 So welcome to the school committee meeting on Thursday, September 21st. We're starting a little late because ACMI was getting everything worked out so that everyone can heaps here and see us, both in person on Zoom and at home are millions of viewers. Do we have any public comment? We have no public comment, so let me just welcome our two student reps, Graham Minnick and Amy Chilru. So welcome and please pop in if you have any questions. And we have Seif on the AEA rep on Zoom with us, thank you. And we will have lots of other people to introduce. Are we onto that? I think we are. Actually just so that everyone understands can I have a motion to change the order of the agenda so that the accountability and accountability system overview goes first and the wellness department report goes second. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so that passes, so thank you. So we'll be proceeding in that order. All right, so we have with us today all of our new leaders in Arlington and we have quite a few of them. And I'm a big believer in letting people introduce themselves, so this could take a minute. But I'm going to first ask all of our new principals and cabinet team members to come up really quickly. You'll speak into the mic right there. Share your name. You can do it from where you're sitting. Share your name, your role in the system and where you are and if there's one sentence you want to say about your start here in Arlington so far, that's great. And if not, you can just say hello. It's wonderful to be here and that's great too. So we'll start with Dr. Ford Walker and work our way. So I have principals and cabinet first. Some folks aren't able to be here tonight because they have other commitments. There is a really exciting Friends of Metco event happening right now that some of our leaders are at. So we're kind of dividing and conquering here. So you won't see everybody but those who are here and on via Zoom, we will say hello too. So Dr. Ford Walker, you start. Sure, thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Dr. Ford Walker. I am the new deputy superintendent of teaching and learning. And I would say fast and furious and exciting. That will capture the start of my time in Arlington so far. Super exciting. Is it team Pierre? Hey Kelly, I'm the principal at Stratton and I would say I am learning a lot and I'm... And Eva, I believe Ms. Liner is on Zoom. Yes, hi. Excuse me. Eva Liner, I am the principal of the Bishop School and I'm really honored to be serving the Bishop community in this new role and having been in Arlington for a few years already. I'm just very excited and the school year has gotten off to a great start. So, hold on. I'm being instructed to make my window bigger, so I'll do that and see if it helps. All right, Dr. Weiss. Hi, good evening. I'm Dr. Gretchen Weiss. I'm the new bracket principal. I'm not sure if assistant principals will get to. Michael van der Leyen is here with me. And we're just really excited. Bracket has been incredibly welcoming as the whole community has been and it's really been a joy to get to work with the students and the faculty there. Thank you. And Dr. Connolly? Good evening. Dr. Mitch Connolly, I am the interim at Hardy School. And again, I would just echo what Gretchen said. It's been an incredibly warm welcome since the beginning of July and it's just been really a privilege to start this journey. And it's been just from the professional development that we've experienced to the team building that we need to do at our school has just been exceptional. So I'm grateful for being here as well. Thank you. All right. And we also have a number of new directors, assistant principals, many of whom are switching roles this year, but not necessarily new faces. So we'll get started with Ms. Spinney. I don't know if she's able. Was she able to make it? Liz? No, she's not able to make it. She had formerly been the assistant principal at Stratton School. So we're excited to welcome her at Bishop. Great. And Ms. McEwen. Not sure if she was able to be here. No. She is the new assistant principal at Pierce and she has moved over from being the assistant principal at Audison. So it's great to have her at Pierce, the elementary level. She's really enjoying it. Mr. Amaral. Thank you. My name is Michael Van Der Leen, hyphen Amaral. Just got married, so that's my new name, Van Der Leen. It's been a privilege to be part of the bracket community. I'm the assistant principal there and it has been incredibly welcoming to echo Dr. Weiss's comment. And I'm very excited to be here and to begin the work of our strategic plan. That's really exciting to me and to see part of the initiatives happening here. Thank you. Thank you. And not a new face, but a new role. Ms. Parritz. Lovely to see you all, Cape Parritz. Leadership, development and onboarding. I'll be working this year on elements of our strategic plan. And I would say that the very, very best thing so far this year has just been getting to know everybody in all the different schools and to break out from just that one school focus into the district and it's been great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And Kelly Bostwick. Oh, there you are. Here she comes. Good evening. My name is Kelly Bostwick. I'm the new middle school special education coordinator. So I'm located at Gibbs and Addison School and it's just been a pleasure to get started. I feel a very strong self belonging. It seems like I've always worked here in some ways in some ways, not so much, but I'm learning. So thank you. Thank you. All right. And Mr. Coleman. Not a new face, but a new role. Yeah. Kyle, you formally knew me as the math and computer science director, but it's been exciting to move into the new role of data research and accountability. For me, the start of this has been just a lot of learning, but being able to engage with the districts as a whole in a different way has been a pretty awesome experience. So thanks for the time. I'll see you in a couple of minutes. Great. And filling in the interim math director position. Octavia, is she online? She wasn't able to make it. No, Octavia. I don't have full memorization of who was making it and who was not. No, she wasn't able to make it today. And Rachelle Smith also not able to make it today. Octavia is our interim director of math and computer science. Rachelle is our interim assistant principal at Audison Middle School. And Shayla Lowe is our brand new, as of I believe this week, interim director of Mac Co. And last one is Mr. Scott O'Brien. Go ahead. Hi, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be a part of the Arlington School District. It's been welcoming and reassuring and like a new family. And I'm so excited for all the new initiatives, especially in gearing towards students' mental health and the secondary planning processes. Thank you for having me. Thank you. It's a really dynamic group of educators that we have joining our team. They've been off to a running start and it's been a lot of fun. And it's been wonderful also to see those who are shifting into new roles bring their expertise and experience from previous roles into what they're doing now. So thank you all for coming. You can stick around. It's a really exciting agenda. Or you can head out because I know you've had a long day and you have a long day ahead of you tomorrow. Madam Chair, before you all leave. Wait. As a former school administrator and principal, I will say that the most important thing that folks do is hire people into the district. And over the past few months, in conversation with the superintendent, talking about all the hires that she's making and the positions we need to fill. And this drama has ended with such happy endings that when it's come to the point of making a commitment to hire somebody into these positions, to hire you, that she was thrilled and with the enthusiasm of the superintendent and the description of your qualifications and your abilities and your drive that Arlington has well served to have you. I'm sure all of us want to welcome you and ensure that we're here to support your work. Thank you. So thank you. What Paul said, that's right. Okay, great. Now you can head out. Okay, so next, because we have changed the order, we have Accountability System Overview with Matt Coleman. We know when to change slides. Yeah, I wrote some notes. Thank you, appreciate it. Hi again. Thank you for having me here tonight to present. Thank you to the subcommittee the other day, also just to have a little time and space to talk through some of this information as well. So goal for today, if you want to think about this almost as like a two-part series, goal for the day is to focus on the, not the Accountability System, some of the changes, some of the modifications, some of the things that are back in play and then also give a quick little overview of how we are right now relative to those. In October, I believe myself and Dr. Ford Walker will be talking about outcomes. I think that's gonna be a much longer and broader presentation. So for today, really just think about this as the general start to the conversation about Accountability. So, next slide please. We're gonna go through the summary of the system in general, the different components. We're gonna go through the indicators specifically. When we talk about being measured, what are we measured by? We'll go through the pathways. There's a new aspect to the program for this year that kind of gives a sense of where we are relative to 2019, 2022 and then also today, how they assign points. And then at the end, it's gonna be a little overview of where we are right now in our Accountability System. Next slide please. So, whenever we see this big broad report, just to kind of give the general 30,000 foot view at the start, there's usually two percentages that are offered. One is a percentile ranking for where we are relative to similar schools. I'll explain that in a little bit. And then another percentage that we get is our ability, percentage, our progress towards our goals that were established by the state. That's the Criterion Reference Point System. So, for these two parts right there, they're interrelated, they're connected, but I'm gonna dig into the Criterion Reference Component first, which almost talks about how we're doing with those metrics that the state has set forth for us. So, overall, on the right, overall we're looking at five different specific indicators that are gonna guide a lot of this. Achievement, student growth, high school completion, that is only for high schools, obviously. Our EL proficiency, we're not gonna talk too much about that today, that's measured with access, and then additional indicators as well. So, those are the big buckets where we're receiving scores, metrics, and we're kind of judged against. Next slide, please. I'm not gonna go through all of these, but this gives a sense of, within each of those indicators, what aspects of our testing or assessments that are there. One thing that I like to point out, just so I'm looking over this over here, additional educators, the chronic absenteeism, pretty much something to note, I will talk about that a little bit, and then the additional educator, percentage of 11th and 12th graders completing at least one advanced course. This has been a particularly strong area for us as well, which has been really nice to see. The other ones I think somewhat make sense, we've all seen those scores, but these are all the components of each of those indicators that go into how we generate our scores. Next slide. All right, so this is where I wanna go a little bit slower now. So one of the big differences this year, when we're looking at our accountability information, is that the state has created two pathways for us to move forward. This was dictated in 2022, spring of 2022. At the end of last year, and I'm sorry, I haven't looked back at it, but we were given certain benchmarks or certain goals to strive towards. Now in the spring of 2022, they were looking at our scores relative to 2019. If our scores in 2022, let's say our math composite score was above the 2019 score, they gave us what was called a path forward categorization. That means that essentially, you have recovered back to where you were in 2019, and you are free to move forward. If you scored less than in 2019, they would give you a recovery pathway. That meant that essentially, you have to make up a little bit more ground. And then spring of 2022, they gave certain metrics and benchmarks for us to move towards. That's important just in terms of when we look at the categorization, because it's essentially saying, have we caught up? If you did, yes, where do you go next? Have you not caught up? Where are you going to meet those scores? Those two big targets were, categorizations are gonna come up in the next little slide, please. Can we skip to the next one first? I'll go backwards, sorry. Thank you. So here, if you look all the way in the right, essentially we have path forward, path forward, path forward, recovery path. This right here is the grid for our English language arts high school from this past year. If you were to go on our state accountability website, you can look at this. But this essentially on the right indicates where we are. So path forward for all students essentially means that in 2022, we had already achieved a higher scale score than in 2019. But then met target, what that means essentially is that the new target that they crafted for us and the end of 2022, we have met. So we're already ahead, we've met our interim target from there. If we have recovery path for those students who identify as Asian, the row across, it gives us a recovery path. So what that means is the 2022 score for that group was lower than 2019. So they set a target for us to reach and essentially we exceeded that target. So that's how we have to interpret that graph if you look at that information. Just to note, a lot of these in this category are already path forward, which I think is a great indication of where we were even at the end of last year for how we were doing for some of the benchmarks that the state established for us. Could I ask you to go back one slide now? Sorry, it was a better story in my mind before. So based on how we do in terms of meeting their targets, they give us points. If you can see to the target, they award you four points. Meeting, give you three. If you decline, they give you zero. These points accumulate and these points are actually how they generate our overall percentage of how we're doing. That all goes into it. Could you go now two slides ahead? And that's how we generate this big report. Now one of the things that's important for us for this year, this is the first year we're back to the full accountability system. So this means that they are actually giving us our criterion reference, how we did with our benchmarks, how we've done with meeting all of them and they're also giving us our percentile rank with how we have done in our meeting, our benchmarks against other schools. So this is a full scope of it. So they had a little bit of slide of hand the past couple of years with some of the MCAS just because some of the grades only took half of the test and for some years, 2020, they didn't take any of the test at all. All right. Before I go on to our scores, could I ask any questions about the general part? Does anyone have any questions? Nope. Yes, please. Billman. Just quickly, so in slide six, I'm sorry, slide seven, I guess it is, we're the reason, so that's the rating for Arlington, right? Path forward, and that target, path forward, decline, path forward, okay, and that's you're gonna go into more detail. So yeah, so that just, thank you for asking. I was trying to go through quickly. There's so many details. So they're looking through each of these different subgroups and when you see reason on the side then you can see the points in the next column to the left. If you see path forward, that means for all students, in 2022, we had already achieved past the 2019 score. So now we're okay. And then if it's met target, that means that if you see the 2023 targets, 517.1, they're calling that close enough with the 517. So they're giving us little steps, incremental steps for us to keep growing and achieving. And this is their way, the state's way this year in this transitional year of saying, all right, so from 2019 to 2022, this is where you are from 2022 to 23, where did you go from there? Did you go up? Did you go down? So we went down in a few categories from 22 to 23. Right. From a year, okay. It could have been, it could have been, and this happened for some of them when we dig into the deeper part. It could have been that in 2022, we were a path forward for certain subgroup, but then we decreased. And we may have decreased below the 2019, but they're almost using that as kind of a quick benchmarking in the middle just to tell you that 2022, you were doing well, and then that's where you're going from thereafter. Thank you. No problem. Any other questions? Okay, we're good. Awesome. All right. So this one is big as well. And this is the part that I wanted to transition to how we're doing. An aspect of the overall accountability system also includes assessment participation. It is expected that 95% of students in multiple ways in which you would look at this participate in the MCAS tests. So if you look at all students in a school, they want 95%. If you look at students within disability categorization, they want 95% of students participating there. This sometimes could be a little bit of a roadblock, but it's not that big of one. I just wanted to kind of make everybody aware that in addition to us meeting our benchmarks, assessment participation is also taken into account. It doesn't show through in a lot of the metrics, but it does show through in the categorization sometimes of schools and districts. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Next slide, please. So how did we do? The state gives every single district as a whole a percentage that represents your criterion score. So in re-read this, this tells us that the benchmarks, the targets that were set forth by the state, Arlington as a district made 89% of those, which is pretty phenomenal. And it was a great, great year for us. Meeting and exceeding targets for this, it's a good category for us to be in. If I recall from the presentation from the state of this category of those who are within the meeting exceeding, there was around 22% of all districts that were in it and we were one of them, which is great. Next slide. This is just a little categorization of all the different kind of rankings they can give schools. So schools of recognition, I know there was a little bit of conversation about that for us, but as a district, we're in the meeting exceeding and you can see what some of the other categorizations are. We're in the highest, say for the school of distinction category that we can be in. So great job by all of our teachers, administrators, staff. It was a good year for us in terms of meeting our targets. Next slide. This is how we performs for all schools. So school on the left, the accountability information. This is the way in which the state gives us a category. So not requiring assistance, let's say we're looking at the high school just means that we're doing okay. Meeting or exceeding targets, that's verified by the fact that the progress towards improvement targets is 92%. Anything above 75% is meeting or exceeding. That's that three out of four or four out of four. The school accountability percentile, the way in which that's calculated is they take last year's criterion reference score, multiplied by point four, they take that 40% weight, take this year's criterion rank score, or 92, have that at 60%. They create a single number and then they percentile rank all the high schools. So we are in the 85th percentile for all schools. And if you note, our progress towards improvement goals were pretty phenomenal across the board. And our school accountability percentile was pretty phenomenal as well. One last little tidbit about this before I kind of highlight one aspect. You can compare high schools to high schools. So when you look at 85% percentile for the high school, that is when you rank all high schools. For all of the other schools, they're listed as what are called non-high schools. So the middle school and Gibbs and OMS, they're in the same percentile ranking structure as our elementary schools. They're all considered non-high schools. They have another category which doesn't pertain to us. They're schools that might be 612 or different structured, but essentially all of our middle schools and our elementary schools are all together. The one that I wanted to note in my final little part before I kind of close and ask some questions is for us, for Thompson Elementary School, just wanted to highlight the positive. 82% progress towards meeting their targets is great. 87th percentile of all elementary schools. There is a little bit of a red flag because one of their subcategories had a lower than 95% participation rate. Something that we're not too concerned with. It's pretty easily identifiable and something that I believe that we can support our schools with. Overall, pretty fantastic year from an accountability point of view. Good job. And last slide. Any questions or comments? I really try to go in quick and efficient with a quick little overview of the system and then talk about where we were. Yes, Mr. from, sorry. Okay, Schlickman. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, first of all, just in terms of the Thompson, just to give the actual data behind that, we had 45 students with disabilities who were eligible for testing and 40 of them took it, which is a 93% participation rate, which is below 95, which is why they got dinged. You want everybody to take the tests and I understand that, but the performance overall of that school was good. The one I wanted to mention, I mean, there's a lot of good news in this report. A lot of good news, but I want to say that if you do a sort on these scores, odd us and just blows the doors off of everyone. I mean, you can sort it based on the two categories. I think that the second category tends to be the one that has a little more influence in terms of the way that he's putting together the data. But no matter how you sort it, Thompson's like 10th, 12th highest score in the state. Now, well, I mean, it's just extraordinary. And not Thompson, I mean, Odesson. Odesson was like 10th or 12th in the state. It was just totally extraordinary. I remember when I first came on the committee, Odesson was the school we were concerned in. Now we're celebrating that the Odesson is just being this outstanding school. And middle schools, first or second middle school in the state, there's this grade six school in Needham, which was sort of above us in the sort, but there's nobody else who's running a middle school who's doing better on this accountability metric than the Odesson. So I just, I want to highlight the fact that if you go take a look at this Odesson scores, I mean, accountability scores aren't everything. They're just one bit of information. They don't, you know, it's the magic that's being done by teachers interacting with students and parents and community that's making it work. But this number just blows me away that we have such an outstanding ranking out of that building. And some of the growth, and we'll talk about this more in the next presentation. Some of the growth for some of our elementary schools within certain categories has been pretty phenomenal as well. It has really contributed to some great, and just to echo it, this is one lens and one way to look at schools and has values as its pros and cons, but the overall growth, the overall shift towards us meeting our targets has been great. This next one. Thank you very much for this overview. It's helpful to get a background, I think it's helpful for the community too. Thinking about the Thompson mic, does this have to do with people opting out of taking that? Yeah, I mean, I'll, I think just to start from a broader narrative, I think there are families, folks, even in the town that I live in, where reflecting upon the need to send your children to school while the MCAS is occurring is part of it. And I do feel as though when looking at this and digging into this, that did contribute to some of the suburbs for not meeting the participation rate. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Anyone else? Any other questions? Gordon? So as, I mean, you just got the state at last week, but as you dig into it more in the areas where we decline instead of making any improvement, is that an area where you would look to focus efforts next year or are there other things? There is, yeah. What do we look at to sort of drive our efforts for the next year? So I mean, you have to, for the accountability information, it's 30,000 feet. Like I don't mean to go through it quickly, but this isn't the meat. There's more narrative, there's more nuance to this. And that's why that October presentation is hopefully gonna be more informative. But yeah, I did intentionally highlight chronic apocentrism here for a reason. It might tie to something that we'll talk about later in terms of areas of growth and what we might see in terms of supporting some students for some of the achievement within different grade bands of let's say, ELA or science. There's something there that could form and shape future goals or future initiatives that we wanna do. Great, thanks. Okay. Ms. Morgan? Yeah, just, I'm interested in hearing about chronic apocentrism in October, so. We'll do this. It's better. It's better. But there are pretty significant disparities between different places. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. Thank you. I intentionally mentioned two parts, the chronic apocentrism and also the advanced coursework. Those might be interesting things to talk about more broadly later. We love a good pre-teach. That's what we need. Anyone else? I get to talk first. Yeah, go talk first, I don't care. I just wanted to make one little point. Okay, so I understood what you said to Mr. Cardin in terms of next year, but are you able, and this kind of goes to the superintendent too, to use this data to change anything in this school year? I mean, I know you've got things going, but can we so react that fast? Mr. Coleman's extensive work over the summer digging into what we did have available because we get raw data several weeks ahead of leadership workshop, for example, has been to get us organized so that school leaders could use the data in our planning for their school improvement plans. So what's gonna happen over the next many, actually a few months, because we're gonna try to spread school improvement plans out a little bit, which I'll talk about more in our next meeting, is that you're gonna hear first about the district and what the district has done, what our district data tells us, and then what, in terms of district initiatives, we need to focus on and plan to focus on. I think a lot of the data is pointing us in the direction we were planning on heading already, so there's not really a need for significant pivots, but we can tie and connect the work that we're already doing and the work of the strategic plan to what our data's telling us and that's gonna be the goal of the Outcomes Report. And then as you hear from schools, we can get into where one site may have an area that they really need to focus on because of what they're seeing in other indicators or individual academic areas or individual grade bands. And so you should see consistency in the data reporting that's happening in the school improvement plans. We've been improving towards that for a couple of years now and that's where we can get into a little more detail about a specific school or specific content area and initiatives at that level. So you'll keep hearing about this and how it is shaping the planning of the schools. The more granular you get, the easier it is to shift the direction of a ship towards addressing a specific indicator that might have an area of growth that came up in these reports. Great, thank you. Mr. Schliffman? Yeah, I just wanted to note one thing is that this gets very granular. Any group that has more than 20 kids is countered and assessed within this. And the bigger the school, the more diverse school, the more data points you have to enter into this calculation. So it's a little more difficult for, say, a large school like the Addison, which is one of the largest middle schools in the state to do well in this type of calculation. And so as a district, we're doing even better than it would look because the system sort of biases towards smaller, less diverse schools. Best places to get dinged. Yeah, yeah. Great news. Well, thank you very much for coming and giving us this overview and it was very clear. I appreciate that. Not a problem. Thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. I think I'll see you all in a month, maybe? All right. See you soon. Have a good rest of the night, everybody. Okay, thank you. Okay, so next we have is Visco with the Wellness Department Report and Update. Well, good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me. My name's Kim Visco. I use the pronoun she, her, and I'm beginning my 18th year here in the district. Second in this role. Just a few tidbits of myself. My family lives in Norwood. I have a fifth grader and a third grader at home. So a lot, I'm gonna recap sort of last year, what we did over the summer as well and what we're moving towards working on this year. The first thing we did last year when we came together as a wellness group and we had a lot of new members in that group, we came up with a wellness department vision and made sure that we were aligning it with the district vision. So as a group with all hands giving input, our wellness division was to provide an equitable learning experience where all learners feel a sense of belonging, experience, growth, and joy. Our instructional practices will promote health and wellness on a daily basis. We work collaboratively with students to improve students' overall wellness. And from that, we also collaborated as a group to develop student objectives that we could see in existence K through 12 in all of our classes and all of our grades. So the first was to develop a plan for lifelong skills that will enhance overall wellbeing. Recognize personal needs and how to achieve them. Find appropriate practices that will enhance social emotional learning and wellbeing and strive to challenge themselves intellectually to develop a growth mindset. One example at all levels is cardiovascular fitness, how we can take that topic and hit all of these areas as far as student objectives go and really focus on growth and improvement and kids are learning what cardiovascular fitness is and how they can individualize it and improve their own personal wellbeing, not comparing to others. So next I'm gonna go over a K through 12 update and then break it down by level. So facts being our newest members in the wellness department, the facts department was added into wellness which was very, very important for a sense of wellbeing. That was a comment that our teachers made quite often is that being a part of a department as a whole increased their sense of wellbeing in the district. We did various K through 12 PDs last year, one being skill-based learning and health. This was a district-wide PD that we did where our teachers attended, learning how to bring in skills into the health classroom, so students are learning content but they're walking away with learning skills. We had a PD, district-wide PD on inclusive languages in classroom, in the classroom and curriculums and a district-wide PD on mindfulness and yoga practice. This summer we had the most teachers, I mean I've been here 18 years and we've had the most teachers this summer that volunteered to contribute their time to work on curriculum. We had a lot of updates, we had to really build a lot of our middle school curriculum and we had a lot of teachers that put the time in to get it to where we wanted it to be at the end of the summer. We created a K through 12 website and we're almost done but we're almost, most of our teachers are all finished with creating their personal websites or team websites. Okay, so our goal there is to really increase community engagement and to be able to share what's happening in class and what's happening on a monthly basis in all the classes, okay. And our website, just to kind of give you a look at what we're putting on there, what the public can see, what families can see. All of our standards that we align with are there, Mass Health Frameworks, I just want to point it out. We're now going to update that link because now it just passed this week for the new PE and Health Frameworks, which was a long time coming since 1999, so that's pretty big. You can go to the next slide. And then one of the great things about our department is that we hit so many skill themes in all of our classes. This is just a partial list, it could go on and on. It's one of the things that I've always loved about wellness in all of our courses and in the unique environment that we can bring out all of these skills in. You can go to the next slide. And then at all levels, we give an overview of our health topics. So when families can go on our website and go to each elementary, middle school and high school, they'll click on curriculum overview and they'll see all of the topics we are teaching at each level. And then they'll also have a Meet the Teachers page where they get to have a visual of who their child's teacher is and then that's where they can visit the personal pages or team pages of the teacher or the teaching group. So elementary update, we started the year off in the fall last year with Project Adventure PD and in that PD, there was a focus on diverse and inclusive activities that teachers can bring into the curriculum. We removed, this was big across the board. As most of you probably know, in the past we had done fitness testing at our elementary and middle school level and we removed that from our classes and there was a few reasons why we did that. But the main reason was we wanted to shift the focus on assessing kids and assessing, this is where you're at, this is what you need to improve on and move it towards a more teaching model where we're teaching about all the health related components of fitness and teaching about how you can improve on your individual fitness and growth. And last year, Gibbs had done quite a few assessments of students where they were given feedback to the teachers and it was overwhelming. Like kids really responded to this shift in how fitness is viewed and how it's practiced in the schools. We implemented our grade four and five human growth and development lessons. Our health teachers taught the lessons towards the second half of the year. I'll talk more to that a little bit later. And then we had teachers, many teachers bringing SEL activities into the classrooms. Our Dallin teachers worked with the SEL coaches and they were coached on bringing mind, heart, breathing into the classes. And I observed several of these classes and it was really wonderful to see. If you can picture a physical education class, let's take a third grade class. They're engaged in an activity unit and there's a lot of high energy. And then at the end of the class, rather than just those kids lining up and leaving, they would go to breathing boards all over the gym and they would start practicing those breathing techniques. You would see their bodies calm down, their minds calm down, then the teacher would bring them together and again, debrief, and then they would line up and leave and the teachers even commented and it's what a world of difference while they transitioned from one activity and one subject to another. And this past summer, we worked on revising our human growth lessons. We brought in activities that included peer discussions and problem solving into those lessons. And then our baseline PE curriculum, we used the Sparks curriculum and the teachers had binders and we didn't have anything that was accessible online for them. So we purchased the online license but we also organized it into our own K through 12 curriculum docs so that the teachers could easily access the units and download them and have them available to them in an easier format. At Gibbs and Audison, again, we removed fitness testing, shifted the fitness focus to measuring growth and goal setting. We integrated in various classes, mindfulness activities that we had learned through our PD sessions. The YRBS was administered in April which I'll speak to in a little bit and then the teachers worked really hard in our PE curriculum build throughout the year creating unit block plans. YRBS stands for Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Risky behaviors, survey on risky behaviors. And then in the summer, we also, our middle school teachers continue to work on curriculum by putting in lesson objectives to each of the units that we're teaching. And then with health made sure that we were aligned with our health and national health and sex ed standards which is gonna, not so much shift when we now bring in our mass health frameworks because they're very much, the national standards in our new health frameworks are very much in line. Next. And then high school. Well, one of the big things for the high school group for our PE department at the high schools, we survived the final year of constant class relocation. I mean, there were times where, Amy, you might've been in one of those classes where we didn't have a space, we didn't have a teaching space. There were so many times where they, there was a schedule conflict with we teachers thought they had a room and so we're done. We're now in a great place. All of our classes are scheduled with a consistent learning space. So that's great. YRBS was also administered for the high school in March. And our climbing course, which we haven't been able to use in several years, it's over at Grove Street. The town had, there was a project that was done over on the Grove Street Park which made our climbing course inaccessible. So this past year we were finally able to get it inspected again and some repairs that were needed, that were made and now we're just waiting on the course certification, which could happen any day now. Summer, we added, I forgot to mention one there, but we added new courses, new electives, Pilates, which will be taught quarter three this year. Advanced relaxation, our relaxation course has been so popular and many students and a lot of what drives how we decide on these electives is student voice. We are constantly serving students at the end of courses to assess the courses to improve them, but also to find out where the student interests lie and that's has a big reason how we built our programming. So advanced relaxation is an extension off of the relaxation course. Dance for fitness, we have a teacher that's piloting and rolling that out this spring. So we're excited to see how that class is gonna be running. And then marketing and customer service is also a course that we've added this year and I believe Mr. Schlickman, you might have asked a question last school committee meeting about the new space and does it influence what we can program? Absolutely, I mean, when you think about classes like yoga and dance and Pilates and having a new space with mirrors and just the environment does make a big difference because there's some courses that during the rebuild are taught in spaces that might not be the perfect environment for it. So that will definitely help when the time comes. And then I put a few slides on here just highlighting some of the YRBS results. We just got the report late August. So we've taken a little dive into it and in our department when we're teaching health lessons at the secondary level we do use this report in the results to drive a lot of our student discussions. So I know some of it's a little fuzzy and hard to see the company that provides the report. I don't know what happened with their graphing but I'll try to highlight verbally but the first is on bullying. This is high school results and yeah. Can I interrupt for a sec? Sure, let me just, can I take the temperature of the committee first? I'm wondering if we can have us split if we could stop here and ask for questions on all the stuff you've mentioned but also whether we would wanna hear the information about the youth risk and health survey at a different time because we're gonna need to talk up to you. I mean, it's up to you, either we can do it now but I thought we should take a break and hear if there's any questions about the department and your offerings and everything you've presented so far. So does anyone have any questions or comments? I don't have any questions or comments. I think I'll have a difference with you both. Ms. Morgan. And I wish this year would be great but. Ms. Morgan. So I had heard and you may not even know that this is happening but it sounded really great. So I had heard that at Strat and the PE teachers were working with some students during recess to sort of pre-teach the PE lessons so that it was more like accessible to them in when they actually came with their class to go to PE class. They were like pre-teaching the game or pre-teaching the scooter or what I don't know. Right, I think you're referring to some of our special ed students. We've created a class that they attend once a week and they're able to preview the activities of that week so that when they're with the Gen Ed PE it's not so overwhelming and they get to participate, practice, it's great. It's really a wonderful class to see and it's been so successful. And is that just happening at Stratten or have you been able to expand it? It's just happening at Stratten. At Hardy we will have the same similar class but smaller numbers, not as many students. Awesome, that's great. And when does that class happen? Meaning? When do they go for their pre-teaching class? When do the students go? Like specifically what day and time? No, no, no, I don't know, I couldn't say. No, like do they go during recess? Like do they go or do they go like? It's built into the schedule. Perfect. Yeah, it's built into the school day. So it's an actual period in the day. I can't tell you what they're not missing anything. But I couldn't tell you exactly. Great, that's awesome. I think it's incredible that that's happening and it's exciting that it can be, because I would imagine there are students across the district who would benefit from that. So, thank you. Ms. Gilson? You mentioned the, I have a question about you talked about in some PE classes I think, the sort of like ramp down work of the breathing boards. And I was curious, I think, did you say that was just at Dallin so far or? Dallin, yeah, Dallin teachers, they, yes, part of their student learning goal last year, they wanted to test this out. They wanted to try it, it's great. I mean, it sounds like something that would be great. Yeah, it's something that we would like the other elementary schools to do as well, because like I said, I saw it in action. And every teacher is going to close class a certain way, but this was, it was very impactful. So, we're hoping that Dallin teachers, we had them share out, and we're hoping that we can now get volunteers to try it at their schools as well. I would imagine that all of the teachers in a building would appreciate us having spent a lot of time with them. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. That position is a real challenge, especially for the younger kids. For sure, yeah. Anyone else? Mr. Cardin? Yeah, I just wanna appreciate all the work that you've done. Have you created a department? I think this, I don't recall, but this seems to be the first time that we've heard from a wellness director and presented about developments in the department. We've always used to have like part-time directors, I think, and they didn't, we're unable quite to the level of work that you've been able to do, so it's great to see, thanks. Thank you. Thanks. I, that's because we invested from having this role to be a point two to having it actually be full-time. And so the amount of work that your team has been able to do over these past two years to ramp up and make more consistent and richer the programming that's going on in all of our different sort of pieces of the wellness department is commendable and is because the community is invested in this department, which is great to see. Okay. And then I had a quick question, which was, I know you said you removed fitness testing. I thought some of it was required like by national or I mean there were present, nope, nope, okay. It's just something we've always done and it's caused, we've gotten a lot of student feedback over the years and it's caused a lot of anxiety and discomfort and I felt from what I came in in my assessment of it, the situation is that there was less teaching on the topics and just more, it was just assessing where students were and so I think we're moving in the right direction on what fitness, how fitness should be viewed. Okay, thank you. Ms. Morgan. So the fitness, is that like the PACER tests that you're talking about? Okay. So they still did that at the Odyssey last year. Not for, they may have used it but not as an assessment tool to measure them against the standard. They used it as warm ups, things like that. Some teachers had a hard time letting go of certain pieces of fitness, but we weren't using it to assess students and measure them up against the national standard. It was more of, it was more of a cardiovascular activity that the students individually could get a baseline assessment for themselves and then they could then attempt again later on in the unit to see improvement. Okay. And then what about the, because I think with Dr. Allison, there is a point at which we like weigh and measure kids at school like fourth grade. Yeah, the nursing department. Okay, that's the nursing department. Yeah. All right, we can talk to them then when they come. Yeah, they believe it's 10th grade or ninth grade and then like you said, fourth. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly, yeah. Yeah, okay, perfect, thank you. Okay. I just want to say I think that's great that you're shifting the focus towards the learning and away from the assessment. I think it has the potential for real long-term impact on the way that kids engage with fitness and very different from my own PE of the babies. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, that's on a personal level, that's one of the reasons why I became a PE teacher. Try to change that. Okay, great. So yeah, if we want to go through the, I think we can go through the YRBS stuff fairly quickly and then we need to do the grade four and five update. Yeah, okay. So in general, all of the data that in the next several sides that we'll see are all into public schools. We are below the middle sex league average and we have seen the trend data decrease in many of these categories. So with bullying overall, 7% of high school students who were bullied on school probably in the last 12 months, some of the trends you're gonna see from slide to side with online bullying and bullying and some other categories is transgender students, LGBTQI plus students were significantly more likely to be bullied. Excuse me a second. You said we're below the middle sex league. I'm assuming this means that lower is better. Yes, yes, just under on some significant on a few others. So for middle school, there is no trend data on this but the numbers were 14% of middle school students bullied on school property. Again, with this transgender and LGBTQI plus students being significantly more than the average. Electronic bullying there for trend data, we can see that it's gone down since 2021 4% for high school students in the past 12 months. And then for middle school students, again, no trend data because it wasn't done. It wasn't asked. The question may not being asked in 2021 but 7% of middle school students. And then for mental health, the overall 53% of high school students reported their mental health was not good. Sometimes most of the time are always with 11th graders, females, transgender, LGBTQI plus in Hispanic and Latino students significantly more likely to report that their mental health was not good. This, like I mentioned just before, is this type of data, one of the reasons why we are trying to include more mindfulness relaxation type tools is to hopefully have an impact on students and how they can view their personal wellness and walk away with some tools that they maybe can use to help. Okay, that's one of the things that we'll look at and we'll continue to look at as far as our programming goes. You already flipped. No? Yeah, yes. Okay, so this is middle school. So middle school was at 33% when it came to reporting on mental health in the past 30 days not being good sometimes most of the time are always. And then for substance abuse, these are gonna be hard to see but most of the trend data except for one when it came to substance abuse and all the categories went down. Alcohol use, the report was for students who were asked if they had a variety of substances in the past 30 days. So alcohol use was at 17%, bins drinking 8%, 4% for vaping, 10% for marijuana, cigarette smoking, 2%, 0% for prescription drug use. The two that went up in the trend data were bins drinking and marijuana use. And again, as I said earlier, we use this data in our classes with peer discussions like when we're talking about the topic of substance use. We try to include in a lot of that skill-based learning and health is where we try to pull in where students can practice skills that are gonna prepare them to make good decisions. In some of the classes at the high school level, we've included students thinking about their personal value system and scenarios that they may see themselves in and how they can prepare how they're gonna respond in those scenarios before actually being in those scenarios. So that's, we really try to bring in peer practice and peer discussion on these topics to hopefully influence their own decision-making when they're faced with them. And then for middle school, it was, let's see, the numbers were definitely much lower as we would hope for middle school, 2% for alcohol use, 1% for every other category, vaping, marijuana, cigarette, prescription drug misuse. And then the last piece of data included here was screen time. And in those relaxation classes I was talking about, we do spend a lot of time with time management with students and how they spend their time. And screen time ends up being a topic of discussion when students are mapping out their day and what they spend their time on and how much time is spent here and there. So we try to have them even think of alternative activities they can do in place of screen time. And then some takeaway up middle school, yep, it was, I forgot to mention, so it was 73% for high school students and then middle school, it was about 60%, excuse me, 52% engaging in three or more hours of screen time, not including homework. So, and then some of the takeaways our department will take from these surveys is we know there's a need to continue to include bullying topics at all levels, K through 12, continue to include skill-based lessons in health classes. The feedback we've gotten from the high school students on practicing skills in class has been positive. You know, it's made them sort of open their eyes to thinking about these skills and how they would actually use them. And then it also justifies the importance of inclusive lessons and academic conversations to support peers. And then just through, you know, last year we did quite a few community forums on different health-related topics. And for this coming year, we have some that will repeat because they're very popular and parents have given the feedback, they're interested in seeing these topics again and then possible forum ideas for this year. Navigating social media at home, conversations about gender, collaborative problem-solving at home. So I'm looking forward to collaborating with Wesley and her department of communications and family engagement to, you know, bring more of these forum ideas for families. And that is action items for this year. So we've already started the conversations of bringing academic conversations into our classes and working on bringing the strategic plan initiatives into our student learning goals and professional practice goals. These we would work on during department time. And our department goal, one of our department goals this year is inclusive language throughout all curriculum. And strategizing ways to increase the sense of belonging into our K-312 classes. Again, we will collaborate on this during department time. And one of the things we would like to research is a new health curriculum that is skill-based, inclusive and has an SEL, social-emotional learning focus. Great, thank you. Does anyone have any questions about this aspect of the prison? Ms. Morgan? Just one thing on the takeaways for the YRBS. I guess I would just say include the bullying topics, include skill-based lessons, certainly. I think inclusive lessons, even if these numbers went to zero, we should still have inclusive lessons, right? So they're not, I don't really see in my mind this data to me doesn't justify the importance of inclusive lessons. Like I think we should just do, that should be what we do, right? Regardless of, I mean, maybe one day we'll get our bullying numbers to zero, right? Which would be amazing. And then we wouldn't see a disparity among various groups of students. So that would be my only feedback, was that for me, this data doesn't necessarily justify it, if that makes sense. Like I think we should just be something. I agree. I know you do. I agree. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else? Mr. Schluckman? I just wanna say thank you for the overview. I know that we're looking for belonging joy in the growth and we're gonna be looking. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey is really an important component of us being able to analyze our progress towards the mission of the district. So I anticipate that we'll be asked, as a committee, to be looking to direct resources and an effort to bringing those numbers down and making this the kind of welcoming, belonging place that we aspire to. Anyone, any other questions on this part? Okay, I have one question which was when you called out that the transgender students and LBGQ plus students were more likely than the average high school student to have been bullied on school property and stuff. Do we have a comparison of how that is in other schools? In across middle sex? Yeah, across middle sex or? Don't. Middle sex league, are you referring to high school or middle school? High school? Yeah. High school, middle sex league was at 9%. Okay, and we were at? Seven. Okay. But that's overall, correct? Yeah. So they don't disaggregate that. They don't disaggregate. By middle sex student who identifies transgender, they don't disaggregate. Right, well yeah, we don't have the data on if who was more likely to be bullied, yes. Yes, so they don't say like, in Arlington this percent of transgender No, we don't have that. Identifying students said they were bullied versus middle sex league. We don't, they don't give us that. They don't give us that. Okay. Okay, that was just curious. But they make the significantly higher determination when you get the data back? Like, has it said that they're significantly higher? That's coming from, that's, yes. Because we couldn't, we couldn't determine if it was significantly higher given that they don't give us the. We don't have the wrong. Incidence rates. Right. But they're, the YRBS people are saying it's significantly higher. Yes, got it. Are they saying it's significantly higher for everybody or for Arlington? Compared to all students in Arlington that took the survey. Okay, so it's. We have the ability to give them, so they give us, they don't give us the raw data. They give us a report that they do give us some ability to provide input and feedback on. So if that's something we wanna be able to compare against like how students who identify in particular focal groups are doing in Arlington versus against the middle sex league. That's something we could ask them if they'd put into the report moving forward. But they just give us the digest basically with a little ability to sort of manipulate what they're reporting on. Okay. Okay, thank you. And so now we go for part three. Thank you. You have a marathon today, but then it'll be done. All right, well this one's brief, not as lengthy. Okay, so next I'm going to, I'm gonna start with giving the background on the Sims grant and then move to the changes we made last year, changes we made over the summer to bring us to now. So first off, the Sims grant was awarded to Arlington Public Schools in 2021. The purpose was to update the grade four and five health human growth and development curriculum. The Y behind it. Students are entering into puberty at an early age. Education and human growth and development needs to reach students at an early age and also at their cognitive and emotional levels. Provide correct information to students, prevent students from participating in risky behavior and to provide an inclusive space for students who identify as LGBTQI+. We relied heavily on DESI last year to consult with us, to give us feedback and our main goal was to be inclusive to all students. So DESI, as it states, research shows that inclusion of LGBTQ topics and curricula corresponds to all students reporting that they feel safer in school regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. Curriculars should reflect issues of sexual orientation and gender identity as relevant to be inclusive across all subject areas, including but not limited to health, social, science, language arts and family curricula. So last year, we made some minor changes in order for the lessons to be inclusive for all students and to line with the Arlington Public Schools vision. The lessons were aligned with the national sex ed standards for grade four and five. Puberty content remained the same, but the proctor and grant gamble video that was part of those original lessons we removed and we replaced them with teacher talking points. Okay, so the content was all there, but we did not show the video. DESI's feedback regarding the proctor and gamble video specifically was that binary gendered language is referring to people's anatomy and it doesn't reflect all students. The two resources to explain gender were added. The lessons were well received by students and the survey results from those students. As you can see here, 72.3% of students learned something new, 84.9% of the students felt the information was organized in a way that they helped with their understanding and 80% of students did not find the information confusing. And that brings us to this summer with the revisions that we made this summer. No puberty content was changed from last year. The visuals were adjusted. So we removed the gender unicorn in the amaze video and last year, grade four and five received the same lessons. So this year, each grade will receive different lessons. So we made that adjustment because of the fact that now this year's fifth graders would have received last year's fourth grade lessons. We stretched the content to span over grades four and five and we added more activities to include peer discussions about puberty and problem solving activities as well. Parent information night will be scheduled for January, February of this year. And as always, if any parents, caregivers reach out to me, I will schedule a time to review materials if needed. The topics covered in grade four, stages of development, growing up, sex assigned at birth, gender changes during puberty and products used during puberty. Grade five topics, there will be a review of the grade four topics and then we get into pituitary gland hormones, reproductive organs. Okay, so thank you. Any questions or comments? So let me preface this. So at the end of our discussion here, I'm going to ask that we approve this curriculum. We can argue whether or not it actually needs approval, whether the things were changed enough. I would prefer that we just either approve or not approve depending on your vote because of the big to do last year and just to make it clear what our thinking is on it. And I appreciate Ms. Visco creating the presentation on short notice so that we would have the ability to discuss it. She's also provided us with the curriculum guidelines in our, in NOVA's and parents can see it there. And those will also be available to parents because it's the start of the year. So we will inform parents of the topics covered in the health curriculum as is required by regulation. Ms. Visco just articulated what the expectation will be for parents who want to go through and review the lessons which is that they have a meeting because the teaching of lessons is contextual. And so we want the opportunity for them to meet with Ms. Visco. And I believe you said you do not care how many meetings that is. So if families want, so this is not something that's gonna be like the full lessons with all that script posted on the website. But it is something that we invite families if they have questions to reach out to Ms. Visco and she could schedule some time to meet with her. Right, I meant, isn't the curriculum? The curriculum is posted publicly in NOVA's. Right, that's what, so that's available for parents now. And yeah, I wasn't talking about that. But we weren't intending on putting it on the website or like the slides on the website because it's easy to take that out of context and we invite families who want to review curriculum to meet with Ms. Visco. Okay, so any other comments? I just want to thank you for the work that you've done and for the quick responses last year and then the deeper dive over the summer. And while I agree with Ms. Morgan that we should be doing this regardless of our bullying numbers, I do believe that it will make an impact on individual students' experience in school and I think it's extraordinarily important. Any other questions Ms. Ekston? Yeah, I also appreciate the work that you did last year in making changes, responding to feedback and also making changes based on what is best for our students in our classrooms. And I know that it was not easy for you at times but I think it was the right thing to do for our students and so I will also be supporting this curriculum moving forward. Anything? Yeah, so I just want to question the requirement that there be a meeting to review the materials. I mean the law says we have to make them reasonably accessible to parents, guardians for inspection and review. Is that reasonably accessible, requiring a meeting? That's a very common practice in a lot of districts with this content. It's required that the topics be shared with families and posted and that we have the meetings to review them with families, which we will be inviting parents to and letting them know well ahead of time when those meetings are happening and it is a reasonable expectation that if you want to go into detail, into deep detail with the lessons beyond the forums that we have the opportunity to make that a conversation. So at the forums, these materials will be displayed? Well, Ali will give a presentation and I will present various pieces of the content in of the lessons. I'm not gonna hand out copies of, like Ms. Dr. Holman said, I'd be glad to meet with parents to discuss the lesson plans because as she said, a lot of things when you're looking at lesson slides, a lot of things can be taken out of context. When teachers are using the lesson slides and they're speaking to the slides, there's a lot of explanation that goes along with it. Right, but the state law says we need to make them reasonably accessible to parents. And we have them in Novus. I'm just wondering why we're hiding them in Novus and not putting them out there for parents to look at. The intention is not to hide them it's to invite the conversation. We also don't have the actual slides in Novus. We have the curriculum, which has pictures of many of the slides but it's not the actual slides themselves. It's an overview. So it's a little different. Okay, I mean, I think we're inviting a complaint about our compliance with the law. Okay. I'm just curious what the solution would be. And I'm not kidding. If we don't put it in Novus to make it reasonably accessible what would be another way to go? You put the, are you, is there a proposal on the table to ask the district to consider putting in the entire curriculum with the slides? Is that what the... When requested by a parent, they should be emailed or given a link to the entire curriculum. I'm not sure the board has the authority or should actually get into... I'm not making that as a request for the committee to act. Yeah, okay. I'm just saying in my opinion to ensure compliance with the law that would ensure compliance with the law. If we don't do that, we're inviting a complaint. That's not my decision to make. Yeah. I'm happy to review with council what they would recommend. Great. That's what I would suggest. That's what I would suggest. Okay. So now that that's taken care of would anyone like to make a motion to approve the curriculum as presented? So moved. Any further discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any objections? Nope. That passes unanimously. So we have an approved curriculum. And thank you very much. And your marathon is done. All right. Thank you. Thank you. So you're welcome. Hold on a second. We're going to policy because we have a wellness policy. Oh, that's right. Yes. Don't leave yet. Yeah. Next we have... We're gonna make you leave. We're never gonna let you leave. Love you so much. We just wanna keep it. All right. Okay. We have... Our next thing is policy. And one of the... I don't remember what... ADF. Okay. The policy that we are going to approve first is ADF which is not written here but is like health and wellness. Is the health and wellness part policy? Yes. So it's for second read. Do we have any discussion? I move approval of file ADF nutrition and wellness policy as presented. Okay. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that is approved. And now we are done with health and wellness for tonight. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your efforts in work with Ms. Morgan and the committee on this. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Next up, the file. Let's do JJE which is for second reading, co-curricular and extracurricular activities. I move approval as amended. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that passes unanimously. And the third one up for second reading is ACA-E, guidance from Massachusetts public schools creating a safe and supportive school environment. This is putting desi guidelines in our policy document. I move we adopt file ACA-E. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That also passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Great. Then next we are up to job description. DEI and FE, administrative assistant job description. Do you want to? Yes. So as part of our budget for this school year, one of the things that was, and there was some expansion of the diversity, equity and inclusion department, including two specialists. We were able to fill one of those specialist roles and we're very excited to have Miss Kitty Hodgkins join the team. And we're not able to fill the second of those roles. And so that is currently vacant. One of the needs that emerged as we were bringing the new department of communications and family engagement online and as we were sort of reorganizing central office this year. And as we were looking forward to moving into the new space is that we need somebody to greet everyone at the new space and to support the welcome center in that capacity. And the DEI department thought also that it would be beneficial for them to have some administrative support given all of the professional development that they're also organizing. So this role is intended to be a shared administrative assistant that will also be the sort of welcoming face of the welcome center. And would allow us the ability to have someone at the buzzer when someone comes to central office. So one of the other things we're also losing when we move into the new space is the benefit of having the front desk folks at the high school who run security and make sure that who's coming in and out should be coming in and out. They buzz people in and then help us get someone down to escort them up into our offices. We won't have that when we move into the new building. So we won't have the benefit of people coming into central office from coming into where they come into the high school. So we also wanna make sure that that is a secure front area that people who are being buzzed up who actually have appointments and we need someone to manage all of that. We looked into whether it would be possible to solve this particular challenge with technology. The answer was that the cost of the change order for the high school project would be about as much as the salary we'd spend on this this year and thought that if we could make this role work to also provide administrative support to the welcome center as well as to another department that we would make really great use of the role. So instead of filling two DEI specialist roles, Ms. Etienne Pierre and Ms. Creel Thomas thought that this would be the most supportive thing for those two departments as well as for the whole of central office which is why we're proposing this job description. Happy to take any comments or questions and if not would ask approval. Anyone have any comments or questions? See none. Anyone? Approval. Okay, can I have a second? Okay. Okay. Any further comments or questions? No. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Any abstentions? No. Thank you. Great, yeah. These positions like the front, people at the front of the high school and I think at the front for the administrative offices, these were kind of understood that they were coming as positions when we were doing all the high school planning years ago but we kind of conveniently never talked about though they're gonna have to go into the budget and things like that. It was just, they will magically appear. So, but now we're paying for it. But that's good. It'll be good to have someone to do that. So, next we have something which I am required. So I've had council explain to me exactly what we have to do. We have had an open meeting complaint from Corey Spalding who is a resident of Newton. Framingham. Framingham, sorry. Ms. Spalding alleges that our board as well as many other boards in town violated the open meeting law chiefly by declining to put her item on our agenda. So first she actually never contacted me to do this but it doesn't matter. Council responds that with respect to the complaint and brief public bodies are not required to place any item on their agendas for discussion. So no one can tell us that we have to put something on. As such, the allegations in the complaint do not present a colorable claim under the open meeting law. Wherever some of the allegations may be time barred. And what he asks us to do is vote to authorize his office to file a response on our behalf and detail whether or not we would like this draft proposal, draft response, provided jointly or separately with our fellow bodies. Now the thing is we're first. So we don't know what everyone else is doing. So what I would like is a motion that says we can do it, he can do it either way. And then whatever everyone else does. So can I get? You're asking that we give the town council the option to do what he. Because he can't, we don't know if everyone else is going to say file jointly or what? Because we're first. So I'm saying he can either, depending on what the other boards decide, he can either join our response with them or file one separately for us. Mr. Schwarzman. I move that we authorize town council to file a response on our behalf and to respond jointly or separately as he sees fit. Okay. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So that passes unanimously and we are done with this. So next, we have the superintendent's update. Several. So our strategic plan working groups launched today thanks to the Arlington Education Foundation. We'll have some dollars to help welcome some additional community members onto these working groups, but for today it was just the administrators and they got into their working groups and started thinking about some of the information they're going to need to gather in order to get some of our initiatives off the ground. These are designed as inquiry groups. So they will be doing things as they are also developing the initiatives and going into their contexts and trying out some small actions and then bringing data back into their group. So this is designed to be us really doing the work of the strategic plan in real time and having the space to process that and we'll be doing that once a month for a couple of hours. We have a new partnership with Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development to provide professional learning focused on instructional leadership for our directors and principals over multiple sessions. Dr. Ford Walker, do you want to elaborate on that at all? Because this just kicked off last week. Sure, I'll just add in that the focus of the professional learning opportunities is to really allow curriculum directors and school leaders to engage in a conversation and work around intentionally identifying what our instructional vision is in Arlington Public Schools and also having conversations around how we are looking for commonalities across schools, across grade levels around experiences of our students centered in deeper learning experiences. We will have a rainbow task force back to school gathering on Saturday, the 30th of September on the Arlington High School Lawn which is hosted in partnership with our elementary rainbow alliances, middle school QSAs and Arlington High School GSA. So we hope to see you there. Is that the same event that we did last year? Similar to the one last spring, right? Similar, but smaller. Okay. We welcome all to attend. Our implementation of the Yale Education new literacy curriculum began this week at all of our elementary schools. Two grade levels per school have started implementation and Dr. Ford Walker and I are looking forward to getting out into classrooms and seeing how this is going. Our coaches have done a lot of work to get this off the ground and we're really looking forward to seeing the impact it's going to have on our students' ELA experiences and outcomes. I wanted to say a quick congratulations. I know we introduced that she was a new administrator earlier today but she just started this week. So congratulations to Shayla Lowe, our new interim director of the MECCO program. We have K through six back to school nights next week. Gibbs is Wednesday, elementary schools on Thursday and we had this past week, OMS and Arlington High School back to school nights which were big successes I heard with record turnouts at both of them and lots of student tour guides helping everybody get to where they needed to go. And I also wanted to let the committee know that Arlington will be participating in Influence 100. This is a program, you have to apply to be part of the program, Fellows Do and it's a program to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of superintendents in Massachusetts, create more culturally responsive districts and leaders across the Commonwealth and promote stronger outcomes for students. We had two fellows apply and it'd be accepted to the cohort, Wesley Pierre and Fabian Pierre Maxwell will be participating in this development opportunity and thank you to Dr. Allison Ampe who in a pinch jumped on with us, the superintendent and a school committee member has to be present for at least quarterly on these to make sure that the fellows are supported in their work to be developed towards superintendency, central office leadership, whatever they're aspiring to. We are still hiring, so I just wanted to let everybody know we're still hiring and if you know anybody who could fill any of these wonderful roles we'd love to have you on our teams. We do still have a number of paraprofessional openings both at the TA and SSP level, both levels of our unit D. We have one bus driver opening, a few after school teacher openings and we're expanding access to after school as we're able to hire more staff on. We're now looking for a Metco Social Worker that's new as our Metco Social, one of our Metco Social Workers moved into the role of interim director of the program, a school social worker at Thompson, psychologists, a design engineering teacher at AHS, that's a brand new opening that we just got a vacancy in this past week, a multilingual learner teacher at Odyssey Middle School and a special education team chair and your enrollments are in your materials and I'm happy to take any questions. Any questions? So I just wanted to say the Influence 100 thing was very interesting and I'm actually kind of sorry we don't get to go to all the meetings, which there's a lot of meetings so it's gonna be a lot of work for the people who are doing it but I think it's gonna be a good thing. And it's great for growing new leaders I think and also serving to network and have them have a group that they can access to reach out to, so. No one has any questions? I was a little concerned about, I was looking at the enrollments and the first grade at. Kindergarten at Stratton was newly yellow this week. Yeah, I'm talking first grade at Dowan. They're 24. Yeah, they cannot take any additional students and we have a close eye on that. Okay, so what are, what's our plan? Kersey, could you speak up a little? Oh, sorry, what's our plan? At the moment my plan is that no buffer zone students go into grade one at Dowan and if we have any additional enrollments that need placements at a school that they're not going into grade one at Dowan and continuing to monitor it. I have not touched base yet with Mr. Dingman about how things are going in those first grade classrooms so I wanna do that before any further planning. Okay, okay, thanks. Any other questions? Nope. Okay, so moving on, we have a consent agenda. Okay, this can be a little difficult. All items listed within asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the community so requests. In which case the event will be considered as normal sequence warrant number 24052 in the amount of 260,758 dollars and 72 cents dated 9623 warrant number 24065 699,480 and 30 cents dated 91923 and the school committee draft minutes for September 7th, 23. Okay, motion? So moved. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Yes, any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes unanimously and now we have a subcommittee and liaison reports. Mr. Cardin budget. There's a budget meeting, budget subcommittee meeting tenderly scheduled for October 6th, 1115 I believe, to look over the budget calendar and some other stuff which haven't decided yet, but we have a meeting on the agenda for whatever we need. Okay, Ms. Exton. Nothing to report. Okay, Ms. Morgan curriculum instruction. We met last week, we're meeting in October on the 23rd, we're gonna talk about SPED new programs report and the sixth grade overnight experience. Facilities, Mr. Phelan. We met last Thursday night, right? Mm-hmm, yeah. At 8 p.m., that's time, work for everybody. Mr. Mason went through the presentation of the capital plan and then we had a discussion about school facilities in general and we talked about the electrification study that the town did in January of 2023 and what that meant for the schools and then there were four requests made, one by Mr. Schlickman, three by Mr. Cardin. Mr. Schlickman requested, huh? I don't think they were all by me. I have good notes. I gave everyone an opportunity to edit the minutes, you didn't get back to me, silence is consent. So Mr. Schlickman wanted a report on the capacity of buildings to be air conditioned and so he's asking Mr. Mason and Mr. Barron from the town to take that report from CMTA, that electrification report and put together a spreadsheet that's elegant and simple. School name, current capacity for installation and recognition, steps that need to be taken, estimated timeline of an upgrade, you know, broad stuff. Mr. Cardin asked for three things. He did, inventory of buses that the district owns, playground report, which I guess we haven't had and then information on the possibility of using the MSBA's accelerated repair program for upgrades. Those are the three requests from Mr. Cardin, who's not a member of the subcommittee, but contributed very creatively and enthusiastically to the meeting. So it was a good meeting. We're supposed to meet again in mid-October. I'm gonna talk to Mr. Mason to see what he can have by that date and then we'll schedule the meeting. Okay. And I'd note that the report for the updated capital plan was provided by Mr. Mason, it's in Novus, it's in our minutes. Actually, maybe it's not in Novus, but we've got it. All right. You can get a copy of it. And if you have any questions about it, we can ask him next meeting. Generally speaking, the Capital Planning Committee approves about $3 million a very quest every year. I mean, there's like $7 million in needs, isn't that about right? Yeah. Policy and procedures. We are going to need to schedule a meeting. We've got a couple of things on the plate. I've asked for town council's opinion on a couple of things, including the public comment period to make sure that we're aligned. So we'll look at that. File ACA will be coming back to us. There are a couple other health things involved, including updating the policy that Dr. Allison Ampe asked because she signed off on it, or that was the policy regarding dispensing medications to students, that will be before. So we've got a couple of things to do. We'll have to schedule the meeting at least two weeks out because we still need town council to respond and he promised that within two weeks. Okay. Town council will be leaving us, so. Yeah, yeah, he's leaving in two weeks and he said he'd finish this up for us. He lives in Andover and he's accepted a job in Andover which is right around the corner from his house. We wish him well and there will be the assistant town council will still be here and will be informed on all the things. So we'll be in good shape. Okay, great. And building committee, anything? We meet on October 3rd, there was a communication that went out about the October 30th turnover date and there's a lot of great photos on the website. But here it goes on it with, I don't know, maybe they're a few days old now, a week old, I don't know, but there's, if you look at it, there's a very exciting, all the, we're coming, it's coming together nicely. Great. Before we go on, Mr. Thielman, could we have a report sometime in October to prep us for our move over there? We can. Yes, we can. We can do that. Dr. Holman and I will give a presentation about the move. Come on. Can you write us an email? You write us an email? No. I was asked to do a presentation. I just said, I just said report. Report, it did work. Oh, but I, I want pictures of the new meeting room. In November, we'll be able to take them internally, right? Well, yeah. We'll get together to report on our move over there. Yeah. I think we should, we should approve the quality of the furnishings and the, Oh, looking boards. The GMI would also like to see the new room to work on stuff. So they have put a request in about that. I'm more interested in a report on the disruption to our students. They're not going to be, they're going to be fine. Yeah. They're going to be fine. They're going to have a, it's going to go great. And the kids, they're kids will be. Joyous. No, it's going to go fine. It will. They're joyous and adaptable. Please, I'm reports. And I know Ms. Ekston had to, had to scoot out of here. She already informed us. So we say bye. Bye. Have a good day. It's not us. Announcements. Anything? Nope. Town day is going to be on Saturday, maybe. Plus rain. Future agenda items. Nothing. Okay. So now we go into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union. In which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or mitigation. In which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. And we're going to be discussing an MOA for a contract with the AA. And we will not be returning after executive session. So moved. Second. Okay. This has to be a roll call vote, right? Yes. Okay. So Ms. Guttelsen. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I also vote yes. So we will now go into executive session.