 2014. We have a lot on the agenda. We will begin right away with public participation. Mr. Harrington, Stephen. Good evening. My name is Stephen Harrington. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 13 and I'm here tonight to discuss the disparate impact that the Allington public schools discipline policies have on minority students. Did you know that an African-American student is 11 times more likely than a white student to suffer an out-of-school suspension in the Allington public schools? I'd like to draw your attention to two pie charts on the screen, but I guess I can't show it tonight, that's found at the office of civil rights in the U.S. Department of Justice using 2011 data provided by the Allington public schools. It shows that black students make up 3.6 percent of the student enrollment, yet they suffer 24 percent of all out-of-school suspensions. If you adjust for white students' disproportionately smaller suspension rate, it turns out that a black child is 11 times more likely to be suspended than a white child. Earlier this year, you received a dear colleague letter from the U.S. Department of Justice and Education outlining their concern of exactly this type of disparate impact from board-approved disciplinary policies, policies that can be found to discriminate against minority students. I quote from the DOJ, African-American students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be expelled or suspended. I'm trying to understand Allington's almost four times higher rate than national average, and so I looked at all the surrounding towns, including Boston. I compared them, and it turns out, again I show you the chart, Karen has it, that Allington has the highest rate of all surrounding communities, including the city of Boston. In 2012, the Massachusetts Legislature enacted Chapter 222, which requires public school districts to provide alternative education for suspended students. I couldn't find any reference that this body acknowledged that expensive mandate or any tutoring expenses incurred. Some might claim that this is sort of a harsh accusation, and I don't want to believe that any of you are racist or intentionally formulating policy that it's discriminatory. However, this body does have a history of discriminating against an educator and counselor to the METCO program, the program that brings minority students to the Allington Public Schools. As the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations determined in 2012, earlier this year, one committee member took to the local press a complaint about the costs of METCO, perhaps revealing an unconscious bias and an unwillingness of this committee and administration in fully funding the costs associated with educating minority students. I don't have the time or the patience or the $50,000 for public records to update the disciplinary data for the 2014 school year, but the importance of your potentially discriminating policies cannot be overstated. Without a suitable response from this committee, we ask in the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the disparate impact to minority students in the Allington Public Schools disciplinary policies. Thank you very much. Mr. Harrington. Thank you very much, Bill. Sean Harrington, Precinct 15. Tell me a member from Precinct 15. I would have spoken actually at the last school committee meeting, however, I was at a town. I'm here talking about an issue that's very important to me right now, which is the Community Preservation Act, which is on the ballot this November. As a lot of people know, we have a lot of projects coming up the road. Allington High School needs to be rebuilt. Straton Elementary. We have an Adminuteman. Three really important projects. So to me, you might guess my shock when I hear that a majority of school committee members are supporting the CPA tax. As someone who has a three-year-old sister or someone who has a sister at Allington High, this does really bother me that this seems to me a simple, it should be a simple choice of priorities versus special interest. Priorities versus nonprofits, schools and kids versus what isn't necessary. I think the choice would be obvious. Let me also be clear, I'm not questioning anyone's commitment to the Allington Schools. It's just a question of judgment on this issue. My biggest concern after hearing in town meeting Al Tosti discuss what he believes could be a possible danger to the Allington High rebuild is if this CPA tax passes and the Allington High School rebuild tax does not pass, that is a huge possibility. People are being taxed tremendously. 61 percent tax increases over the last 10 years in Allington. So right now I would really like for school committee members to really reconsider their position on this because if the CPA tax does pass and Allington High doesn't get the tax it needs to help be rebuilt or strat in school to me, that just simply seems what I can only call for one of better words is fiscal child abuse. It doesn't seem to be anything but that and it's really disturbing that we're even having this discussion right now. Let's pass the three school rebuilds first. Put children in schools first. Let's put special interests where it deserves to be last. Thank you very much. Thank you. And it's public participation and at this time I would invite the town manager to come forward. We're going to be talking about the open checkbook initiative. Welcome. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you members of the committee. We wanted to give the committee tonight a brief presentation on the open checkbook web portal that the town has been developing. Quick history as I think a lot of you know we've invested a great deal of time over the past couple of years in putting out comprehensive financial documents and last year rolling out the web based Arlington Visual Budget. So we see this tool as sort of the next step in financial transparency or data accessibility on the part of the towns and the schools as you'll see school data being contained in this. So earlier this year we applied to jump on to a community innovation challenge grant that the state issues that had already been applied for and awarded but had some extra funding and they were soliciting extra communities. So we signed on to that. And then over the course of the past few months Andrew and Ruth the deputy town manager and town comptroller have been working with Munis the town and schools financial software accounting software provider to build this site. So without further ado I'm going to ask Andrew to walk through some of the highlights of the site and then allow the committee to ask any questions it has and I'll close by saying that we would like to launch this site before the before the end of October. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and members of the school committee I think Adam did a good job at setting the table of how we've gotten to where we are today. So this is a real robust program and platform and I think you can have as great of a greater degree of interest you have in many of our financial components as you would like when you access it. But for tonight I'm going to hit on a couple of the major components and I would be happy to take any questions. So this is the home page which once launch will be accessible through Arlington MA dot gov. You will do all your navigation from here. You'll see there are five primary components category department fund government area and vendor throughout the whole program you'll see that there's a traditional display of data and in most cases a graphical display of that data. So I'll start by going with fund. So most of the focus is on expenses that are paid to the general fund. What this does is it breaks down all of our fund types general fund special revenue funds enterprise funds capital projects OPEB trust fund health claims trust fund and student activity fund. So what I'll do is I'll click on a special revenue funds. So you see how it's organized here. It's miscellaneous special revenue. And then if you scroll down you'll see it's broken down. Let's see where's where's the school. So basically what it does is these are all special miscellaneous special revenue funds that are either in the custody of the town or the school department. But let's say if we clicked on foreign languages you would see all the vendors that were paid through that special revenue account. So if we were to click on Blackboard Connect you'd see there was one transaction on October 21st 2013. It came out of the office supplies count in the school department. So like I said you can drill as deep as you want through this section you can go into school revolving funds school grant funds town revolving funds town grant funds. Another area is vendor. So under this icon you'll get a list alphabetically of all the town's vendors. Just give it a second to pull up. So you'll see on the right what the town top vendors are. None should be too surprising MWRA which provides water and so are Commonwealth of Massachusetts which is our GIC payment for employee health Arlington contributory retirement system Minuteman and so on. So you can search if you have a vendor's name but for the sake of this we'll head ABC equipment and you'll see there's a number of transactions the town had with ABC equipment. Again you get the payment date the accounts the category what department it was paid out of and the amounts of the transaction. From here I'm going to go to payroll and at the top of the page you'll see all the different categories of pay so regular pay overtime details stipend and what Ruth and myself did is we went through all the pay types in unison basically dropped them into these categories and I think we've covered most of them. So if you scroll down you'll see all the positions in the town and it's all searchable so you won't see an employee's name but you'll see their position. So if you're interested in let's say a teacher in one of your buildings you could do hardy search and you'll see guidance counselors or department you'll say hardy and then bachelor elementary master elementary you'll see what their earnings are to date in FY 15. I'll tell you that this updates automatically because it's integrated with units on a weekly basis what the earnings were in 14 and what the earnings were in 13 and then you'll see base rate and the reason for that is and I hope to show it here's an example regular pay longevity so the two different pay types under that position but to maybe go outside the schools I'll do police officer and if you click there again you don't know the name of the police officer but you just know the position you'll see all the different categories of pay for that one position so regular pay over time longevity and so forth. So I'm happy to show you any other function of the site or answer any questions you may have regarding what was presented tonight. How is this different from the visual budget. So I would say this is several layers deeper than AVB Arlington visual budget that is really to give ordinary resident an opportunity to have a high level overview of the town's finances. So for instance in public works you could click on expenses and you'd see their expense budget or if you selected fire department you'd may see three quick categories versus every vendor they've contracted with over the course of the year. So I think this is a much more robust in the level detail it provides the resident. Yeah I just wonder about teacher salaries. So there's always a question about how summer pay is calculated. And if it's so the question is will there be any distortions because teachers are paid on a eight or nine month salary and they sometimes take it over to summer and they sometimes don't. That makes sense. Teachers are paid contractually the 21 payments or 26 payments. Right. So is there any way I guess the question is is there a distinction in this. So I don't think there's a distinction. I think what would happen is let's go back to Hardy if you had a teacher on 26 weeks and a teacher on 21. The teacher at 21 weeks their pay would be higher at the end of that week than the teacher on 26. But at the end of the fiscal year it would be the same. But some of the payments are coming after the end of the fiscal year. But I think this the way this integrates is munis. This will catch what's paid after the fiscal year and put it in the right fiscal year. Okay. Okay. That's that was my question whether there be any distortions. So but it go the fiscal year starting in July or starting in July one July. Okay. And then I have a question about the visual budget. So are we going to continue to update the visual budget. It seems like a really nifty tool. I like playing with it or is it something we're not sure about yet. So first we see this as a compliment to AVB but we're very much committed to it. This like I said will update every week 52 weeks a year. We update AVB less regularly. We update it when we propose the budget. We update it when the budgets approved by town meeting. When we set the tax rate we update it then because sometimes it's revenue adjustments. So rather than have 52 updates a year there's probably four or five with AVB. So it sounds like there's a commitment then. Oh absolutely to build on what Andrew said. So AVB is what we say we want to do and it gives that functionality of a taxpayer to be able to say okay you know my tax bill is X. What portion of that dollar goes to you know Y service A service B service. And it's much more of a I say a policy tool. Now where's the town investing its resources. And it's simply put a budget tool. I call this an actual tool. Right. And eventually and I know Ruth has been having conversations with the vendor and it's not there yet. We'd like them to cross because ultimately you want people to be able to compare your budgets to your actuals to see how you perform against the policies that you've set forth. But today I'd say committed to AVB and updating it as that budget presentation and then providing this as an actual tool or maybe even a trust but verify tool for some citizens who just want to see where the dollars are actually being spent. Okay. And we do have the ability both here I clicked on site links and at AVB to link one to the other. So. Any other questions. Yeah. Okay. Is this something we're buying from a vendor that's more or less prepackaged or is this something we're developing in house. We at at first and not paying anything like Adam had mentioned we are participating in a CIC Community Innovation Challenge Grant through the State Department of A&F with several other municipalities. Basically the development of this has been in the hands of Tyler Technologies which is the owner of Munis. They we've given them information they've integrated it. We're still talking about what this would cost potentially into the future. So this is really being developed by Tyler. Correct. Okay. Okay. First I wonder if the CFO has any comments about this. Partly I'm thinking I remember there's some things that Munis doesn't have enough space in the header to give information. Well this as you see with some of the detail about the vendors this isn't capturing things by code or using the specific Munis description. I think it's grabbing the codes and matching it to a different descriptor because these are not the descriptions that sit in Munis. So I think there's some kind of translation going on there. So I think this is much more readable when you look at the expenses than when you're looking directly in Munis. I do a slightly different translation when I export the data for the monthly reports and I match the descriptions by the account codes. But I mean you know the whole gist of it is to try to describe in words what's going on. I was very concerned initially that particularly we protected the confidentiality of our special ed vendor relationships for schools and tuition and I think they've done an excellent job of making sure that that's clean. You know that was as soon as I had access that was the first thing I checked because that was the thing that worried me the most. Everybody did a great job. Then just on my behalf I to be clear I understand that it's public information to have the teacher salaries but it really doesn't sit well with me to have that be something as accessible as this is. I just I think if I was a teacher and had this up it would make me feel uncomfortable and I don't know it just it doesn't I don't like it. So I understand I understand the desire for greater transparency and everything but I find this and it's not just the teachers either it's kind of it's it's all the employees I just as a former teacher back at 72 and currently in a lot of communities. You're identified by name. When I started fall the time I was there it was William Hayner Masters step seven and the child would be right there and be very easy to determine my name. My understanding correct me if I'm wrong. This is not identifying by name. Am I correct? That is correct. It's just positions within the building and stuff like that. Yeah. So I mean so it's halfway there. So then the one other thing I'm concerned about is whether there's any disagreement and by disagreement I just mean there's a different name in this versus a name in our budget. And so people will come and say you're spending this many dollars on office supplies and you know we're calling them stationary or something and just that there can be confusion because of that. I don't believe so. I mean we're both both sets of reporting are coming off the same codes in the same transactions and the positions in terms of the salary are identified a little differently. Your position control in the budget has a position control code alpha numeric and here they're identified by their payroll codes. So you'd see something like Masters in Masters five twenty six or something like that which tells you that it's a the degree and the number of pays in a cycle whereas I'd identify it as you know a hardy grade five teach or something like that. So there isn't a correspondence in the positions but you could probably figure it out without too much trouble. Okay. Is that the element. Yeah. Adam did you want to answer something. I want to just one response about the payroll. You know you know I think I can speak for myself but probably any public employee that one of the least favorite parts about being a public employee is that your salary is publicly available and it's public information. I completely understand with my job it's even much more available in public and it's not a great thing but it's a thing. So we had a lot of dialogue with the unions both school and town about this and that's why the names aren't on this site and just the titles. But with that said I feel pretty strongly that you know there's members of the community who post this information publicly the local media will post this information from time to time. And I feel like when that happens there can be a certain taboo that occurs where people find like that they feel like they're accessing information that's been held secret. Whereas if the town and the school are really the hosts and providers of this information on a regular basis I think it diminishes that taboo. So I don't expect that to fully take care of your concerns but that is the sort of the way I look at it. Okay. Thank you. So just to clarify how often is this updated. It updates weekly. It updates weekly. And is this this is a public information tool. It's not necessarily a tool that you use or we use the school district and the town uses to you know modify policy or make changes in strategy. I would say that's correct. It's OK. So that that happens with the multiyear planning and looking at trends. You guys did that. Absolutely. And explain all that at school committee to tell me. Correct. And finance committee is more selecting. Correct. OK. Thank you. I just one question. Just clarification. When it goes down to the salaries and stuff are you showing the weekly salary. Are you showing the annual salary. Pardon me. Year to date. OK. I just want to point out that if you take a look at many of the town's annual reports they have the names and the exact dollar figure people can pay. So it's not uncommon in New England for town government to have all that. We also have our pay scales in. So you've got a pretty good idea what somebody's getting paid anyway. I think this is a good compromise between not being so granular that you can Google it and get somebody's name and their actual salary versus being able to do the information. Although the Herald has routinely gotten dumps of salaries of public employees in various departments including everybody in the UMAT system and putting them in a searchable database. So you know it this I think is hitting a good balance between public's right to know and not just over exposing our staff. Yes. I'm just wondering how you would deal with something potentially someone went on maternity leave or some other health related instance where they aren't being paid. So all of a sudden there's I mean I'm concerned that people can infer something which isn't publicly public knowledge from what's happening from the data. And I just I am concerned about things like that too. Yeah. I mean I guess at any point someone who was separated from service left the district. There could be less than a full year's salary that is demonstrated. I don't know that you could necessarily infer the exact you could infer something occurred in their employment relationship with the with the town or the school. But I suppose that's a fair question. We could one thing this doesn't capture as compensated leave. So if they took one day of vacation it's not going to say 7.5 hours of vacation or if they're out for 12 weeks on FM LA it's not going to say 12 weeks is sick. So it doesn't break it down like that. Any other questions. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move on to MCAS analysis part two. Part two. And we're going to take a moment while we get everything set up and hopefully somebody who put the lights back on all we're going to leave more. Okay. Dr. Cheson. Mr. Coleman and Mr. Rosa. Would you come up. Thank you. Good evening. I have a two able assistance tonight in case there are questions that you would like more detail. Both Mr. Rosa who works in the literacy staff and Mr. Coleman who is the director of math are here tonight and they have been working very closely with teachers and analyzing the MCAS data. So they may have a level of granularity that I'm not as expert in as they are. They're also I'm going to focus tonight on just the MCAS slides. There are some slides in here that we incorporated that actually came thanks to Mr. Schlickman that go back to the accountability but we covered accountability in the last time so we're not going to go over those slides. So if I skip over slides it's not like we don't want to discuss them but we did discuss accountability in the last time. Before I start I really want to emphasize that Arlington is a very high performing district and when we look across the board the percent of students that proficient in advance whether it be at ELA or at math is very high in most cases 75 percent or higher. When we get to that point we will find that this the remaining students moving those students to proficient in advanced is quite difficult. It's it requires us to make decisions about our resources in a very very difficult way because we need to make the decision and I used as an analogy today a game of Jenga because we may pull resources from one place and put them in another place but what we want to make sure is that we don't disturb the students who are already scoring proficient in advanced who may be utilizing services in order to keep those scores. We may have students at the top of proficient that are almost too advanced and we may want to put some resources there so we constantly face a balancing act as to how we move resources around. So we're going to talk a little bit about the ELA results at the district and then the grade level at the same thing for math and the same thing for science and then just briefly talk about the plans for the next for this coming school year. I'll stop at each subject area to see if you have questions at that subject area before we go on to the next one. And that was also this is just to remind people about the accountability that we've covered the last time and then this is the only accountability slide that I'll talk a little bit about just to refresh people's memory that the areas we had that did not meet the goal of 51. Really the one area that's that's we have the concern and that we're going to be working on the most will be grade six grades six and seven math I'm sorry in ELA in grade six and seven math we're very very close to 51 and considering the the fineness finiteness of the metric could easily have been 51. So we're going to talk a little bit first about overall performance for the district. As you can see as we said before this is a very high performing district if we look at the district as a whole across the board pretty much 85 percent of our students score proficient in advanced and are above the target of a 51 median SGP in ELA. You'll see that we've been at that place pretty much over time and the state has also been pretty much the same place for the last four years so we're pretty much the same difference from the state that we have been all along. Looking at the percentage of students that fall into each category over time if we look from 2011 to 2014 you'll see that we always have a the vast majority of our students again scoring in the advanced and proficient with a very small number of students and the needs improvement or warning and failing. And these were the accountability slides so I'm just going to skip over them. So now talking about comparing at each grade level the percentage of students that score proficient in advanced for the state and for the district and the top line which is the white line is for the district and the lower line would be for the state. As you can see since about 2006 to 2014 we've had some movement up or down a couple percentage points each year but for the most part we're pretty much holding steady and while one may think well that means that we're just kind of stalled out or stagnant I want to call to your attention that we've been doing this with especially the last couple years we have one less FTE in terms of reading that we've had before we transferred that FTE to math coaching in addition since about 2011 we've been dealing with the introduction and then the full blown common core that is a much more difficult test and we'll talk about that as we go along so we actually consider this success that we are able to maintain the same level of proficient advanced with a cutback in FTE's with a much more difficult test and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along. The same thing we see for fourth grade that we're pretty much holding steady in the gap being the percentage that were above the state in terms of proficient advanced sorry and we see pretty much the same thing for grade five. When we look at the elementary SGP by school we're talking about ELA so I'll talk about those numbers just about every grade in every school in fourth grade and fifth grade with two minor exceptions met the 51 SGP target so we're seeing continuing to see some good growth in some schools some spectacular growth particularly in the cases of like Bishop and Thompson saw at fourth grade saw some pretty impressive growth in ELA. Going on to middle school again we're seeing pretty much the same level of proficient in advanced and the same percentage difference between us and the state and I want to talk about just briefly I know that we saw an SGP number for grade six that was below the target that we would have liked but still when we look at the percent of proficient in advanced it's still in the same ballpark as we have been before so while we are concerned and we'll talk in a minute about what we're going to do to focus in on grade six and actually we think in our analysis of looking at grade six we saw some commonalities in some same areas of concern actually in grade five even though that didn't show up but when we looked at the item analysis saw similar things and so we still saw a good percentage of proficient in advanced it just means that those students in those percentages do not grow as much as their peers. Again the same thing for seventh grade we're consistently above the state and eighth grade we see even a higher number of percent proficient advanced compared to and I just want to kind of go back so you see that at sixth grade we around eighty four percent proficient in advanced then when we get to seventh grade that number goes up to 90% when we get to eighth grade that number goes up to about ninety five percent and when we get to high school where it becomes a graduation competency exam we're at about ninety seven percent so let's talk a little bit about the growth by grade level so on this chart the lighter number the lighter bars are the least amount of growth so it's hard to tell in this chart but the one if I think on your version the far left is going to look more like yellow and then the one to the right of that is going to look sort of yellowish green so anything in the dark three darker shades of green are considered to be moderate or very high growth and that's where we want to see students we want to see them at least in the moderate if not the high and the very high growth. This chart will show you that at when we look at across all grades we're showing that the vast majority of our students are following in the following in those three colors and if we look at the individual grades with the exception of grade six again the majority of the students are in their growth is within those top three bands and that's what we'd be looking for. I understand why those don't add up. Rounding. Rounding. One of the things you'll find if you look at various reports on the state website some of them must round some ways and some of them must round other ways because they're off sometimes by one percentage point. Yes. Okay. Is there is there a reason why grade six is so different in terms of least amount of growth comparatively to all the other grades. Well, Deb Perry looked at the sixth grade scores I actually looked at the elementary scores we saw some of the same kinds of things things about really inferencing the questions are different they're harder they're really asking kids not to just go back and do things by rote but really to think and I think that's what we're looking at is how do we get kids to learn how to think differently to really think deeper. So I know that the sixth grade is also just switched to Lucy cockens writing so there's a consistency across there. One of the things Deb did this year also was have the fifth grade and the sixth grade teachers get together and they talked about what the expectations were at fifth grade what the expectations were at sixth grade some of the fifth grade teachers are going to the middle school to actually shadow a fifth grade a sixth grade student to see what those expectations are. One of those teachers came back and said unbelievable every single class they had them reading every single class they had them writing so there was a lot more on-demand reading and writing she's I need to bulk up that a little bit. So I think those conversations are great it'll help the fifth grade teachers know what those expectations are and hopefully help in sixth grade. You just mentioned that the sixth grade just started just started Lucy cockens but these children that they come into the sixth grade haven't they been doing Lucy cockens all along? They have been doing Lucy cockens all along but last year in sixth grade they hadn't done Lucy cockens so the writing would be different. I guess what I'm saying is when a child goes into the sixth grade they've already had Lucy cockens prior to that several years in the law and the elementary grade. They haven't had the grade specific one so Lucy cockens used to be a K through 2 kit and a 3 through 5 kit. Arlington has didn't have the individual grade level kits they just came out and we're just starting those. They're very different. So just from my understanding so because it's a great level kit it it's just not a continuation of the program. It's it's more geared to us so instead of I pick up a book and it says oh here's here's an English book that I can use with the second grade kid or I can use it with the kindergartner. That's what the kit was before. I understand it but Lucy cockens is a process. It's not just dependent on the material. It's writer's workshop process. So I guess what I'm saying is that process of the writer's workshop should be a continuation problem. It builds yes. Okay and and I just because it's in the sixth grade it shouldn't be. No no let me let me go ahead. That that what you're seeing here is the connection between Lucy Colkins writing and Lucy Colkins reading. So what we found in grades five and also found in grade six and it was very interesting that Evelyn was working with the grade five teachers and Deb Perry was working with the grade six teachers and when they both reported into me I'm like wait a minute I've heard this before and this is what we call questions of discernment. So while Lucy Colkins is a writing program, the reading program for Lucy Colkins has just started in the elementary schools and was just released for the middle school in August and it is questions of discernment that we're having trouble with. So these scores here not only reflect reflecting writing they're reflecting the reading aspect. Yes that's correct. So the disparity that we're talking about in the sixth grade that we're seeing here is because the reading program these questions that you're talking about I'm not they're not having this prior preparation. That's correct. So are you able to differentiate between the writing and the reading aspects of these scores? Yes we get the scores are broken down by standard so we can see what standards is going. So the expectation would be the writing shouldn't see this differentiation. You also have to remember that the Lucy Colkins writing program was phased in over time so it wasn't until recently that all and do we still. This is year two and we still have some units that are optional. See so it's your I think it's your understanding that the whole program was implemented immediately and it was not it was phased in over time. All I can remember is that my training in Lucy Colkins and the writing aspect we did not have the reading I'll admit that was something that when it was there was just added to it was reinforced each successive year that were not additional elements every year. There's different genres. There are additional elements different rubrics different expectations now for every grade level. So they build more on them. It's just not the writing process that it's different every year. I'm sorry I don't mean to belabel this but no. So there's Lucy Colkins writing right. Right. And there's also a reading component. Right. But when I'm saying my question though was I'll accept that there's a new element in the in the reading. Okay. And that's going to show the difference. But the writing scores the writing element of this should be consistent. We shouldn't see a disparity at the sixth grade in the writing am I correct. Well it has changed a little. So now the units of study are there's an opinion unit of study. There wasn't always one for every grade level. And it's different at every point. Sixth grade just got those. There's an informational section that's different every year. So it it's kind of then I guess this discrepancy we should be we should see this every year then because the the prior years are not going to have that new element than the new element is being introduced in the sixth grade. We introduced them to the other grades as well. Informational writing which is the core one of the core elements of the common core was not in the original Lucy Colkins programs. They have recently added the informational writing informational writing requires a level of skill in reading. Those two things are very closely connected that we did not have so the lower the lower grades to should be impacted next year. We will we may see it well hopefully not because hopefully we've gotten ahead of that curve. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yes. I just wanted to have you emphasize again for our viewers at home that this is the first year that this set of tests is the first year that the MCAS was all common core related. The percentages of questions has gone up. Yes. Yes it was faced in over time. Yes. But this is the first year it's all supposed I mean it's not going to get more common core than this. This was the. Yeah I mean essentially now we're at a point where all the test questions are aligned to the new standards. That's what if that's that's what I was asking. Yes. Yes. It was another question. Yeah. My question is if you when I when I see that pattern in sixth grade. I'm seeing two things. And I apologize profusely. I do this for a living. And I don't want to go farther than a well informed school committee members should particularly in this form. Two things I look at first of all transition grades for when they're moving from different building. Usually there there is some loss of momentum in that year. And it's something that in Lowe that we're struggling with in our fifth grade which is our transition year. So. And I was glad to hear that you've got fourth grade teachers going to fit. Fifth grade teachers going to sixth grade and sixth grade teachers going to fifth grade trying to. Keep the momentum up rather than losing some there. Have you looked at. Open response questions visa v. Six grade relative to other grades and have you found a pattern there. We have seen that the open response. The sixth grade. Okay. I know Matt working to Deb Perry. So I want to make it specific to you. Right. Right. Right. But Matt actually helped Deb Perry who is the director for L.A. work look through this data. So I thought perhaps he had some insight that he wanted to share. We have seen again anytime that the open response question requires the student to go back and make an inference or to respond which is the best piece of evidence or this which is the most likely thing to happen. That those are questions where our students are struggling more. And you hit on a very important topic which is the transition year from fifth grade to sixth grade. The amount of scaffolding that a student has in fifth grade within the classroom is significantly different than the amount of scaffolding that they have within sixth grade currently which is why the teachers are visiting each other's grades. Students who are struggling but able to keep their head above water in fifth grade because of the scaffolding generally will show a slight decline in sixth grade and then that as we saw from the scores before we start to see an increase in seventh grade and eighth grade in terms of their performance. What's happening is we've raised the bar for those students because now we're using all the common core the informational text looking at two pieces of text and talking about it. And when we raised that bar these students have farther to go to meet that challenge and I think that's some of what we're seeing. Yeah. That does but this all ties in everybody's got sixth graders because the one thing the one thing that I've noticed statistically across the state is that there's an there's an extraordinary correlation between growth scores and open response scores so that a child who is able to articulate learning within the context of an open response question not somebody's practice to do it you can't do that but somebody's got the capacity to explain learning is going to do relatively well especially in a response to literature test such as this so that's why I'm sort of alerting to the open response is is is an attack point. Okay. Thank you. Also Mr. Hillman excuse me. Okay. I just want to go back to the elementary SGP by school three slides four slides earlier. So the one thing I picked up in that is that there's three fifth grades in the district bracket down Thompson that didn't make the SGP goal in mathematics. So is there so why is that what's our strategy right we're going to get to math and so I'm ahead of I got ahead of you but we're going to answer that question when we get to math. That's why Mr. Coleman is there. Okay. Sorry about that. Oh he's excited that you're excited. I'm excited to learn. Any more questions about yelling. I have a question on so I have a middle schooler so I get serving a window but there's a story window into what goes on in middle school. So I was wondering is are the staff in sixth grade newer than they are in seventh and eighth grade. So that was been sort of my uneducated perception but that may not be true. There there is a new cluster in sixth grade. I think we have a new cluster right and we do have an English teacher that I believe is in her second year of teaching as well. So last year where there are sort of more new people last year then yeah. Yeah. I know that there is one English teacher that's only in her second year of teaching and we added a new cluster but I believe that that teacher had a lot of experience. So I would say of the four teachers I know for a fact that one of them is in her second year of teaching. Just curious. Mr. Pierce building on Mr. Thielman's excellent question. Can you help explain for me why the ELA at Stratton and Brackett were lower. We've done. I've been looking at the exact test items and trying to look at gender and trying to look at the high needs and see what the trends are and see what kinds of questions they had difficulty with at those buildings. They also had a really high amount of kids the year before who did really well too. So trying to discern what that is and actually build teacher competencies and instruction is what we're looking at. Not to get better at taking this test but just to get better at thinking and reading and doing the tasks that they need. But we're looking at those questions and we have a lot of data about that and what and I would Paul Stuckman said is really the open responses we've been looking at the short and the long open responses. The questions are the same at every school right. The questions are the same at every school. One of the things that she's alluding to is that while we knew the 10 things say 10 is not the right number but just pick a number the 10 things that we needed to do for the common core that's vastly different than knowing how when instructional changes need to have to be made how we have to assess students in a formative way to tell how they're doing and we're all learning about that and sometimes we're and I'm not saying that this is all teacher driven that's not what I'm attending to make any comment on whatsoever but schools are growing at different rates and so we're seeing some of that and we're also looking at subgroup groups in some schools different subgroups are not moving as quickly as we would have we would like and so we're looking at gender and sometimes that's a factor and also looking at high need students and sometimes that's a factor and if different schools have different percentages of high need students that's going to that's going to come into play as I said before you know as miss somebody asked about the common core there's just different schools are moving at different paces in terms of the ability to be able to handle that you know one of the realities of having this kind of data is that you know it it points to the fifth grade at one school or the fourth grade one school which is three or four teachers so I'm assuming that you're using this you've isolated where there might be an instructor who needs additional help with her practice and you're using that to coach her and guide her and it's all about coaching and we should also remember that this is one year worth of data we're not looking at a trend over time here so you know one year could be an aberration I mean it could be you know for whatever reason so we look at trends over time to really determine whether there's an issue with instruction yeah we have to be careful not to get into a conversation about an individual. Conversation about that right I want to just say that we look at a lot of data and MCAS is just one piece of data that we look at when we look at in terms of what's going on in terms of instruction. Yeah and it might be a hymn Cindy correct me it could be a hur or a hymn right. That's true yeah thank you. The hymn is probably the one struggling right the struggling. Speak for yourself. This might be actually a good moment because it's related to this question I'm talking a little bit just a couple of sentences about the lab program that we've put in place this year which is an extension on some other pre-professional programs we've had but it's really a significant change this year. So Linda and I both had the opportunity to go to New York to teachers college and it was wonderful for a coaching institute and one of the things that we found the most powerful was when we went into a classroom with the teacher who was coaching us in our coaching. So when we came back we had this idea of wouldn't it be great if teachers could go in and watch other teachers do this with one of us there to help guide the conversations around this. So we set up a lab program this year at every grade level teachers who wanted to get involved could sign up for either going in for opinion writing, narrative writing, informational writing. They go in once a week during that writing block they stay for 40 minutes. We meet with them before to say what's going to happen and what we're going to be looking for. They follow a protocol while they're in the classroom whether that's getting involved down in dirty with the kids or it's watching the mini lesson and talking about it afterwards. They get to go back to their building. They get to reflect on what they saw and they can ask questions of the teacher who led the PD or of Linda and I. And it's been kind of an exciting thing. They go for six weeks. They go once a week for six weeks and they release from their classroom for that time. Thank you. OK. This shows the percentage of students scoring advanced. Again, we have approximately at every grade level at least one third of our students and actually a grade 10 that number almost triples or doubles more than doubles one third of our students who are scoring in the advanced category. When we compare ourselves to the other districts that we always take a look at. I showed this chart the last time but just to reiterate that every district that we would compare ourselves to our level two districts are percentage of proficient in advanced is pretty much equal to or close to all of the districts. As I stated the last time when I looked across all of these districts over time I saw that they might go up a point or down a point and percentage point in terms of their proficient in advance but pretty much they're in the same place we are. Yes, sir. Do you look at you're looking at the district. Do you ever look at the grade levels too? In these districts? Yes, we look at the individual grade levels. We're pretty much about the same. Everybody's if you saw the state data you saw that the state pretty much did the same. Everybody's pretty much staying the same. We're all in that position with that last. I guess we saw and I don't mean to dwell on but grade six for an example would there be a different. I didn't look at that level of detail but I'm happy to do that and respond to your question. I'll send you an email. Right. It's just something I mean that you wonder. Thank you. Sure. And finally so at the end of the elementary and the middle school level as we talked about before we've seen issues in questions of discernment and inference. Also words that have multiple meetings. One of the questions talked about the bird drawing back their wings or the bird drew back his or her wings. That was difficult question for the students to answer because they think see the word drew and they immediately have one sort of meaning in mind and that wasn't the meaning that was in the question. And so it became difficult for them to answer. Skills which relate to close reading and high level of reading comprehension are also questions that we have trouble with. As we talked about we haven't had an increase in enrollment in students overall and then that also causes an increase in enrollment in students that need to have reading services for decoding and fluency at the lower levels. So what has happened is that the reading teachers have very limited capacity almost none actually to deal with issues of comprehension at grades four and five. We find this across all the edco districts that we are all looking for that magic bullet that's going to help us with reading comprehension at grade four and five which then carries over into grade six and that's really becoming a bigger and bigger struggle over time because of the level of complexity of the text. And student caseload at the middle school for reading teachers allows for no work with comprehension except with those students that are at level two and three but it's just a tier two and tier three. And middle school teachers are just starting training for Lucy Colkins. The last thing I want to say is that we heard Evelyn talk about the lab program and it's really our goal and actually it's the same goal at math to really get that tier to one instruction over time to really better meet the needs of all students and that has a couple of facets to it. It requires personalization and differentiation of instruction but also the tier one which is the classroom teacher needs to be able to mirror a lot of the techniques that are being done in tier two and tier three support for those students so that they sort of hear it multiple times and don't see it isolated just into that pullout. That really requires a level of expertise of the classroom teacher to be far and away what the expectation might have been two or three years ago and so the lab program is one way that we're working on that. We have literacy leaders, literacy lead teachers at every grade level that are running the PD so that we don't have to spread Evelyn and Linda out. They do that and sometimes even in pairs. We're trying to get a lot of feedback from teachers as to what techniques they're taking away for those and they'll also be presenting on the full day professional development day so we have put a full court press on this but as I had said last year and I guess I'm sorry that my words were true but the road in front of us is much steeper than the road that is behind us. So talking about mathematics. Can I get one last ELA question? Sure. What are you guys doing in grade eight in ELA? It's spectacular. You're 125% the state average and open response. I mean, I've been in those classrooms and I can tell you that the teaching is exceptional. I don't, I mean not that all of our teachers aren't exceptional but those teachers actually several of them went to the Lucy Colkins program and came back as if they had found the keys to the kingdom. So I would, I would say that they long before those materials ever came here they were this year planning to implement many of the things that they saw at Lucy Colkins. And if you've never seen Lucy Colkins speak you need to see her speak because it is almost transformative in their experience at Teachers College was such. They went last year and in some in February and some in the summertime. So I'm not going to say it's all Lucy Colkins but I definitely think that that inspired them to make a lot of changes this year. I mean, certainly it's it marks a high level of discourse that's going on in those classrooms. Yes. And considering the size of the one classroom that I was in it was amazing that teacher was actually to have be able to have very effective discourse with a very full class. She was excellent. So as we look at math again over time, we'll see that we actually have seen an increase in the percentage of students who are proficient and advanced. And we're seeing a steady increase in our SGP. When we look at the students percentage of students in each bandwidth, we also see that we're seeing an increase in the percentage of students that are in the advanced category across the district. I'm going to skip over the accountability slides. We continue to see we made some improvement a couple of years ago in grade three. And we continue to see that maintained and see that we're still performing better than the state. We saw some pretty marked improvement in grade four last year when the state was pretty flat. Pretty much the same in grade five, but still better than the state. In grade six, we're continuing to see a positive trend in terms of the percentage of students in proficient and advanced. Pretty much the same down a little bit in proficient and advanced in grade seven, but still significantly above the state. And also in grade eight above the state and grade 10. So again, I want to just take you back. If you look at grade six where we are, grade seven goes down a little bit, but then back up in grade eight and then right at the top in grade 10. So we end up with 94% of our students at proficient or advanced by the time they graduate. Do we have a look at a cohort going through on either ELA or math. In other words, we're looking at these charts and we're seeing a dip from year to year, but the two different groups that we're looking at. Yeah, I do. I mean, the one thing that's nice about the way in which you can generate the reports is you can filter it based on the students that we also own over that period as well. So it's tough sometimes because we also have the data from kids who might move here in ninth grade and then in tenth grade. So when I look at it, I typically, and this is for me when I look at this, I'm also trying to discern whether or not it's a cohort issue, a curriculum issue, a teacher issue. And sometimes it is a cohort thing. Sometimes you can see that that's a cohort that might be larger in size or has some other deficiencies. So in the overall judgment, I want to take that into account. But like I said, it's always important for me to filter it as the kids that we own throughout the whole entire time because those are the kids that we really have had that effect on long term. It's good to know that you're looking at all the aspects of the thing. Thank you. We do the same thing at ELA as well. And if we had infinite amount of time, I actually did that with one cohort and was going to bring it. And then I was just like, that'll be too much. Again, we're looking at growth distributions reminding everybody that the three darkest colors are really where we want to see the vast majority of our students. And we're seeing continued good growth in math. Again, this chart just shows it in terms of numbers. And then when we compare ourselves to the other districts that we normally compare ourselves to, when we look at our proficient in advance within a couple points or equal to, again, these are all level two districts. And if we look at our SGP, it's right in line with all the other districts. I'm going to actually let Matt talk a little bit about this, because I know there was a question about the elementary. Right. Do you want to cover that question? Yeah, I'd like you to. Yeah, thank you. It depends on how specific you want. As specific as you don't think I can understand. You don't think I can understand. No, no, no, no. Well, it's a common. I can get, well, I can blabber, I guess. So the three schools were Dallen, I think Brackett, and Thompson. They showed the lower SGPs. I would chalk up Dallen fifth grade. Historically, they had been departmentalized. I mean, there was only one teacher who taught math. And last year was the first year where I kind of mandated that all the teachers had to teach math. So the achievement was good, but the growth wasn't as good. But you had a couple of teachers who were teaching math for the first time in maybe 10 years. For Thompson, kind of the cohort analysis, that was a pretty tough cohort. And historically, they were a little challenging. We've identified some curriculum areas that we could definitely improve upon. But it was a challenging group of kids. That's not to say all were challenging, but I think there was a subset of the kids that definitely took more time away from teachers. And that has an impact. For Brackett, at the 47.5, I wasn't too concerned because Brackett tends to be a larger school. And they have a couple of other programs within there. When I dug a little deeper, the 47.5 as a growth, it wasn't overly concerning. It wasn't as though there was anything that was a huge red flag based on what I saw. It was more a blip. It's one of those things where it's on my radar now to be able to track and see if there is some consistency to it. But that one wasn't really anything that was major or big. For seventh grade, they had the 49.5. They had a couple of things. Last year was the first year of implementation of a new curriculum for both sixth and seventh. So there's that one little obstacle. The second thing that was a little bit of a hurdle for the seventh grade, they had a larger class. Like there are a couple cohorts that are also much bigger than others. Right now, you guys know how big Audison is in terms of the population. The sixth and eighth grade are pretty big. That eighth grade current class was with the seventh grade, and that pretty much was a pretty large class. Two years ago was the sixth grade. Six grade teachers who struggled with that cohort because they are much larger. The typical seventh grade teacher last year had about 125 students overall, whereas the typical eighth grade teacher last year had about 100 and like 405. And last year's sixth grade group was much smaller. I think the total for last year sixth grade was only about 351, if I recall correctly. So the cohort size and that impact on the teachers played a little bit. We did struggle and this was brought up last year with balancing some of the sections. So I think some of the seventh grade teachers just had unbalanced sections, new curriculum, large class sizes overall than they typically have had before. So I think they had a couple things going against them. And what's great to me is they still had the 49.5 SGP and they still had, if I recall correctly, I think it was a 69 advanced proficient, which wasn't as far off relatively speaking from the state or was the same distance from the state as the other grade. So kind of taking that on to account, to me it wasn't a huge red flag. It was one of those things where I wanted to dig a little deeper into the curriculum. So with all the grades at the elementary, middle school, we've already kind of looked at some areas we can improve in the curriculum. So I'm actually optimistic to see how it's going to go with the middle school. The high school did great. I mean the high school I was really excited about. Real, real happy about it. But the reality is I think we still have a lot of work to do. And so take away from hearing is that now you're trying to address some of these concerns in more or less real time to the extent that you can. Is that possible? Yeah. I mean now in real time, like a daily, not getting on power school, whether it be student and looking at the data every day, but I mean you're able to sort of see if there's trends. Yeah, I mean that's also kind of on the local data that we're collecting right now if there's anything there. But for me, when I think about this MCAS, we have access to some of the preliminary data and the end of June, which we looked at and try to project ahead. I see this again in August. And a lot of the things that I think I was already planning for and put in place, I'm hoping fill those voids. Like the current sixth grade is large, so having four clusters there is a good way to do it. The lower end of the current sixth grade needs and warrants a little bit more support. So we've kind of put some structures in in the current sixth grade right now that they'll help it out. In terms of the curriculum issues, we've already been able to have the current eighth grade group, the eighth grade teachers, because they have that cohort from last year and seventh grade. We were able to pull them for a day at the beginning of the year to work on more curriculum things to not only to consider the new curriculum, but also to consider some of the areas of weaknesses we know for the kids that just moved up to try to address those within the curriculum that we're working on. So a lot of this work has already been done, like all kind of setting it up in August in the beginning of September. So real time, yes, but all this stuff, this, the reality is for this, for me, this was a month and a half ago. We talk about one school where group of students were struggling in fifth grade. Now they're in sixth grade. Yep. So we've identified those students. We've got some plans to help them. For the most part, yeah. Yeah, we kind of beefed up the support program. The teacher was working with them as a fantastic teacher. She has good size sections. I mean, she's great. She's actually working with kids in her free periods, which is nice. And it's one of those things also for me, sharing this information, making this much more transparent and much more accessible to the teachers, was pretty important to me as well. So a lot of the teachers in the middle school I had kind of worked with and kind of pulled reports pretty early just so they were pretty aware. So all the support teachers are sixth, seventh, and eighth grade support teachers have had access to this since the end of August as well. And we've really been trying to look at what we need to do with those students, how do we find some kids that we may have missed the fall through the crack, try to see if we can get them in the support classes, peeling off kids that may not need it, working with special ed to make sure that level of instruction for the small group math classes are pretty good. Currently, all the small group math classes are actually co-taught with a special educator, someone who self-identifies with math, as well as a support teacher. So there's two teachers in there, which is kind of nice. And some of those kids are the kids who are traditionally typically scoring on the lower end. So what I was trying to do was just build all that infrastructure and that support in the front end, so it's not us reacting. It's already there. And I'm hopeful that it's going to help out. Thank you. The other comments that I want to make here is that one of the things that we did was that we did get two additional math coaches this year, so level two schools last year were sharing. Math coaches, they now have their own math coach. And coaches are focused on assisting students in those instructional changes. The other thing that Matt alluded to is that we have really opened up what's called Edwin Analytics, which is a tool provided by the state to all the teachers across the district so that they really can look at all of the, so they're not just looking at their students, but they're looking at, say, all the students in fourth grade or all the students in seventh grade. And teachers have been working together with data, not just at the elementary, although that has been quite the focus, but also at the middle school and looking at that data, which I think is going to make a big improvement for us. Science and technology. Back to Matt. Matt. Again, what are you doing up in eighth grade? It's so wonderful. It's a set of teachers that work until 7 o'clock at night and they're unbelievably dedicated. They're great. I mean, if you ever talk to an eighth grade math teacher, tell them to take a day off. I mean, really, they work hard. They really do. I mean, the thing is that we're used to talking about exemplaries in the elementary and high school results this year are sterling. But the eighth grade scores in both the L.A. and math, the growth scores indicate high open response, which the thing is we're not talking about learning how to take a test. And the open response kind of questions are the ones that indicate the ability to think and express learning. So it washes out a lot of the teaching, the test. It's just a measure of good teaching. And when I see those numbers that are consistently high, I know something good's happening, which is why I want to make note to everybody that this eighth grade last year did extraordinarily well as a cohort. And to sort of put that on the table is something that I should spread around on the rest of the district is an example of wonderfulness. The other question I'm going to have is you raised the point of the class sizes in seventh grade last year. And that's where we had that class of like 36, 37 kids. Yeah. 36. Do we have any similar concerns this year of any individual classes that are starting to look large that we should know about? Not in math. No. Maureen Murphy, one of the vice principals at Audison, I'm sure at some point at the end of the summer wanted to kill me with the amount of emails that I was sending her. We were pretty much on top of all the math numbers. Some of the comments from some of the seventh grade math teachers and really kind of extends, but the seventh grade math teachers in particular said that the classes are much more balanced this year than they've ever had it. The class sizes are pretty much, you know, pretty normal. But the one thing to take into account is that the current seventh grade also has a more reasonable overall class size. It's only 350 kids as opposed to the other two. So they were working with 380 kids last year. You know, the reduction gives much more flexibility with the balancing. If you look at eighth grade classes this year, they are a little bit bigger, but it's not unmanageable. It's not unreasonable. It's, you know, we try to take some of that balancing into account. I was looking to the support teachers. So the support teachers for me provide a lot of flexibility in what I can do. So to add increased kind of reservoir of teaching, one of the eighth grade support teacher also has a section, a normal section of math to, you know, the typical grade has 15 sections of math in eighth grade that has 16. To just allow for the fact that it was a larger overall class size and to provide a little bit more balancing. One of the difficulties last year was how do you split up the clusters to be able to balance it? And by adding that extra section of math eight, it allows you just to kind of move things around and work the jigsaw much more thoughtfully. And the four clusters in sixth grade, it's gold. You know, the typical teacher has about 100 kids. And you kind of alluded to the transition year. To me, that's so important. Even though it's the smallest average for a cluster teacher to have, it's probably one of the more important because you're working with so many other issues than just academics, new environments, new cultures. So that's, it seems to be a pretty good place to put your eggs right now. On top of the fact that, you know, that sixth grade from the math point of view and I'm a little biased, that's already a class that I want to make sure there's a little bit of a focus on long term. I think they can use a little bit of support. Thank you, very thoughtful response. Okay, going on to science and technology. We did see a decline, a little bit of a decline this year. When we looked at those questions, we do not believe it as content. We believe that it is the level of reading that we're asking and writing that we're asking our students to do. And the content area, and this also showed up in ELA. So we were actually, the two corollaries did not surprise us. Pretty much stable for science. We did find that there was an area of communication technology that had been dropped out of the curriculum and then the engineering and technology curriculum because of lack of time and they've rearranged some stuff to put that back in there. It's only one or two questions but it means that that strand for some reason has an impact. We're still significantly above the state. And then again, when we look at the percentage of proficient advanced in science at grade 10, again, significantly above the state. So in terms of the science analysis, as I said, we saw some problems with communication engineering and that has been rectified. And so those low scores should come up in that one strand. In addition, the level of complexity, we're seeing it at grade five. But also we noticed at grade eight that the questions that the students were struggling again were with complex text. And the level of writing that they're being asked to do is much more significant. Just quickly going over our high need students, and this is again the definition of students who fall into those groups. When we look at the percentage of students that reach proficiency, so all is the white, which would be all of our students. The darker color purple is the non high need students. Again, students who don't have an IEP or don't have ELL, are not ELL students or are not free and reduced lunch students. And the lighter blue color is the high need students. And even though there is a difference, you'll see that there is consistently, as we look over the grades, as students move up through the grades, a higher and higher percentage of students in the high needs population reaches proficiency. While we do see a challenge still at math, it kind of fluctuates a little bit in the elementary school. Again, when you look at grades seven, eight, and then 10, you see a consistently rising percentage of the students that are reaching proficiency in the high needs population. However, that is an area that we continue to focus on. And as we talk about improving tier one instruction, in ELA, we also feel the same thing in math. And so that is what our coaches are working on. So what lies ahead for us through arrangement of the budget this year, we have three building subs that go around to each elementary school. And so we have, we call them data teams. One of the meetings over a two month period will be a response to intervention data team that will look at those students who need intervention. But the other times that they meet, teachers are free to choose the area that they would like to work on. And that part of that work includes looking at data in that area. And so that will be, I know also that we have Paula O'Sullivan who joined us this year, who had worked with DSAC at the state and she's been working with a lot of the level two schools to work on their data. And we're also looking at data across the board, not just DRA data, which is what we had used to have done. Baseline Edge, we have a lot more of our data in baseline Edge. Teachers, when they do DRA testing and when they do writing assessments and math assessments for grades three through five, they're immediately putting their data into baseline Edge so that that's a formative assessment so they can monitor that over time. Along with their MCAS data is also in there so they can ask a question like which of the students who failed this formative assessment also didn't pass the MCAS test or scored poorly on the MCAS test. They can ask that information. They can also isolate which of these students are special education, et cetera, to take a look at that data. We also are having a wider review at all levels of common assessment data. As you knew last year, we put in a wind block or a flex block and the literacy coaches and the math coaches at the elementary level. We've actually scheduled the building subs so that they can be in those buildings when the literacy coach and the math coaches in that building so that when those teachers meet they have that assistance available to them. And we will continue as part of the new teacher evaluation system to set up specific goals at schools and teacher goals to target student achievement. I've got a question on the last one for you. How do you differentiate from teacher A and teacher B with teacher A student, teacher B student? In other words, the achievement, Mr. Thielman has high achievers or a percentage that do really well and Mr. Hayner doesn't. Yet we have similar goals and my achievement isn't as high. Yeah, I- Well, you wouldn't necessarily have the same goal. First of all, we try to avoid a black or white quantification of what that goal should be and that we're more looking for growth of students over time. So if Mr. Hayner was a special education teacher and Mr. Thielman had all the honor students, they would equally have a growth that we would have expected of those students but the black and white number might not be the same. And it's my poor articulation and my bad example. There are so many variables that determine growth. Our expectations of you and you've been able to articulate the different variables that have skewed some of the scores that we were expecting. That must be an awful hard thing for an evaluated to be communicating to the teacher. As long as it's out there and we're discussing it, I think it's important. I think that's important. When we teacher set goals, we tell them straight out that what we're not looking for is whether you met that goal, you're great, you didn't meet that goal, you're lousy. What we're looking for is how you made progress towards that goal and if you had problems meeting that goal, why did you meet those problems? What are all the variables that we took into place? It's definitely a collaborative conversation between the evaluator and the teacher. Thank you. So I have a question. It's hard for me sometimes to look at these charts because we have this state average that can sometimes be quite low or quite high. For example, looking at science, eighth grade science is 42 for the state average of proficient and advanced, whereas 10th grade for the state is 71. So are we really doing, like maybe we're really doing much, much better in eighth grade than we are in the 10th grade. What you're really looking for is the difference. The difference, right. And right, so the question is, is it just variabilities in this test or why some grades score higher? It becomes a graduation requirement in grade 10. So it gets easier. Well, it looks a little bit like it might get easier. It is more achievable. Let's put it that way. But also the seriousness of which students, also the bandwidth of what students are being tested on because all of our students take an intro, we call it physics, but it's an intro level to physical science class and then that's the MCAS test that they take. They're all taking the exact same course where in eighth grade you're testing the science that was taught in sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade. So you're teaching, you're in fifth grade, even worse, you're testing the science that was covered in first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade. So it's a much narrower amount of information that's covered. So that's hardly, comes into play there. Okay, okay. My question actually kind of gets to what Missus was talking about. I'm wondering, I appreciate that our achievement has been gradually increasing over time and is actually quite high compared to the state. And I'm wondering if we're at the point where we should start looking, separating out the advance from the profession, not just clumping them together and looking at one line, but doing like a stack graph going across to see how ideally you'd see the number, the whole number going up and the advance increasing over time. But I feel like there's some more information that could be gotten from analyzing like that. You want us to look at the percent of students that are advanced at the state level as well as compared to the district level? Is that what I'm hearing you say? I'm thinking you could do the same, I'm not sure how to present the state data yet, but just do the same information but instead have it the percent proficient below and then you stack the percent advanced on top of that so that the top line will mimic what you've got. Right, I think that's, this is what. No, I want them on top of each other. So you want a stacked graph as opposed to this one. I know I have it one in here someplace. Yeah, it goes across. I'm trying to find it. It's in here somewhere, right. So instead of that, you'd like it stacked? Yes. Okay, you can certainly do that. Because I'm thinking, you know, I'd like this. It's visually easier to see? Easier to see and it means something different to me if I see the advance doing this versus if I see it widening. You know, I'd like to see everyone going out in the evening. That's easy to do, easy enough to do. And, yeah. I don't know if that's available or if it's safe. Okay. I'm just trying to go through all the reports on how we see it. They don't give you just proficient somewhere. They don't bring it to the line of easy. No, I'll have to do it by hand, but that's okay. This is easy. We just changed this. When we run this, we just changed it for a stacked bar as opposed to a side-by-side bar. All the wonderful work you're doing to compensate for all the issues on MCAS, is it translatable to the new potential testing system or are you gonna have to start all over again? I'm gonna let you answer that question. What I would say is we're at the point right now where, now to say I don't worry about MCAS, but it's not like I'm talking about increasing MCAS scores. Like I wouldn't be talking about increasing park scores. What I wanna talk about is increasing our capacity to be better teachers. And that's the part that's gonna translate. So, I don't know if it's not just as simple as like changing it. The fish that I have to fry are more instructional and they're more curriculum-based. So it's, and I think that's what's gonna help. Okay, okay. No, no, go ahead. Mr. Schlickman first though, he was waving at me, I think. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Is that one of the misconceptions we have is we're chasing test scores and we're not. At least that's not our intent on the committee. But we're aware that certain indicators within the test are highly correlated to high quality instruction and student achievement. The MCAS is nothing more than an indicator and a constellation of sub indicators. And if you look at the indicators carefully, you can pick out the ones that correlate to excellence in instruction and benchmark that. You can look for trends, you can see certain things. So being data aware and looking at this as much the way you described is very important but it's not how many kids were proficient this year versus last year. It's not a lot of the metrics that get published in the newspaper. It's that subtle analysis of the sub scores that have relationship to things that you're doing in the classroom that you translate into the next year strategy to improve instruction next year. Cause the two things we're saying. One, you're talking about coaching. I firmly believe every teacher deserves a coach. I mean, Tom Brady's got a coach. Why shouldn't our teachers? And secondly, there are a couple things that call out to us and I'm looking at some of the high need students on the elementary and some buildings and saying that's of concern and I know it's a concern of yours and I know you're working on it but I'm also seeing some amazing things that I can discern from the patterns and I've got to say that the people of Arlington are well served by the school system and there's obviously a commitment to high level teaching going on all over the place. Talking happy. I'm just following up on what you said about Park. Oh, we're going back to that one. I didn't use that word. So I understand that we're not doing that we're doing MCAS again this year but if in the future we go to Park because the state does, I understand that they're not releasing individual questions. So how can you drill back difficulties in areas with students? Okay, before I'm gonna let Matt address that question but I don't want anyone at home to think that while we are not doing Park this spring that we are sort of just sitting back and letting the world pass us by, we actually have a committee of representatives of teachers across the district that have met with me once but will begin meeting with me again in January while we will talk about what we feel is necessary to prepare the district to do Park should that the Massachusetts Board of Education vote to go with Park. So I just want to assure people at home that we're not, just because we're not gonna be doing it in the spring that we're just not doing anything but do you want to talk about? So you're talking about how do you do an analysis if we don't have the questions that are released? So the one thing I'm not quite sure about and this is what I'm trying to think about is whether or not that's a long term mandate because at some point, right now also for the MCAS they're only releasing half the questions. So when we do analysis it's sometimes frustrating because you only see the domain or the standard. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point maybe two or three years down the road when it's more established assessment and they've normed everything that they will start to release some of the questions as well as some student work that usually comes at some point. I just don't know if there's a timeline but yeah, I'm aware of the fact that it's not released immediately but yeah, that could add a little wrinkle at the beginning. Okay, thank you. But what, if I may Mr. Chairman. Yes. But what you're really doing is you're not, a good analysis isn't looking at a question and trying to think out what happened to that question because you can have some real spurious things going on with any given question. Every question is full of error. The more you group together, the less error you have, the more you've got to deal with. What happens is that we look at clusters of questions and see how that correlates to other things that we're doing and is the point we were making on the open response. As the open response tends to move it tends to be aligned with things that we like to see in the classroom or certain components of the test moves you're seeing in classes with higher levels on certain sub scores, you're seeing as a trained observer more instances of higher order lessons going on in the classroom. So you can see the numbers or indicators of classroom performance and that's how you line it up. I mean, why is standard 12 under the new standards? Why are certain areas of interest? Well, maybe they're not but if you see that one is lower than the other you can start to think that out but it's really not that necessary if the content area standards are clear and you're teaching to the standards and that you don't need the list of test questions in order to think about what this means. The last thing I wanna say is one of the reasons I invited both of these colleagues to come tonight is that I want you to get the sense and the folks at home to get the sense that we work together as a team so that even though we don't, we have many times we'll meet and the social studies, there is no MCAS for social studies but there are standards in the Common Core State Standards to talk about literacy that relate to social studies and even though science has its own content area there are also literacy standards that appear in science. We meet as a team, we analyze student data and performance together as a team and we put together plans together as a team to educate the whole child and I think that that's the important thing that I wanted you to get out of tonight because as someone had said in the beginning it's really the instruction. When you get to 80%, 85% proficient in advance the difference between that and meeting all of your goals for all students whether it be MCAS or otherwise is just gonna be a change in instruction and it takes a full court press to make a change in instruction. It's just an incredibly high bar. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Appreciate everything you've done. Thanks. Great job. Excellent presentation. Dr. Bode, school safety. And do you want to invite? I also, yeah so I invite Cindy Sheridan Curran to join us and I also want to thank them that was a terrific presentation but I also think that you can hear the level of thought and planning that goes in in response to these tests as well as all of our formative assessments. All right. One of our sort of collective district goals this year is to relook, update all of our safety protocols which include some of our protocols around evacuation. And we have been, we have spent over the years and I want to give again a historical context to this. We have actually done quite a bit of work in the past five, six, seven years in improving the protocols we have around safety in our buildings. Some of these have been even triggered by events in the nation that we've all found quite tragic. And but as we, but it's a, this year we're having a particular focus in part in response to the governor's task force recommendations this summer but also some initiatives around safety that our police department as well as our larger community of star community members are highly recommending to school districts. And last school committee meeting, so the public is aware of this, the school committee and executive session because it's an item for executive session, had a presentation from our chief of police, Chief Ryan, Sergeant Gallagher and Cindy Curran around recommendations for a change in some of our, one of our, some of our protocols this year. And we're not going to have the full presentation this evening. I've asked Cindy if she would come and just sort of give a quick overview and then talk about where, what we need to do to move forward in the role out of this. Cindy? I would like to just first acknowledge the fact that what we're presently practicing is a passive response to a dangerous intruder situation that is via our lockdown drills. And we would like to move toward a proactive response mostly because of some very powerful recommendations and some lessons learned from some really tragic events. The Department of Homeland Security recommendations few years ago was their three outs program, the get out, hide out, take out, which is really reflects our natural human response to an unsafe situation, which is of course fight, flight or freeze. Moving forward this past summer when the task force from the governor's council on school safety and security came out, that report really mirrored a lot of what we are already doing in Arlington and we're already doing much of it very well. But again, a recommendation was made to move away from the passive response to a more proactive response. In June 2013, the US Department of Education, the REMS, Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools recommended that we stop using lockdowns as our only school response. So because the governor's task force very specifically cited the ALIS program, the three of us in the community who are trained ALIS responders that would be of course Inspector Porchello, our school resource officer, Sergeant Gallagher and myself. So we would really like to move toward the implementation of ALIS very quickly. ALIS is not a linear response, but a list of options and tools that we would like to practice with our staff and students so that they have an ability to respond in a varied way to a certain set of circumstances. So very briefly, ALIS stands for, the A is for alert, which of course is to notify authorities and anyone who may be in harm's way from a violent intruder. And what they'd like to see is that anybody would be authorized to make this announcement and to make the notification and that we not use any codes. So we would use very clear language about the danger and about the presence and identification of the intruder. The ALIS of course for lockdown, which is presently practiced in again a very passive way. So the difference here is that the barricade training would go into effect, which is in essence learning to not just hide and be silent and the classroom is presently practiced but learn how to barricade the door so it would make it more difficult for an intruder to breach that door. Inform the use of course technology to provide real time updates and information as the event is occurring. The counter is to interrupt the skill set needed to shoot accurately. This of course is a very, very last response if an intruder should breach an area where we have students or staff. And of course, he is for evacuate. And that is of course, a getaway to put time and distance between that staff or student and the danger. Again, this is not a linear response but a set of really common sense tools that we would like to practice. And again, the recommendations are very clear from our federal government down to our district levels that we move in this direction. So we would like to and are ready to move forward with your approval. I'll put the motion on the table so we can debate. So I'll move that the school district adopt the ALICE training. School safety protocol. School safety protocol. Is there a second? Second. It's open for discussion at this time. Mr. Schlichman. Yeah, I just want to say that working in Lowell were a few months ahead of Arlington in this and we've done the initial training. I don't want to go into details here at the meeting because I think that as we go forward, the police department is going to go out with the school department and talk to parents about what this is all about. But it's an excellent program. It's very well thought out. The training we've received is school administrators and Lowell has been top rate. And I think that it's, this is an important step forward to maintaining safety in our buildings. Anyone else like Mr. Thielman? I thought Jennifer had her hand up. I'm sorry. Oh, no, I had these general questions but tell me when it's sort of appropriate to ask. Go right ahead. They're not about ALISO, so I can wait. Okay, then let's stick with ALISO. So the one thing I want to say is Chief Ryan has recommended this strongly. He was with us in executive session. The public should know that. So the police department, the superintendent, the leadership of the district, all the people that are involved in safety in the district are recommending this. And so that makes me very comfortable with it. Plus it's being used in many other districts. Yes. Yes. I just wanted to add to that that we did have a very detailed discussion at that time. So we're not asking a lot of questions right now because we had a long detailed discussion at our last meeting. Dr. Boatie? I can go a little bit over the rollout of this, pending your approval this evening that we've actually spent a lot of time thinking through and have investigated how it has rolled out in other districts. Other districts have moved further, have done this as well. I don't, we know quite a few districts around here have already gone through the training. Karen, do you have the, can you put that up so everybody can see it as I talk about it? And Cindy, feel free to add any comments you might want to make about this. I'm just going to go over the brief structure of it. Do you want us to take the vote first and then? No, I think she'll go through it first. We'll take the vote, yeah. So the first step really was in September, it ended up being more too small. Oh, wait a minute, you have. Doesn't matter, we have it. We have it here, but the wrong vote. That's it, that's what we got. I know, but you know what? I think I gave you, that's my fault. I gave, I gave you, didn't give you the updated. Let me just take that off the screen and I'll just talk about it. And because we'll have, we'll put the corrected one that adapts to, we had to change some of the dates because we weren't ready to present to the school committee in September. But let me just talk about what this will look like. So pending your approval, what the next step of this will be is that we will have an overview at all of the school's faculty meetings. So all staff in all the schools will have an overview of Alice and the program. This will occur in November and December. We've already scheduled the elementary which would be in early December. We're still in the process of scheduling the middle school and the high school for when this presentation is going to occur. So that's the next big step. So these are sort of in big windows of time. The next is that we need to have a town-wide presentation to parents. And that will occur in the January, February, we're actually working on some dates right now and potential speakers at that. So that will be a winter and will certainly give plenty of notice to parents for those presentations. We will then move into training. This year, we have decided that it makes sense to have, as Cindy pointed out, that this is really, we're asking to practices. So in this rollout this year, we're going to have the high school, the middle school, and one of our elementary and that school will be Bishop. So what will happen when we get into the February, March time period, because we need some windows in order to accomplish this, we will have the training for the staff in those buildings. All right. Then as we go further in this, we're getting ready to do the practice with the goal that we're actually going to practice this in June, we will have a practice session for parents at each level, so they can come in and experience exactly what their children will experience. And that will be scheduled probably late May, early June. And then the goal is by June, middle June is to have the actual practice with those three schools. Obviously they won't be staggered a little bit. And then we'll be debriefing. After each one, we'll have a debriefing session. So based on what we learned, particularly what we learned doing this with Bishop, we'll inform how we do the training next year for the other elementary schools and we'll follow the same course of action. There'll be a training at each school followed by parents having a chance to experience what the practice session, what the exercise looks like. And then we'll do the practice at each of the schools so that by probably November next year, we will have done all of the training for the district. So that's the rough guideline. We can put this up in our notes. But I guess I gave you, what I gave you was the initial copy that we had and I somehow quickly gave it to Karen too quickly. But we do have it thought out based on when we actually were able to do the executive session presentations of the school committee, okay? Okay, at this time I'd ask Mr. Cheryl, do you have a motion for us to electronically vote? Are we gonna do it manually? Manually, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Thank you, unanimous pass. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Karen. Thank you. We have a member, two people on his questions. Oh, I have some questions, general questions, because I had a chance to read the governor's task force recommendation and they're partly related to Alice. I understand Alice is, everyone's being trained. You know, all teachers, students are involved. It's designed to empower lots of different people. But one of the very strongest recommendations from the governor's task force, which may be being implemented, I just don't know, is to identify a school level crisis response team that meets regularly. And I'm wondering if that is part of this process or... It is, actually, when we had... Yes, as Cindy was saying, we actually do almost, I would say that we do what is in the task force. And one of the reasons we have been able to have that level of preparedness is that a number of years ago, it was in 2007, we applied for the REMS grant through the federal government. We received it, it was nearly $100,000. And during that period of time, which extended over, well, we took us about two years, we did a lot of training, we have a crisis communication and management booklet, handbook, which actually details who should be on the crisis team, what the responsibilities of the crisis team are, and all the principals have this. So we've been reviewing that with principals this year. And all of the principals are, if they haven't already created the crisis team this year, we'll be creating the crisis team. So at each school, there's an identified group of people that are, and how often do they meet? There's a district-wide meeting on anybody who's involved in the crisis team monthly. And there are some elementary schools that are now starting to have monthly meetings within the building. Okay, but that's just being rolled out with the expectation that we will do that overall. Most of the buildings are already doing that. So this is a process that's been in place. And we've got some new staff, and we've just recently now, we have social workers in every building. So this is something that for the most part is being done. Okay, and then there's actually one other question I had. Another strong recommendation of the task force is that this anonymous hotline. I know one of the things you mentioned in your report last time is that in many cases, somebody knows that there's something very dangerous about to happen, but that information doesn't filter out properly. Do we have anything like that in place, or any plans for? We don't really have a hotline, but I did see that in the report, and that is something that we're talking about, how to put that in place. I think what happens is that it's very important that students feel a connection to at least one person in the building, because that's often who they will go to. I'm not saying that the hotline wouldn't be important, it is, but I think our first, and I think the most important thing that we do, is to make sure that we're very aware of the students in each building, and that we create a way that students have a strong connection to someone in that building, because that is, I think, important. And to add to that, we do have student support teams, so there's really a vehicle in each building that all staff members have to run through any concerns about a particular student, so there are already processes in place in each building, specifically to address students who are at higher risk, or any students that are flying underneath the radar, and we have staff members who do have concerns. And those meetings are weekly. This is a question for the superintendent. On the rollout sheet that needs to be updated, it does talk about early on a notification of the rollout to parents and staff, and I'm wondering, is that going to still happen, and how is that happening, and what's the process? Yes, there will be a letter that's sent out to, I'm just giving you the broad, yes, there will be a letter that'll be sent out before we actually begin these trainings. And accompanying that will be the general rollout of it, supporting documentation is about this, so we'll create some URLs that we can have parents go look at. No, we have to do that before the trainings actually start in the schools, yes. Thank you. That was my question. Good job. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Appreciate that. You have two minutes? Superintendents report. We have the motions on lab. Yes, I guess we are a little off time. Well, as you know, we belong to collaboratives. The EDCO Collaborative for professional development, primarily in job-alike professional development, as well as some special ed. But our primary collaborative for special education is the lab collaborative. We've talked, I think you're all very familiar with that collaborative. Over the last few years, just the regulations apply to all collaboratives, special ed, professional, whatever the, their mission is. And quite recently this year, you approved the Articles Agreement for EDCO and asking you this evening to approve the Articles of Agreement for lab. The articles have been discussed at great length with the five members of the lab board, which consists of the five superintendents of the five districts represented in the lab. And we've gone through multiple readings of it. We've had the attorney for the lab collaborative review it, review it. The articles are totally consistent with all the regulations that have been required by Department of Education. So what is going on right now is that all of the lab districts or school committees are being asked to approve the articles. Once that has been accomplished, then the articles go to the Department of Education for final approval. Some of approval, well, we have two motions here. Let's, I saw more approval of the lab. The second one is to have you sign it. Right. The first one, any questions? Is there a second? Yes. Is there any questions? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Second. I move to authorize the chair of the school committee, Mr. Hainer, to sign the collaborative agreement with lab education collaborative. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? In innocent. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The, do you want to, the EDCO agreement, we were going to have it signed this. They still have to do some fine tuning and get it approved by their board first before we vote on it. There was a, an amendment brought forward by one of the members. So they're working on that. So we'll bring that forward to next, next meeting. Because the EDCO board of directors has to vote on the amendment before it comes to school committees. All right. Karen, could you put up that little video or get it ready? What you're going to see, and I had wanted to, to do this last week and prepare it and just sort of, we're tight for time. But I wanted to be able to show you this little clip. One of the things that, as you know, we, we are part of the middle sex, the district attorney's middle sex league. All right, well. Sorry. What was I going to say? Let me explain what's going on. And there is a middle sex partners for youth with something that was started a years ago actually by, it's been in existence for a long time actually, in the middle sex DA's office. But one of the things that they have done in the last couple of years is do outreach to students, both in terms of creating posters on a particular theme, or in the last couple of years, public service announcements that are usually go for 60 minutes, or I'm sorry, 60 seconds. It's not 60 minutes. And they open this up to all of the communities in the middle sex district. And this last year, I think that there were 130 students who participated and there were 33 student videos submitted. And out of the middle school submitted one of the videos. And the theme was take time to get involved. And this year we have another one, which is another theme. But there were five winners selected. And how the balloting occurs is that there's the first winnowing down to a number of videos. And then the videos are sent out to all member schools who are willing to do judging. We had to decline this year because one of ours was a finalist, but we've done it in the past. And so the final five are selected by other students. Of the five that were winners, only one was a middle school and that was Odyssey Middle School. And I wanna really recognize Edith Moisson who works with our students in just amazingly wonderful ways, very creative. And she has a group of students that do a lot of work with videos. You know they have the ACMI studio there at Odyssey. And so I just wanted to show you what the video was on this theme. This was shown to, we had a couple of weeks ago, a breakfast for superintendents and police chiefs. And all the videos were shown at that time. So again, the theme is take time to get involved. Congratulations to that team of students and to the whole Odyssey Middle School and certainly gratitude to Edith Moisson for her leadership. And so they're anxious to do it again this year. So we'll see how they do. And then one thing I just wanted to give you an update. Today, everybody was aware of how significant last night's storm was. Weathered it fairly well compared to some districts, though this morning there was no electricity town hall. And for some reason, the phone system for all of our elementary schools was out for, in some places for a good portion of the day. Alert nows were sent to all parents. We did have some damage, but nothing really significant though. Here at the high school for the, I don't think I've ever recalled this happening in a big storm before, but the blue gym, about half the gym, had water on the floor. And then over on the walkway from column house to downs, there was about two inches of water on the walkway. So that all was cleaned up very quickly. We didn't, I guess we had to move one class. So most of the damage at the other schools were, limbs down, kids couldn't be in the playground, a bracket, for example, until those limbs are taken down. There was some leaks at Hardy. A new leak that we didn't know about could leak. But. A new leak. A new leak. We're working on the leaks at Hardy. But the thing that there was some leaks at Bishop, but amazingly, with all the efforts we've done recently, there was no water into the fifth grade, that fifth grade hall. So I feel like we've made some significant progress there. So it was all very minor, but I just wanted to give you an update and in what happened, that's it. Awesome, thank you. Moving down to the discussion on the format for the superintendent's evaluation. Our next meeting, just to let the public know, the school committee will be doing the annual evaluation of the superintendent. And the intent of this discussion is to come to consensus on how the board, the committee would like to do this presentation. Traditionally, we've done it around Robin. What you have either electronically is just a suggestion. Part of the requirement is for the chair to do a compilation of all the members. But at the same time, each member, how we do this presentation, what I gave you tonight is just a suggestion, which basically is, let me get it up so I say it correctly, and it's not gonna come up when I hear it is. My suggestion is each member will have the opportunity to make an opening statement. Then the chair will read the superintendent evaluation compilation. Then during this, each member may comment on each section. Basically, what I was thinking of is something similar to when we do the consent agenda, if there's a member hears something or wants to comment on it, hold or whatever we agree on tonight. And then at the end, each member would have an opportunity to make a closing statement. This is just a suggestion. And so in our discussion, I would ask us to talk about generalities, not specifics that are within your documents or my document and stuff like that at this time. So opening it up to the floor for any discussion this time. Ms. Starks. I have a bunch of questions. One is, how will things be reported out? So how are you going to report those? I have no idea. I mean, I thought this compilation, as I shared, it was a great idea as long as I was sitting over there and didn't have to do the compilation. So I think- It goes into the details, right? Absolutely. So if you have a suggestion, you want to make a suggestion? Okay. But we have, in the forms that we have, we have number ratings. And one of the suggestions, I'll throw it out, is that I add them up and divide by seven. No, no, there's no numbers. Well, I would assign a number to it. Yeah. Assign a number to each one of the, I'm sorry, to the values on it. If that's the agreement. Or I can state, on this particular item, there were three at this rating, two at this rating, one at this rating. I think that- I think that- That's more accurate. Good, we have one agreement. Thank you. That makes it a lot easier. So- And there'll be no real cumulative score. It'll just be kind of, you know, this is- At the, on the final rating, is that how you want me to report the final rating? Because there has to be a final rating, overall rating for the superintendent. That's what the state wants, an overall rating. Now, we're still, I think we, in our discussion, correct me if I'm wrong. That first rating has to be done by June next year. That official one. Well. Or sometime this year. You know, I would suggest an overall rating is a broad term. Overall rating could mean just what Cindy said. Three members, I believe it's proficient. Three believe it's- I think that's an overall rating. That's an overall rating. I don't think that it has to be rolled out. I have no problem with that. So I think we should try submitting it. I mean, they may kick it back and then- And then we'll learn. We'll have another discussion. And then we'll learn. That's great. I think we do have to land on a central measure because in the reporting system, you have to pick one of the four categories. I understand. Yeah. In the past, with the exception of Ms. Seuss, we've all done that. We've presented that as an oral final rating on ourselves. So I mean, I agree. Give it a shot. If they don't like it, they'll let us know, I'm sure. Are you Mr. Slickman? Are you saying- Wait a minute, wait a minute. Mr. Slickman is correct. You have to have one. So we have to have one for what? Because there are many, many, many- The final. The final. Overall. Overall has to be one of these categories. One of those categories. Well then- I think we have to- And we have to do in America- Let me ask the superintendent. Are we reporting for you in the way that we're reporting for principals and teachers by category and to the state electronically and that we have to go through the four categories. The four standards. The four standards. And the overall. That we have to report one ranking overall electronically. Is that what they're asking us to do? Yes. Okay. So we do have to land on one measure of central tenancy. Then I think- Only on step three? On the four sub-areas and the final. On each of the four areas. But in step one, there is no overall. There are three different sections. And in step two, there are four different sections. Step three is the only one that has one. Step four has one and step five is just common. Since it's not a numerical, it's not numerical then. It's an overall rating then we have to- It's categorical. It's majority. If the majority- Maybe we need to vote it. Well, I could report out three said this, two said this, the majority is boom. Could you- Is it possible to call somebody at the state just to get some guidance at this? I mean- I'll be happy to do that. Well, I mean- Because it's just really hard. I mean there is no- For step one, there is no, you know, there's three sections. So how do you roll that up? Let's say professional practice, three of us say met, three of us say significant progress, one says exceeded. So what's the rating? Wasn't step three supposed to be based on one and two? Yeah, right, so it's, I'm not sure. I think we need to, I think the state should be able to help us with this. There should be somebody, or even the MASC. We're not the first district to- Well- That person says that- Let me just share this with you. At last year's conference, these questions came up and there was a lot of I don't knows. This has showed up at every EDCO meeting, including yesterday, and they're bringing another speaker out because of all the questions that, we're not the only board having this issue of ambiguity in their instruction. Okay, Kathy can call the MASS. I mean you can call the superintendent's association and see what they're going to do. No, you don't want to do that. I can do that. I do think that everybody is in a learning curve about this because of this issue. Because if the teachers or administrators is one evaluator. Yeah, it's easier. Right, it's easier. Much easier. And this, you know, you go through all of these, you look at the rubrics and you determine it. Now, one of the discussions we haven't had as a committee thinking about this is what we've done with the teachers and that is in the first year we did the evaluations for everybody. We really only looked at standard one and two. We had a gradual rollout because it's just very overwhelming. Now teachers that were pre-professional, we had to look at the other two standards, but it was not given the same kind of weight and look at evidence. And that's again something we haven't really talked about here is what we're going to do about evidence other than the goals. Yeah, I think going forward, so this is a new form, we're all getting used to this. We were given evidence by the superintendent for the professional practice, student learning, district improvement goals. But then there's all these other categories, instructional leadership, curriculum, instruction, assessment, evaluation, data, informed decision making and it goes on and on. And the one thing I think going forward might be worth considering here is that either we select certain standards and ask for evidence or we get evidence from the superintendent for everything we have to evaluate around because it's a little bit difficult to go back over past minutes and in the history of the school committee in 2013, 2014, and figure out how we did on instruction, assessment, evaluation, it's just a lot. Well, and that's actually, yeah, for some it's hard. And if you weren't here, it's even harder. I was given a packet that is very inadequate in terms of assessing these kind of things. Yeah, so anyway, I'm going to answer you. On the 13th, I am going to announce that the superintendent evaluation subcommittee is going to meet in December. The superintendent and I are going to meet prior to that and try to work out an outline of goals and set a timeline to do exactly and set the parameters going forward to do exactly what you were just talking about. Because if there is, and I don't know all the conversations that are taking place at the state level, but if there's flexibility here, it's to pick one or two of these standards in each of these categories and ask for evidence allows us to go deeper into the evaluation and is actually more helpful to anybody you're evaluating. And I'd like to be, go deep in two or three categories rather than a broad range because it's just too much. So what do we do with this thing? I mean, especially an issue for me because I have less experience than you do. I had the same experience you did. And there's some things that, I know that nobody's made a fuss about something. So does that mean that the superintendent is proficient, exemplary, I mean, no one has filed a lawsuit or anything. There's certain things I just, I don't know if the superintendent is doing evaluations in a timely manner. I just have, I don't have personal evidence of it. I just know no one's made a fuss, right? And there's a whole bunch of things like that. And there's no box where I say I can write. Or I don't know. I don't know. Well, this is my opinion. I have no problem on putting down insufficient evidence. This is not an area of concern. This is, I will qualify that. And if I don't feel, I have, I have an up. So I can write another box or? Go on the comments. This is a common area. Right. This is a common area. And I would, I would ask if you feel as an ambiguity or you don't, it isn't an issue. You don't have sufficient stated. Because I think this is important. I mean, as Dr. Bordi said, everyone else has one evaluator. Dr. Bordi has seven, even with a compilation that's going to be there. From what I have heard from you folks that I will report out the numbers of the, how many proficient, how many, I think like that. You're going to read through the whole thing? Well, that's, that's another thing. I mean. I think you just read the headings. Engagement, you know. Right. I'll read all the, unless this, some member has something, I mean, really outstanding. Everyone's rating. So there's steps, and there's standards. Yes. The steps are fairly easy. They have big swaths, so they're easy to read out. The standards are, they have lots and lots of little ones, but for each one, we have to give an overall, each of us. Yes. And so I think that what we should do is not read every little one, and how everyone voted, but, so for example, superintendents performance rating for standard one instructional leadership, you can just say overall of the seven of us, so many rated exemplary, proficient, needs improvement satisfaction, without having to go into the sub-bullets. Do you see what I'm saying? Yes. Because there's like five sub-bullets for each one of these that would take. I would think it's important to inform the public what the standards mean. I mean, you know, proficient. Yeah, yeah, he can read off those sub-bullets and say these are the things that we looked at. No, no, no, no, no, no, defining each one of the ratings. Define the indicators, because the public's not going to understand the proficient exemplary. That needs to be defined as a prelude to the evaluation. Right, right. So let me write that down. Yeah. Yes, go right ahead. I think that because this, what's different about the position you're in than what we would be evaluating is we can do observations. There's a lot of things that we can get. And for example, evaluations, you just simply can't have those. And so it's sort of an odd indicator, really, in that whole piece of it. But I think a lot of, an initial sort of go around in this as people are starting to get used to it, is they were looking at the goals. And then the school committee picked out a couple of district goals that you want evidence on. And having that have a fair amount of weight, because I think what you need to do is think about, well, what are some other areas that you particularly want evidence in? Now, all year long, you get reports. But basically, some of the interactions more from what goes out the committee or subcommittee meetings. So you have to sort of extract your discernment from those kind of interactions. And it's, given the rubrics, it's sort of hard. And I think that when Starks is correct, that you sort of have to look at the big standards and sort of do an overall on it. You're in a tough spot. And nobody's really figured this out well right now. Again, I want to make it clear. Are we all going to be giving a rating on all four standards? I don't want to be in a position like we were last year where a couple of us did four, some did two. If you choose not to give a rating on that, that's fine. But I want us to all be clear that we're looking at all four standards. Yeah, but I think people have the right to say all four standards, but let's say management operations, law ethics, and policies. I don't have enough information to answer that. That's fine. I just don't want, and this is not a negative comment. I mean it this way. I felt a little blindsided because I, and I think it was my fault, I didn't make it clear. I went down through all the things, and some of us didn't. And I just, if somebody chooses to go through the whole thing, that's fine. There's a lot of these here I agree with Mr. Thielman. I'm not, I don't have information. I don't feel it's appropriate at this time to be making a judgment. Yes? I'm just looking at this, thinking if I understand how this is being done, you're going to have to take this and fill out a computer form. And you're going to have all these questions, and you're going to have to pick boxes that express our committee's opinion of, for each category and stuff. So I'm thinking as. We don't know. That's what. OK. That's why the call needs to be made in the state. Yeah, I got that feeling from Dr. Bodie. So for example, let's take the example management. You're right, there's so much in this. So what you do with the district goals, you decide what are the big priorities in terms of that category. And we had some things that had to do with the high school SOI strat. So you've already pre-selected the things in that standard that are high priority. That's for next year's evaluation. If you go back up on the forms that Cindy was going to have to fill in on these things, there is taken from. Last year's goals. Last year's goals. Last year's goals. You already selected what are some big ideas in each one of those instructional categories. Yes. Instructional management, PD. And so you've already selected the indicators, in a sense, that you wanted me to focus on. And so basically in some ways, this is just a different format than how we used to do it. We had district goals, and what you wanted to know at the end of the year is evidence on all the goals in terms of how we did. And that's sort of the same idea here. And so to be clear, but we're evaluating, this is, so everyone knows, the public too, we're evaluating you on FY14, the 2013, 2014. Yes, yes, yes. So I think that needs to be. But again, just to clarify, the reason we moved it to November was to also include the MCAS results, which we have. Right. It's the 13, 14 year ended technically on June 30. Because we've extended to November, we're including this piece of it too. That aspect only of the 14th. Well, the MCAS for last year. Right, exactly. OK, just for the old man to make sure he's got it clear. You folks are going to give me, hopefully, tonight. We had till the end of the month. Yes, that's what I was fine with. We've got another week. Do not do it. Yes. The policy, and I'm only saying this because I twisted somebody's arm over here, said the second meeting of October. Well, that's not a trend. He gets planets. He gets extra stars for his being done. That's all. But I'm going to ask you all, I would ask you if you could accommodate me by sending it to me electronically. That would make my life a lot easier. I'm going to scan in my written copy and send it to you. That's fine. Is your am I going to be calling you for clarification of your handwriting? I don't know. OK. You can type in the comment box. So it's almost like typing in the comment box. No, OK. There is. All right. OK, fine. OK, this is between Ms. Dax and me. And this is allowable for clarification. I want to be on record with that. The other thing is that I lost it. We're sending it to you and Karen, right? Yes. I want to remind everybody and our newest member that during the meeting itself, any note taking during this is subject to going to Ms. Fitzgerald at the end of the meeting. During this, if you take any notes, they're very clear on that. If you express those notes. They get handed to her. Yes. What I'm saying is in the past, a member might have said something that all of a sudden, before I got to speak, it jogged my memory or something. I would add a comment to my actual written one. And it might have been on a side note or something. But I would verbalize it. That written is required. Any note taking during that is required. OK. I am going to send to the committee through Ms. Fitzgerald. And I would ask any response, go back through Ms. Fitzgerald, for clarification only, my understanding of your charge tonight for what is going to happen on the 13th of November. If it's not clear, again, I will send it through Ms. Fitzgerald to the members. My understanding, I would ask you individually, if I'm not on the right track, please clarify it back through Ms. Fitzgerald to me. And yes. If you get clarification that you will have to fill out an electronic form of this, which means you have to make choices between one category or the other. When you do your compilation, can you say, this many people chose this category, this many people chose that category, I'm going to, with the committee's permission, I'm going to check this category. And then we can talk about it. During the actual evaluation meeting. Yeah, during the actual evaluation. I have no problem with that. So I'm saying, if you are going to have to do that, then I think it is good to report out everybody's, but then say, and so I'm choosing this one. Fine. The meeting is after another three weeks. So if you do get some information in the state that informs us, I think you should share it with all of us. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Again, through Ms. Fitzgerald. Great. We all set? Like the first evaluation I participated in, it went a lot smoother than I thought it would. Actually, just to clarify, so I sent it to you and to you? No. Don't send it to you. Yeah, Ms. Fitzgerald is going to be the conduit. Okay. Correct. The evaluation just goes to that. No, the evaluation, I'm sorry, the evaluation comes, a copy goes to Ms. Fitzgerald and to me. So CC. Put it as an attachment, CC her. Got it, okay. That's fine. All set? Oh, I'm so excited. We are now moving to MESC Delegate Assembly. Turn it over to Mr. Schleckman. Yeah, I mean, the thing I want to emphasize before we descend into this little topic is that the only thing that is really debatable within the course of a resolution is the therefore be it resolved statement. What will happen, has anyone besides Mr. Hainer seen a Delegate Assembly at MESC? I've seen it. Yeah. It's sort of like town meeting. And you get one member from each school committee sitting in the room and they're going over through the warrant articles, in this case, being the resolutions. And the item before us is the therefore be it resolved statement. So all the whereases are just commentary and not subject to amendment. And that's what's going to be voted. Now, sometimes committees will come prepared with an amendment. What often happens is that at a meeting such as this, a school committee will tell their delegate, inform their delegate as to how the committee feels about the resolution and instruct him. On some committees never do that. Some committees do it on just a few of them. One of the resolutions is one that we joined Chelmsford, Lincoln, Sudbury, Mendenupton, Northbridge, Holbrooke, Wolburn, and Worcester to sponsor. That's resolution number six. So the assumption right now is that we support resolution six because we've already voted that. My suggestion is we go very quickly through the resolutions and ask whether or not we want to instruct our delegate or pertaining to that resolution. Resolution number one is that the MASC file and support legislation will require institutions providing out of district placements for education, which are private providers, to file end of year reports that reflect in detail inclusiveness that of corporate annual reports and stock offering schedules and post salaries of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I mean, there's a feeling out there among school committee members that we have to do extensive reporting. But the cost of private placements are going way up. And there's really no accountability for why this is happening. That's sort of the rationale for this resolution. I mean, if if I move to make a vote, yes. I can't make a vote in favor. OK. I move to instruct our delegate to vote in favor of this resolution. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Quick question. Paul, does this mean if it says submitted by Framingham School Committee, it means no other school committees signed on to it? Right. I mean, you don't have to. One school committee can sponsor it. And then it goes to the resolutions committee. And if they approve it, it goes to the board of directors. And if they approve it, it goes before the delegate assembly. So there's a screening process. A couple of school committees presented resolutions that we didn't think should go before the delegate assembly. So we rejected them. So there is a level of approval on this. The rules of MASC, however, say that if you have five school committees from either two or three different divisions in total sponsoring something, it goes automatically to the delegate assembly. It's not the committee and the board of directors can't bump it off. And that's sort of what happened with the one that we jointly sponsored. Let's take a look at number two. Number two, universal quality pre-kindergarten. So to therefore be resolved that MASC file or support legislation that will provide the appropriation for universal pre-K in Massachusetts and will take the steps necessary to provide access to good quality universal pre-K for all children in Massachusetts. I just have to ask, is it understood that the state's going to fund it? That's what it says. That's what it says. No, I said, is it understood? No, just saying that we support funding it. Is there a motion? Some of it. Is there a second? Second. I need a further discussion. I just want to know, is there any way to caveat it that they can't take it from our other funds? I'm serious. No, no, no. It's true. I didn't think of that. No, I don't. That's sort of the end to provide the appropriation for universal pre-K. That's implying, I would think, in the resolution. Now, we're not writing the legislation. We can. But I think there's sort of an intent from us. This is to stop the process for legislation. We're not going to get them out. OK. You've heard my concern. I heard it. I'll pass it. Yeah. OK. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Number three. Is charter school reform, which is another accountability measure, and there's a lot in the, therefore, be it resolved. So I'll give it a quick, I'll try to be as fast as I can. MASC call upon the legislature to enact charter school reform legislation that will include provisions that require the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to consider social economic impact, upon the districts from which newer expanding charter schools would recruit students, require strong provision to prevent skimming and suspensions from charter schools that return students whom they no longer wish to enroll to the sending districts. Finance reform so that charter school expropriations from local Chapter 70 funds funding does not severely damage the sending district, require timely reporting on accountability with meaningful data on student attendance, expulsion, suspensions, students at economic risk in comparison with the sending districts, established in the benchmarks to measure success, establishment of the formula for evaluating school districts that use a growth component that's no less than 50% of the formula and require an annual basis that reporting of best practices and innovation to the sending districts. Motion to approve. So second. Second. Discussion? Yeah, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna abstain from this and I'm gonna explain why. If charter school would have come to Arlington I would have a lot to say about it. But I sit on something called the Boston Compact in Boston which was set up by the mayor. And it's a coalition of private charter and public schools and we're all in a conversation, a collaboration trying to find ways to work together. And I live in Arlington but I work in Boston and I don't wanna, I got a mayor I gotta work with there. So that's, I'm abstaining. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention. Abstention, I abstain. Thank you. Resolution number four finger printing therefore be resolved that MASC calls upon the legislature to establish such legislation that requires the administering agencies conduct a periodic system review to consider means of streamlining and reducing cost of operation. Ensure that teachers be fingerprinted upon their initial licensure under the supervision of DESI. Establish the requirement that teachers be fingerprinted upon their recertification if they are not already fingerprinted. Establish DESI as the clearinghouse for all background checks for all educators. Mr. Spiegel seems to have an opinion. Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there a motion? Move to approve. Second. Yes. What do you think? Go ahead. So when they say that DESI is gonna be the clearinghouse, our school district's gonna have access to the actual background reports. What would think so? Okay. Yeah. Because we don't have that access now from other districts, they can't be shared. But we can get what's called suitability determination. And if another district found an employee suitable, we have the option to rely on that. Yeah, I think what they're trying to do is turn this into a situation where as instead of all the districts having to go and do this, that it'd be done centrally through DESI, and we can call upon it if we're hiring the employee. Okay. And then that would be sort of ruled into the certification fee. Into the licensure, yeah. Licensure fee, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think that would happen. Okay, fine. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passed. Number five. Number five, therefore be it resolved that MASC supports the reading statement of federal earmarks for school district, regional school districts, and municipalities throughout the federal appropriations process. Motion? So moved. Second? Second, I'm just trying to figure it out. Paul, could you give a little more? Basically what happened is that they stopped earmarking in the federal level. And some of the earmarking directed revenue, resources and revenues into municipalities and school districts. And what can you restore the practice? For the discussion, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Number six. I think we need to talk about six because we've already approved it. Yes. Number seven, therefore be it resolved that Department of Elementary and Secondary Education conduct further examinations of options for a state evaluation and accountability system and to substantively involve educators and school committee members in the process of choosing an assessment instrument and to refrain from committing to any instrument before the process is complete. Just in terms of background, let me say that there were a couple of districts that were looking to toss out park and another couple of districts that were looking to get rid of the common core. And we shot down the let's get rid of common core, seeing that we're already well into common core and it would be chaos to do that. And we didn't wanna do this as a park versus not park discussion, but more in terms of having some input into the process. There are some districts in particular that are concerned with the commissioner's participation on the park board that the selection of park is not objective. So that's the origin of this resolution. Motion. Second. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Schlickman. The proposals to amend the bylaws are basically procedural. It shouldn't be controversial. I hope. Okay. Consent agenda. All items listed with an 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 committee so request. Which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant, warrant number 15046 stated 10-9-2014 in the amount of $552,429.61. Approval of draft minutes none. Approval of new date for New York City, Allington High School FE student trip, January 16th through the 18th, 2015. Motion to approve? So moved. Second? Second. Any further discussion? No, there's none. Thank you. All those in favor? All right. Thank you. Subcommittee reports. Policies and procedures. We'll be meeting on the 28th at 5.30. Thank you. Budget, the Starks? So everyone has the budget calendar. Are there any changes? All right, so motion to approve the budget timeline as presented. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. All right, and we are working on finding a date for a future meeting. Thank you. Community relations. We met on October 1st and, do we have a copy of the additional questions? Yes. Okay, they're here. Okay. That's a lot of questions. This one? No, not the additional ones. Oh, the other one we haven't talked about. That's the stock questions, and this is what we're adding on to. Those are not the exact question questions. That's a sample of what they might look like. But they're five point Likerts, Scott. Most of them are five point Likerts. From strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. And for the ones that the National Center are publishing, we'll be able to compare them nationally. I think it's gonna be a good thing. And we had an extensive discussion over additional questions. We didn't want to go into things that might impact negotiations or really belong in another venue. So we may do a future survey on how we allocate our calendar for early release days, a couple of other things that we didn't put in here because there wasn't a continuity. But the six questions before you are the ones that we discussed and decided that we should add. So that's what we have in terms of the NCSL parents survey. This talks. That only question three. Our question three? How about my child demonstrates anxiety to any test? Just having that question tells you nothing. Are they anxious going to school? Are they anxious taking a test? Are they anxious going to the dentist? Okay, so just because MCAS, that doesn't tell me anything. Are they an anxious kid? I don't like that question. I feel like it's setting us up for like a lot of, what are you gonna do about it? Complaint to Desi. I mean, in my estimation, you're gonna ask questions because you have something that you're gonna do with the information that you get. That there was sort of, you know. What we're gonna do with that. And I just feel like it kind of sets us up for. Can I speak to that? Sure, go ahead. One of the things that I liked in our subcommittee meeting and we talked about this in depth was the fact that, and it was evidenced, I think this week at more than 100 parents, I think showed up at the audits and to talk about this very issue. It's an, I think, approaching an epidemic type of level. Not only in our district, but in other districts. Yes, but not just standardized testing anxiety, anxiety in general. Well, perhaps, but it is evidenced, I think, in a lot of students when approaching a big type of test. Well, okay. Anecdotally. I hear that, but I tend to agree with Ms. Starks. An anxious child can, a test can bring out the anxiety. The anxiety can be caused by a variety of variables in the, I think it does your child demonstrate anxiety. With regard to school, maybe, you know, maybe having something to do with, generally with school, like is school an anxiety producing time for your child? That would be more interesting to me and that says to me, oh, we need more social workers or mental health workers or. I think the testing that we just, it was presented us a couple of weeks ago by Ms. Bovier talks about anxiety more in that, school anxiety more in general. And there are many things that may cause it. I would agree that this narrows it down too much like that. I think. I agree. There's a lot of anxiety. I mean, I have kids who don't want to come to school. I have a lot of issues. I think it would inform the behavioral supports that we're putting or budgeting for. That would be a useful tool. I mean, knowing the level anxiety is valuable. You're saying knowing the level anxiety just at the test, isn't it? Yes. I see what you're saying. Right, right, right. And just to clarify, this is a survey of all parents and the youth risk behavior survey was just. The youth risk behavior was just middle and. Just high school. It was just high school. Okay, so that's what we're doing. So we can proceed. I will make a motion to approve the National Center for School Leadership Survey with the six additional questions from the Community Relations Meeting and make that as a motion, which we can then amend if we want to change awarding on questions. Is there a second to that motion? Okay. Is the next amendment, what's this? Well, my amendment is to modify question number three and read my child demonstrates anxiety with regard to school. Is there a second for that amendment? Second. Any further discussion on the amendment? All those in favor of the amendment as presented by Ms. Starks? Aye. Any opposition? On the main motion, all those in favor? Can we have discussion on the main motion? Excuse me. How is the survey conducted? What if you have two children? We talked extensively about that. Dr. Woody was going to find out more information about whether people could submit multiple questions to be multiple answers. Because it's school specific, you indicate, if you look on the questionnaire, they will have some demographic information and so the idea is to get the level and if that's the case, then we would want to make sure that information is available. So you would be able to respond on two surveys. Okay. So the same IP address could give two surveys. Right. Okay. So if you're lucky enough to get one at the high school, you get three. How are you verifying that? And through the portal. What if you have both of them at Stratman? So how do you answer these questions that taught my child has anxiety? What? If you have two kids at the same school, you only get one survey. How do you answer a question of my child has... You're right. You're right. And some of the... And one, they're probably very different. Yeah. Yeah. That's an issue. It's not perfect. That's the problem with the... Well, you could change one of my children or at least one or more of my children has... It's gonna money. Well, that's gonna be, that's impossible for each question then because this one, my child was challenged. Well, maybe one was, one wasn't. Yeah. A lot of the questions in the main survey are child-specific too, which is why the, you can answer one for each child is... Is not... One is a critical aspect of the answer. Right, except you can't if they're both in the same school. No, there's no reason why you can't run through it twice. Wasn't hearing that being an option. Is that option? I believe it will be an option. First of all, this is gonna go out through alert now. And you can, you'll have the URL for it. So you would be able to do it even in different emails. I can find out whether when they submitted for one email whether then they don't allow that again. I don't know the answer to that, but I will find out. Cancels it out. Okay. Second one? My other point was just that in our goals this year, we have doing a dashboard of district metrics to be developed and also that the district website will be analyzed and changes implemented to improve the communication. And I'm just thinking, I'm not seeing when I look at the questions that they're sort of generic questions. I'm not seeing lots of information that we're gathering for either of those goals. And... So we only very briefly talked about dashboard because just because of time limitations. I don't think we were thinking of dashboard as tying into the survey as much. What are you thinking of? Well, it's a satisfaction survey so that other things that are of interest to us, we really were have, we started to play with the idea of bringing other things in and then we started pushing them away because they were inconsistent with the intent of the survey. So we had starting a dashboard conversation on the agenda for the last meeting we ran out of time. We're gonna start talking about that next. And we can, we, I think the process of finding out what's useful on a dashboard is sort of a different exercise. Or on a website. Or on a website. I think we might need another survey for what parents go to the website for to get information. I can see where you're going with that, but I think we're out of... We could put that on the website in such a way that, okay, you're a user of the website, what do you think? Yeah, right, right. I think you're right that we do need to... Yeah, okay. We're ready to vote on the approval. All those in favor? Opposed? Unanimous vote? Okay, curriculum instruction and assessment accountability. Nothing to report. Okay, facilities. Facilities subcommittee is gonna be done Thursday, October 30th at 6.30 p.m. It's... It was gonna be 6. And then somehow it got changed in the... Did it get changed? Because the negotiations ended so hard. So it's still 6. Well... Whatever. Before all of that, we can start whenever. Well, okay, we really can't. Okay, so it's gonna be 6.30, I'm sorry. So it's 6.30 on the 30th. There are three issues on the agenda. One is a space strategy discussion of the district on how we're going to address the potential for more students in the districts next fall and what our planning is for that. And with a conversation about two buildings, I guess, Dallin and Brackett that are crowded, there was a request that Jennifer sent over to me from the parents at the party. Yeah, and this is sort of being addressed, but I wanted to bring it to people's attention on the facilities, because it's facilities matter. All right, well, I mean, if it's resale by next week, we don't need to count that. No, actually, I think this larger question of several playgrounds that are part of the schools under the schools ages versus other playgrounds that are part of the towns is sort of a bigger question that is, from what I understand, beginning to be looked at, but I think needs more study. All right, so, and then Bill asked for an update on the mononomy preschool. Just the conditions. Because we had a meeting about it last year. So, and ongoing. All right, October 30th, 6.30 p.m. Can we make it 6.15? Just come, what do you want to do? You want to wait? Let's just, let's talk again and update if we need to. We've got plenty of time. Update to six. Time. Time. Let's, so let's make it at six. Yeah, okay, let's change it to six. And I'll be, I gotta redo the agenda to put all these three things on there. So we'll make it back to 6.00 p.m. It must have been a miscommunication. How do we do this? We'll make it six and if we. Thanks. Yeah. No problem. Well said. Special study group on superintendents evaluation. I've indicated at the next meeting I'll have a specific time and date for you. And the chair would just like to quickly report at the EDCO meeting yesterday. She had the 11 school districts were represented with 15 people. The first meeting usually shares concerns at your district, which sets the agenda for EDCO for the rest of the year on that. And the two major issues that came out with one exception was enrollment growth. And the other one was stress and anxiety. That was a problem. That was an issue. So we're going to. Will we have any members? No, that was expressed in another venue. At this time, I would like to commend to the committee and to Dr. Bodie. Dr. Jessen spoke at a weekly Rotary meeting yesterday. They, a group of people who don't always sit and attendively were very attentive. It was a very, very fascinating and interesting talk she gave. And she was just really wonderful. So thank you very much. Let's see, okay, that ends that. And I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Before we do that, one other thing. The recommendation on the appointment to the poet laureate committee. Dr. Bodie, we have one resident. Yes, we have one nominee who is also a resident of Arlington and is a the librarian paraprofessional at Thompson. Elizabeth Haley. Move her appointment. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Any, no discussion on that. Excuse me. All those in favor? Aye. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Nice job.