 Welcome to the school committee meeting, regular meeting of Thursday, February 13th, 2020. We're going to open tonight's meeting with some new artwork. So, tonight the artwork is from the Stratton School. And the teacher at the Stratton School is Melody Wolf-Thomas. The Stratton School art program follows the teaching for artistic behavior, TAB model. TAB is a philosophy that regards the students as artists in the classroom as their studio. A tab program is Learner Directed, Emergent and Honor Student Choice. So, I'm not going to be talking about each of the bulletin boards. So, if you want to go ahead and pan on ACMI starting each of the bulletin boards, that would be great. Students learn about art media techniques in the art world. Projects are student led and teachers supported. The studio is arranged in centers and students have the choice of what centers they would like to work in each day. Exploring their own ideas and purposes, determining the purpose of their art, as well as reflecting on their work, are fundamental components of a TAB program. In this show, grades K through 5 are represented. Each piece is accompanied by an artist statement that gives further insight into the artwork. I hope you enjoy the varied and unique voices of our young artists at Stratton. To learn more about teaching artistic behavior, you can visit the website, which is one long word, teachingforartisticbehavior.org. We'll give one more minute to complete the cycle of the various bulletin boards. Thank you to all the Stratton artists for sharing your artwork with us. Next, we'll move on to public comment. Each participant will have up to three minutes to speak. Pursuant to open meeting laws, the school committee generally will not address the topics discussed, but they may be discussed at a future meeting or referred to a subcommittee. So the first person on the list is Courtney Rodlin. Please come up to the table and state your name again and speak into the microphone. Thank you. In Arlington Public Schools, one at Hardy and one at Audison. And I am here as a current representative of the Arlington Ski Team. For the past few years Arlington has had a ski team that's been operating as a club. And they've had about 20 kids on the team this year. Though they're a new team and a smaller team than the other schools that we've been participating against, they've had a great showing. We had two students this year who placed in the top 10 and would have been able to compete at the state level. But right now since we're a club sport and we're not a recognized school sponsor, Adversity Sport, unfortunately they've had to concede and give their spots to children from other schools. So skiing is an MIAA sport and I believe that having this funded and supported by the schools will offer more opportunities for children with varied interests, excuse me, to participate in sports where they can engage and socialize with their peers. And also provide opportunities for students of all genders. I have really enjoyed being a part of the team this year. It's a very dedicated group of parents and children, very dedicated. And my impression is from the community that there are many other parents and children who will be looking to get their children involved in this sport. Of course there are budget considerations. Though it seems like the coach and organizers have done their homework in talking to the other schools about their budgets. And compared to other high school sports, it seems like a relatively low budget item, though we are asking to be considered in the budget to be a school-sponsored sport in the future. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Alright, and next we have Kate Leary. Hi, I'm Kate Leary. I have children at the Hardy School and the Gibbs School. Do I need to say anything else? Okay. So I'm here because I just happened to see on your Arlington that the budget was being discussed tonight. And I know you've been working on this all winter long and that there are a lot of considerations. So I was able to grab it like an hour ago and look at it. So I have some sort of preliminary questions with the understanding that I know you don't respond to them directly, but you are discussing the budget tonight. So it's really great to see so many things from the five-year strategic plan being starting to be realized in this budget. I did have a question, one of the big things in the override and in the budget, maybe not big monetarily, but I think kind of important was librarians and library books that the school department is paying for library books in the elementary schools again, which I think is important in terms of just showing the school department's values as well as on a very practical level. And I didn't see it called out anywhere on the budget for this year, and I'm curious about that. It might be that it's a technicality because of where the money comes from. But I did notice that dedicated art supplies are in the budget, which is great. I noticed that you said that the principals are paying for them out of their budgets, but I can also attest that PTOs have been heavily funding art supplies. Hardy has had $1,000 worth of art supplies in our budget for years. So I think this is great. I'm curious if the library books could be called out in the same way, and if there's a technical reason that they can't be, is it possible to at least name them in the narrative, you know, maybe under whatever sort of heading they would fall under? Because I think that I know that budgeting is done on an annual level, but I think it's important for us to see that the school department is continuing to support that. Another note about library books is that although the money, $5,000 a year is in the elementary school budgets, I know that there have been some logistical problems with actually getting the library books, actually being able to order them and get them into our schools. I'm not totally sure where that stands now or if it's been worked out, but I hope that that's being prioritized, sorting out how to do POs and make sure that books can get into libraries in a timely fashion because I know PTOs are still being asked to fund simply because they can write a check faster than the school department. I don't expect the school department can do it with the same speed, but I expect that they could do it within a couple of months and I'm not sure that that's happening right now. I'd love to be corrected on that if I'm wrong. So that was what I wanted to say. Thank you for your welcome budget. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. Is there anybody else for public participation? All right. So the next item on our agenda is the trip, the approval of the Arlington High School, France and England trip. And Lisa Clark will be presenting that. Thank you. Hello, I'm Lisa Clark. I'm a history teacher at the high school. Thank you for letting me come and speak to you this evening. I've never done this before, so do I go? Do you go? How does this work here? Would you like a little summary? Yeah. So generally, we just get a very brief summary of the reason behind the trip. And then we have the materials and we can ask questions if there's anything else. Okay, great. So I was fortunate enough to chaperone the EF-led tour of Holocaust history last year. And it was just an amazing experience for me and for the students. And it gave me an opportunity to interact with students in a different way and to really kind of globalize the history that we teach sometimes with an American primary perspective. And when I was looking at the other tours that EF offered, I saw this tour of the western front of World War II visiting numerous sites in England as well as France. And I was very intrigued by the opportunity and the possibility to globalize American history. And particularly in regard to historical memory, this is something that all of the history classes have been talking about particularly in response to the controversies in recent years in the United States with removal of statues of some Confederates and not even Confederate soldiers. But Stephen Foster, for instance, had his statue removed, the statue of him in Pittsburgh removed. And so just this discussion of historical memory and this trip offers our students the opportunity to see how the American participation in World War II is remembered in various countries throughout the world. And also students would get the opportunity to visit sites like the D-Day Invasion and cemeteries. They would also get a chance to take a ferry across the English Channel and kind of experience perhaps some of the route that some of the soldiers took on their way to fight during World War II. And so when I saw this tour, I was very excited about the possibility of taking students on a trip to, again, add to their understanding of this global event and to build on this discussion of historical memory. Thank you. Questions? Miss Seuss? No, I just have a comment. A comment? Yes, sorry. Same comment I had last time we talked about trips, which is in the pre-trip prep. There's a sentence there that I find objectionable, which is that the history teachers will be asked to mention to their classes of sophomore, juniors, and seniors. The sort of inner requirement that teachers mention within a class time about the trip, because these are not sponsored by the school. We do provide a resource like a room to meet. There is sometimes a message sent out, but I just think it's inappropriate to have it require teachers to mention it in their classrooms. Okay. If I wrote teachers are required to mention it, that wasn't my goal. I think it's their standard thing. So I think it was taken out in the other thing we're going to approve. I'd love to see it taken out here as well. That's fine with me. I would just ask my colleagues in the history department if we could possibly place posters in the history hallways or throughout the school. It won't be a requirement that history teachers are asked to use class time to promote this trip in any way, but perhaps during passing, if there are signs up and students have questions, if teachers could direct them my way. Okay. Mr. Haynor. I think the trip is an exciting trip. What is available for those students that don't go to sort of balance the knowledge and experience that these students are going to have? Is there something that the students that are not able to go for whatever reason that they can experience too? They're not going to be able to go, but I didn't know if there's any videos or anything like that. Have you considered that? I have. I am actually currently enrolled in a class of primary source about globalizing American history. So for my professional standpoint, I would love to gather resources and video and photographs that I could use in my classroom as well, and I could share with the other members of the history department again to add to that kind of globalization of World War II. I haven't researched what videos are currently available on these particular sites to add into my classroom, but using kind of virtual field trips is something that I have implemented in my classes over past years, using museum websites and things like that. So it is my hope as well for my professional standpoint that I will be able to get experience and resources that I can build into my lessons. I just think it's important because there are high students that are not going to be able to afford this, and I'm really concerned for a public entity, and I think going is great, but it would be great if everyone could go. Thank you. Great. Mr. Shukman. In the application that we have before us, we have day three in London, and then the following page is day seven in Normandy. I think we're missing days four, five, and six. I have an updated itinerary that I can provide you with copies of. I had double-checked, and I was under the impression that every day was accounted for, but I have a detailed itinerary that I can provide you with right now. Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. Absolutely. Dr. Allison Ampe. Just to speak to Mr. Shukman's point, I think what he's saying is that the itinerary is printed in the form. I think there's some technical difficulties with the Google form. We're missing some of the pages. I noticed that we're missing a question, which is what is the process for students who may have difficulty paying for the trip, and additionally, we're missing whatever page has days four through seven. The itinerary was appended at the end from whatever the company is. But I guess my question is, I don't have a problem approving this. I'm assuming the information is actually out there. We just didn't get it in our PDF, but I would ask that the administration go through and see the pages that we're missing right now. Do you know? Karen is. Yeah, it may have two-sided to one-sided. Sure. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I printed out the copy of the application, and I have that information here. Okay, do we want to get copies made and table this until we see the copies? I'm coming. Okay. I'm going to vote against this trip and the next trip, because I just feel like $3,300, $3,400, $3,100. This is like an elite, elite group of kids whose families can afford to send them on these trips. These are the only trips that seem to come to us. This is not, like, it looks like an amazing trip. I'm sure, like, there's, it's obviously educationally viable, valuable, et cetera, but I just, and I get that it is very expensive to travel. But I just, I can't keep approving these trips that so few students can go on. My kids couldn't go. And I just think it's really puts parents in a tough position because when my kids go to the high school and they come home and they say, Mommy, Daddy, there is a school trip and they're going to France. It's going to be so awesome. And the mommy and daddy in our family is going to say, yeah, it does look amazing, and there's no way we can afford to send them on these trips. They say, yeah, it does look amazing, and there's no way we can afford to send you. And we will tell that to our children, and that's part of parenting, but I'm, I'm ready to see some trips that are accessible to more kids. So. Anybody else? Dr. Eisenhampe? I just, I agree with you that it's expensive, but it's also less expensive than taking the whole family to Europe. And so it can, for that reason, provide an opportunity for some people where they can't afford to do the whole trip, but they can send one kid. But yes, it would be good to have trips that are more less expensive and also that have funding for people who can't afford it. Mr. Hainer? I agree with Ms. Morgan on this, the fact that this is during non-school time for it to be brought before us. I see this being done in a private way and people can do it that way. By having it in the school, or connected to the school indirectly through us and stuff, it does, some people are not going to be there. We're not a private school system, we're a public school system, and there should be an avenue for every child to go there. We don't have funding probably, I've been told in the past, just go fund me. There are other ways to raise money and stuff. It hasn't happened. It just hasn't happened in the past. There are kids that are not able to go. All right, let me make a comment first. I agree with what people have said. I think this is more of a bigger policy question. All we're doing is letting them promote this trip on bulletin boards and through announcements. This is not a school sponsored trip, it's just allowing them to promote it on school property. If we want to decide as a policy not to allow that, then I don't know how else people are going to find out, these kids are going to find out about these trips. Just as practically speaking, I think we've decided that we want to be able to review these trips, even though they're not school sponsored, yet we have a lot of criticism about it. I think as a policy question, it would be interesting to see what other school districts do in regard to these private trips and go forward from that. I would definitely be open to having our policies committee look at that. Did you want to say something, doctor? I agree. It is true that the trips are expensive. We are looking to see if there are some other trips that would be within the United States. In fact, we have a lot of Congress, for example, that's going to be coming up. But I will say that one of the things that I'm working toward is getting scholarship monies. We have, when students have applied for as much as even the entire trip, there is scholarship of money that comes out of the international fund. Phil, that's a very appropriate way to support students in doing these trips. The other thing about it is that we're getting a calendar of trips so that eighth grade students can see what might be offered during their high school career. You're not going to be able to go on every trip, but there may be some trip that really would be important to you for family reasons or interest. And if you were to see that there was one, it was going to be your junior year, for example, the French exchange, or going to Japan in the summer, that you could, we want students to be able to take jobs and contribute to this. And I think that a lot of our students do exactly that, that this is something that they want to do and they get support. So I want also to express my appreciation for the teachers that give up their time to be able to allow our students to have these opportunities because they can be quite transformational and it just opens their eyes to the world. The other thing I also want to point out is that something that you have approved is our global certificate that can be on students' transcripts and one of the ways that students can gain credit toward that certificate is through travel. It's not the only way and it's not, and you can certainly get the certificate through other means but this, but it is still a pathway toward that. Mrs. So when I first got on the committee we had a very extensive discussion on this and I think the boat is somewhat sailed in terms of the types offering these types of trips. I agree with everyone both that's very expensive but also with Dr. Allison Ampe that it might be affordable for a family to send one kid on one trip once in the career. But in our discussion five years ago what we came to the understanding was is that these are since they're not official school trips that our interaction with the trips had to be minimal and that meant that they could not be promoted in a classroom for example and that was our agreement that we came to. We also at that time looked at ways to establish that those trips which I know has been done so there's been a lot of progress on this. I just want to sort of thread that needle carefully so that we would, so that this is something that we announced to our students but we don't make it appear as if this is somehow related to someone's curriculum or sort of a necessary component to it. It has to always be seen as separate and that's why I think it's super important that it not be promoted in a classroom. Anything else? So moved. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Yes. Any abstentions? And opposed? Did you get that? So five one one. No. I apologize. I'm not abstaining. Oh. I'm opposing. Opposed. Okay. Five two. I apologize. No problem. Thank you very much. Great. And the next trip is the AHS Science trip to Germany and Switzerland. Good evening. I'm Jason G. I'm a science teacher at the high school. And last year I ran a trip to Panama. We left a year ago tomorrow. Or yeah, a year ago tomorrow. And with the EF and it was a STEM trip as that organization is starting to kind of grow their STEM programs. That trip was definitely transformational for the kids that were on it. And because of it, I was intrigued at exploring what other STEM offerings that they have. This year, when I was planning, I was put a few different offers in front of me, including Galapagos. But what I really wanted to explore was something that was quite different. And usually when people think science or science trip tends to be tropical or something along those lines. And with this one, it's exploring a location that is different from that idea. And what they're going to be looking at is sustainable living, urban design, urban farming, urban planning, and bioreserves in the area of Germany and Switzerland. So it would be a three and a half days in Berlin before traveling south of Germany to Frisburg for a couple days followed up by the Lucerne region in Switzerland where the bioreserve is itself. The time spent in Germany will be looking at, as I said, sustainable design among other types of urban planning. And what I'm really trying to pull from here is the idea of we are in a position in our country, in our region where we're trying to transform where we live, how we live with greener technology with sustainable living to try to give ourselves a better future and give our kids a better future. So I would like these students to be exposed to ideas in other countries and other places that are taking steps forward. And especially in the upcoming years as we rebuild the school, I think it will be insightful for kids to see how these are applied in other countries and how we're applying them here and what they can really take away from that. So that is the general gist of what this trip will be offering. Any questions or comments on this one? All right, is there a motion? So moved. Second? Second. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Yes. Any abstentions? In opposed? Okay, also a five to two. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. G. All right. So next we have the superintendent's budget. I want to begin this presentation this evening and thank you everyone who's participated to the point where we are right now, which is a process that began months ago. We've had a lot of discussions within the administration. There's been some discussions at department levels and at the elementary school as well as we go forward and also with the budget subcommittee of this committee. When we talk about a budget for schools, I think it's an opportunity for us to take a moment to review what our mission is. We don't do that very often. And we began this budget presentation as putting the mission of the Arlington Public Schools. And well, I won't read absolutely everything. The last line is really important, that the Arlington Public Schools are committed to helping every student achieve emotional, social, vocational, and academic success. And to that end over many years, we've had a multi-tiered system of support, which a lot of our budget tonight is in support of. We've also, over the years, looked at sort of our portrait of a graduate which is looking at what we want all students to know and be able to do when they graduate from Arlington High School. And we've looked at the knowledge, the qualifications that are key to, we think, success both in life and in whatever vocation a student chooses. So we've looked at this as student as learner and as student as global citizen, which sort of pertains a bit to our discussion earlier this evening. I'm not going to read through all of this, but I do want people to know that this vision is a result of a lot of discussion within the community, in forms that we have vision 2020. There is a lot of people involved in it, not to mention all the discussions that went on with respect to the new high school. So as we look at the budget priorities this year, we're working to achieve this vision for all students. And as I mentioned, we do have a multi-tier system of support that includes special education services as well as reading math interventions and social-emotional support for our students, as well as the work that goes on in our high school guidance department for vocational career advice and support. So, but one of the things that has been true in the Arlington Public Schools for many years, and we've talked about this over and over, is the enrollment growth. And we continue to grow as a district. You know, in the last 10 years, we've grown over 1,000 students, and this last year we grew up 112, then this year another 100, and it's continuing. And so our budget must reflect the needs just to address enrollment increase. So many of the positions that will are outlined in the budget represent positions needed to address enrollment growth at the different levels. But they also are positions that we are adding to support these tiered levels that we tiered the level of support that we've been offering students in math intervention, reading intervention, special education, ELL support. And if I was to say the majority of the budget asked really fall in those big buckets. Related to enrollment growth, it's the size of our elementary schools. They have been growing. Some of you on the committee can remember the time when our schools were in the 300s. We have one school in the 300s. All of our schools are in the 400s, and two are over 500. And as you do this kind of work that we do in terms of deep dives into data to support decisions that we make, you know, meeting SST, student support meetings, and students with IEPs, the number of meetings have been growing as the number of students grow. That we are finding that we need to have more administrative support at our elementary level. A couple of years ago we added administrative support at the high school and adding new dean. And we haven't done, we actually now have three assistant principals at the middle school level whereas before we had two. So currently we have four assistant principals. They're part-time. One is not, well actually two are not, but that's because they fill the position in a different, the other part of the position in a different way. And so this budget is going to be looking at increasing two more part-time. So basically those are the big, most of the issues, but to Miss Leary's question tonight about books and libraries, what you will see is where we want to add another librarian's special literacy specialist. It's right now, if you become a librarian, you have that kind of certification as well. And, you know, as we increase the books in our librarian as well also, as we support students in their reading, this committee's been very supportive of this idea of having a librarian, certified librarian in all of our schools. And we keep looking toward how we're going to fulfill that. So this year we're adding one more, but as far as the books go, that is already in the budget. We didn't call it out because it wasn't an increase. It's already part of, in a sense, the rollover budget from FY20. So at this point, this is a joint presentation with Mr. Mason and myself, and we're going to talk about just the finances of this, and then we'll come back to the particular ask at each level. Good evening, School Committee. So, the developed budget takes a lot of time, meetings, coordinating between multiple key stakeholders. And our budget process really starts back in August. We work with the town, which is not on the side because this is in terms of our operational budget, but we work with the town on the capital planning. And so we do have deadlines for that before this meeting. I came from a capital planning committee where it looks like all of our requests are going to be supported by the capital planning committee. But then as a team, we meet starting in September, and where we initially start talking about priorities and how we can try to improve instruction, looking at different data points to try to work on improving achievement gaps. And then later in October, as we meet with the budget subcommittee, some of you are part of that committee, to lay out the schedule on how we not only report to you guys, but are the current financials, but how we are intending to roll out the budget. And in addition, we continue to meet with district leadership and administration on the budget. In December, you got presentations from the principals and as well as AEA providing their request, which was established part of the schedule. And as well as the school committee, some school committee members and district leaders meeting with long-range planning committee and town governance to determine the budget targets, which then you vote on in January. In the beginning of January, which you guys accepted that number, which we'll discuss tonight. And as well at around the same time is mid-January, we do get the preliminary governor's budget where they will inform the town of what we get for state age, which we did have a couple of changes due to that. So I wanted to start going into the numbers where this is the funding sources and how it's been structured the last few years. Where we're breaking out what the state aid has been, what the town contribution has been, which has been over the required foundation budget, and then how grants and revolving funds, which are made mainly from fees that are collected for user fees for the buildings and student activities, such as music instrumental program fees. And then circuit breaker, which is another state aid, which is a reimbursement for tuition that hits certain thresholds for out-of-district tuition. So as you see on this, you'll see that, yes, we have been increasing in terms of our investment to the education, so we are committed to that here in Arlington. But on top of that, you'll notice that, yes, we've been increasing, and it's increased about 14% from last prior year. So these are anticipated revenues. And so in terms of the fiscal 21 for the town appropriation, the town appropriation, once again, that is that consists of what the town locally contributes from its tax base and what the state provides, which based on the formula that we have between the town and the school department, which includes a growth rate factor of 50% of per pupil desi average and percent increases for general education and special education. We are getting $76,030,531 in fiscal 21, which is an increase of about $4.6 million or 6.44%, which is great that we're able to do that this year. Grants are hard to project. They've been trending downward. So we level fund grants. Sometimes we do get increases of grants. So we'll wait and adjust when we get those final numbers. The circuit breaker we're actually spelling out because due to all the great work that we're doing, bringing in, bringing back our students in some cases to be able to provide more services in district, that means that we're not paying out as much out of district tuition, which are not meeting those thresholds to get reimbursed. So we're seeing an actual reduction in circuit breaker. And this circuit breaker revenue actually comes this year. So we do have a cushion where the money that we collect this year will be used and applied for next year. So that's a reduction of $377,000. And our total revolving in other reimbursements we're actually increasing from $1.4 million to $2.1 million this year. And part of that is to offset to try to remain committed to special education to maintain our local maintenance of effort. So we're increasing. We have a revolving fund that we use for tuition that we collect for services that we provide for out of the students that are not from Arlington. And we're going to use that towards special education to offset the loss in the circuit breaker. And on top of that we are going to increase the use of the building rental fees to keep up with the cost of utilities. We wanted to do this in a phased manner. We didn't want to just shock the operations budget and not be able to do some of the proposed additions. So we're doing $250,000 of increased spending over what we normally do on building rental facilities. And as well as we're doing additional $175,000 on foreign exchange tuition to support curriculum materials and professional development to support stronger instructional support for our students. So the total grand change in funding is $4.9 million which is about 6.34%. Everybody kept up so far? All right. Great. So this chart you normally get and this is a chart which shows the obvious. Town appropriation is most of the dollars but what it doesn't show is the portion that we don't see is there's a state aid portion which is about 19%. So about 22% of our money is from the state. 72% is locally contributed and 3% comes from grants which can be not as predictable and another 3% that's been pretty steady has been from revolving. And then we take the same $82 million total budget and we break it out into the voting categories. So as you may know is that we break out the budget transfer categories that the school committee limits our budget on based on curriculum instruction elementary education grants. The other category which includes facilities, transportation for regular education as well as information technology and other indirect services secondary education for the high school and middle schools and special education. Special education is what we are largely budgeting for is the largest followed by secondary and then elementary education. As some of you may know Arlington has a town manager 12 that it compares to similar towns that meet certain criteria and once again not much has changed. We're still in the middle of the pack on the per people spending according to the latest data that's available for fiscal 18 per pupil expenditures just to get an idea where we're at and maybe some of the movements that we're doing will help us but we'll see how that plays out in the future years. But to recap once again the total net increases $4.9 million for all funds not just the town appropriation that's town appropriation revolving funds and grants and it would be nice to use that all for ads but there are certain things that we have to do right so off the top we do have to take $2.6 million for contractual salary increases non-union salary increases and bargaining unit increases such as the teachers as well as we're spelled out in the budget as we're dedicating we're making dedicated art and music budget supply so instead of increasing principal supply budgets and leaving it at the discretion of the principals we wanted to make sure that we're providing equitable programs for art and music across the district where we're allocating a per on a per pupil basis based on the development through the district as well as additional funding for some information technology increases in software that will be implemented district wide $175,000 that I've already previously discussed that's going to be coming out of foreign exchange which is for the additional curriculum materials and professional development to help improve instruction and then the increasing utilities on both the town appropriation which is a little bit over $200,000 and $250,000 dedicated to I'm sorry over about $300,000 increase of utilities on the town appropriation fund and $250,000 that will be focused on the revolving fund I want to be clear that the use of the revolving fund is not necessarily an increase in collection of fees is that we benefit it with some balances that we need to spend down so that we're going to be increasing the spending out of those accounts as well as you know that we're going to be getting a new high school and so the high school project will be starting in a few weeks just starting breaking grounds so when it starts getting really busy out here we wanted to remove the preschool from this area and this operation and have a dedicated location at the Parmenter school but with that there is operational costs that are mainly tied to facilities there will be an increasing of a custodian to service that building to help with snow removal cleaning services any issues that happen on site it will also include any utility costs for that building which is you know it uses oil heat it's not anything that's more modern or efficient and so we estimate about $180,000 just to build into the operational budget for that program for those programs and then in order to be able to meet and serve the needs of the students that are coming in district or that as the grown population or the students that have special needs in district we're reallocating tuition that was normally for out of district placement to some of these ads and so the total ability for ads this year is $1.6 million and I'm going to leave it to Dr. Bode to continue that discussion you have the element you have there some of the you see 0.5 and 0.2 often times in these proposals this is moving someone to a full-time position in order to meet the needs there for example in the math coach that again one of the things that we've been able to do over the last few years is move toward dedicated math coaches at the elementary level but that doesn't mean that they're full-time and so this 0.5 actually sort of spread out in a bit in order to create more time availability of the coaches for teachers another one here is the math interventionist we're going to be able to actually make it a whole by reducing something else in the budget in order to make up the 0.3 but right now we have four schools have some level of math intervention so the math interventionist works directly with students a math coach supports the teachers in their instruction and what this is going to do is allow us to have every school have some level of math intervention support for you know in the tiered level of a support approach we also this English language learner teacher actually we've already hired this person in the last month so that the FY21 budget needs to reflect that salary because it is not in the base budget and then as again as our number of students with IEPs increases this halftime team chair is for Thompson which has our largest number of students with IEPs the inclusion reading teachers this is going to be a very helpful addition to the work that we're doing with early literacy as you know this year we had a schedule we were able to change our schedule that allows for at each grade level that you could be teach you could have English language your reading program your foundations, your ELA program at the same time same thing for math the advantage of that is that it gives the opportunity to be able to have specialists come in and do push in work with flexible groups flexible groups across the whole grade but right now we do service the reading needs we don't have enough reading teachers to both do the tier two and tier three pull outs and be able to do some push in so this is going to allow us to be able to do that the principles when they were here in December talked about this but they have really gotten down to exactly what they feel they need for next year as we move to the middle school virtually everything in this is due to enrollment growth right now what's going to happen next year is that the seventh grade at the middle school is going to increase roughly about 50 students the students that are in the sixth grade currently have close to 490 students we expect that's going to go up a little bit but we have five learning communities at Gibbs at Odesson we have four in the seventh grade and so we're going to increase 50 students so the proposal by the principal a very conservative approach is just to add a half learning community which we have done in the past it means that the two teachers in that learning community are really certified there is also a need for more another special education teacher and again with our tiered level support we have math support both at Gibbs and at Odesson and that's increasing those positions to full time and then the Spanish teacher at Gibbs and Odesson against enrollment growth and class size same thing with physical education teacher when we move to the high school pretty much all of this is enrollment driven as well I think the high school would like to actually have more FTE's in this but as we balance all the different needs of the district this is what we feel that we can offer next year this would meet their base needs going into the next year and as you can see some of it is again special education and as well as we need to have the ELL teacher one of the things that we're seeing happening more is that we are having students coming in that are immigrating or having interrupted education so that they are coming in at levels that doesn't even match our intervention classes so we are creating more opportunities for these very small group interventions that's what you're seeing at the middle and the high school at the district level we're putting in three reserve positions as we've been doing the last couple of years and hoping but it looks like we may be potentially might need teachers at two elementary schools but we'll have to wait and see on that this next one social emotional I'll be really honest with you this is really a placeholder of money for position that we haven't we haven't completely defined but we know that we need as you have had to aware of the lab report has a lot of suggestions that are general ed suggestions really more than special ed and getting consistency in our SST process but we also need more support with social emotional learning and how we set up the cultures in different schools so we are working on what that is going to look like and before we actually ask you to vote on the budget will give you something a little bit more of a recommendation specifically what we're looking for and it may involve a job description that will need to be approved and then we talked about the librarian this is where it is the district position even though the intent is that the district position will probably be servicing only elementary schools and then again we've talked in the past about one way to increase our physical therapy support is actually to use a therapy assistant and that's we have had requests both from teachers as well as principals to have more support behavioral support and that's what the BCBA request is we also need another bus driver to transport special education students this is this has been needed just by the way we've been shifting the preschool to parameter and change in start times when our director of transportation looks at all the runs he couldn't do it with our existing our existing staff and then we are also increasing our behavior support personnel at the in our special programs so this is sort of a look at where we are again you can see this is enrollment driven it is also tiered support driven as well as some vision of what we want where we want to move over the next five years so that concludes our report except that the major dates that are coming up we're going to be having the public hearing on the budget at your next meeting the 27th and we need to have a vote on the budget from you by March on the March 12th meeting because we took basically the last time that we could present at the finance committee which is March 23rd and then we go to town meeting probably 730 we'll get a 7 do you want to talk now about the student opportunity act in relation to the budget yes the student opportunity act is an act by the legislature that you're all aware of that provides additional money to support really a multi-tiered system of support really targeting our students that are not achieving at the same level as our aggregate most of our students and we have identified what those groups are in fact we had a presentation about that in the fall when we looked at our MCAS data but our MCAS data isn't the only data that we look at in terms of knowing which students need more support so in the governor's budget the amount of money that Arlington will receive is $2 million but what the public needs to understand I know that you know this the money comes into the town in Chapter 70 and then becomes part of the general appropriation to the schools which we have agreed in terms of a formula in how that money is distributed the Department of Education and the state legislature are requiring plans for how the $2 million would be spent in support of our students that have been struggling more than are not achieving the same level as the majority of our students but the Department of Education also recognizes is that districts have been doing this work and that you're not starting from scratch and we're not so $1.5 million of that can be identified in terms of ongoing efforts and there are certain commitments you need to make and decide where the focus of your energies and monies are going to be directed at for Arlington it's what we've been doing we're looking as you know in terms of literacy that's a goal we're looking at professional development both in content and in pedagogy and in cultural competencies because the social emotional environment in which students learn has a profound effect on their learning and the state recognizes that as does the legislature there are even suggestions on how you can change your schedule to create more planning time for teachers in this effort which is exactly what we did this year and so the monies that we use to do that can also become part of our ongoing efforts so this plan to the Department of Education is required to be submitted by April 1st in fact it's 6 o'clock I think you as a school committee also need to approve the plan and be involved in the planning of this so we're sort of on an accelerated planning schedule in that we're going to be reaching out to our teachers reaching out to the public and because that's part of the requirements is to have input into what we're into our plan and of course the work we did in the five-year plan really is part of this that was definitely an outreach to people in terms of what we're looking to achieve over the next five years so we actually as this is unfolding and I'm learning more about it we are actually in a very good position in terms of what we've been doing what we're planning to do and the outreach we've already done in the last few weeks so we're working on the basics of it we'll be coming back to you and the subcommittee and with the goal of moving toward your last meeting in March for approval of the plan but I think you already can see where this plan is and it's a question of how we just articulate it they're looking for brevity not long narratives which is good of course they have 300 and some to read in comment so that's probably part of it but they have a very strict format they're going to send us templates mid-March that we fill out so it's a very structured planning process and the takeaway at the budget subcommittee meeting was that there probably won't need to be any adjustments made to the budget as a result of the SOA plan we have to go through public participation and all that but as of now it's not looking like we'll need to modify the budget to adapt to the the initiatives that we're thinking of putting in the SOA plan Mr. Sikman. On the SOA plan to begin with the state said there was a threshold of $1.5 million any community that was above had to do the long form anyone below 1.5 now most districts in the state got a $30 per pupil increase we got significantly more the reason why we got that was not because of the needs of our populations because the Chapter 70 formula caps the minimum local contribution so that the increasing enrollment is what's generating the additional Chapter 70 funds and putting us in this category I'm on the AAC and we've talked about this the state DESI was kind of surprised that the legislature is requiring this plan the first year of implementation given that the Chapter 70 money was first announced in the Governor's budget late January and DESI didn't really have an infrastructure for playing with this as well and I think that Commissioner Riley seems to be a reasonable guy who wants to have school departments and school committees doing good work for kids rather than generating paperwork and bureaucracy so that's sort of the context of this getting off SOA and into the budget if I can hit a couple of questions starting at page 12 of the budget book all the revolving fees and reimbursements are budgeted numbers do we have actuals around here someplace actuals for for example the athletic fees is steady $260,000 across the five years I'm sure that we weren't taking in exactly $260,000 each of those five years correct so the actuals so well these were budgeted funding this is not necessarily expenditures so this is in terms of revenue we don't show the actual revenues in this particular schedule it has never been shown as such so we kept it as the way it was I'd like to see the actuals I'd like to know what we're dealing with here because if we're putting the same number in the budget every year I don't know if we're really closer, far apart you know asking us to approve the budgetary number without having seen the track record over the years absolutely and seeing that we're talking about $260,000 worth of athletic fees which the community is involved in plus or minus what the actual is that's something that people talk to us about quite a bit actually and I'd like to see how that lines up secondly while we're on athletics could we before we adopt the budget get a cost estimate for adding a ski team I think that the proponents of it have you can say what the number was but one of the things Mr. Macy and I talked about the other day is that there's other costs that are not represented for example if this is going to be a sport and a student can't afford skis do we say you can't be on the team because you don't have skis now in some sports people do for example hockey they usually buy their own stick but we do provide sticks when a student cannot afford it there are things that we are just part of the uniform we pay for what would that be the helmets I mean there are things that need to be thought about so while there was an estimate I don't think that is the estimate cost that's why I want our number I can't give you one right now I don't expect one right now between now and the time we adopt the budget because when I hear that we have a couple of kids who would have qualified for the state but we couldn't send them because we're not a team or a club I think we're taking an opportunity away from kids and if we're that good we should make it a team this is a masterful document I think this is a very well done budget my other question is because it was raised out front I think it's a reasonable question do we have set aside for library books in the budget correct so that was an ad last year so we wouldn't put it unless we're increasing above that amount that we were allocating is not being spelled out because of that reason it's already built to the budget so it's somewhere buried in the materials correct once again in the curriculum and materials we usually use for the one time purchases on the revolving funds that's where they're coming out of so we did the same thing this year we'll do the same thing again in fiscal 21 so if we set it the library books aside as a line item there'd be sort of an expectation that would be spent on library books as opposed to other books what would come back to us as insurance that some of the town money is going into buying books to libraries how do we know that well basically you would get that information when we report on the end of year report so there is a line section that we report for end of year and it would actually be reflected under our revolving funds where we're funding that so when I do report on the fiscal 20 expenditures you would see it there and I'd like to comment I mean with the logistics to clear up that we are actually in the process of ordering I think that when you're putting all the purchases of the district over a certain amount you have $5,000 per school it hurts certain threshold so it does take time to actually put it out to vendors to actually look at things for three quotes to make sure we're getting the best pricing and we're following the procurement laws and so that's where we're at just to give updates so hopefully I understand those complications as a school person but the one thing I'd like somehow during the process of either the budget process or during the school year is some sort of acknowledgement of money that we're putting into this because for so many years we didn't and I think this is something we should be celebrating even for 30 seconds in one page or one place in the budget because I think we could be proud of this and if I could say I will notify you when the monthly reports show that actual expenditure. Can I have a comment to that? Sure. I think we're definitely moving forward with it. It's different when PTOs buy books. Yeah, that's outside, yeah. But another part of this which is our new library has been very helpful we're trying to do audits of the different libraries and our vendor has been helping us with that so that there's also the issue of equity of opportunity of what is available and so you might have some schools which have purchased a lot of books in one particular area but not in another and so we're trying to use the money that's coming from the district to create equity among our libraries which is going to take a couple of years to do well several years to do that but that's the effort going forward. I very much appreciate that. Miss Seuss? So yeah, on librarians and library books as well so I do think it makes sense to just call it out in this budget just because it's so new and there were snafus and you just say we will continue to do this and in subsequent years you don't have to but it's helpful I think So in terms of equity then is then are we going to have a minimum distribution of $5,000 per school but then for the schools that have a debt, you know, are not as well stocked, they get more or does some schools get less? It's what they use the $5,000 to purchase. Okay, because there are some schools that are much better shaped than others and I have to say it used to be Thompson that was in the worst shape and the generosity of the town and of Elaine Che and that family that looks fabulous, right? So Hardy is now the next school that's sort of in the worst shape I think. So we might want to look at one time expenses at some point. When we've added librarians, we've been thoughtful about the collection, I think it's helpful to maybe look at equity across the district among schools. Because there may be beginning and equities, yes. And schools are just a lot better funded than other schools. Historically there are PTOs that have a lot more money and they've just spent, you know, some PTOs raised three times as much as other PTOs, that's just what we've seen. Actually I have a question though also the librarian, how is this librarian going to be used? Are they sort of are the two librarians at the elementary level working together? Is one going to be more specialized for the middle school level? Well, the current librarian also has a teaching assignment as does the new digital literacy. One of the ways that we are able to do this common planning time which at each one of the elementary schools is to be able to have coverage of the classes. So the new librarian will do that as well? Right, we would have to figure out what that different schedule would be so there'd be more free up a little bit. We'll figure out whether, you know, we assign four schools which is what we did initially with coaches. We had four and then the other three. One of the issues we may we may need to assign some to the middle school while the issue of increasing librarians is another aspect to this that we've become educated about and that has to do with our databases. And in order to have these databases available to all of our schools free, is that you have to have a .2 certified librarian for each school. So by adding a 1.0 is actually .2 more than we need but we weren't going to quibble on that. In order that then all of our schools would fit the criteria for having these free databases. So there's going to be instruction at all of the schools? There has been instruction at all of the schools and the more support we have the more they might even be able to get into classrooms and this is not affecting our pairs. Our pairs are doing a great job and we have a lot of things that we need to do. We're just talking about library books. Just looking at the collections and figuring out where are some holes that we need to have. Phil, I should say. Mr. Hayner. I'd like to commend you and the complete staff. I think it's a wonderful book. That being said page 5, the second and last line. It's on the page 5. The teacher student ratio in the past when this was published I've asked for at least an asterisk to explain that you take the student population and divide by all licensed people that would include Mr. Mason, the superintendent, the nurse to get we do not have classrooms of 14 to 1 on an average throughout the district. This is the way Jesse's been doing it. It's just leading and I've asked in the past I'd like to see an asterisk just to explain where this comes from so people realize that we do not have classes of this size and the teachers are under work and overpaid. That's all. Thank you. I apologize. I apologize. Thank you, Jeff. All people need all the help we can get. We all do. Dr. Allison Ampe. I'm working with. Okay, so I have a couple comments and then some questions. First, regarding the SOA the other thing that came up at budget subcommittee was that we were making ensuring that the SOA requirements could be fulfilled within the current town allocation which when we were first hearing about the expectations and how much we were getting was at least to me a little bit of a concern but they can and so that's great. And the clarification that I want to make while I appreciate the chart that you have that shows the chapter 70 amount. People need to understand that the chapter 70 does not come directly to the schools and so any increases such as I was just speaking about where we're the chapter 70 coming to the town is increasing by almost 2 million this year does not correlate to an increase in our budget of that amount. I'm a little concerned that that chart kind of makes people maybe think that or I think it would be good to have something in there just making it very clear that this is sort of of intellectual interest but really all the money comes into the town and then the town portion is out and the advantage of doing that is one it gives us stability over multiple years of knowing what our funding is and two if chapter 70 goes down as it has in the past the town has made up our difference whereas if we were writing the chapter 70 we would have been doing this. Okay so now my questions first I'm a little confused about the librarians I had thought just the general idea yeah I had thought from last year's discussion on about the five year plan and stuff that we were talking about adding combination library and digital literacy specialists and so this is listed as a librarian or it does media specialists mean digital what do you see what I'm saying I'm confused what we're adding what we had talked about adding what we're actually adding. We're adding a librarian with digital literacy skills and that's how the job description is for the position and we want that too and in fact anybody who's coming out of that certification today has all of that. One of the things we found last year is because we were so late in advertising we really did not find the second person we thought we would have but we really needed a person to help with all the teaching that we were going to do this year to you know for the planning block so we did hire a digital media specialist that person is not a librarian but but still a needed skill what we think was having hiring a librarian is we get a tupper. Great I guess I'm just thinking it'd be good to put that in the description when we're talking about it so that people understand because I think it's interesting that parents are interested in understanding that we are covering those bases too then on page 10 of the budget book the paragraph that starts it talks about the first paragraph I think has some errors in it and we can talk about this offline there's I can't explain on camera but we should probably get that fixed then on page 17 there's a statement that says enrollment growth means that it's explaining why we were adding some of the things it's a footnote it says enrollment growth means that Arlington is considered a low incidence ELL district and I'm confused by that statement because enrollment growth if the incidence stays the same if the percentage I'm saying that the percentage should be changing now it may be that it's changing but that's you could it's two different things I'll double check that but I think it has to do with the number of students you have but I'll double check that maybe just be the actual low incidence means the number of students not percentage the number of students needing specials ELL services has increased but what has also increased is much I shouldn't say as much but both things are going on as well as the needs of these students okay and then finally one last comment I just wanted to call out to everyone who's watching us that this budget book is now being really put into the format from ASBO which is based on the meritorious budget and it has a different look it has a different feel it's not this is our first this is our next big move towards improving the budget book and I think it does I like it it's professional there's some things to start tidying up but I think it was a big it's a big change and I think it's definitely towards a positive and I commend you all for doing the work to make it possible credit to Mr. Mason on this Ms. Morgan I think it's beautiful I think that the slides in the book talk to each other and that fills me with joy and love it does, no, like I do it makes me feel so happy I love that I can look at this ad here and it has a number in the row and then I can move forward and read the narrative about that particular addition and so I really appreciate it I think that's a couple of the pie charts in that presentation speak to Dr. Allison Ampey's concern and I do I think it's really tricky this whole relationship between chapter 70 and the town appropriation and we're getting there it feels close and these two pie charts and it's really really close to being able to talk about it spot on so I think that that's exciting and I do think that that's important so anyway thank you in the long-range planning spreadsheet that we have it actually, chapter 70 is called out so what that means is if chapter 70 goes up some other monies can be either put off into the stabilization account and that's to the point of stability which I think Arlington has done an amazingly good job in fact people reach out to find out what Arlington does about this because it has done such a great job in terms of stabilizing budgets. So Mike great job on this it really is a big step forward is there anything that we committed to do in the operating override that we're not doing anything and I mean maybe I mean is that land or if there's anything that we're not able to do in this? So I mean we didn't really commit to anything I know that. I understand that. So if you look at the five-year plan that if you use that as the measure I mean partly is we don't have enough funds to cover everything so we're doing everything slow more slowly you know the one major item that Ms. Morgan pointed out is that there was funding in the plan for additional staffing in our SLC programs. And as Ms. Elmer said at the last meeting the enrollment growth has not occurred there so that has not been needed yet so that's still not funded. There are other special education positions that are being funded just not in the SLC programs. That's really the main thing that I think sticks out I don't know how much we've been increasing is an increase in curriculum expenses other than the art and music item. That was going to be one of my questions but so. I mean I think this could be a question that will come up and tell me somebody asked me this and I said you know you got us lend card and that guy will know. Well I'll pick you back on a comment that you made in that yes our SLC is not as you can see the success we're having out of district and honestly I really want to credit our teachers in the district who are doing so much you know are really reaching out to a much more inclusive environment but also the money that we've been putting in every year iteratively more into interventions math support coaching reading all of these things are now really starting to show and you're seeing it and we're first we're going wow this is actually looked at the numbers wow this is really a change and now it's a sustained change for two years now one of the things that we haven't done because we've been very purist about what considered special education increases the we've had this category of intervention in fact we've done that graph before we just didn't put it in here as to how much we spend interventions and every year that percent goes up and we really are seeing the effects and so we're definitely on the right track of what needs to be done in fact when I saw what they call the 17 evidence based programs the department of education was touting as districts to do when I read them I went we're doing it that's exactly what we've been doing iteratively and I think that you sometimes can't see it in a given year you only see it over time and that's what we're seeing in the numbers right now so actually that was going to be a question about so I know for a few years we did have in the pie chart this little slice that said these are the intervention money and so you could see that even though we weren't spending as much on special education as we had historically there was a clear visual explanation for that and I wonder if it makes sense to do that or if it makes sense to do it as a bar graph as ever increasing numbers or per pupil I wonder if there's just some way to convey that to the public we'll try to work on a visual aspect that is easily to explain how that was part of our story it'd be like not great to drop it because if we can convey that and then I have a question so I sit on the wellness committee and I know that the way our budget process works we often don't hear from nursing staff and I know a couple years ago we heard sort of late like oh my goodness we didn't like realize that the timing of the budget request and you know really the numbers are getting such that we really need additional nursing and I know that in this budget there isn't any and so the question is is that okay can we sort of slide by increases I know we have ever increasing needs of individual students as well as just the sheer number of students are growing that was a request and we also have to understand this is a blueprint and when needs come up we try to figure out how to staff when we for example the ELL teacher we had to staff this year at Stratton I think our nursing staff is a little stretched it's true and I think here at the high school when the preschool goes to Parmeter that nursing position is going to go and so we've been staffing it too in the clinic we also have I can talk more about this at another time but we also have another opportunity to get some resources through some grants and so we're looking at that as well but yes I think that that is an issue now you put this in perspective though we still have districts in this Commonwealth that do not have a nurse per school there are schools that do not have a social worker in every school and this is something as a district and as a community we have prioritized and we do have that in fact we even at the elementary now we have sometimes more than one social worker so we have been investing in this and if we find that we need to have more nursing we'll figure out how to do it within this alright my turn I guess so again yes congratulations on the revised presentation a lot of good stuff I guess as a process matter I mean often we have feedback and things sort of get appended to the budget but I think after our hearing at our next meeting it might be useful to actually revise this document and republish it before our March meeting with our input and that just you know people agree nodding their heads okay may get binder send though okay we don't have to actually print it for us but just republish it so and then things I noted was to add the library books so I think we are reflecting spending out of the revolving funds and so we didn't discuss the books in our budget last year so even though we funded it it wasn't discussed so it would be useful to call that out somewhere okay and include that money somewhere even if it's being funded out of those revolving funds and the interventions chart adding that if you can put that together it would be good so I had a couple questions so the team chair I think certainly supportive of reducing workloads but based on the numbers from the state which are older there are actually more students at Stratton than at Thompson is that changed or yeah I think the numbers that we pulled live from November I think was the last time we pulled them had it higher at Thompson okay because it was 91 at Stratton because the SLC is there with 30 kids and 77 at Thompson yeah and they have an additional I don't have the exact numbers in my office for what that currently is as of November because those would have been October 10 numbers that were and just frankly the numbers that the state have don't always match up with what we have locally when we pull it directly from EZIP which is our software for tracking IEPs they're close they're definitely those of the two largest we also have the full-time assistant principal over at Stratton which part of that 0.5 Dr. Bodie mentioned is for special support and then for Mr. Spiegel bus drivers it doesn't look like the contract requires them to be full-time right so so why is this a full-time position if they're just doing runs in the morning in the afternoon do we have to have them work full-time I mean I don't know I'd have to ask our transportation director but our bus drivers who do runs in the morning don't just that's not all they do during the day they do besides transporting in the morning in the afternoon they make deliveries between buildings they work on the buses and then the field trips and yeah so the field trips are a big thing too that we tend we'd like to use our own buses and our own bus drivers if we can for field trips rather than going out so the decision has been made we've had full-time bus drivers here in the district who work the full year they work very well I will say that hiring a bus driver is getting to be very challenging I'm not sure if this one is a if he wants this one to be full-year I think he only wants it to be the school year he did he did say that he would prefer if it could be full-year but if he couldn't be approved as not full-year it'd be a 10 month job and that was the last okay and then on the art supplies and performing art supplies certainly with art supplies there's actually materials you see it on the walls here what does the performing art supply budget cover what kind of materials so my understanding was there is some consumable materials but there's also equipment that they would use in classrooms that are district-wide and yeah by nature it may not seem as though the expenses not as consumable as arts but they're more expensive it's not necessarily something that you would have to phase out each year to purchase to keep the operations going so one school might get something one year another school may get something another year based on the cost of equipment and then you would create a rotating cycle because you would eventually replace that equipment on a rotating basis to keep everything fresh okay great and then finally the last question on curriculum so that's the one item that was in the five-year plan that not called out but maybe we're increasing it otherwise but so I guess there's 60,000 in here 30 so is this actually more materials that we're purchasing or yeah so it's a variety of between curriculum like textbooks and additional instructional materials that could be strengthening our instruction inside the classroom in addition to it's not just curriculum materials that we're doing we're also looking at different types of professional development to help improve instruction we do have a list of that I mean we can disclose that list it was something that was separate that we know that we can't fund all the requests that are on our list but when it's finalized we can also disclose that with the school committee and I'm just noticing that now the numbers actually don't line up 31 items in the list so I'm going to explain that so if you look at that total number that total number is the net change on the town appropriation alright so if you look at the total change on that it's 4.6 as you notice that our total change is 4.9 and so part of that the funding additions are supported through revolving and we do not call out the revolving adjustments on that particular list oh right right right but the table is 31 items but then in the narrative something's just wrong I'm just noticing this now don't quite know what's wrong but then the narrative a number is off 32 items maybe there's something that's extra that we decided but thank you for noticing that I'll adjust that and update the digital document anything else Dr. Allison Ampe I had two quick questions both on page 26 first line 6700 curriculum and instruction leadership there's an increase and I was just wondering what that's for page 26 it's the first it's the first one of all the curriculum instruction I can get back to you Kersi on that I believe that would be tied to possibly some professional development but I will definitely get back to you on that question okay and then on the same page line 6854 the special education summer program that is funded at greatly reduced amount and I'm wondering how come I'll look at that reduction as well those aren't the summer that's not why yeah it's probably how it's coded in the community and our financial system that's as a program code but that's probably the reduction of tuition but I will confirm for you because there's a lot of moving parts here so the tuitions will come up in the summer program no it's not our ESY program it's our students who attend out of district placements and there's usually a separate they separate out the summer okay so it's like paying for summer camp yeah I'm assuming that's not our ESY budget so I don't know the number we might have reduced the wrong tuition to accommodate to the additions that we were talking about to reallocate special education funding okay but there's not like some major district initiative to shut down a summer program which is what it looked like but thank you for spotting that out yes I will look into it the right line and we'll have a chance to go over it we just got this on Sundays we'll have a chance to go over this again at our next meeting after the budget hearing all right anything else all right great on to the monthly financial reports Mr. Mason again so I was not at the last meeting due to a person who's reading so sorry about that um but once again these are your standard monthly reports this was for the month ending in December the last calendar month of 2019 um and this report is showing that we currently have as of that period a surplus of $415,000 and similar to last year is mainly driven by uh special education out of district tuition um so we'll be looking at probably setting some money aside for reserves just in case in the future as well again as we did last year once again um you also have the grant accounts report we're drawing down funds as we normally should so you'll see that some funds do not have necessary revenue drawn they just have the 10% that they're given up front because some expenses are later in the year that occur but um as expenses occur we then draw down funds for the grants and all of revolving accounts are in balance and going as planned currently um questions that you had after reviewing the report from last meeting I'd try to answer some if I know the answers right now otherwise I would get back to you as well any questions on the monthly reports well all right great okay thank you superintendent's report I have a few things I'll try not to keep your keep your keep going strong for your um let me begin with the high school if you could just put that up we're moving into a period of time where you're going to start seeing things it's going it's going to be happening um this is the diagram for those different months as we go forward we are entering the we've been in it frankly for the last all the all the meetings we've had in the pre construction time there's a lot of things that have to happen before you can actually begin construction which will not really officially happen until probably around October 1 next year in that vicinity but uh in the in this process of beginning this we need to over the next um month or two figure out where people are going to park so one of the things that's going to happen when we get into March is that the basketball area in the back is going to be paved well it is paved but it's going to be put in a way with the fencing and line night um putting numbers on spots this is going to be the temporary parking for the parking that's eventually going to be eliminated in front of the school and also a long mass f so over the basketball is one of the big issues that's going to be going on um another thing that's already starting we've been having people come look at this is doing trial uh borings for the geothermal wells there's going to be one that's done over in the practice field that's the one that's over by dpw do we have a you have a clicker with a laser on it uh we'll go from here maybe you could do um the practice we're going to do a boring over in the practice field and then over in the softball field all of the fields are off limit except for pierce and so one of the things we have a number of subcommittees of the building committee that meet but there's one committee that is an internal committee because it's basically all of the nitty gritty is a transition phasing so there's a lot of things that we're dealing with in terms of beginning the process of actually moving there's a lot going on with the parameter building right now bids have just come in we're looking at some of the bid documents and perhaps negotiating about those we have to do a lot of planning with respect to what the move when the move is going to take place what kind of boxes we're going to use there's just a lot of things that has to be thought about in each aspect of this but what will happen in March is that the circular drive in front of the school will still be operational but we're going to beginning to start seeing fencing and the fencing is going to start in April and when we do the next the next slide when we put these in they didn't come out in color but what's going to start happening in April we're going to start putting fencing around the area some of the trees on the inner part of the drive are going to have to come down the trees that are a long mass add they will be fenced in by formula in terms of the diameter of the base how far out the fencing will go it's going to have to be along the front right now there is a culvert that goes under the high school and all that water has to be re-diverted it's going to be a trench it's going to be dug in the front of the high school six feet deep in order to do a diversion on the culvert sometime later in April right down the middle of the front park is going to be a new driveway that will access some visitor parking on the right as you come up basically you can only go left so there still will be some drop off there but everything to the right towards CVS is going to be off limits at least for several months later on we'll get some pictures to show you of what will happen in terms of the walkway that will be in existence so we're starting to move into a phase where there's going to be it's going to be noticed there's going to start to have some inconvenience to people as they get used to this in terms of where you have to park what door you're going to be coming in for students I don't think you're going to see much you know they will notice that they're not walking up in April along the full circular drive they'll be coming to the front of the school and walking in but the front door and all the doors in front will be used as they are right now there will as we start doing more geothermal fortunately they're far enough away from the high school that the noise that those are going to generate are going to be pardon you want this up there with the pictures shows the arrows and everything yeah when we scanned it it didn't scan in as color she has different versions now these were updated last week that probably is not 24 oh they say 24 next meeting we'll make sure all these are in color so you can see it a lot better but the we had a community forum on the 4th which you're aware of we talked a bit about that we're going to probably need to have a parent meeting to talk about what's going to be happening what students are going to expect that will be meetings with the students themselves over the spring but it is everybody's been hearing about the building project for quite some time now and now you're going to start seeing some of the changes that are going to be going to be happening I think one thing that I do want to emphasize that came up before and it came up again in some comments that have come in the form is that even though we've reduced the number of geothermal wells down from what was originally estimated we haven't changed the sustainability goals we are going to accomplish very very close in terms of the energy that we had planned from the larger numbers in fact there's a blog on the website that those that want to get into more detail how that's the case can read so it is now starting to happen and beginning in some earnest so we'll talk more about that obviously every meeting in terms of what to anticipate over the next month and continue all the planning that's going to go on does anybody have any questions or do you want to add anything the chair of the building committee is here no I think the committees work really hard we're still developing making decisions about exteriors and other things there's still work that we're working on but I think the committees work really hard design team has worked hard Kathy's worked hard we had a good forum the other night I would say half the people there were butters who had concerns about the project were parents who had questions about what was going to impact their children and probably we need to have a separate forum for parents right after that forum people were talking about some of these concerns one of the concerns of course was damaged to their own homes wasn't a couple days later was that article in the front page of the globe about need them but at the forum a skanska did say that they were going to be taking pictures so that we do this there's going to be a lot of care given to not having that repeated and watching the decibel levels and the earthquake parts of this as we go forward I saw the article also it was nice because at the forum they talked about how skanska slash consigli plans to be proactive at abutting homes and doing assessments and documentation before the fact which was not done in need of and so I think what they saw was not going to be our experience the other thing I wanted to point out is we did we had a nice turnout from a forum but if anyone was unable to attend we've got both the replay from ACMI up on the website as well as all the presentations and handouts and things so you can see them in color and we'll get them and then if there's any questions they can send them onto the building committee so I have one question slash suggestion I mean the idea of I dropped my son off but the number of people that have to pull into the driveway to get their kids just a little bit closer to the door is a little bit ridiculous to me and putting the special driveway in the middle and having parents drive in there just doesn't seem like a great idea they should be able to drop them off on Mass Ave you need that driveway to access the parking but we need it for emergencies too we have the nurses office still in the front of the building what's going to happen in September is the nurses office is going to go to Downs House where the playground is in the back there that's where the nurses office is going to go and then any ambulance will come in off of Mill so we still need access until the end of the school year to the front door for that reason we could authorize vehicle only we would prefer parents just drop their son or daughter off on Mass Ave or if you're coming from the west side of town maybe just drop them off the bank there is a crossing light there I just point out that it's not always drop off just last week I had to come early and pick my child up because from the nurses office and that you know I don't want until we have to it was nice not to make her walk across but you're right and we probably should keep mentioning that at the meeting please just drop off a Mass Ave or the back as you've done in the past alright a few other things the we had a group of physics students that applied to present at the learn launch conference which is a major conference in Boston and they were one of I think we had about 20 groups of students from different schools and they're going to come at our next meeting to talk about their project which had to do with studying infrared light so I just wanted to tell you that and we'll honor them at that time for the second time in the last 10 years the Arlington High School quiz team qualified to move on into the final 17 and the first televised round is going to be this Saturday the 15th at 6 o'clock on GBH and they're up against Acton Boxborough so there is a on the high school website there is a nice video high school parents or any parents the community members might want to see that in terms of interviewing the students who are on that team so go AHS kindergarten registration began and we had a large turnout as expected during that first it will continue and it will continue until forever honestly but one of the things we did say to people is that they were in that January 22nd to 28th and anybody who was in a buffer zone would have the same place on the list there was no list and we went through and did all the buffer zone assignments that's all been sent out this week we'll continue to do that we want to make sure that all the parents know that if they apply to the after school programs by 6 p.m. on March 22nd they are on equal footing with every other parent for a placement and so any buffer zone students that are in buffer zones will get their assignment prior to that date so that they have that same opportunity and then it will just be ongoing after that we are I'm sure what you're most interested in is how many do we have right now and we have 170 students we had 90 some in the buffer zones and we are predicting that we will have 543 and interestingly we are almost identically on track as to where we were last year so we shall see newsletter went out this week and there were a couple important things in there I don't usually do this but I do want to emphasize one is that the the US census is going to be coming out in March I mentioned this before but also put some numbers to the impact that for every person a state will get $2400 so if you take that over 10 years that's a sizable amount of money that you would not get otherwise and it's really important that people respond to that and as well as congressional seats we've lost congressional seats in Massachusetts but perhaps we would pick something up I don't know if the numbers would warrant that this time but it is significant and I think the thing that some people are concerned about is confidentiality the bureau for the census is required by law to keep all information confidential confidential within the US government too so I just encourage people to do that then I also want to acknowledge our counselors and social workers last week was the school counseling week and I think that it's important to have this moment to acknowledge them because there's a lot of students that are able to be in school and be successful in school due to the support that they receive from our counselors and social workers so I want to thank them and acknowledge them the other thing is that this year and this will go out last year we had a speaker that was very well received who had conversations, courageous conversations about cultural and racial issues Dr. Eliza Talanum and she is going to be coming back again this spring we have three sessions set up March, April and May and that will be open to the target audience is all of our K through 8 parents but it's certainly open to the community as well and we will be publicizing that the first one will be held at Thompson the second at Down and the third one at Gibbs let me see what else here well I think what's on every teachers and students minds is that tomorrow is the last day before break and it is happens to be Valentine's Day also so that's always an exciting day in schools it's an opportunity for this winter break to have students get healthy teachers get healthy hopefully our teachers won't get sick which often happens when you start slowing down but it is a chance to just air out these buildings and get everybody healthy for the spring part of this year so that concludes my report great any questions alright can I say one more thing it's in the newsletter I just want to call your attention to the film I forgot the screening of intelligent lives this is going to take place in the high school it is a film about students with disabilities and how they how they manage in their schooling and workforce lives and calling your attention about what is intelligence so I think it's going to be a wonderful presentation it is funded by the Arlington Education Foundation I think it's being supported by that but it's also being supported by CPAC right so the high school specialized staff got a grant through the organizers of the film they were offering and so there will be a panel discussion panel discussion with it it's free but do you have to get reserved tickets for an event event bright sign up that's it thank you what was that oh it's on Monday March 9th I did have one question sure I was approached by someone about how notices went out about the kindergarten registration just the usual way right email letter I mean how'd you we mail out as many ways get it out as many ways as possible okay fine it's still sort of a passive process because we don't know who's out there at least to register I think principals have encouraged people that are in their schools to if they know they have siblings and what often happens is it's the parents who have children coming up to register it's an interesting phenomenon it's the third kids center it's the third kids center we're past that stage great thank you alright their consent agenda all items listed will be considered routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee requests in which event the item is considered in this normal sequence approval of warrant warrant number two zero one five zero dated one twenty eight twenty twenty in the amount of one two eight oh six eight dot one seven approval of minutes from one nine twenty twenty and one twenty three twenty twenty and approval of the Arlington High School MASC student council conference in Hyannis in March twenty twenty so moved second second all those in favor unanimous policy there's nothing to discuss subcommittee and liaison reports budget Dr. Allison Ampey budget met Monday morning and we had a good discussion first about ski team hearing from parents this time and getting some background on what their view of finances and the advantages of having a varsity team where we've I'm going to I'm reaching out to Mr. Bowler and Michael Mason to get some more information on what their assessment of the finances are for us to have some idea of numbers the subcommittee also felt that we need to start discussing the fees and kind of the process by which we decide we determine which teams are varsity that we accept for varsity and that we really should probably get this done by June so and we decided that it makes sense for budget to be working on this although you could argue a little bit about policy but we're willing to do the work so unless policy wants to take it over okay I just want that okay so we're going to start working on how this should happen but that also is dependent on the status of the school departments take on fees and adjusting them and this has been something since we haven't had stability in the athletic directors we it's come up in discussion but it hasn't gone forward so we had that we also had a little bit of we just saw the budget didn't have too many questions about it because we hadn't had a chance to present yet and we'll be scheduling another meeting soon thank you policies and procedures no report except that if you are a subscriber to the MASC list there's a little bit of a discussion about what happens when somebody sends an email to all seven members of the school committee which is an interesting question in that if we start responding individually with each other in the collection it is it is deliberative in a very definite violation of open meeting law so how do we handle that we don't have a specific policy in that I think what we should do is codify the policy and the event of an email address to all seven of us that the chair will respond will direct it as appropriate and will include it in the correspondence with the notification back to the person who wrote it that because of the open meeting law requirements the other members of the committee cannot respond to the bulk email something to that nature but I think that's something we need to talk about and to place in our policy priority we don't can discuss the actual policy but go ahead I just want to say we already have a legal opinion because myself and a former member stepped into this issue and Liz gave us a specific how to handle this I'm just sharing that it's there already but we need to put it in our policy manual and she addressed that so I think it's something we should look for because the question was is this in your policy manual specifically that was going around other committees and I don't want to go into any more depth think about it so that we can play with it in subcommittee but I just wanted to put that before us is something to at least think about there was also a large set of policy revisions that they put out recently we're going to have to take a look at those too great they didn't seem very urgent but they're pretty pro forma great all right curriculum instruction assessment and accountability I have reached out to Dr. Bode and her team so that we can set a meeting when they're ready to look at the SOA as needed great thank you community relations we have meeting on the 24th facilities Mr. Heyner met with the PTO of Otterson and Gibbs they were hoping for a lot more people but we were in competition with the building rebuild it was a good meeting and it turned out well thank you life is a good job Bill all five of us good job and I heard the PA system is working again so that's good we'll go after you Arlington High School Building Committee we heard about March 3rd is our next meeting okay calendar committee yeah we met last week we had a skeleton group from the committee so we felt we couldn't make any decisions we're continuing to look at possible new calendar looks so that we can communicate the information better potentially adding policies around homework on religious holidays that we don't have a day off on and and then just the continued discussion which I think is going to take much longer about whether to reconsider having school days on the religious holidays that we currently have often I just think that's a longer community discussion that's not going to be decided this year thank you Skeletal committee are you looking at Halloween are you looking at days off Skeletal Halloween stop-up or maybe that's just for Salem maybe time to adjourn Collection Modernization Committee we met last week just to talk about the warrant articles there's going to be an warrant article on rank choice voting a warrant article on changing how how the vote happens for town meeting positions so that people with the most vote will get three year positions and if there's a one or two year people with fewer votes would get the one or two year sort of just sort of making that make better sense and there was a third one that I've right now at this very moment can't remember where to vote well where we're going to vote is definitely under the consideration there's a survey that went out to the community and we're still getting back to results so the thought is the third one is to try to extend the meeting the extended committee because they just can't get the decisions made so the survey that went out until they get all those results you really can't we have some preliminary results about which precincts are problematic but we needed the whole thing to really evaluate it Superintendent search process the RFPs on the street will schedule a meeting around the opening of the bids nothing liaison reports any liaison reports announcements future agenda items all right executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation negotiation with union and nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and nonunion personnel which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect particularly the the traffic supervisors agreement conducts strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if which held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect and executive session review of the executive session minutes from April 2018 to December 2018 motion to end the session second roll call Mr. Hayner yes yes yes we will not be coming back to the executive session