is a role model for thoughtful and caring leadership with a laser focus on improved student achievement and so on behalf of the school committee I would like to congratulate Dr. Bodie on this well-deserved recognition and share how grateful we are and the students of Arlington are for her work on student achievement here so congratulations um it sounds like it was very well deserved um and I'm really glad that they recognized you in this way so um now you can do your report well thank you um thank you for your announcing that I hadn't told anybody um I just learned a few days before myself um it was quite an honor I have to say I do know that MASS would like to come to the school committee at some point um and do a formal presentation but it was quite an honor and I was honestly quite humbled by it one of the things that they had as part of the whole conference actually um they asked us to you know think about stressors and of course everybody knows this has been a very stressful year but what are the kind of stress relief that you have you know at work and honestly I had to say it really is the administrators in our district and the people I work with um and Ms. Keys is here tonight and also my office I mean they we just have Arlington is very fortunate to have such a wonderful group of people that are um they're working very um and quite dedicated to the success of our students so I do want to recognize them because it's really a team effort but thank you for mentioning I appreciate it it's a pretty big deal to get that award this year I think because there's never been a harder time to do that so um Dr. Allison Ampe we're gonna jump in on your report here sorry Dr. Allison Ampe could we get a press release written up about this um because I think this is something that we should be announcing to the community at large or I don't know maybe it comes with its own press release but I think we should be firm I mean it's really cool that's great yeah I don't know the answer to that um it may be after they present it to the school community I really don't know what MASS is going to do in terms of press release I haven't been told but thank you we'll look into it no it's it's great this is a conference for administrators um women administrators across the whole state and it used to be a conference we held the Holy Cross but it got so big that we had to move it and of course this year it's it's uh actually last year had to be canceled and so this January one is um a reschedule on the Zoom but it was uh an excellent conference even though it was by Zoom normally it's an all-day conference and we usually have a pretty strong contingency that goes to goes to this event thank you um anyway two superintendents report the first one is um the high school building update you know where I sit um I have a bird's-eye view and watching all the work that's going on we also have uh Mr Mason will say and everybody else here that we also get the advantage of all the the clanging that goes on but that's all progress and if you if you've been by you can see that we're now almost ready to completely enclose by white sheeting it's funny sheeting but the second part of the the science uh I should say the steam wing so uh while we will still be hearing it we probably won't get to see why uh there are the the clanging that we've come to no love in this process but it's it's really moving along quite well it's certainly on schedule in terms of the work that's being done they also have prepared well the the walkway for students when they're starting to return we've already had that for a while but we have developed protocols for our students to remind them about um you know the the building and what are off-limit areas that they cannot enter even though they might be very interested in doing so so it is moving along quite well there is a great video that has been uploaded this month on the ahsbuilding.org website and I was tempted to show it tonight but I think we have a lot on the agenda but I would encourage people who um who haven't seen it to go to the website and look at that so it's going along quite well we continue to have um because you know in the district goals it talks about design there are still more design issues that are currently going on we've had um both the interior exterior subcommittees and next week we have another interiors um subcommittee meeting so there's still a lot to be done in fact this is as we move into this next part of the year it's going to be particularly busy as compared to the fall because we really have to start working on technology what we're going to choose in the new in the new steam wing as well as the performing arts wing because you have to be you know six eight really more eight months out so you can start um putting the you know the orders in additionally there's going to be more work on some interior design with furniture selection colors in the building um there's we're working with the disability commission on some of the suggestions they may have about um certain kinds of ways that you can find your way around the building so there is actually going I will say that the next couple months are going to be very busy with respect to the high school and I will give you updates as we go along so I don't know if there's any questions before I go on to the next part of the report I'm going to be touching on the student staff um testing and also synchronous instruction so any questions about the high school or comments seeing none okay forward to head thank you um we this week uh we began staff pool testing uh before we were doing a individual PCR testing and again this week we had um we just received the results uh today um and that we had zero positives in all of our testing staff now there are 320 people were tested and how this works is you have small batches and you test the batch and that if the it's then if you find that that the there's a positive uh virus in one of them then you have to do follow-up testing so I'm very happy to report that we we did not need to do any follow-up testing I will say that what we're finding other than when we did Thompson last week which I reported to the community the pool testing pilot for the cohort A group that we were able to get the results back in 24 hours that was because they opened the labs for us I'm concentric to do just our pool testing I think that what we're seeing right now is that we're going to have about a 36 to 48 hour return and concentric is now going to be one of the three providers at the state level for the pool testing the state pool testing program so my guess is that their volume is going to increase as we start moving into that program which by the way Arlington did apply and in fact um we got noticed yesterday that that acknowledging that we had completed the survey and then said um to us by the end of today actually workday today you need to submit a much more detailed application which um was him several people all hands on deck we got it done and it has been submitted to the state so uh right now they project that we will potentially begin this program February 8th but I don't know if that will be the case we will continue um with our pool testing in fact today uh Thompson tested cohort B and Bishop tested cohort B in their schools we will be getting the results on over the weekend next week we will also be having um pool testing more generalized in the elementary and Augustine and Gibbs I just don't have the schedule uh with me tonight I don't have it we don't have it developed yet um people were working on that but parents in those schools will be notified and it's important to note then order to participate a parent a parent guardian must complete a consent form so those will be um being sent out very soon I think that we're going to need the week after which it goes beyond what our free testing agreement has been with concentric but again I don't know how this is going to play out with the state that's just not known at this point that we will have to do some additional testing because we're not going to be able to in any of the schools maybe not any but many of the schools both A and B and of course as you as you would there's always a potential winter kink of the plans I understand we may be getting us um some more snow next week so we'll see how this this goes but the plan is to use the next two weeks to complete those that want to participate in this program so um going forward we remain committed good night uh going forward we are remain committed to continuing weekly um testing for our staff with the hope that vaccinations will be available to teachers and stand those in our schools in late February early March we just don't know um as you may be aware the governor has opened up um has has realigned phase two and so we don't know exactly when that will occur there's a lot of I don't know but I think that care I think uncertainty characterizes this year more in a word than any other word I can think of and the need to be flexible uh very flexible um it's certainly been true and that's where we stand today with respect to um vaccinations but will we continue our testing as we go along the the answer is yes will we get uh reimbursement from the state remains to be seen uh and the and we'll just keep you up to date as we go along I think I'm here on the main point I wanted to say about this um are there any questions questions about testing okay seeing none go ahead all right there's not much to say on the synchronous learning the additional time parents were notified of the additional specialist class that students were were going to be offered unfortunately once you introduce another class into a schedule where at the elementary level you already have academic support um reading support mass support uh instrumental music it's hard to find a time that both matches availability of staff members and available places in grade levels where they're we minimize contacts I mean as much as you that the the planning was to minimize those conflicts conflicts existed and that will change however the people who may have had conflicts in quarter two which ends next week quarter three starts the week of February 8th some of those conflicts may go away because the schedules for our specialist teachers change quarter three and they change significantly so a new schedule has been developed and parents will be notified next week as to what the new schedule is for a special the important thing to know is that these specials are they they have been planned for very softly and they are not they are not interruption or addition to the existing curriculum but rather supplemental to the curriculum and and um I understand that it's gone fairly smoothly I think there's been some minor hiccups but for the most part it's gone smoothly this week and I expect that to be true next week all right great questions or comments on the synchronous learning time um so I I guess I just wanted to say on that I want to acknowledge that we did hear from a number of elementary parents who were disappointed that this was how the district elected to um increase synchronous learning time I think the intent was to use you know staffing that we already have and I appreciate that and I appreciate the challenges I will share that you know my seven-year-old now has music twice on Thursdays at home once from 9 50 till 10 I don't know because yeah but he's supposed to spend two periods in music and while I appreciate that the curriculum is different allegedly uh that that doesn't really mean a whole lot to seven-year-old so I've I've heard from especially in the early grades I've heard from from parents personally just that their their kids have been like you know especially when the the courses are duplicative um that's you know that can be tricky for kids but again you know we're all being asked to be flexible and we're doing the best we can and um you know when our kids are home we're going to make the best choices for them so I do appreciate that this was a really you know that it's challenging to schedule and I'm optimistic that there may be a little more variety um going into you know once the schedule can actually change um as part of the next quarter so I think that that's I think we're kind we're lucky in that respect that there's an ability to kind of reset it for for next quarter so that's all my comments all right um so the next item on the agenda and I see that we've been joined by um Ms. Bird Ms. Bird and Ms. Rodriguez welcome thank you for coming um I'd like to note that we are currently running four minutes ahead of schedule um and right on our agenda time which I think has never happened since I've been the chair um so I'd like to turn the presentation over to um Dr. McNeil Ms. Bird uh Ms. Rodriguez for the um sort of beginning of the uh Panorama Family Survey um analysis thank you thank you uh Ms. Morgan I would like to share my screen because um we did make some edits to the slide deck that we can upload into Novus uh after our presentation so let me see if I have perfect so let me know if you can see it can everybody see my screen yeah looks good perfect so yes tonight we are going to present on the family panorama uh results the survey did go out to families in November and they had about three weeks to respond to various questions about their experience within the school district for this year and uh Ms. Sarah Bird who is our director of SEL in school counseling and our newly hired SEL coach Ms. Laura Rodriguez is here to present some of the you know the majority of the slides here I'm just going to get us started so the objectives will of the presentation we will talk about the key findings and what was measured in the family survey we'll look at areas we call them glow areas areas where that were very positive and then areas of growth and then our plan for how we're going to respond to the data as we move forward and then I will let Ms. Bird talk about this slide here and then I just have one more slide that I'm going to present on and then they will take it away I just wanted to give Laura a moment to introduce yourself to everybody oh sure absolutely uh hello everyone uh glad to be with you this evening um so like Sarah said my name is Laura Rodriguez I'm new social emotional learning coach for the district I'm coming from an extensive uh background with summer camp and youth programs so I'm excited to bring that knowledge and that experience with character development to Arlington and she has already proven her worth uh she's been involved in many of the discussions we've had about developing curriculum and looking at data and helping us to forge ahead with our plans for the things that we would like to do to meet our goals so she's been a welcome asset and I look forward to working with her as we move forward great um and then Ms. Bird if you can present on this one yeah just a brief setting of context and these were the two new slides that will be updated um for for everyone on the uh committee just released today was the really great update and this is mostly for folks in your positions and and folks who are working at um policy positions at the state level about school climate and how important school climate is to the functioning and the work of a school district and it was just released today from the Aspen Institute and um Excel Ed so I just wanted to share the the existence of the report the importance of it but also to highlight that this is the work this is why we did the family survey this is why we have the family survey the student survey because it is school climate data it that's what we're looking at and to highlight with the arrows a couple of pieces that our presentation is going to touch on a little bit today so we are measuring a little bit of the school climate here talking about how to engage our stakeholders including families in particular in the data that we'll be sharing with you all today as valued partners here and definitely taking a look at number six and seven and eight so investing in and developing knowledge and skills of our school personnel um Dr. McNeill will talk about how we've started to do that with some of our administrators dedicating resources and student support personnel that helping build those healthy school climate pieces and y'all are very familiar with things like responsive classroom um and a lot of our efforts that we're doing with SEL across the district and safe and supportive schools so this isn't necessarily a linear process but these are all the pieces that you need to have in place um and then really making the information about school climate publicly available so in the past we have um worked with DESI and their use of the vocal surveys and that was only administered via its attachment to the MCAS assessment for a couple of grade levels so this was really a big undertaking for Arlington in that we're doing it with students in third through twelfth grade not just four different grade levels that we're doing it twice in the year not just once a year so that we can have a comparison point and that we're actually asking all of our families from pre-k through 12 and all of our staff so this is a massive undertaking and then being able to share this data publicly um and use it for some of our school improvement planning and and so on so I just wanted to share context and highlight for you all how we're going to be using this data and the work we're going to be um undertaking around it go ahead Rod. So this past Tuesday uh we had a representative from Panorama come and lead and facilitate a discussion around the data that we have collected for on the family survey and the objectives for that session we focused on purpose setting so we looked at how and why is our community why we're measuring um you know as as serik also indicated why we're actually uh conducting the survey and then we talked about you know processing the data looking at looking at the data being able to look at the building date their individual building data and the district data and just to get a just a slight overview of of what some of the data points were and then look at how they can utilize the dashboard to disaggregate the data and then what type of resources are available and what type of questions we need to ask in order to develop a plan so that we can respond to the things that we those grow areas and also celebrate the areas that are considered a glow so we spent about two hours it was a very informative session and I look forward to the building principles on going back to their individual buildings and sharing the data with their staff and also with their school councils thank you so one of the major pieces we wanted to connect is something that the folks from panorama shared with us and it's just a reflection of the major findings from john haddie's research so this is not going to be news to many of you all um this is research that's pretty familiar we've talked about collective teacher efficacy over the past couple of years um but i want to bring your attention to the three light blue pieces right here about teacher student relationships parental involvement in school climate and that those really are these massive levers for change and impact on student achievement i know in arlington we don't really have to convince folks about the value of school climate and relationships and um safe and supportive environments and the impact on student achievement but it does definitely bear repeating and citing that it does have its research and it it holds really really strong arguments in the field but that you'll see in the data as we start to go through that when it comes to teacher student relationships parental involvement in particular and school climate those are things that we're going to be looking at as we move through in our data and the reason that we highlight parental involvement was because that was one of our major findings one of our major grows as a district you can hit the next slide rod i'm just going to keep going here because this talks about everything i just said i'll spare you the time so here are our key findings we heard from um over 2300 family voices in our district which was um from panorama they were psyched that we had this kind of a turnout we're used to getting really great turnout in arlington um we also had a much larger window that this survey was open than we have typically for family surveys so we were able to obtain more family voices which was fantastic and we had six survey topics that we wanted to hear from go ahead run so we took a look at these following topics we also just so that folks know we didn't pick these randomly we sat down with representation from and feedback from the teachers union the administrative union we brought the topics to um a number of stakeholders with our safe and supportive schools district council which has parents and family members on it we also had a representative group of folks who are helping us feed into the giving feedback on it looking at it and then i believe we had some of the teachers yes from the synchronous learning work group take a look at some of the topics to provide some feedback so we really workshop to figure out which questions we're going to be the best for what questions you all were asking us wanting to know well what are families saying about this what data do you have and then matching it up with the evidence based and the valid database of questions that panorama has within their platform that would ascertain the answers to those questions so we landed on additional family assistance family school communication student needs cultural awareness and action learning model and learning behaviors um at a broad glance the learning model gets that the question that many of you had about how are students doing with the remote versus the hybrid versus the four day in model learning behaviors gets at how students are managing that independent work versus needing support from their families at home working on their own how are they managing the digital content versus synchronous and asynchronous and so on the cultural awareness and action got us answers to questions around how comfortable students are feeling when they're being asked to talk about or engage in conversation around race how comfortable staff feel about that how ready families feel that our staff are ready to engage in conversations around race how often students feel that they are represented in our materials in our curriculum and so on and that aligns with our district goals and then student needs taking a look at how everyone is functioning with their academic physical social emotional relational needs and so on and then our communication between school and home and any other additional needs especially given this moment in time so food housing transportation income etc etc and looking how we can support our families go ahead run so our biggest celebration that we just wanted to highlight for folks and you can hit the next one too because it kind of has a animation feature there we go 82% of our families feel like they can get in touch with teachers and they respond very strongly very favorably to this so some of the pieces that came up in the free response questions were favorable responses around in-person days at the secondary level the high school in particular the reverse field trips were really successful and well reviewed and that people were feeling like it was pretty easy to get in touch with folks at school so that was a strong piece that we wanted to celebrate especially given the high rank and impact that John Hattie's work talks about with family school communication all right so this is a snapshot of a heat map just a quick intro to a heat map the basic concept is that there are shades and colors and this is us compared to ourselves so the lowest numbers on our range of scores will be highlighted in the darker orange the highest numbers of our range of our own scores are going to be highlighted in the brighter green and so there there is a scale of zero to 100 but the greens aren't going to be 100 the greens are going to be the highest that we score amongst ourselves and the lowest aren't necessarily going to be zeros so what you'll find here is also just the deviation from the average on this particular heat map and general glows and grows that you'll observe from here at the very top across the various columns you'll see the six categories I just described that we asked families about and then you'll see down the various rows each of the grade levels across the district it's helpful you'll see it by grade level but you'll also see the n number how many families responded within that group size and you'll see the percentages across the top as well as the points the percentage points over or under the general aggregate on the top okay so hopefully folks are with me just sort of getting an orientation to it now this is a massively macro view there is a ton more information on the platform and we we can dive deeper into it we can ask many more questions about it but this is one of those moments where if you want to take a bird's eye view and take a quick snapshot and say you know what is the the drive-by version of what can we learn about what our families are saying and what can we learn about what our families are saying families with younger kids are having a harder time when it comes to managing things like learning independently learning in any type of a learning model when they're having a harder time in terms of managing all of the household needs and family needs and they're valuing across the district the family school communication so if you notice all of those bright orange highlights at the pre-k the k the first the second and to some degree the third and fourth because there's still negative numbers there even though they start to fade out really our elementary aged families have indicated that a lot of these things are hard if you're a parent of an elementary student and I'm sure this concurs a lot with the anecdotal stories that you've all been hearing and collecting as well but it's developmentally appropriate right the learning behaviors haven't been taught yet they haven't been learned yet and the older you get the easier it gets for typically developing students too the learning model regardless of if you are remote or hybrid and so on it's still challenging for the younger students what we see overall on the trend is the older you get the stronger those skills get as well so you'll see the green starts to kick in as students hit seventh eighth ninth and so on so there are some variabilities depending on grade levels and communication styles you'll notice based on principles and their methods of how they communicate with whether it be electronic or phone or school messenger and the platforms that are used so there's some variability in home to school communication but overall if you look at the top 63 is one of our higher percentages for home to school communication so that's great and as we also noticed when it comes to additional family assistance 87 percent it's pretty high so it seems like a lot of families are getting what they need and not all of them but our hope is that we're continuing to be in touch with those and we can learn more about those families that may have indicated that they have additional family needs you can go ahead to the next one rod because this gets a bit deeper so other trends that we're starting to see if you look now it's the same spread of the columns across the top but we're starting to now dive into some deeper subgroups so you may be asking questions like well how does this impact our students based on race or how does it impact them based on their learning model so things I would like you all to take a look at is by gender our students who are females tend to be feeling more successful with this learning time than our students who are males and of a significant note is our students who are non-binary or prefer to self describe are having a remarkably different experience here than our students who are falling into typical binary identification categories we had 55 families who responded on behalf of a student who prefers to self describe and there's not a single one of those categories where we're in the green district wide that should be a highly noteworthy finding that we take away from this secondarily if our students primarily attending class right now in the remote academy they're overall having quite a positive experience it looks like in terms of if we were to compare all three those are that are in four days a week are actually having a less favorable experience as compared to the other two and hybrid is still concerned about their learning model and still are concerned a little bit about learning behaviors so in terms of looking at where have we got some grows I would say this is a great highlight of grows around our in person instruction or what to do on the days when they're not in and we can look even deeper here there but a major glow that comes out of this is that the folks that have signed up the 982 folks that are in the remote academy are reporting that it's working out quite nicely for them here so that's a major glow to take away from this finding and go to the next one too Rod thank you so if questions then about students with IEPs or students who are currently speaking learning to speak English in addition to another language I just want to highlight here some other glows that we came across is that there's some real strengths here with family and school communication I know particularly when it comes to these two populations we worry a lot about especially with our ELs are we translating everything everything's going through virtually you know have we made sure that we've gotten on top of everything and they have a a plus five out of the 255 families that responded with an EL student they have responded quite favorably around family and school communication which is a really great glow so kudos to Carla Bruzezi and her team and everyone who's been taking on the translation and other things and access and the whole everyone reaching out to those students and also for students who have IEP or individuals sorry education plans looking at the communication they are connected with their teams they are in relationship with their teams and as can be expected they're still working on things like learning behaviors still trying to make sure that they're in the right learning model and that the student needs are being met so that again is something that we can continue to look into and learn more about but the fact that they're connected to their teams is a is another great glow as well next one Rod we're almost at the end of these snapshots this is one of our images that takes a look at our racial and ethnic breakdown so just giving folks a moment to take a look at it you'll notice if you are a white student in Arlington everything seems to be experienced pretty neutrally or positively if you are anything but a white student in Arlington there's at least one category where things are maybe not being experienced as optimally or as well as it could be so our Asian students have reported some negative experiences around cultural awareness and action or it's lower than what our average is and could be looking at two or more races and ethnicities same categories and of particular note our black and African American students and the students who found that their races weren't even listed on the desi sims categories because that's what we had up there are finding that they themselves are reporting quite starkly that their cultural awareness their experience of the district's cultural awareness and action is pretty intensely different from their experience of their white counterparts and even the students with race not listed is feeling like there's not a lot of great family and school communication and that the learning model is not matching their needs and it's not suiting their needs so I would say our goals around becoming an anti-racist school that addresses the whole needs of the child is a well identified goal because we have some work to do here next one all right so just pausing there for a moment hopefully I highlighted some of the glows and gross from what the families had shared I'm gonna pass the mic over to Laura because what she took the liberty of doing was picking I believe it was a learning model and learning behaviors is that right Laura she took one of the categories and dove a little deeper and started to pull out some specifics that she found within the data that were worth surfacing so I'm going to pass it on to Laura. Thanks Sarah so I went in deeper in a couple of different areas just to give you all a broader idea of the type of data that we're able to collect through these surveys so as somebody new that's coming in whenever I get to look at data I find it really interesting and exciting because it shows me where the opportunities are within a given space so as you can see here 50 percent 57 percent of families responded that they are not at all concerned or slightly concerned with managing their child's schedule so it's a positive number and it gives us the opportunity to recognize there are still a good number of families that are really struggling with the balance between taking care of their children in the home and making sure that they're taking care of their own jobs and their own needs so it gives us a better understanding of how we can best support and really start getting to the root of some of the issues that we are seeing so unsurprisingly one of the questions within the survey is asking how easily their child is distracted so what's interesting when this data is pulled out the green bars are what is listed as that favorable or that positive percentage anything in orange is what's listed as an unfavorable response so even though a majority of people are listing somewhat easily distracted which is on neither extreme that's still listed as an unfavorable response so it's showing us that a bulk of our students are really somewhat distracted overall though not doing so poorly all right we can go to the next slide please okay so this data I found really interesting particularly because we have about 42% of families who are concerned about their academic growth right now so this full slide goes through a couple of the really specific questions that are asked in those larger umbrellas and as we'll touch on a little bit later what I found in the data is that more families are actually more concerned with their child's peer relationships their social emotional learning and those aspects of their education rather than the academics themselves so 42% again are concerned about the academic growth 44% are satisfied with what that learning model is you know as Sarah went through and showed the heat maps there are definitely some grades and some areas that are having an easier time with this and again it just shows us an opportunity for where we can grow and how we can start to better support not only our teachers but our students and our families too and then as you can see with that last one 43% of families are confident in their ability to support their child's distant learning at this time all right we can head to the next one organization something that our younger students struggle with and as Sarah mentioned they get better with as they get older so 42% of families are experiencing their child getting having difficulty organizing themselves for school so I pulled this data point along with the smaller bracket beneath it so then you can get a better idea of how in depth it goes so not only does it give you the exact breakdown of percentage points when you look at it it'll also give you what students are on an IEP what the students races are whether or not they're male or female or non-binary there are so many different data points and so much within this that we can really learn from so for me somebody again that's new it's really exciting to see where those opportunities are for the community and for our families that we're serving and we can go ahead and head to that perfect all right so this data point is the one that I got most interested in and why I'm so excited to be here as the social emotional learning coach you can see here very clearly in this data only 38% of families are responding favorably to this question so a majority of our families are if they're not somewhat concerned they're slightly concerned or quite concerned with their child's social emotional learning so through all the programs whether or not it's responsive classroom whether or not we're looking at the whole child whether or not we're using second step and a lot of different tools and techniques to not only equip our students it also gives us a better idea on how to focus on that adult SEL so then our teachers are able to have those skills themselves and really be able to embed them into the curriculum into things that they're already doing to make sure we're supporting students mental health and our teachers mental health right now we can go ahead to the next one thanks so what's interesting when you get down into the student needs parents or families are not really concerned with their child's relationships with their teachers they've responded 72% favorably to that question which is amazing students are building great relationships with their teachers however what families are noticing is that they're not necessarily getting that same experience when it comes to building relationships with their peers so this again it gives us an opportunity to look at okay how can we create more intentional spaces for students to be able to build relationships with each other how can they build community with their peers and not only with their teacher that's serving them and then we can go into the perfect thank you so as Sarah mentioned there are certain populations that are feeling pretty positive about communication but within that communication point you get to see how families are feeling whether or not their voices are being heard and whether or not there's their opinions are being valued so the data point of 44% responding favorably again broken out a little more in depth so a majority of people either feel that it's valued some or valued quite a bit which is a solid bracket to be in and gives us a good base and a good benchmark for how we can improve and how we can move forward in really listening to our community listening to our families and making sure that not only are we hearing them but we are doing our best to act on those voices on those opinions and really validating their experience not just right now but you know throughout the course of the year and then finally so as Sarah mentioned we have students of various races that are having a very different experience than our white students so something that was really exciting to me was that 68% of families do believe that when there are major news events related to race that they should be discussing them that they should have these conversations regarding race and how to be anti-racist which is really inspiring and really encouraging that that number is so high and then when you look at how confident these families are feeling whether or not those conversations are honest and open that number dropped significantly lower and so the important data point that I found here is that when you're looking at the race makeup of the students families who are feeling most confident you know you can see that Asian white and race not listed they're responding much more favorably than our black or african-american families our hispanic or latinx families or our multi-race families so this is a good area of opportunity for us to figure out how we can really acknowledge these students experiences how we can start talking to teachers and equipping them with more tools on how to be anti-racist how to have these conversations in an honest and authentic way that makes sure that the spaces feel inclusive for all of our students and that all of their voices can be heard so very interesting data a lot of opportunities for us to work on this as a full district and I'm going to hand it back over to Sarah I believe for the last two slides great thanks Laura gave you a quick snapshot of a lot of things that were you know Arlington specific and seem to pop up as important pieces from what community members were mentioning in the qualitative responses as well as pieces that were positive or noteworthy glows and grows for our community to be working on as rod mentioned earlier this is the first time that we've ever done something of this magnitude um this comprehensively gotten this many family voices on it this many diverse voices on it um and so our administrators our leaders are taking a look at it our teachers are now for the first time getting a look at it our families are now for the first time getting a look at it and we're going to dig in and ask lots of questions and dig deeper and start to find out well what's behind that number and who primarily answered that and let's get even more curious and and find out why you know before I start to project and think my own answers about it let's ask the people who actually took it do a focus group or ask and figure out how we can go further so there are a lot of further tools that obviously panorama recommends but obviously we just know from best practice from from data wise and from any good inquiry based cycle um married with our school improvement plan cycles and our district improvement plans and so on but it all needs to be centered around equity and that even though this is a school climate questionnaire and that we are looking at how students are experiencing things we need to make sure that any and all of our responses are going to be done with an anti-racist intention and that all of our resources that we use are evidence-based and that we make sure our adults are modeling these sound wise intentional practices and that's why sometimes it takes time but one of the major pieces that I was just reminded of this morning from our own adult training is that one of the racial equity detours we tend to take is we pace for privilege so we tend to take on a pace that those of us who have privilege and power can afford to and we forget about the fact that those without this privilege can't afford to wait for us to be slow in it so I know that as administrators have just gotten access to the platform and they're diving into it they're going to be taking a look at things and say all right where's the urgency what do we move on now and where can we get some short-term wins and start making change for students immediately because we're going to be administering climate surveys again at the end of the year and we want to know what's changed we're intending to change experiences for families and for students this year so we're excited that things will be moving and equally realistic about the fact that we've got work to do so with that we'll open it up to questions we also have the capacity to answer some questions that folks have by looking into the platform but keeping it at a district level and making sure that we're still answering macro questions because if we were to go through all of the questions and answer everything we'd be here for about three weeks so with that in mind I'll sort of ask Rod or Jane if there's anything that you guys would like to say next or ask next. Great Dr. McNeil did you want to share anything else? No I just want to emphasize that this is we're using this data that we've received as a benchmark this is the first time we've done this type of survey I'm very happy with the way that we have administered it to staff to the community and to students and I think that if we continue to work to you know as Ms. Byrd said to dive into the data and and take an inquiry stance that we will be able to develop a plan and some consistency across the district of how we're going to address the areas of growth that have highlighted the areas in which we need to evolve and we realize that so we're not trying to gloss over anything or present a false picture and we're not going to explain the data away we're going to look at the data and develop some you know short-term and long-term goals and how we can address the various things that the community has that has service from their responses so I will turn it over to you and then we'll be here to answer any questions. Great so I suspect that most people have questions on this so we'll just use our regular order so Ms. Exton. Thank you for coming to present this and spending the time to really look at it and and think about it um so um I'm sorry you answered some of my questions so I just want to um I guess so one of the things I'm thinking about is just you and Ms. Byrd you mentioned the the pace and so I think some of um my thinking and I guess frustration is like this was administered in November and we're seeing the result at the end of January and then I heard you say you're going to readminister in June um and I don't know how much of that is Panorama's pace and how much of that is APS's pace but I I just I worry that there's a lot of time between when it was administered and now that without having the data there we weren't necessarily targeting the areas that needed support um and then we get to June and you know if we see that it wasn't every the changes weren't effective you know then we're coming and we're coming into September and and so I guess so one question is will you then continue this in the fall like is this something that we're gonna cycle through again with with one question um and then another question I have is related specifically to sort of the um the issues around talking about issues of race and um current events I would be really interested to see the staff um responses to that and do staff feel supported in having those conversations with students and are they comfortable um having those conversations and what kind of supports are they getting um so just thinking about is it is it different for families and staff or is that something that as a community um we need to work on on both sides um and then I just I'm gonna highlight again what you know people have noticed um one of our public comments noticed this mentioned this that our public comment earlier um you know just that K2 is is really struggling um in a lot of ways and you know I hope that we can find ways to support them and bring students back into schools um sooner rather than later thanks right thank you um I think this was the question that was mentioned in public comment does this look accurate the question about do you think your child should spend less or more time learning in person at school right now accurate yes that was that was one of the ones that was brought up through public comment and I and also if you can highlight the fact that we are when you talk about the the percentage the way that the survey presents the data is that they give you the you know the the the the percentage there that talks about the number of respondents who respond it favorably that's it so but when you open it up the way you just did it so if you could just delve in ready other category yeah here you go so this is under the category of learning model so the numbers that we shared in our presentation this gives you just a snapshot of how deep the data goes right so what we shared with you all was just the 47 percent big picture the questions that fall within learning model and some of these Laura brought up one of those and this was the question mentioned earlier is do you think your child should spend less or more time learning in person at school right now the overall response to that district wide was only 37 percent of families responded favorably but what does that mean when we look deeper you will find here that it was a very interesting spread in that nine percent of our families 201 families thought that their student should be spending less time in school 54 percent of our families which was about 1278 felt that their student should be spending more time at school and then 37 percent of families which is 869 families felt that their students were spending they wanted them to spend about the same amount at school so that's also demonstrating to us that there is a significant divide it is not a clear 85 percent of all of our families want everybody in there's a pretty clear distinction here that 37 percent of our families are content and they think it's it's about right but then there is 50 percent that would like there to be more so then what we would need to do is this is where we would dive deeper and we would say what where are those 50 percent coming from are they the k12 families and so on and so forth we can dive down deeper and take a look at this and see yep okay percentage of favorable responses for this were the pre-k and the k and the favorable responses here um were the ones that were responding sorry that um they were spending about the same amount of time so actually our pre-k students um were the 61 percent of pre-k were saying yeah they're spending just about the same amount of time so this is the deeper they're in full they're full time in person so that yes and it's a little yeah it's a it's a different model i'm just using it conveniently because it's the first one that's there on the grid um but yeah if you look at kindergarten only 31 percent of the um response here said yep favorably to that one and yes you can see that it is a slow rise as you go through so in terms of um being content with the model and as you can understand or expect ninth grade is feeling a little bit less favorably about being out right um but this is the deeper dive that we could be doing for each of these questions once we get to be more familiar with them i just wanted to share that to give a visualization uh and an explanation of what the 37 percent means and how that breaks down and to be able to share that information just very transparently with everybody the um the second question that you had asked about or in reverse order was about the timing so the timing of it is yes it was administered in november and it was also open for about three weeks it was open for about a month or so and then there the holiday breaks and so on and i have to say the turnaround time compared to what we've had in previous years which is only one administration through desi and we don't get the data until about four or five months later when the fifth grade students we assessed for school climate are no longer in our buildings but now they've all moved on to gifts and they're sixth grade students and we can't even see them anymore this is a vast improvement over that is it great no is it better absolutely um and the fact that we actually have a benchmark at the beginning of the year and then at the end of the year to be able to see if we've made progress is it is a huge win i will also add though um our linkedin doesn't have if i can be honest we don't have the infrastructure to do a whole district school climate survey we we took it on as a very bold undertaking this year out of necessity out of necessity because it's just what we needed to do for families it's what we needed to do for families what we need to do for students what we need to do for staff and we are simultaneously building our infrastructure while administering the climate survey so part of why it's taking some time is because the behind the scenes um rostering for getting our staff and our school student information system logins and passwords and individualized url links for survey links to go through to panorama all of that takes so much time and we don't have a special team working on it you're looking at us so this is definitely not something that we were built to handle and we didn't say no to it we're we're doing it so um in future years it will run more smoothly because we will have plowed away but it is definitely taking a lot more time and effort than um then it would have if we had piloted it or if we had done it with just one building i mean we're doing it with everybody and not just all the students we're doing it with all the students all the families all the staff so if i can say that that's why it's taking a little bit because it's a heavy heavy lift um in terms of will we be doing it in the future i hope so but i'm going to look to michael mason and rod mcneill to see if it's in the budget for the future because you'll be the ones that are going to say if it is or isn't and y'all a school committee can check to see if it's in there too for the future i would like us to continue especially with the panorama data and the partnership that we have with panorama because we will be able to look because they will have the results right so we'll be able to look back as they archive the results and we can compare and contrast how we're improving in the different areas that we need to continue to to focus on so um my goal it is it is very expensive i will say that but they do provide support they provide um you know resources that teachers can access and uh you know there is a the playbook that's also in there we don't really you know dive very deeply in that but it has various lessons and activities that teachers can access in order to address some of the data points um so yes i would like us to continue and they provide that like i said before uh when i in my earlier slide that we had a representative from panorama to come and facilitate a workshop for all of our administrators so we can continue that partnership that would be great and uh Liz my final response is why i wrote all your questions down is um we haven't yet fully uh looked at and analyzed all the staff data that's the next piece on our list um we want to make sure that we get that out to staff as well and share that with everyone before we are able to share that out with everybody here too i believe that your your thoughts and your questions about the race is going to be really where we spend a lot of time and attention because there are a lot of intriguing data points popping up and i'm very curious i haven't i haven't been able to chase all of those numbers down and go down all the rabbit holes yet but i i will say that um i think we staff are asking for support around things like social emotional needs of students which lines up with family requests for i'm concerned about my students social emotional needs um and they're asking for support around things that are converging a lot with family supports so to speak to your question about race i believe that those are going to converge as well i do want to point out that that the that the survey results that we're analyzing will also so impact the various budget decisions that we make as well so as miss bird talked about building an infrastructure so looking at the various resources that we need to purchase that we can integrate into our instruction and also the human resources that we have to continue to invest in in order to move us forward in certain for certain goals so i mean i do want to point out and i want to thank the school committee for approving the hiring of miss rodriguez because that is one of those resource human resources that will help us as we we continue to cultivate and implement a k-12 seo curriculum did i get it all this yeah thank you very much i appreciate it mr cardin uh thank you thank you for all this work um so if we could go back to uh the overall slide you don't actually have i have it up you don't have to share it um so so for example for a learning model we're at 47 percent which means 53 percent unsatisfied what you you highlighted some glows and i forget what you're calling them by differentiating by grade levels and by you know race and gender but why why what can you describe what what is in the learning model that that's creating the dissatisfaction that i think is more i mean the the other the the deeper die that you're doing is is good but what we had requested and what we're concerned about is where our learning model may have shortfalls and what can we do to change that mid-year so was there any learning from that from this survey yes did rod did you just take over because i was gonna do it so now i feel like there's a ghost operating can i uh grab it from you you're muted so i'm just not able to yeah brilliant go ahead oh thank you so much okay so this is what you're talking about right lenn so the 47 percent of the learning model right yes brilliant thank you okay so what you're looking at are the following four questions and this is part of what lora talked about too how satisfied are you with the way learning is structured at your child's school right now and this was the other question about do you think your child should spend less or more time learning in person how difficult or easy is it for your child to use the distance learning tools and how confident are you in your ability to support your child's education during distance learning so the lowest piece was that question about time time in school is that enough or not the the other two were the ones around the way it's structured and are you able to support it so the way that it's structured just so that you can see is that folks tended to come towards the middle like a bell curve right so somewhat satisfied was around 37 percent quite satisfied was 34 percent and then it trended off like a typical bell curve around the side um no massive differential between IEPs or not ELL or not um and then when you want it this is probably what you're asking about too remote hybrid or four days the hybrid students were feeling 34 percent about favorable so in terms of thinking about how the learning is structured that's where we would find that again the remote academy students are having a more favorable experience with the learning model than the hybrid students are just like we saw the other data points the traditional binary identifying students are having a more favorable learning experience through their learning model than our students who are non-binary you can see that here too right yeah okay and that that that go ahead knows that that level of information is is interesting but I'm more looking at the higher level right now because that's where I think as a school committee we would have the impact right so as I look at this data we don't have full access to it but as I look at the data what I'm learning is there's there's most dissatisfaction in the hybrid model and there's most concern about peer relationships right so the way we can solve that is not going to a full remote model which more people are pleased with because that's not going to that's not going to solve the peer relationships so so the issue is in the hybrid model what can we do to improve the learning model we've made some minor adjustments now but I think what we need to do is as soon as we can start moving away from the hybrid model because it's just it's just not working for those lower grades right is that a correct uh conclusion to come from this data oh that's a loaded question I mean it may be but that would require uh that's asking um a lot of other data points to be considered I want to go back actually to the very beginning of what you just said the data that we have actually says not that the hybrid is having the hardest time but the students that are enrolled four days a week are having the hardest time so I want to just be very clear on if we're comparing three different models right the students that are in four days a week and that is that is hybrid but that's mostly in those are the kids that are four days a week and then you have hybrid and then you have the remote and this was one of the other questions within that same category so how confident are you in your ability to support your child's education during distance learning we have the families of the students that are in four days a week reporting that they are the least confident out of all of the families in terms of supporting their students and the families that are in remote obviously feeling the most confident so I actually think it it's a very intriguing question to entertain a bit more because you can and just devil's advocate or think about this you could make the case yes let's make all the hybrid students come in four days a week but then you have the case right next to it that while the students that are in four days a week are not reporting that they're having a great experience but you can also look at it and say well the students that are in four days a week are there because sometimes they're getting additional services or sometimes they're there because they need additional support so perhaps that's why those families are reporting that they don't feel that they have the ability to support their students level of need and maybe that's why the family self-selected remote because they felt that they did have the level of need to support their students outside perhaps there's a parent that's able to take some time off of work or be at home and do some some support from there where there's additional resources those are the pieces of information and data that we do not have so any of those scenarios I just outlined would all be assumptions on my part those would be analyses that's a way beyond an analysis that's me jumping to different assumptions but if I asked people and they told me those things right then yes I could say that yeah so two comments one is that I mean this this type of survey a climate survey is is a great thing to do I think it provides a lot of wonderful data panorama should be able to automate it more so that there's very little involvement on our side administrating it administering it you know I have a climate survey at work we get it every month as a manager I get access to the data you know it does take me some time to to look through it but it's it's you know we have our HR groups there's somebody there who who creates a summary so it's a great tool and I'm glad we we we we launched it particularly with with the climate and the the race issues that will help us and and an SEL will help us pinpoint where we need to focus going forward but I want to go back to our resolution this summer and it says the superintendent shall periodically survey and provide reports to the school committee and the public throughout the 2020-21 school year on parent and staff experiences with all learning options and the district's response to concerns raised and you know it was it was your choice the administration's choice to combine that to roll that into this climate survey and I don't think it really produced actionable information about where we have needs and so I mean what is based on this survey what are the you know the the the district responses to the concerns raised that that's more for Dr. McNeill or Dr. Bode well I think that oh I'm sorry go ahead Dr. I was yes that that's correct that's correct that this is what the choice that was made we disclose this to the school committee in the fall and I think what you're asking Mr. Cardin is whether we know what percentage of our elementary parents would like to go back to have a full day program and yes this data doesn't really answer that question directly but it's a little bit it's also a more nuanced question I mean answering question as well in terms of what we're seeing the data I think that the question of whether we can go back full time to any point this year is directly related to vaccinations and as long as the state the federal government is not providing the vaccines and we don't have the distribution that's perhaps equitable across the state right now and you know there's some places that are sitting on vaccines that could be used and that has to be fixed and getting off in a little bit of a tangent but my our direction you know over the summer was to have you periodically survey parents about their concerns with our operating model this was a survey that we did there were concerns reported what it what is our plan to address those concerns just just wait until the vaccine is distributed I mean do we have any plans to address the concerns raised by this survey we the answer is yes well first of all we have to have everybody understand what the results are and you've already heard that piece of it there are issues with experience of our students of color that are something that we are going to need to address and it goes back to these these goals we've had over the last couple of years and we and we don't have a baseline so we don't know where the the improvement or not not improvement has occurred but yes we need to do more around professional development in terms of how we engage students in our in our our schools and in our classes and it would would be if we did this last year would we see a difference is the learning model well is the issue around race issues different because we're in a in a hybrid program this year as it would have been when we were full in last year we don't quite know that the answer to that but it does underscore the need and and also as you we've talked about at the table there is a major commitment on the part of the school district to provide professional learning opportunities for our teachers to be able to have all of our students engaged and that if you're there are issues around professional development we can't separate that out from time in time sitting in a classroom and that is one of our big takeaways that's one of my big takeaways in terms of how we're going to more effectively engage successfully all of our students in learning and i i interrupted dr mcdill he may want to add further comments on that but i think the issue of whether we're going to equate these results to what's what what we're doing this year to address to be able to have our students as much as we can in school and and also keep everyone safe is it's sort of hard to pull this pull that exactly those cause and effect from this and i think that's what you're asking us to do with this i think it's been helpful to also look at the open responses and we can see a lot from them and we shared them with all the directors as well as principals and i think folks are starting to find within their different changes that people can make within their own departments so some of them have been taken into consideration already in terms of ways that google classrooms can be made more consistent across the different levels of the secondary places where all the links could go together i know that dalin elementary had all of their specialists put all of their zoom links on one page so that parents just had one place they could go to so some of these pieces of feedback are just being absorbed by the staff and the leaders that are reading it and hearing from it and coming up with small solutions that are just in time and putting them out there others are going to require like dr bodie was saying much more in-depth dive into data and systems and investigation and figuring that out so if it's helpful to see some of these questions that have popped in from the more qualitative answers are really nice places for people to come in and think about what are the next steps what are things that we can do in the here and now this was one of the questions what's challenging with their education that you would like to see improved this was some explicit feedback from families and then the other question that was helpful to see from the free response was when families were asked is there anything else that you would like us to know about your family's needs and this was another category that was helpful for when families just shared their individual needs and it was a lot about it was helpful to get the Chromebooks it was helpful to get the support from the material needs from the schools thank you and then a lot about from the younger level child care balancing working from home balancing two working families two working partners and things along those lines so great thank you Dr. Allison Ampe thank you um so I had a few questions um first to follow up on what Lenwood what Mr. Cardin was saying um I understand that you're presenting data today at a district-wide level but I think that's part of the reason why it's it's harder to start seeing patterns because I think it the heat map thing is very nice in terms of showing that our pre-cave through second grade students are having significant troubles and I'd like to know what do those responses look like um for these other things you know so not just the district-wide but um paring down just looking at those because that's that's where we're seeing you know if you lump it all together then you've got the high schoolers going oh it's okay and I mean it you can't figure out what the problem is because the problem is different for the different grades um and I'd like to see I understand that the principles and stuff are teasing out some things that can be fixed but can't we also be reporting these out as they're being done first so that all the principles don't have to be doing the same thought process for something that applies to everyone you know let's figure it out once and then everyone does it as opposed to oh I've got to figure this part out and then oh I've got to figure the same thing out um and also to let parents know that these things are happening so that they're aware that a chain one the problem has been recognized to the problem has been addressed and then three did it actually they'll be able to see did it actually help okay so that's one thing um I am still confused as to how the heat map is created in terms of I don't understand what the average you know what's the zero I I don't get that I mean how I don't get where the zero comes from but I'd like to hear about that more just because it's really I don't like looking at something and I don't understand where the information is coming from that's what I feel like with this um I would like to know where when we're going to get more information from the survey and by we actually meet the whole community not just the school committee um I think there is a lot of information here and that there can be more more than just the snapshots that we've seen but there should be some synopses of trends and and things that came up and and more than word maps and stuff that's that's not that just tells you words or I mean that just tells you things that showed up it's not telling you really what people were thinking and I think that people can read through comments and and go you know a comment that came up a lot was the Chromebooks keep breaking or something you know there's ways of summarizing some of this information and I think we should be doing that um and then finally I'm wondering it talks about comparisons to other districts or other other schools or or something and I'm just wondering did we do that what does it look like um so thank you okay uh Laura you know the answer to that last question right so which one was the one that was compared you are your smiling hello yeah I'm uh fairly confident that it was the learning model uh and nationally we ranked ranked in the tenth percentile okay okay so that's not a happy place to be that's that's like at the bottom right not at the top yes correct yeah yeah so that's not a happy place to be right correct I can look at that on the next screen I had the heat map pulled up from earlier because you mentioned that earlier but if you'd like I can go back to that one in a moment um the you asked what was zero zero um if you're talking about sort of like on the number line is the the percentage at the top up here um of where the entire district has fall at where they fall so for example if um additional family assistance is 87 percent for the entire district then females scored at 89 percent because they were two points over and male as a population male respondents came in at 86 percent but how can you go to the bigger heat map the one that's um all the grades yeah it's actually the same one we just had to break it out into screenshots for you all so here you go okay it's not all gonna fit on the same screen I'm just gonna have to scroll up and down for you mm-hmm so so for example pre-k additional family assistance was 77 percent so 10 points below the district average okay whereas the communication with pre-k was 19 points above the district average okay mm-hmm okay so what that's saying is that even the ones that are quote-unquote green in the high school even those are not really in happy places so the green ones in the high school here we'll just keep it to high school for the second and happy places I'm assuming that you mean a percentage that's higher closer to a 100 percent yes okay that would be a hundred percent of our families responding favorably to that question right yes um yep so when we're looking at something like additional family assistance I mean all of those would be in a very happy place right in terms I'm talking about the learning behaviors and learning model that those are the ones that are you know or in the culture awareness too but it's the numbers are more differentiated on the learning behavior correct yep your observation is accurate mm-hmm okay um that is the heat map in terms of your questions about sharing out this data as well as all of the data with everyone in the community and then going through the qualitative responses and being able to do more than a word map with them and come up with coding and so on and so forth I believe you're going to see in our budget requests a request for a data analyst that's not the level of work that the that we can take on the the word all and the the analysis that we have from panorama is the services that they provide to us if we're able to go through and come up with much more fine you know coming through it with a fine tooth comb and so on that's going to require more of those human resources and so yes it's something that definitely another person could do or could take on but that's part of why the team has put forth the proposal of having a data analyst or somebody in there who can help us take this information streamline it and put it out to the community at large okay we did actually pass a motion last meeting or meeting before that there is money for hiring someone to help with surveys which would you know the position that you're talking about could certainly we could certainly get someone part-time this year on the basis of this motion to get you some help with this so but that's something you can have a discussion with the administration that's not that's for you thank you so I just wanted to respond to your request about sharing thank you yeah okay that's all for now thank you thank you mr. Thielman yeah thanks very much so uh i just want to make sure i'm clear we're in the 10th percentile in the united states for positive responses on this survey just for the learning model the survey itself doesn't actually give out the learning model yeah okay well you know that's um that's a pretty big concern so i mean i think we all have to uh own and acknowledge that i do i do think there are um you know mr. Cardin was right the motion talked about the summer talked about the fact that we're trying to um do uh some you know the survey we want to survey and then take action and i'm i'm assuming um that we are pivoting and taking action so if you look at the heat model on slide uh 10 i guess it was or i'm not sure what slide i was looking at but and that model i mean it shows pretty clearly that in grades k through two um we have a sizable number of people who are anxious and eager to see their students get back to school so it seems to me an immediate action um that we could take is to do everything within our power and i realize we're waiting for testing to take place and i realize there's there's there's things we have to do to um get ready but i think it's it's to give people hope it's we can start to take immediate steps to prepare to bring back all learners in grades k through two that's an immediate pivot action action item that we can take to respond to this survey and respond what we know is a felt need we don't need more surveys to tell us there's a felt need out there uh especially in those grades the second thing in the the survey that jumps out of me is that there is a family school communication issue in the sixth grade school and that is a solvable problem by you know management uh and improving that that that work and improving communication is it's a it's a i mean it happens in all organizations and it's something like you gotta like dive into address and figure out why it's happening and usually it's it's personnel and that's really what it is and then there is a family school communication issue in grades nine through twelve that is uh represented in that survey and that is also a fixable solvable problem that you have to kind of identify dive into and resolve so i do think you know we can take action to resolve some of these things getting you know taking steps giving people hope saying that we're going to do everything we can to get kids in k through two and here's what we're going to do here's what's going to have to happen for us to do that and tell people that improve the communication uh at the sixth grade and improve the communication between families uh and the school in grades nine through twelve and then the other point is you know in uh slide i think it was 11 or 12 i don't remember 13 um you know our black and african-american students students of color are are uh are are obviously based on this survey not satisfied and so it's possible for us to to take a look at the things we are already doing the things we have in our plans now and accelerate them to help these students so i mean i i don't know i mean i think that there the survey tells me that we can take action now to um address some of the issues that we know are there already that have been confirmed by this survey i mean i don't know who can respond to that but that's i mean i can respond to that i think that we have to really i just want to take a step back i i definitely think that you have very valid questions but i want to i want to be very careful not to simplify the solutions we're talking about a cultural change like when you talk about you know the the cultural awareness i mean you know institutional racism has taken hundreds of years to evolve to where it is now and so when we talk about trying to address it and we are trying very desperately we have uh 77 of our staff members have taken the ideas course which you know talks about anti-racist strategies we've had you know several speakers come in we've had parent forums we've had a lot of things that we're trying to do we've done an audit of the curriculum so we're doing these things and and the one thing that we have to continue to do is you know provide teachers with resources and have conversations about the complexity i mean about race and you know people have to be comfortable to have these difficult conversations about race so we're talking about changing the culture not only in the school district but also in the community so i think that we have to you know i i get kind of nervous when we say well we here's the data and then now we need to change it and yes we do need to change it and and we're trying very hard to change it but i don't want to give the false impression that this is going to be something that's going to happen within the next three or four months we're not going to dismantle institutional racism which has been around since the birth of this country so i mean i think that we need to you know we need to understand that and we need to respect that and we need to understand what has to be done and and really delve into conversations i mean i don't know how many times we've had conversations in the school committee about you know institutional racism and the reasons how and the origin of it within the community i don't know how many people in the school committee have taken an ideas course or have a cultural awareness training so it starts with all of us so i just want to make sure that we're we're very careful and not to oversimplify the solution to a problem that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years yeah i don't mean to yeah i'm well aware that it's a complicated problem i work with the de i consultant in my day job so i i uh i uh i understand that i'm saying if there are programs and activities that we have in place right now um designed to help students uh in this cohort all i'm suggesting is and i i don't have that list at my disposal it might be a time to accelerate those activities to help these kids that's what i'm suggesting no i i totally 100 percent agree with you and and getting back to like the learning models i i want to i want to also talk about you know when we went into this we knew that the hybrid had some you know they had there were some cons to the hybrid learning model when we talked about it we we shared it with the community we said that the days that when the students are at home which is my hypothesis as to why parents are not very happy with that program is because of the days where the kids are not in school that they're not having the contact with the teachers that they would like the consistency isn't there and i and that's the comparison in my mind between the remote program and the hybrid program but i still think that we need to reach out to the families and get more um you know targeted information as to what can we do in this what we've been dealt with right so you know looking at the health protocols and looking at the things that we have to do to keep people safe what can we do within this this limited you know realm of learning environment that we've been dealt with what can we do in that in order to accelerate what we need to do and i think one of the things that we need we need to look at is like what type of hiring we can do to provide support for students on a remote learning day that's that's my initial response to that and we've tried to do that um and and you know it's just like looking at the pool of people that are out there to hire i mean we want to get quality educators but that's to me and and anybody who are out and any of my colleagues who also work in other districts that's one of the main problems that we're all having is trying to support students in the remote learning piece so when you talk about their i think we know what we need to do but trying to to advance and make sure that we do it i mean some of the things that are out of our control so that's just one of you know to answer to one of your questions and then yes we're learning how to use the online tools we're becoming more efficient at it so i mean i think that every day teachers are learning and they're they're they're evolving and how we're responding to students needs in this particular environment um and it's just taking time so i just want to just highlight that i think you have very valuable questions i think that's great thank you for saying that what are concrete steps are you taking to improve the communication between the family school communication in the sixth grade if i could actually jump in on that i know that both principals have spoken about that and have started looking at the specific breakdowns within their building data to see are there subgroups particularly that are having a harder time hearing from them are there strengths within it and and so i i do know that both principals themselves have mentioned that they're looking at it and trying to learn from the data about how they're going to address it and um unprompted by by myself or anybody just upon them looking at their data so um i'm not sure what their action steps are but i know that they're looking at it so i think that's important for you all to hear additionally though just to come back to what you were saying about action steps tomorrow afternoon we have a group of young people that represent the middle schools and the high school that are a part of a learning cohort called learning with equity and they are meeting with administrators who are a part of a commitment leading with equity cohort that have been working for a number of months with the school reform initiative and pegasus springs and we're we're actually going to be meeting to hear from the students tomorrow and so this might be a perfect opportunity jeb to your point about accelerating this is something that's a year-long commitment that the district has made and the way it's set up is so that teacher leaders and district and school leaders sit back and hear from our student leaders who are secondary level students specifically members of our underrepresented students and a lot of the subgroups that have been mentioned in the data today and they're going to speak up and we sit back and listen and we hear from them and then we take our cues from them so i don't know what to anticipate from tomorrow but um i guarantee you that's going to be a perfect opportunity for us to accelerate and then to to amplify what we hear from them good that's what i was looking for something concrete you're doing right now to respond to the data and something you're doing next sorry okay thank you very much for that that's what i also want to say we've had a we've had staff to also be in various different types of mtss academies we've had uh some of our schools participate in the culture responsive teaching academy we've had um and and then also part of what sarah just uh talked about is that we've had a group of staff and administrators also there's a there's a staff portion of that that they've been attending uh workshops over the last few weeks we're also forming a dei uh group within the district level dei group that is going to um you know come out with a mission statement and a vision statement and a organizational chart of how they're going to communicate with different uh stakeholders within the community so we are doing things right now in order to set a foundation for how we can move forward but again i just want to i just want to again emphasize the fact that this is going to take time to change a culture because that's what we have to do we're trying to dismantle institutional racism and that's going to take time yes i don't disagree with that i i um so the other point though is you know i mean i've said this and i and uh you know i think what our our first speaker spoke about tonight was what what a lot of people want is is more in-person learning and i appreciate the uh distinction or the comments made about um the four person that the students that are that are in school four days a week and some of their dissatisfaction but that is by and large a different cohort with different challenges and you know so i it's it's it's hard to make a comparison a completely equal comparison the other thing is that um this is anecdotal but some of the remote learners that i know in my own you know that we know in our own circle are our our families that have a little more support for their students and so uh it's a different situation sometimes and so i don't know if the data actually got down and tell you that but i can i know i i have a sense of it anecdotally but anyway my main point is i think if we could all work together to bring students back this spring in some levels particularly in grades k through two we're going to be responding to the concerns in the survey and we're going to we're going to do a lot of good that's it can i just make a quick comment um i i i just want the community to understand that the elementary principals have been talking about how to do this bring more students back since november um and so there's not a lack of intent on wanting to do that the the issue there are a lot of other issues around that that we need to um have addressed and i i mentioned that earlier i i think that um vaccinations are a very important part of any kind of planning to do more students in district the thing is in or we had this discussion last summer in order to have more students in a classroom we have to change the distance that the the students are going to be sitting um and you know that i think there's gonna be some parents on so you're gonna have some issues with that as well as long as students are not vaccinated these are real concerns and you know we certainly are and have been and will continue to look at ways that we can have more staff in remote days they have more tutoring for students we we're gonna continue that effort but i don't think we can divorce the issue of vaccines from what you're talking about i really don't and because we have already worked with you know with the how many kids we could have in a classroom and maintain what the cdc still says is the amount of distance that you should in your life have with people we've heard one thing over and over and over again is social distancing and that is six feet with masks and if we're going to have students come back more fully and honestly there is not an administrative there's certainly probably teachers would agree with this that we want to have this happen but we also have to be very practical about what needs to happen in order for more in person in in in our schools and that's if we're going to have cohort a who has 10 12 students and cohort b and we combine them we're gonna have 20 24 students in classroom yeah i mean i would say uh uh there are districts that don't have students six feet apart i think i'm not i'm i'm at i think the first thing we would do is survey parents to see how they would they would they would feel about that and it would i don't know what they i don't know what the response would be if you said you know um i really don't know um if you if we did a survey question at some point in the year and we said assuming teachers are vaccinated um and we're otherwise able to open schools would you feel comfortable with your child in a seat that's that's three feet or or six less than six feet apart from another student's desk i don't know how the survey would go i really don't i don't know what parents i don't know what the what do we tell us it's worth asking at some point in time and then we'd have to see i agree with that dr bogey we'd have to we'd have to do a survey we'd have to get the information we would have to see what parents say i don't know what they would say either i don't but it's worth doing at some point in time and we don't want to we don't want to like delay the process so if the survey if people are starting to get vaccinated that's a good time to start the survey to see what people think not wait until too late in the year so that we can't turn around and get kids in school and jeff i wasn't sure if you were asking but i just wanted to pull up the two um questions side by side because you mentioned the four day a week cohort and then students with ips so this is them just side by side right being at the trends um and they are comparable trends but they are a difference in numbers you have 159 students who are in the four days a week and then 385 students who do have ips so obviously not every single student who has an ips is in the four day a week program let alone the hybrid program we have a lot of students with ips who are also in remote um but you do notice a similar trend in terms of where on the heat map they're having the same experiences so i believe you mentioned that i just wanted to be able to pull it up side by side to confirm thank you okay thanks that's helpful all right thanks very much i'm i'm good uh mr schlickman wow um thank you for doing this look this is the first time we've administered the survey and this is one of those things that uh are most useful when they're longitudinal in nature the other problem is we're administering this survey in a very peculiar time in that we're not running a district in the way we would normally run the district because nobody is going to go and say hey i've got a great idea let's not have kids come to school why don't we do a hybrid model instead because people would like it well nobody's going to like it and to find out in the survey that people don't like the hybrid model really isn't exactly headline news it's sort of like uh uh polling people to see who likes broccoli more than hot fudge sundaes you know uh it's not remarkable there there is data in this survey that is useful for building administrators to tweak things but i think the power of the survey is going to be as we plan for our return in the 21-22 school year things that we are looking out for things we're going to tweak and then for trends that we're watching as we're moving forward because if you have the same survey going forward and you notice differences in outcomes you can then inquire as to why these changes are happening i wouldn't i wouldn't put too much stock in in any one survey at this point and i'm certainly not using this as evidence to to say that we should open school because we know we should open school we know the kids learn best when when they're in school with teachers and other kids the only question is is when can we do it safely because we're not this isn't a political decision this isn't a choice this isn't what we're doing on a basis of a survey this is what we're doing because of the health status out there and things are changing there's more contagious strains out there building and there's a vaccine coming out and and it's a race in time between the vaccines and and and the mutations of this virus so where are we going to be in a month two months three months six months i don't know i have much more faith in the national administration right now it's going to be able to tell us firm answers i have a national administration that is intent on setting the stage to have kids back in school in a hundred days i i'm firmly believe that we we could and should do it if we have vaccinated teachers but i'm not a health professional i'm an educator i'm appreciative of the data but i'm also aware that the data is compared to what and on one level the comparisons are to a baseline that extends before the my assumption is is the baselines that compare before the pandemic started seeing this as a national organization let's just use it for what let's just thank the the the folks that put the survey together look at this longitudinally re-administer it later in the year re-administer it beginning and next year watch the trends and see what tweaks we can we can have from it and not try to read too much into this data that is not particularly relevant because it wasn't normed in unusual circumstances um and that's just my gut reaction to the whole thing i've got more questions as a data person all i want to do is peel into this and unpeel the onion and ask questions and think about what's going on underlying the data that's been put before us because it's it's a high altitude view so to speak but as long as people are looking through it asking questions looking to tweak things looking to make things better and we can see some indicators of movement and we trust the educators are doing this which i do uh i i'm i'm appreciative we did it and we should celebrate this rather than trying to pick it apart mr hainer thank you all for the work you've done on this survey quick question you're planning on uh re-administering the test at the end of the year what are you looking to to see for for growth or comparison uh simply put that any goals or areas of growth that we have identified and made intentional efforts to grow around we have improved around and that our students and our families and our staff are feeling better learning more and are more connected to their community that being said my concern is and i appreciate and agree with everything dr mcneil had said earlier that fourth grade retired school teachers saying this i think you should tailor the questions to be asked to those that you honestly believe that you've made some effort in uh the ones in the racial issue issues that were maybe identified and stuff are going to be long-term uh i don't want people to make the assumption that there's no effort being going forward uh in that it's going to take a lot of time in that so i mean i don't know if i've word worded that correctly i'm just nervous i think i do the yeah the um the assessment is called a 360 so what it's designed to do and it's evidence-based you select six different categories and it looks at the the whole child the whole learner the whole environment and once you pick the category the questions all come along with it so it's not like we go through once we picked learning model all those questions came with it because that's part of the evidence base and keeps it valid and reliable so we don't tinker with it because we want to make sure it's scientifically valid and sound um and so we're i hear what you're saying if if we were in control of creating the survey questions we were in control of selecting the topics that we wanted to measure and assess now that we've selected those we rely on the instruments and the content of the instrument stays the same and we opted into the 360 because we wanted to look at the whole child and that seems to be really resonant with our linkedin's goals and vision of our students as learners and whole citizens because we might be focusing on something about creating these wonderful learners and then we might see something ripple effect somewhere else as well um so it's it is a very comprehensive assessment and that was an intentional selection based on the efforts in in town did that speak to your question it does and it's a little bit of my math background i appreciate that in the to maintain the validity of the responses and stuff i just think it's important for the community to understand that there are going to be some short-term goals that we're working on there are going to be some long-term ones and don't be disheartened if we if we report in june that some of these areas have not seen significant improvement not because we haven't tried but because they did that our effort has to be sincere in long term um the the other thing is uh is there i've watched you touch little parts of the screen and stuff and it expanded and stuff is this something that the school committee can have access to that's a really great question i believe that we can set up certain user permissions i have to uh check with the folks at panorama on that because i want to also make sure that um whatever level is still protecting the uh confidentiality of our individual staff members and students and so on so i would want to make sure that there is a level that allows us to get access to aggregates and to still look at data but without um allowing access to user data and i don't know how to do that yet thank you yeah thank you jane um so i i actually had some just a couple of comments one thing that i found was interesting is looking across the board i was surprised um that from a parent perspective a second grader behaves more like a first or a grader or a kindergartener their experiences with their second graders are more like first graders and kindergartners than they are like three four and five um as somebody who has a second grader i was both like glad and sad because i was like oh gosh this really validates my experience but there's always been a part of me that's not like well he's in second grade like this should be going better and not for lack of trying from his teacher just this is this is really hard um and so i that was a real takeaway for me that that k2 um was from from you know from the parent perspective was was was really clear um and i'm glad that i'm glad mr. steelman talked about the communication um at the gibbs um i'll be interested to see as we look at that and i don't know what we're going to see from the staff surveys but it will be interesting to see um how if if we see that same trend um with staff so um and again i you know i don't know so i guess what i what i was what i'd like to know is um so staff have been surveyed and the the data is done and students are being surveyed or will be surveyed starting February 1st yeah their window opens February 1st and then there's i believe two weeks for that to be administered third through 12th grade we will send out a notice uh tomorrow to all parents letting them know about the survey and in that uh message will also be various links where families can you know view videos to learn more about the student survey and we also want to make sure that families know that this is voluntary that you know they feel their students want to opt out of taking the survey they can do that but uh we want to make sure that everybody knows that the survey will be administered to students in grades three through 12 and so a message will go out tomorrow okay and is the so is the intent so the intent is is to survey staff and families again in June and students or just students this one time no all three will be surveyed again okay so students are going to be surveyed in February and in June yeah the only reason there was a delay with getting the students around this time is um honestly because of our tech infrastructure specifically around our younger students not having school generated email accounts we had to find workarounds and a number of different things yeah lots of feelings about the emails okay um great all right um i think that was so i guess um will will you be coming back to talk to us about the student surveys is that i mean i love hanging out with you all absolutely no problem let's do it when would you so if they're being surveyed in February you would expect that data maybe is available in end of March April yeah um we can do something very quick turnaround similar to what we've got here if we're looking for a more robust share out to the community that's going to have to follow the pathway of what kersi was kersi was saying about getting somebody to share a larger presentation out with the community so we can definitely guarantee a school committee presentation with this level information and q&a um pretty rapidly around like after the February break and i'm i'm just saying this out loud because i'm a sometimes an auditory learner so i think what's important to remember is is that the that staff and and parents families were surveyed concurrently right waterfall waterfall um the family window was a lot larger so it started sooner and then before it closed the staff window opened and but the staff window was shorter but then the the kids it there's like i i just want us to be careful to be putting all these three on i i get we're trying to get 360 it's just like we're getting like you know like they're all they're all considered winter administrations okay but yes there is a gap in between the winter is 2020 for um for the adults and then for the youth it is the beginning of 2021 but then maybe we'll all have spring administrations later i guess i would imagine in a normal winter uh november and february wouldn't be that different but this year they feel like totally different and in a normal year it will be a fall administration and this would be so much better yes i will say i i do want to emphasize what miss bird talked about like just learning the logistics and and the technical aspects of getting everything organized and getting it out to the families and to staff and to students now that we have all that that infrastructure in place you know administering the survey will be a lot easier and so going forward we can be more planful for the dates because the all the infrastructure the technical aspect has been taken care of so we look forward to being able to administer the survey and not have the same type of learning curve that we had with trying to do this the first time and so as she talked about in the in the for next year we could do it in the fall and we have all the technical pieces already figured out great um dr alice nabby thank you sorry i know we've been talking about this a long time but as mr felon was asking his questions about the black or african-american students one thing i had noticed and hadn't had a chance to follow up on but did while he was talking was that it seemed like there weren't very many responses to in that category um and i looked up okay so first i'm not saying these responses aren't important or that they shouldn't be followed up but um we should also be aware of whether we're under sampling or something um i looked on desi and by desi standards we had around 42 response of in desi it says that we have 3.4 black or african-american which would give us 196 people 42 percent of that is 82 instead we have 32 students um respond on that survey and just in comparison for multi the micrarchy that's not students don't have families families not students we haven't given the student survey yet okay the only difference is where there's siblings that's all it's just right right and that's i wondered about that but since it says all respondents it doesn't say like all families i didn't i couldn't tell yeah so a question yes so then i don't know how many of those are siblings any rights so that that would confuse it but i still think that there's some under representation there and then with multi rachel it's overrepresented asian was underrepresented anyway i'm just saying that we should be that should be something that we're looking at too you know or some people not taking the survey and if not why not that's that's great data i'm glad you pointed that out and i think that we have to make sure that we for me i think that's translating the fact that we have to continue to work on the relationships with our those families and those subgroups in order so that they can trust that they will take the survey and that will take the survey and utilize the data in in order to follow through or what the things that we need to do so i think that that goes to that relationship that communication and and we need to continue our outreach to all of our families especially our underserved families right any other questions about this i think there are lots of conversations that will come not necessarily um that will that will come as part of the conversation about this so i appreciate um i appreciate that and welcome uh to arlington misery guys miss morgan can i also take a moment to acknowledge the work that miss bird has done on this and miss rodriguez and we did have a contingency of staff and administrators as miss bird pointed out but she definitely took the lead in organizing these these groups and getting them together in order to review the various questions and so she's done a lot of work on this so i just want to identify that and also highlight miss rodriguez she's only been in the district i think how long have you been in the district laura maybe three or four three months two months two months and she she hit the ground running so you know i just want to uh applaud both miss bird and miss rodriguez for the work that they've done on this and we are going to follow through on the information this is what we're doing i want the community to know that just because there was a gap between the the survey data being presented to all of you we did have access to it and we have been we do have things in place that we're following through on right now so all the things that you've identified we are working very hard to make sure that we're reaching out to families so uh we're we're we're and i want to applaud the teachers as well so we're we're continuing to learn and evolve and the models that we have and we're trying to make the best out of a situation that none of us asked for so i just wanted to highlight that thank you and a big thank you to jeff connors who's done a lot of help for us he's our new power school specialist as of last year so he's been stellar so thanks to him thank you for that yeah thank you all very much you will see us again we'll be back great thanks so much thank you thanks i'll let you go i know it's really late i don't know about you all i gotta work in the morning all right the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda all items listed with the asterisks are considered to be routine 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 vote approval warrant warrant number two one one five five check date one nineteen twenty twenty one and the amount of uh one one billion one hundred and thirty five thousand one hundred and thirty five dollars and fifty one cents vote approval of minutes regular meeting january 14th 2021 so move second second um roll call miss exton yes sir cardin yes dr ellison ampey yes mr filman yes mr schlickman yes mr heiner yes i am also yes subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget dr ellison ampey um budget met uh earlier this week and we discussed things i forget what we discussed i'm sorry i'm getting late it's getting late here um oh great i already shut it um um there wasn't any the budget calendar was the only thing we're continuing to work towards getting the budget presentations and um if anyone else remembers other things i'm sorry my way is talking about going to fincom um yes so that'll be fun yeah that's also on the calendar okay so so sorry relation mr heiner uh mr thelman and i met saturday for uh school committee chat there was only one parent who came in with us it was for six to twelve parents but it was a good discussion and generated a report this upcoming saturday will be school uh school committee chat uh the focus will be on families of children with special needs thank you um mr thelman uh mr cardin cia i know report mr thelman facilities no report mr schlickman policy we're working to schedule another meeting mr thelman high school building committee remia on monday i'm sorry tuesday february second at six p.m liaison reports announcements future agenda items uh executive session to conduct strategies strategies strategies strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which in held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect can to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted um arlington education association a ea union education collaborative for greater boston incorporated ed so moved second second roll call vote miss exton yes mr cardin yes dr allison ampey yes mr thelman yes mr schlickman yes mr heiner yes and i am also yes and we do not intend to come back