 Good evening. The Allington School Committee will come to order. At this time, I would ask us to take a moment of silence to remember several people who've passed away in the past week. Anna McGill-Doen, Allington Public School student. David Perry, husband of Deb Perry, director of our ELL K-12 program. Bertha Huntley Holmes, mother of Sue Briggs, special education teacher at Allington High School. And Dr. Mike Foley, Allington resident. Thank you. At this time, we'll have public participation. We have several people signed up. Ms. Reardon may come up to the mic. And Ms. Newman. I'm Deborah Reardon, and I'm an Allington parent and the chair of Arlington CPAC. I prepared a report of our autumn 2013 activities for Mr. Hayner, who's our liaison. So we are just going to present the highlights of that. And there's a detailed copy for each of you. And there's also a copy on file with Ms. Fitzgerald. In September, meet and greet was held at the Thompson Elementary School, presented primarily Ms. Kelly, excuse me, Kathleen Kelly-Lockier presented, and introduced the staff to the parents who were in attendance. Parents were able to ask any questions about the programs, express concerns, and it was an opportunity for parents to meet the staff for both new parents and returning parents. In October, we had our basic rights workshop. And I'm just going to read that to you. Basic rights workshop was held at the Odyssey with David Dempsey of APS presenting and Ms. Jerry Newman of CPAC, providing our parent perspective. The basic rights workshop provides families with an introduction to their rights and responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, and the Massachusetts Special Education Law and No Child Left Behind. So it basically helps parents to learn how to be effective partners with the child's school and to help decide eligibility for special education, help plan, make decisions, and monitor their child's progress in school along with the educational team, which is comprised of the parents and the school officials. In November, we held CPAC, a workshop for parents on November 4th for executive function skills for self-management. And that provided pragmatic approaches for parents to use with their children as students to help with the executive function challenges and help result in them being successful at school. We had that presented by Jackie Stasho, who's with the firm thinking outside the classroom. That was pretty effective executive function. I'm sure most people are in education. It's something that encompasses students both within special education and outside special education. Our meeting on November 18th was quite detailed. So I've provided the details here. We had both parents and staff attending from Arlington Special Education, as well as Dr. Kathleen Bodie. Dr. Bodie attended to talk about the upcoming search for a special education director, the plans for the process, how that will be carried out. And parents had questions for her, and were very receptive to the process as presented. The other items we have is we talked about how Arlington has a new initiative both for special education students and students outside of special education and general education addressing executive function deficits in the student population. What we're going to do is have a forum in March, and the staff as well as from the school, as well as someone from the ILD Research Institute for Learning and Development will come and talk about how that is being addressed in the schools. Real approaches that they're actually taking, techniques that they're using to help the students and the teachers, that's going to be open to all parents in the town. There's a new forum that has been issued by the DESC, and it is in regards to mass health. It's always been this way, but there's a new forum for one-time consent for parents to sign so that the schools can seek reimbursement for services that are provided by specialists, such as occupational therapists, social workers, physical therapists, et cetera. And the parent only needs to sign the forum one time. And reimbursement is available for all students, regardless of whether or not the student receives mass health insurance. So that's something that could help to recoup some of the costs that are incurred with those services. One of the school psychologists, Ms. Allison Caruso, also attended that meeting to talk about the extended role of the school psychologists and the social workers. They are now reaching out to the community, to parents. We're going to have an update on the school website, so parents will actually know what the school psychologists are available for beyond standard testing and have more of a guideline for parents and how they can proceed. Our CPAC website, we have not had technical access to the website since the spring, so we are working with Ms. Lockyer and some staff to kind of get together a meeting. So what we're going to do is have a link on the school website, but the actual CPAC website will be hosted by another platform so that we can update it at any time. Since CPAC is staffed by volunteers, we need to have access it on a regular basis because our members do check in with the website for information, and I think it's important for us to have access to that, so that's something that we are hoping to finalize after the first of the year. We also talked about upcoming workshops that we have in January and March. The March one is the executive function one, as I mentioned, and the January one is going to be on transitions, and that will be held at the Audison School, and staff from Arlington will present as well as a couple of CPAC members, and we're going to cover transitions from the different perspectives from preschool to elementary to middle school to high school, et cetera, because those are challenges for most students and families. And starting in June of 2014, we're going to be providing the school committee with an annual update of CPAC activities during the year, initiatives, programs, et cetera, so that we can highlight the things that CPAC has been involved with for the parents of kind of to foster more of a working relationship. And in December, we also, December was, sure. We could have full meeting, and normally this time is only for three minutes. Okay, I apologize, Mr. Mayor. No, that's okay. I'm going to ask the secretary to include the full document in our minutes, and the public would be able to access that at a future date for all of you. Okay, sure, that would be great. I apologize for cutting you short. No, that's okay. We're out of the people. That's okay, I've been given the book, I know. That's okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Kathleen Coughlin, and I'll give you four and a half. Thank you. Appreciate it. My name is Kathleen Coughlin. My husband is Mike Varderbedian. We have a daughter in kindergarten at the Stratton School. We've written two letters to the Arlington School Committee, the first one I read aloud at the November 21st School Committee meeting. The second letter is rather long, would like to highlight points from that letter this evening. I'll try to be as quick as I can. We would like to reiterate our concern that the Magic Treehouse book series is being used as a basis for curriculum themes in the kindergarten classrooms in Arlington as part of the Tools of the Mind program. The Magic Treehouse books are intended for children eight to 12 years old and in grades three through seven. The book themes so far have been dinosaurs, knights, mummies, and currently a book about pirates. The next book is about ninjas. These book themes inherently include elements of violence, danger, and frightening characters and are intended for older children. We do not currently read books to our daughter that involve these types of subjects and characters as she is too young for these themes. As an example, I would like to read an excerpt from chapter eight of the Magic Treehouse book number three, Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborn. A real mummy. Bandages were still wrapped around the bald skull, but most of the bandages had come off the face. It was Hutepe, Queen of the Nile. Her broken teeth were showing, her little wrinkled ears, her squashed nose, her withered flesh, her hollow eye sockets. Plus the rotting bandages on her body were coming off. You could see bones. And then there's some dialogue between the two characters and it continues, Jack pulled out the Egypt book and flipped to a picture of a mummy. He read aloud. Ancient Egyptians tried to protect the body so it would last forever. First it was dried out with salt. Ugg, stop, said Annie. Listen, said Jack, he kept reading. Next it was covered with oil. Then it was wrapped tightly in bandages. The brain was removed by. Yuck, stop, cried Annie. Goodbye, she dashed out of the room. Annie called Jack. We have to give her the Book of the Dead. But Annie was gone. Jack reached into his pack. He pulled out the scroll and the scepter. He put them next to the mummy's skull. And that's the end of the excerpt. We also question how much awareness and information parents have about the Tools of the Mind program. There is no mention of the Tools of the Mind curriculum or the Magic Treehouse book series being used in the kindergarten classrooms on the Bishop, Brackett, Dalin, Stratton, or Thompson websites. The Stratton website indicates that Fundations is our formal phonics and handwriting program, and it is implemented in all of the kindergarten through grade two classrooms throughout the school system this year. It also indicates leveled reading, fontis and penel work boards, and others. We have concerns about the handwriting instruction part of the curriculum. I am a school-based occupational therapist myself. My understanding is that the children are to write sentences about the themes and books starting at the beginning of the school year, which they are not developmentally ready for. And doing that, I feel, can encourage poor grapho motor habits. I am having difficulty getting information about the graphics practice portion of the curriculum. As parents, we cannot access that information on the Tools of the Mind website. There is a password required, and parents cannot access that. In contrast, much information can easily be found when searching for materials from the Fundations program. Parents can easily access and print out complete parent guides, practice papers, and activities all for free. We question why the Tools of the Mind program is presented as a research-based kindergarten curriculum. There have been no studies completed on kindergarten age children. Studies have been completed on preschool-level children, and many of those are either not considered valid or did not demonstrate differences in academic achievement or self-regulation. The letter I wrote has links to documents that support that, and I have hard copies of those documents, as well. We would. I'm sorry. Can you wrap it up in the next minute, please? I will. Thank you. We were thrilled to know that our daughter would be attending a school that was the recipient of the 2010 US Department of Education blue ribbon award. We feel this indicates that the kindergarten program was strong as it was. Why did it need to be changed? Our main concern remains the use of the Magic Treehouse book series as a basis for the kindergarten program. We, again, request your support in ensuring that teachers are able to use age-appropriate stories, curriculum subject matter, and materials in the kindergarten classrooms. We understand the curriculum will be monitored by the school committee, as it was indicated at the November 21st meeting, but we do not know what that process is, and we don't know what the timeframe is for that. Our daughter has one chance at kindergarten. We do not want her and her classmates' memories of this precious time to include stories about potentially scary and upsetting subject matter. Families should be able to choose when and how their children are exposed to be books of this nature. We request that these books be removed from the kindergarten curriculum. Thank you. At this time that it's public participation, right now I would invite Denise Boucher, Boucher, excuse me, food service nutritional person, report on healthy hunger. I'm just here to kind of give a quick update on what's going on, where we're at, improve nutrition, and. Sorry, thank you. We're implemented last year. A lot of it has to do with calorie ranges, has to do with fruits and vegetables. Historically, fruits and vegetables in the National School Lunch Program are two separate categories. As long as I've been in Arlington, even before I was in Arlington, we have always offered a fruit and a vegetable, so it hasn't been just one category. It's always been two separate, and to also offer a variety of different types of vegetables, and actually I put it in the packet that you have the orange and the red, the dark greens, the beans, the legumes, the different types of vegetables that children may not be regularly exposed to. And we're required to offer those a minimum of one day, during the week, so to offer the variety. Also, fat-free milk, or 1% milk, more whole grains. As of this year, we have to offer at least 50% of the grains that we offer have to be whole grain rich, which is flour that's 51% or more of whole grain. Starting next year, for the school year, it has to be 100%. Right now, we offer very, very little products that aren't already whole grain rich. There is one product at the high school that I have to mention. We do a homemade macaroni and cheese, and we switched to the whole grain pasta, and there was a little bit of an uproar with some of the high school students. So for this year, until maybe we can find a better alternative to some of the wheat pasta that we're using, we did switch back. So that is one of the products this year that is not the 51% or more of whole grain. But, so a little give and take this year, but hopefully we can find something for next year so that they can have their macaroni and cheese. Also, it eliminates trans fats and reduces the amount of saturated fats in the menu, as well as less sodium. So basically looking at making their plates, half of their plates, fruits and vegetables, which is essentially what the dietary guidelines are for everyone. And this sort of plays a special place in my heart where when the regulations first all started coming about and I had to start speaking to principals and parents and children about how a little bit of the changes that are gonna be happening in the school lunch program, I had to really sort of take a look at myself in my own diet and my own family. I have a five and an eight year old. So really made me look at my own diet and in the course of that, I've lost over 100 pounds. And so this is really dear to my heart. This whole program, I'm very passionate about getting kids to understand and accept and want to eat the fruits and the vegetables. So that's been a big, big push for me is sort of exposing these children to the different fruits and vegetables and setting an example. So I'm much more confident now speaking to parents about why we're doing this when I'm not an obese woman. So, just my little side little note. One thing too, as I just wanna mention is how supportive from top down, from superintendent to principals, to teachers, to the staff in the cafeteria, to my staff in the cafeterias, who many of them are actually have grown up in Arlington, have kids that have gone through the Arlington school. Some of them have grandchildren that are in the schools right now. They care about the kids. They want the kids to be healthy. They want them to eat. They want them to take the time and be able to eat the good, healthy food. So I think that's a huge, a special thing that in Arlington that we have here that sometimes we don't see in some of the other communities. So I just wanted to mention that. Also, it's really interesting too, to go around and even see the foods that the children are bringing into the schools. And I'm from Chelmsford, so I've seen some of the lunches there. I've seen a lot of lunches in Bill Rook. I've seen other communities. But to actually see what some of these children are bringing in from home is amazing. They are bringing the little fruits, the little vegetables in their little bento boxes. It's just amazing to see that in Arlington, I think parents understand the importance of it, which makes my job a hundred times easier to have the support of the parents and to be able to work with these kids. Let's see, big thing we had to do last year was actually document and prove that we were actually doing what we're supposed to be doing. So it was a long process, certification process, but we actually submitted everything last year in October and we're able to get an additional six cents reimbursement for each of the reimbursable meals that we have. So that's a huge, huge thing. And I also wanted to mention that looking at our participation rates have remained fairly steady, which is a huge, huge thing as well. Beginning of the school year, it's always, September is always a low month. You kind of see the numbers go up over and then down towards June when the seniors are gone and when there's lots of field trips and whatnot. Participation goes off, but it's been fairly steady between the last three years. So that's a huge, huge thing for us. Let me see. Another great thing this year is we were chosen for part of the pilot program for the fresh fruits and vegetables. We get an allotment from the USDA for commodity products. A lot of times it's a lot of canned goods, a lot of beef, a lot of corn. So this actually allows us to put an allotment, some of our monies, towards fresh fruits and vegetables that are actually delivered to our door. And it is a pilot program, so hopefully it's something that works well and that they continue to do. It's great to be able to have offset some of your costs and have these fresh fruits and vegetables coming in instead of canned products. So that's a huge thing and hopefully that it's something that works well and will continue. Let's see. This year we've also been able to do some meal pattern training, obviously, with the staff and with the schedule this year, we've already been able to do some professional development with our staff with allergen training, which is huge, huge, huge, as well as we work with a lot of students that have celiac disease and gluten issues. So it was great for all of the staff to be able to go to the training together, which very rarely are we able to do with the professional development days being half days or getting out at one o'clock or we were able to actually do have a great professional development day for them. Also, we did a professional development day over just food safety, which obviously is one of the most important things. That's pretty much sort of the gist of where we're at. I don't know if you have, I've put some information in your packets, but yes. Does anyone have any questions? Can I make a comment? Well, Denise, compliments the parents in town, but I have to compliment Denise. We are unique in lots of respects as a community. Many school districts no longer have their own internal food service because of a lot of cost cutting measures, but Denise has done an extraordinary job and her staff, not only of providing really healthy food, but also making it work. And it really is a testament to their skill and dedication as well as to the parents who have their kids have lunch. I can say, going down there, that the food, the salad bars are fantastic. I don't know how anybody could leave hungry if you wanted. You can just eat as much as you want. And there's always big bowls of fruit. And it's probably due to the grants we have, but it's really nice to see students reaching for that, but they also tend to still reach for those little fruit cups too, but yeah, of course. But anyway, it's a terrific job and I know that with her leadership and the support of our lives and parents, we'll be able to continue this. I wanted to ask you to maybe you could comment a little bit on our morning breakfast because one of the concerns of one of the members was, do we have children that are in class hungry? We do have, we did have some questions with that we didn't have the breakfast program at the bishop this year. Last year, I guess I should back up a little bit, Thompson School's a mandated breakfast site. They have more than 40% free and reduced rate. We're mandated to have breakfast. When they split those children up to the different schools, they were still Thompson children, so we had breakfast at the schools that they were at. Then when those children went back to Thompson School, we went back to the schools that we had had successful breakfast programs at. And they were typically the schools that would have children that were coming in either from the Meco program or children that were there early, sort of a captured audience. Most children in Arlington are having breakfast at home. This year we had stopped doing it at the bishop school. The Meco program spoke with me. We did start it up again. We've had some participation's not huge, but there was definitely concern there about they were worried that some children were going, were coming to school on the bus and not having breakfast before going to class. But I did want to mention too, we always work with the principals, the social workers, the guidance counselors, the nurses, the teachers. They come down, a student's hungry. Do you want an apple for the student? We do not let kids go hungry. Like we, that is not something, it's not worth it for a 12 cent apple to have a child be hungry and go back to the classroom and not have had a snack. So that, I would love to expand the breakfast program. It's very tricky as far as participation goes in getting those kids in there. Like I said, Arlington is one of those communities where a lot of these kids are eating at home. Their parents are feeding them before they bring them to school. I mean, it is something that I can look at as far as I know, I was just reading, there are some grants available. Unfortunately, a lot of times the grants are for schools that have very high free and reduced rates. So it makes it a little trickier. So, I mean, children, as far as, you know, working with staff at the schools, the children are not going hungry. Right. That's, I get that report from all the schools that they're really fantastic about helping in that regard. I just want to make one comment to follow up on what Dr. Bodie said. So my understanding with our lunch program is in another way that we're different is that we actually make money. Which it is not true in a lot of places. We're not, it's very self, it's self-sustaining. I wouldn't say that we make any profit on this. We're not losing money, which is the case and I think a lot of communities. So I applaud, I mean, I applaud you on feeding our children good food and also making the cost. My big plug though is what are they going to redo the high school? The facilities down there, I'm like, I don't want to pump money into the kitchen if it's ever, if it's going to be redone soon. But that is one of the, my two schools, would be a high school as far as facilities go and the Stratton would be my other baby that I would love to be able to see down the road. Put my little request in. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you. That's one of my things I'm very, very excited that they're reopened. We're slowly adjusting because it's a different setup. It's not too separate. It's sort of one together. So they're working together to serve the regular classes, the meals there, as well as making items to go out to the schools. But it's great because she can now make the taco meat again. She can make the sauce again. Making the homemade stuff, obviously, we all know is less sodium, you know, less fat. So it's great. We're very, very excited. Where we do so much to personalize the food offerings. I'm wondering whether you serve it to students in any time to see what types of offerings they might want to add it in that they don't currently have. It's actually interesting. There's a parent who actually wants to work with me on a survey for the middle school, which I'm sure that's something that we could then do for the high school as well. So yeah, I mean, that would be great to be able to kind of see. Thank you so much. Thank you. No, thank you all. How do you work? Oh, thanks. I appreciate all the support. And it truly is a testament to the staff that we have at works at all of these schools. So thank you. This time. Teacher priorities for fiscal 15, Ms. Hansen. Ms. Hansen, you're aware, and I think other people are aware, but we need the microphone. Yeah, we'll pass the microphone down. Thank you. I wanna start off by thanking you for having a spot on the agenda tonight for the teachers to be able to add our two cents to your budget deliberations. And I have with me tonight, teachers representing all the different levels of the school system. We have Nancy Knoff from the preschool and Julie Keyes from the oddison, Val Sarasen from the high school and Siobhan Foley from the elementary level. So we'll keep it brief, but we do wanna just say a little bit about teacher priorities at each level. So again, we appreciate the chance to weigh in both with a teacher response to the administrative priorities and the addition of a few items that we didn't hear mentioned in the other presentations. My part is just to give a very brief overview and make a couple points and then I'm gonna pass it to each of the teachers here. We all understand the financial constraints you are working within as you put your budget together and we respect the thought you put into figuring out the best way to spend the limited amount of discretionary dollars. We know we all need to stay conscious of building the school system we can afford, not necessarily the school system we would dream of, but we wanna share a few of our very kind of tame dreams this evening with you. Teachers have definitely appreciated the comments by administrators about how much is accomplished in this district with the modest budgets we have at our disposal. Overall, I think that what we heard from administrators mirrors our perspective that we need to continue to shore up and support the things that we are doing now. We need to help alleviate some of the stress of large class sizes and large cluster sizes so that teachers can better fulfill the multiple mandates of the new Common Core Curriculum, the new Park Assessment System that's coming, the new Teacher Evaluation System, and other things like the mandated English Language Learner Courses. And so that we can have the staffing to help teachers meet the diverse needs of the many kinds of learners sitting in their classrooms. So I'm gonna touch briefly on four different areas. The first area is the new Educator Evaluation System. There are two components to this new system. One is definitely an evaluative component. How well are you doing what you do? The other is definitely a professional development component. How can we help you get better at what you do? And I wanna go back a little bit to the role of department heads in the new, what we're calling the new Common Core Era. A few years ago, the district had to cut back to less than full-time department heads to save money when we were really tight and constrained for budgets. Over the past few years, some of those part-time positions have been restored to a 1.0 FTE. Others are still at less than full-time. While we have talented department heads of both the part and full-time variety, where we have less than full-time people in those positions, we do see a diminished capacity for those people to provide the amount of content-specific support at all levels, including the elementary level, for the coaching and professional development involved in the new evaluation system. Administrators with general education backgrounds can generally provide the evaluative piece of that formula with proper training, but it's much more difficult for them to provide the ongoing content-specific professional development that the new evaluation system envisions. So we urge you to review the number of less than full-time department heads and consider increasing their FTEs to enable them to both serve as primary evaluators for our specialist teachers and to facilitate a greater number of professional development opportunities in the content areas at all levels, which is what the common core standards are requiring of us. The second point I wanna talk about is the behavior support personnel pay. If last year was the year of raising substitute pay to more parity with our surrounding districts, this year might just be shaping up to be the year of raising the pay level of teaching assistants with that more specialized training to assist with both the substantially separate and inclusion programs. We heard this mentioned in several of the administrative presentations. The consequence of having a level of pay that's significantly below other districts in this area in particular is that it's difficult to attract and retain a full complement of qualified personnel in these positions. There's mid-year turnover due to people understandably moving to higher paying districts when given the opportunity. These positions are in demand everywhere and they are critical to the success of many of our programs. Not that we don't have qualified people in those positions now, but we often don't start the year with a full complement of staffing in these areas and there's turnover during the year leading to staffing gaps. These factors affect a teacher's ability to properly plan curriculum, supervise the students, and for the students, not always getting the support that they need. Technology is the third area I'm gonna touch on. We were glad to hear the pitch by Dr. Janger for more up-to-date staff computers. It's difficult to use all of the software systems expected of teachers these days with the older, slower systems that many of us have at our disposal. Today we have different software systems that collect student data, post assignments and grades, interact with the teacher evaluation system, and support the use of technology in our instruction. The old computers in some schools simply aren't up to the task. IT support is another area in technology and while we're always glad to hear about technology purchases for the district for both students and teachers, there really should be a kind of formula perhaps that for every X amount of dollars spent on technology a proportional amount of IT support is also added. Having the tools without the IT support to make sure the technology will work when you go to flip the switch and that it's properly maintained and serviced can be an exercise in frustration. Again, not that we don't love our current IT staff, they're just spread too thin. And this also speaks to the value and need for additional IT instructional support to help teachers really understand how to best use the technology in their classroom. The T21 program, it's a class that's running this year, has gotten rave reviews from all the teachers that are participating, so we really hope that additional opportunities like that will be offered to teachers. The last point I'm gonna touch on is kind of the work environment. Last year you scored huge points by replacing the tired broken down Xerox machines. I can hear the teachers cheering in the background right now. There are certain things that make up kind of the work a day stock and trade of educators and if those things don't work reliably or if they work reliably intermittently it creates all kinds of aggravation. Climate control is kind of under this category as well and it's another huge factor. Heat in the winter time. Last year the heating system was out for several days running in the high school in certain areas. It affected the preschool program and certain wings in the high school. Teachers and students shivered in classrooms for several days in a row in the high 50s and low 60s. This year a backup boiler is being replaced. Diane Johnson's not here, I'm sure she'd be nodding her head, which will hopefully take care of some of this problem. But on the other end of the spectrum, cooling systems in June and September heat. We know we won't see air conditioning in our lifetimes in the schools but it would be great if the district took charge of ensuring that every room that needs it has a district provided industrial sized fan. In some schools PTOs have paid for fans and other places teachers have bought their own fans but we would love to see the district take responsibility for providing basic reasonable climate control for all the classrooms in our buildings. So now I'm gonna hand it over to Nancy Knopf who's going to talk a little bit about the preschool. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Monotomy Preschool. I have been teaching at Monotomy Preschool since 2001 and Monotomy Preschool has been part of the Arlington Public Schools for over 30 years. It was created as a laboratory preschool for the family and consumer science department and for high school students studying child development. To this day many students still graduate from the Arlington High School prepared and certified to work in the early childhood programs licensed by the Commonwealth. For many years the program served 20 to 25 children on any given day. In 2009 Monotomy Preschool transitioned from family and consumer science and became part of the special education department and this was done in order to provide an inclusive preschool program for the Arlington families who had had were having their children transported to Lexington, Belmont, and Burlington. Monotomy Preschool now serves 60 children on any given day in our classrooms and 60 additional children receiving speech and language services, physical or occupational services or access to one of our social groups. We have grown from serving 25 children to serving over 120. So the old Monotomy Preschool had one classroom with an adequate size, child size bathroom directly adjacent to the classroom and playground and the new Monotomy now has five classrooms, therapy space for two speech and language pathologists, a physical therapist and occupational therapist and offices for an early childhood coordinator, a psychologist, a lead teacher and a social worker. Three out of the five classrooms have no direct access to sinks for the necessary activities of hand washing and hygiene and typical activities of finger painting and other messy and fun sensory experiences. Two out of the five classrooms require long walks to the bathrooms which are not child size. A necessary part of our work is to provide toilet training and support families and these long walks make spontaneity difficult. Over the last year, we have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Bodie, Diane Johnson and Bill Hainer to address some of our facility deficits. Some of the highlights where we have now working blinds for all our windows, a more permanent wheelchair ramp, a new space for the delivery of occupational therapy services, a new door from the hallway to one of our classrooms and all of the heat pipes have been rewrapped and we are greatly appreciative of this support. Our continued challenges, some of which were mentioned above involving the hand washing and toileting are the fact that we are divided by the courtyard requiring people to travel outdoors through snow and ice this past week, an adequate parking for over 60 families receiving services and the ongoing struggle to make the current space work for very young children. I share this to highlight the need for a new and improved early childhood center for Arlington. When the Thompson was being rebuilt, a new early childhood center was in the original plans. Our understanding is that it was dropped out of the plans early on in the process. With the growing momentum for a new high school facility, I speak for everyone at Monotomy Preschool and respectfully request that the preschool be part of the renovations. These renovations are important for the community as we ensure our continued relationship with the family and consumer science department and because we are the gateway to the Arlington Public Schools for over 100 Arlington families. Thank you very much. Thanks, Nancy. And now we have Siobhan Foley to talk about elementary priorities. Yeah, I don't want her to have to come out and adjust the microphone again. Good evening. Thank you for letting us speak tonight. A few weeks ago, the elementary principals presented to you their top budget priorities for the coming year. And their top three were more behavioral support staff for the elementary schools, rewriting the job description for the library TAs to better reflect the job they are currently doing and to increase their pay. And they also mentioned smaller class sizes. The elementary teachers have also mentioned these same issues as concerns for the upcoming budget. In addition, they've also mentioned the importance of increasing the number of qualified teaching assistants, including full-time TAs and the kindergartens and more reading, math and special education support. With the increase in technology in the schools, teachers are feeling that the level of support for these technologies is inadequate and needs to be increased. The teachers have also expressed the opinion that the elementary schools could use assistant principals, unlike the principals who could probably also say that they could use assistant principals. They did not mention that for themselves, but teachers in the elementary schools are seeing the need for that. If I had to pick the top three priorities for elementary school teachers, it would be class size, class size, and class size. I would like to mention an argument that I think explains the importance of this at all grade levels and the elementary level. In general, common educational wisdom acknowledges the fact that grades K through two should have lower class sizes. When classes at those levels are too big, class management begins to suffer. What's not acknowledged or recognized is that when class size is too big at grades three through five, teachers are not able to give children the full level of support that they need to have, especially with our requirements for the common core, which is asking us to go much deeper into the curriculum and to have children go much deeper into their thinking. To give an example from my own classroom, I teach third grade and we do a character trait or a character unit every year. And in addition to having the children choose a character and give me character traits that would explain that character, they also have to give me evidence supporting their reason, that choice of character trait. Now with the common core, in addition to giving me evidence to support that trait, they are also having to explain why that evidence supports the trait that they're choosing. This is a much deeper level of thinking and of work that these children have to do. And to do that with 27 children in my classroom and to support all of them. And I'm not talking about children who in general need support from special education personnel. I'm talking about children who would normally be fine, but under the new common core, they're requiring much more from me. And to do that for 27 children is a challenge, to say the least. Thank you. I have Julie Keyes from the Audison. Hi again. I'm happy to be back with you tonight to speak about the budgetary needs of the Audison Middle School. I think Mr. Rajiri's presentation last week was right on target with the needs of the building. However, he's forced to be somewhat realistic when he comes here and I feel like I can be a little bit more direct. We need more teachers. We are grossly understaffed at the Audison. While the elementary schools in Arlington have added 24 new teachers in the past five years, the Audison's actually down three. As the large population grades move into our school, we need to see proportionate staffing increases. That's about 15 staffing positions if you're just looking at the numbers. Unrealistic, I know, but it's really necessary to our school. Many studies have proven that smaller team sizes in the middle school level lead to increased student achievement. When you asked Mr. Rajiri last week how staffing increases would improve our SGP, these are the studies that answer that question. There's a decade and a half of research showing that smaller team sizes lead to improved student performance. Many of the studies recommend 90 students per team cluster. Next year, most Audison teams will have about 130 students, two thirds higher than the ideal size. With class sizes as they are, students will get less than two minutes of attention per class period. That's not much time when you're trying to motivate, remediate, adjudicate, inspire, inquire and teach. We need teachers to meet our school goals that trickles down to teachers meeting their individual goals and that trickles down to students improving their SGP. We need a full cluster in sixth grade at minimum since that's the important transition year. Sixth grade teachers have far more parent contact as families move up from elementary school and therefore they need fewer students so that they have that time to have that close contact with parents. Ideally, we need another team in seventh and eighth grade too. However, we could do with a four person split grade team that would have a couple periods of seventh couple periods of eighth. That's eight teachers total right there in cluster subjects. Add to that the foreign language, specialized exploratory teachers that Mr. Rajiri requested. We really need like 13 teachers to be fully functioning as a proper middle school. Less than that and we're gonna be overloaded and education will suffer because of large student loads on staff. Just a side note, I think our art music teachers are currently serving about 330 students at a time. When you think that every teacher now has to involve writing, that's a lot of writing and work to be reading. Finally, Mr. Rajiri's request for funds for improved security in the building are absolutely vitally important. I'm definitely not a worst first kind of thinker but we need doors that lock securely in our building and a way for staff to enter the building without compromising our security. I love that our building is a community center but it leaves us open to vandalism and theft. We need cameras and security so that we can keep allowing local organizations to come in without feeling at risk ourselves. Thank you for allowing us to give this input tonight. You all have a handout here that has some of the data that I've been referencing since I know that was something you were looking for last week from Mr. Rajiri. Hi, I'm Valerie Sarrazin from the Special Legislature Department here at the high school and we have three specific areas in the high school that I would like to address. The first one of course is the building upkeep. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail because walking through the halls here speak for themselves along with the NASC report that backs up some of those conditions but the one thing I do wanna address is the custodial staff. The custodial staff is working, I believe, at the best that they can and the building is quite large to deal with. It is falling down in many, many areas. The evidence of mold in the bathrooms and just the upkeep of trying to get windows to open up, they all speak from themselves and what I'm looking for is the support for the custodial staff for the building as it is. We're looking at a rebuild and the future building team is looking at proposals but we're looking at a new building not for a good six years and during that time I believe the custodial staff needs support not only in population but also in materials. Many of the things that they're working with are very, very outdated. They get used up very quickly because of the rough textures and I just wanna acknowledge them that they are doing the best that they can but we're dealing with a 100 year old building and it is what it is. The other thing is though that does need to be maintained is just the appearance. We have doors that are broken, we have a chipping paint and all of this not only leads to the appearance but also to the security. Many, many doors here as we said earlier do not lock if they do lock a good, good pole. The kids know this if you give it a good pole a certain way you can get those doors open and we're looking even though we've told the faculty and we've told the students if you see an open door please close it. It's a huge building and there's an awful lot of doors. We have a lot of the town coming in for town business and everything and I just really believe that this is something that we have to adhere in light of what's going on in the world today. If that takes putting little buzzers on doors that are being kept open, things like that. Just little things like that in these next few years before we really revamped the school would certainly bring some peace of mind to the people who work here as well as to some of the students. The second area of course is curriculum and staffing and you heard it many, many, many times about the shortness of staff and the increase in class sizes and this is gonna continue on through the high school level. The enrollment continues to increase and even our graduation requirements are now being pushed to their limits. Up to this year, only three years of math are required for graduation but 90% or more of the students are actually taking four years of math. Why? Because the colleges and universities that kids are applying to have basically said don't be a sloth in your senior year. We wanna see that you're still challenging yourself. We wanna see that you're still producing good work and to do that, there's not a lot of extra curricular activities out there for them substitute so they deal with the math, they deal with the science and when it comes to the science I don't have to go into a lot of detail about the lab safety. We're looking at many of the labs that are undersized based on the number of students that are in there which causes concern, also the lack of protection such as the eye wash and the storage of different chemicals. The physical education department is also expanding because for the graduation requirements are now have expanded to deal with not just your typical ninth and 10th grade curriculum which covers health but they're going into nutrition. They're going into sports science. It's real, these are classes that the students are interested in and wanna take as part of their electives and we just don't have the staff in order to be able to serve all the students that are requiring this. Lastly in the social and social studies in English areas Mr. Janger went into some of the more specifics about combining some of the teachers to make it a 1.0 position. We have English where we need another full time teacher. Social studies we currently have a 0.2 but we really could use a 1.0 area in there to accommodate those students and he gave you a specific examples of combining them so as opposed to hiring brand new teachers maybe taking those 0.2s and the 0.8s and combining them into a 1.0 position. I won't go into all the other ones were languages, facts but the one thing is with regard to general education support, we talked about the TAs. The TAs are not just necessary for the special education department. We need TAs in the general education population. They are there to help support the attendance. I mean right now our deans are dealing with looking at attendant issues. They should not be looking at attendant issues. We've got so many behavioral problems. We have programming that they should be looking at. They should be there supporting the teachers but they're dealing with attendance. Who's here? Who has skipped? The other thing is by having more TAs we would be able to have more whole coverage. With whole coverage we'd be able to see who's coming into the building that doesn't belong here. Every student and every staff worker is required to have a photo ID on their person. If somebody stops them and asks you do you have a photo ID and they don't have it that certainly is a problem. Right now the teachers are in the classrooms. We've been asked to come out of the classrooms during passing times but as you know most of the times that's not possible because you're prepping for the next class. A student stays after to ask you for more clarification of a math problem. By the time you can break away to get out into the hallway bell has rung and the next class has begun. Right now we do have an individual Diane Swift in our old hall because as you know we don't have a substitute service. So the kids go there when teachers have to go to IEP meetings or they're absent. They have to go to other things and that puts an awful lot of pressure on not only on Ms. Swift but also on teachers. Their duty would have to go in there to watch the students. Taking them away from critical planning time or even what do you call it collaboration time. If we have a teaching assistants to assist with the old hall we would leave the teachers free to be able to rework their curriculums and better serve the students. And the last thing I'm gonna talk, well not last thing but the last curriculum issue is good old special education. My favorite subject. As some of you might know now at the Jermaine Lawrence School for Girls we have created an alternative high school. The students who are placed there by DSS are now, well they're right, I'm from New York and talk faster. Anyway, they are going, we've created an alternative high school there because some of those students are not able to come to the high school as of yet but because they live here in Arlington, Arlington is required to teach these students and what we're looking at is we already have a full-time teacher there. We also have one of our current teachers moving, going there at the first two periods then coming back here. We have a social worker that spends part of our time there then our other part time coming back here and we have an overburdened team chair here at the high school who is trying to maintain the IEPs and the regulations here as well as trying to do there. We're hoping that a part time team chair and a part time social worker can be, positions will be created to deal with just that population. Lastly, technology. The school is old, the buildings are cement, we don't get a lot of wifi, we're doing the best that we can. Only a few people have the smart boards but if we can't afford the smart boards we are looking for projectors for each teachers. We are looking for hopefully laptops for each teacher because we have moved a lot of our standalone computers into labs to service the students but then the teacher is with her own computer and if he or she doesn't have an overhead we're still back to the pen and paper and drawing on the board situation and we're in the 21st century. We've been here now for quite a few years and are we gonna start looking like we are part of it or are we gonna still keep saying we're doing the best we can. Thank you. Is it possible that you guys can send us that stuff electronically, that would be great because I took notes but it would be great and I'll send it all to you, Cindy, through the secretary. Yeah, that would be great, thank you. Would you also send a copy to the superintendent as well? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. At this time I wish to apologize to the public and especially to Mr. Pierce. I did not explain why Mr. Pierce is not here. It's a personal matter and he was not able to attend tonight. I deeply apologize both to him and to the public. My only excuse is how old. Moving on, school committee members discussion of priority for fiscal 15 budget. How would you like us to do this? Maybe you might wanna ask this person if they wanna talk a little bit about it. Okay. I would ask the committee individually if they have their priorities or if we want to put one out for discussion. I had four things I wanted to bring up. First, I'm concerned about the, I'm not sure my mic's on, but I'm concerned about class sizes at all levels as has been greatly discussed by our principals and by our teachers. I'm concerned that until now we have some unmet needs which haven't yet been communicated about the, I'm thinking of full-time directors of science, art, music, some of our departments. I had the same concerns that Ms. Hansen so eloquently discussed. And also in IT and possibly in facilities. Third, I'm concerned that I'm not sure we have any point in our discussion where we're going to be checking in with parents except for the public hearing which in the past I haven't found to be our best place to gather information and I would, I personally would like to hear from them even if we're going to be, the budget's going to be dictated by the needs that have already been heard. I just think it's good to hear from parents they may have other thoughts and concerns that maybe we can think about for the next year. And finally, I'm wondering if we're going to be having a feasibility study for the high school coming up. Do we have to pay any portion of that or does it come from capital? And I just don't know the answer to that. So. It's your choice. It's fine, all right, as far, I could go from the bottom backwards a little bit. The feasibility study, what precedes that is a statement of interest. And as you have in your packet, we just received a letter from the Massachusetts School Building Authority and the deadline for a submission is going to be April 11th. So yes, the intent is that we will be submitting, it requires the signature, not only of this committee, which I'm assuming everyone will want to do, but it also requires the signature of the town, the Board of Selectment and the town manager. So there's ongoing discussion about that. There were some things that we did not, we being administrators did not highlight, which was the issue of our curriculum leaders. It is true that when we've had, particularly back really starting around 09, we've had to prioritize how we were going to be able to make ends meet. And we do have some curriculum leaders who are not a 1.0. However, I'm not sure that their positions would require them to be a 1.0, but that doesn't mean that we could not always use some increased time. Now the issue is, can, it's a more complicated issue than just saying, can we have more time from these curriculum leaders? Because it may be that that's not a possibility right now. I think that what you're hearing tonight is what I had said last time is that over these years, we have focused on elementary, but we really have minimally increased the staffing at the secondary level. It's not that we've ignored staffing at that level, but we've been more allowing class sizes to creep. I think everybody's aware of that creep that's happened. And we've just reached now a critical point, particularly at the middle school and the high school for that matter, in which we really do need more staffing. And you had mentioned the issue of also facilities. I think that's been a, that certainly is a major issue here at the high school. It's an issue at the middle school as well in terms of we need to be looking at and we are looking at how we're going to, perhaps re-utilize, repurpose some of the rooms, reconfigure them. Because even though you might want to have, say we did have 13 more teachers or even eight more teachers in cluster, we do not have eight classrooms to put eight teachers in cluster. So that's an issue. I mean, we certainly have, there was some reconfiguring next year. We certainly could do another cluster, but we'd be stretched beyond that. And that is something I think that we need to look at long range planning. We've talked about that somewhat, we haven't done any real planning around that because we have two other facilities. We are also simultaneously looking at and needing to look at their upgrade. Ms. Consider the discussion on the topics. Just on the class size, I think to the plus side to the staff and the negative side, they continue to do a great job with the facilities and the overcrowded classrooms. But as was mentioned tonight, there's going to be a point with more and more required for the staff to do. It's going to be harder and harder. And I think this committee, at least in future budgets, has to look seriously at class size. I appreciate what you just said. If we could afford those other teachers, where will we put them? It definitely in this town has a ripple effect. We've just about reached the maximum capacity of classrooms. We have more staff. These are questions that we have to, this committee and future committees are going to have to deal with yearly. I just want to ask one follow up point. I appreciate your discussion about my points. I understand the process with the MSBA, but to my understanding, it puts the potential feasibility study falling into next school year. That's correct. And so I'm wondering, do we have to pay for it? I'm now admitted mentioning that, yes, well, if we get invited into the eligibility period, then yes, we'll have to go to town meeting and ask for money for the feasibility study. So it wouldn't come out of our budget for 20. Okay, that was my question. It'll be a substantial amount of money. It'll be under a million, but it will be quite a bit. Right, that's why I wanted to know where it was coming from. Which year would we be doing this? Would we be looking at the, let's assume everything goes for us. Will we be going to town meeting in 2015? Probably sooner. So we should be prepared to go to town meeting this year. Thank you. This year in the spring? No, no, 14 the fall. Okay. Yeah, fall. A special town meeting? We're talking a special town meeting. Okay, fine, thank you. The deadline is like two weeks before the start. Right, I got a little panicky on that. Okay, thank you for the clarification. Miss Iyam? I've been said by Dr. Alsinanti been looking at the direction that the district has taken. Our first commitment has to be to the students in the classroom. We now have a mechanism for balancing elementary students to help with the overcrowding. We need to really focus on the odyssin in high school and normalizing some of those class sizes. And in addition, the high school and the renovations that has to be a major error for commitment. In terms of the technology, we have to allow our staff to get the jobs done and provide what is necessary. But unfortunately, the more we put in, the more need there is to have greater and greater funding streams to support it. And so if we're talking about really expanding technology, we can't do that without talking about expanding the IT, expanding the building, the spaces, the infrastructure. And so as we look at another year of recovery but not able to get back to where we wanna be yet, we have to be mindful of what are half measures that will not get us near to where we wanna be and what will be very effective uses of our time and of our efforts. The class size argument has been resonating, particularly after last week when it was pointed out we had a seventh grade math class with class size of 37. So that I think the first thing we really need to do is look at what our class sizes are. And in the budget process, I'd like to get a report of what our class sizes are in the middle and high school. So we have a sense of how things landed this year, visa V, what we plan for, because that'll give us a sense of where we need to adjust our resources a little more to have that class size information, be able to get a sense of how we're utilizing our staff and whether we're being effective and efficient and doing that in where our real challenges lie, I think is gonna be a helpful tool for us going forward. The technology argument resonates with me as well. If we're asking teachers to do things vis-a-vis reporting, running grades through the student data system, doing presentations, the whole things that we need to do digitally rather than on paper to be an efficient organization, we have to have the equipment to support that. And the issue of facilities around the district does raise its head. The oddest and folks are making an important point for security in their building. I'm impressed by that discussion. I think that we need to also buy an adequate supply of duct tape to keep the high school running between now and the time we're able to move it forward. I mean, I'm just being metaphorical, but that's exactly the situation we're in, is that we've got an aging building where the infrastructure, people do not realize what a challenge it is to keep this high school running. The tour that we took this month was an eye-opener for me, because I mean, when we go through this building normally, we're coming in on the third floor, coming up here. The third floor where we come through like room 302, these are some of our best classrooms in the building that we're seeing on a regular basis. And if you go elsewhere in the building, there's some really difficult conditions, both in terms of the way we're heating the building, the communications we're able to offer. We've got rooms without emergency communication. A lot of real significant issues that are going on. So keeping the eye on the ball of doing the renovation and getting the building project moving forward is important, but we also have to keep things running in the interim. And I just also want to make sure that it's a question of who's caring for the caregivers. The elementary principals are running solo. I want to make sure that our administrators are finding support and finding their jobs to be doable so that there are oftentimes little low cost things we can do to support them that they're never gonna ask for, but makes all the difference in the world. And I think that we really need to explore that as well. Mr. Thielman. So I'm gonna speak to the priorities in a minute, but I have a question for Diane because I just want to get something straight in my mind. I've seen different numbers, but how much more money are we gonna have to spend this year than we spent this year? Next year? I can't answer that yet. Do you have any plans? I don't want a ballpark any more than the multi-year projection I gave you. So what's the multi-year projections today? It shows us that we're short for next year. So we're short for next year. Right, but that's based on not updated revenue projections. It's based on guesstimate with next year's salary, whereas I'm in the process of doing it person by person and having a very accurate read on next year's salary with the steps and lanes adjustments and all of that. So shortly into January, I should be able to provide you with that delta, bearing in mind that we're going to have to increase our out-of-district tuition line significantly to cover where we're gonna land. This year we have reserves, but we have to build it in the base for next year. So we're going to be, for expansion, we're going to be very dependent on additional revenues from the town. I would be surprised if after we meet our needs for out-of-district tuition and our contractual obligations for salary that there's much left. Okay, that's what I thought. Let me just say, will we have that at that time of the governor's budget? No. Okay, thank you. So, okay, so I see, so the question is on the table is the school committee members' priorities for the budget. So I think priority one for me is an appropriate education of the Arlington community and town leaders of the realities the school department is facing now. We've been living within a multi-year plan that was adopted by the voters in 2011, and our enrollment has increased to such a degree that we can't live on that plan anymore. So the first priority for me is an education of all town leaders, town meeting members, elected officials, members of the Board of Selectment, finance community members about our reality. The second thing that I'm gonna ask, the question I'm gonna ask when the budget is presented by the superintendent is how does this budget meet our goals and objectives? So we have a standing goal which is students in the aggregate at each grade level tested in English language arts and mathematics will attain a student growth percentile of 51 or greater. In order to narrow the achievement gap, students in subgroups will receive additional support to improve their achievement on MCAS, which will be reflected in each school attaining an annual PPI of at least 75. So we didn't, SGP and sixth grade math is 47, SGP and seventh grade ELA is 38, SGP and 10th grade math is 44.5. So my first question is gonna be, are those gonna be changed by more money, or is that not the way we're gonna solve the problem and make improvement at those levels? So that's the question that needs to be, that the ministry opinions to think about, is it more money or is it something else? More coaching, better coaching, is it class size? I don't know, I don't know. I'm not in that building, I'm not in that grade, I'm not in the classroom, I'm not with the teacher, I'm not supervising directly, we're on a board level here, so it's hard for me to make a judgment. Maybe it is class size, maybe it's better coaching of the personnel, maybe it's something else, I don't know. Maybe it's not more money, maybe it is. So I think the first thing that I'm gonna ask, or the thing I'm gonna ask throughout the process is, tell me how the budget that you're presenting is tied to the goals and priorities of the district. And they don't, some of the objectives might change a little next year, will change a little, I'm sure, but in terms of improving student achievement, the most important thing we do here, it probably isn't gonna change much, the data's not gonna change, and the goals aren't gonna change a lot. So I wanna make sure that as we build the budget, as you deliver a budget to us that it's tied to our goals, and that you can say to us when the budget is presented by developing the budget in this way, by putting money into these resources, we're going to improve student achievement in the areas where we're not performing at the level we should be performing at, where the kids are not advancing to the degree they should be. So that's really, I wanna see a budget document that's aligned with goals, priorities, and objectives. The next thing is that we gotta inform the town, loudly and clearly about our needs. We've gotta develop a budget aligned with goals, priorities, and objectives. And then thirdly, we've gotta show that we're finding efficiencies any way we can. So several years ago, I don't know what year it was anymore, but we adopted, we decided to start using PowerSchool, and we found out that the use of PowerSchool made us more effective and efficient. We didn't need as many people, we could insert in areas, in some places it made us more effective, more efficient operation. So to the extent that you can come to us with a budget in February or March, and say that we've found some efficiencies because of technology, we've found some efficiencies because we can reorganize a department, that's a good thing. And I think the people that we're trying to convince to give us more money will appreciate that. And so I think your presentation's gotta include that too. Here are some ways that we've found to save some money. Here are some ways that we've found to make our operation more efficient. So those are my, those are my comments. And I ask you those questions because we have a real problem here, and that is that we have a limited amount of resources right now to really make all the changes, the great changes that were suggested by a lot of talented people this evening. So that's my thought, those are my thoughts. It starts. So I think that, and I want you to know that we have started the education of the town. We've been meeting with long-term planning. And I think that the best news about those meetings is that there has been no question that the schools need more money. The question has been how much and how can we get the schools more money and not completely devastate the planning that's gone on fiscally for the town. And I really appreciate the thought. I know that several members of that committee have actually reached out to me wanting to meet with me to better understand what is it about the schools. And I think that perhaps one of the things that we need to do is put something together. They need to understand that when we look at it there's four huge stressors that are going on and they've created the most perfect storm of financial shortfall in our schools. The first one is the special education out of district thing that we got nailed with this year. I mean, that's almost three quarters of a million dollars of a hit that is going to follow us now forever on our heels. The second one is enrollment which has been slowly but surely increasing the size of the number of students that we have to serve rapidly increasing in the last couple of years to a point where all of a sudden I think we were all like, whoa, wait, even myself I've always thought of Arlington as having 4,500 students but we have 5,200 students. We don't serve the same population and the handshake of the money that we got has never really thought about it as enrollment. We always thought, well, yeah, everybody grows a little, shrinks a little and so we are suddenly realizing how much that has impacted us and as we said, we have been very good about trying to shelter that in our elementary schools and now we are seeing what has happened as they move through the rest of the system. So here they are in the Odyssey and the high school needing almost huge amounts of money to support teachers. The third is this new evaluation system and the stress that puts on is the need for more administrators and more administrative support because now we can no longer even get the job done that's required with the administrative staff that we have which in the past years we have gutted in order to maintain the class sizes and everything else that we've had to do. So we need more administrators, we need more teachers, we need more money for special enrollment for special education and with the Common Core, the Common Core is also now with the rigors of the Common Core we're being forced to really think about class size. Again, you cannot deliver what the Common Core is asking at the class sizes that we have in this town now, which we have had because the enroll, and the whole thing is just like, and it's like making my head spin. There's not one thing that can give. There is nothing and we are in a box right now and we have all of these requirements and so I think that Jeff's right, one of the things that we really have to do is make sure that people understand it's not just one thing, it is that all of this has kind of happened and or is happening to us and that one of the things that is not going to be okay is for us to sit here and try to cut services and in any way damage the school system that the town has one become fairly proud of and two that parents rely on and so we also need to make sure that they need to understand that, that there's a real kind of agreement with the people who live here that this is the level of school system they want and if we have to go through a year where we can't deliver some of this stuff. Now, I think that part of what we need to do is for each of these asks, for each and every level of school, for each and everything that we ask, we have to ask ourselves, okay, so if we can add some teachers and we have the room, what's the priority within every single thing? Within the facilities, well the priority has to be security across the board, number one thing, right? So okay, so let's do everything we can with facilities to do security, that's got to be in there. And when we look at all the teachers that we need, we have to say, okay, well one, we have space issues so we can't really have all the teachers they need, what teachers can we have, what are the priorities of those teachers? It's gonna be really one of those hard-budget years, I think, where we have to kind of look at for every single thing that we do, what are the constraints? And I have no idea how we do it because I feel like this is like a 10 by 10 Rubik's cube that is just huge. I mean, there's just so many variables to what we have to work with. I remember last, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, I came up with, we did sticky notes, remember? And we were like, okay, we just, we put all the priorities on sticky notes. I can't even put these on sticky notes right now because the way that the constraints kind of push in on each one of those. So I mean, moving forward, the number one thing, you're right, is that we need to get out, we are out there, we're talking to these people, but they need to really understand where all of the stressors are coming from. And the problem is that each one of those stresses a different area. So it's like, oh, you can't cut back on administration to put more teachers in the classroom because we need the administration for the eval system and you can't have bigger class sizes because the common core is really pushing on these rigorous things and I'm just, and we don't have enough teachers for the number of students we have. So I don't know, it is gonna be hard, it's gonna be a really hard year and I think that we need to get that message out there, we need to work as hard as we can, we need to ask for as much money as the town can possibly help to make this happen and to move us forward because I do. I mean, just looking at just the requests that we've had so far were well over $2 million of money that we don't have right now. So my priority is to try to do what we can with what we have and try to get as much as we can to solve the problems that we have. And I'm gonna do my best to help us get through that. I think that, Kiersey, asking what parents want, I have a feeling that they're going to be in all of this. I'm sure the class size is probably important as well as the supports for all of the teachers and the class size issues that we have. I mean, it's interesting to kind of read through some of these and see what it is that people wanted and the principals are asking for support for the teachers that they have. We've seen that in the request for TAs and the request for behavioral specialists and the request for kind of piece-mealing things together. And I so want this to be the best school system that we can make it. And I think that one of the things we're gonna have to do is kind of get out there with a little bit more information and I mean, there's not really, we can't ask what people want anymore because I feel like we have so much that we already need. That the need is already greater than what we can offer. And so, I don't know, I know we can educate them. I don't know if we can take in any more requests though. But I wanna thank everyone for all of the information and all of the detail that they've given us so far. But as we move forward, I think that the best thing we can do is really try to start to put numbers to this and really show people where we are and reiterate how well we have done with the money that we have had over these years and really that there's just a certain point at which everything, there's just no more that we can do with the limited resources that we have. We really do need more resources. So, I don't know, start digging for gold. I don't know, I'm at a loss, but. The upside of sitting here is I've reprioritized my priorities three times listening to all of you. First off, I'd like to, Mr. Pierce asked me to, one major priority that he had was the library job descriptions and the pay, the reclassification. He wants to see that go forward. I support Mr. Thielman very strongly in getting those documents. I think that would help us in our communique, us in understanding and communicating to the community. I think showing that. Try to answer your question. Which one of these things, class size, to improve the achievement, increase support from the department, I think all of them. And I cannot commend Ms. Stocks enough for all the work and the passion that she's put into this. I think we all feel that way. Our best thing would be one of the winners of that recent lottery ticket, 126 million cash, would handle us for maybe a year and a half. But I would be a, okay, a couple of years. But that's not gonna happen. And I mean, I'm fortunate coming on this committee as things started to turn for the better. And commend the committee for all the work that they did just keeping the ship afloat. As I said before, we're producing a phenomenal product for all the problems that we have. The balloon's gonna bust, and I support. We need to communicate to the town. I think it began by just walking some of the townsfolk through the building the other day. Mr. Schlickman said it. I thought I understood this building. And I saw things that were really eye-openers. A week or so ago, I was in the Thompson School and the dichotomy. I mean, it's scary. We produce a phenomenal product. It shows every single year with graduation. And our students, and it's, I don't understand how we're able to do it with what we've got. Great teachers. Phenomenal teachers. But that balloon, I mean, one of the things in technology, the park requirements, and I talked to Dr. Chessum about trying to get something through the new cable contracts. We're gonna have to, this town is gonna have to expand its broadband for us to be effective at all. Because if we end up doing this test on paper, it's not gonna produce anything more. We're gonna be waiting for results the way we've been for MCAS. And one of the benefits of park is if we do it online, it's immediate feedback. So which one? I don't know. Mr. Schlickman. I just want, you know, the whole discussion of class size, I think parallels the core problem or fate, one of the core problems we're facing is the increased enrollment. The argument was made by one of the staff members who came to talk to us tonight about the staffing levels of the Otis. Since 2008, so that was a baseline, I decided to take a look at our student enrollment since 2008. Since 2008, comparing to 2013 school year, which would be a year ago, the October 1, 2012 count. In that time period, we've had a 9.7% increase in elementary, a 4.5% increase in middle, and a 9.5% increase in high school students. Districtwide, that's an 8.2% increase in our students. And we haven't increased the mileage of our roads in town by 8.2%. We haven't increased the population to the town or the library users by 8.2%. Nothing is increased in the town by these figures the way the student enrollment has. This part of our success is because we're doing so well. People view this as an attractive town. They're moving here and bringing their kids. And that's one of the things that's helped keep our property values and our lengthened up after the recession vis-a-vis other communities in Massachusetts. We have a strong real estate market and one of the reason is the quality of schools. So when I talk about class size, it's in the context of how we are handling this increase in enrollment. And that's really one of the elephants in the room. That and the quality of the facility. We need to be talking about increased enrollment and the effects of that and the quality of this facility at every meeting because they are such critical parts of the puzzle. And if we don't solve those problems, we're in deep trouble as a community. And if we solve them and solve them well, we're going up to the next level. We're gonna be even better place to live. Thank you. Mr. Thielen. What's the timeline for getting some clarity from the town as to whether or not we might get more funding? Like what's? The town budget is submitted the middle of January. I think 15, something like that. And the discussion has been let's get a sense of what we would be receiving as an enrollment index. The discussion is that we're keeping the plan as we've had the three and a half percent and operating the seven percent of special education. But there's no denying that we've seen phenomenal enrollment growth just in the last few years. And how do we capture that? How do we make it? How do we put an enrollment index? It's almost a separate line. I think everyone has agreed at this point that that's what needs to happen. And Cindy said, it's really what the amount is. What our position has been is that we'd like to know what the amount is so we could plan. That amount really affects how we take the delta of what we potentially would have under the current plan with the all in and how we prioritize here. And it's gonna be sort of a lot of thinking on the part of the staff and the teachers in this building and this district as well as your thoughts as well. I think we've done a very good job over the last few years of trying to make things work, make things meet. But I think we really are at a critical point and we can't sustain the level of achievement with class sizes in the 30s at middle school. That's been a high priority of this district and when you have class sizes, cluster sizes of 130 and you think they're divided among four teachers. So right away you can see how big the class sizes have to be. The average class size is at least 25 in a cluster. It has to be because five times 25 is 125 and you don't even get to the 130, 137. So you're gonna be over 125. Now it can be that they get distributed differently depending on a number of factors and of course math is the one that gets hit because you have two levels. It's the only subject that's leveled in the middle school. So it naturally has that precariousness of having some classes be larger than others. They're not evenly divided. And unfortunately in one cluster it's sort of like a perfect storm this year in terms of what happened. But we have to fix that and by the way, we are working on a plan and I'll tell you what the plan will be at the next meeting as to how we're going to deal with that, those two large class sizes. They're just not acceptable. But yeah, it's gonna take a lot. It's gonna take some real thinking about this because there's a myriad of needs but we're not gonna probably have that much money to work with. What that number is, I don't know but it's not gonna be too main, pretty sure. Yeah. So the real, I mean the real positioning with the town is we need additional money so that we can staff to our enrollment. Right. And the staff to enrollment is X. You're gonna come up with what that number of staff is. You're gonna have to. Right. What do you use as the, what is the metric? Maybe that doesn't get backed into quite that way but rather it gets backed into a different metric way which is looking at the number of enrollment increases and doing some kind of percent on the per pupil cost. There's another way of getting it to it. And Diane did a very good diagram and in fact you showed them the diagram, did you? Yeah. There's two different ways you can approach it and they actually come out pretty close. So I think that's gonna be the discussion and also then there will be that number that we might see in January could change after we see the governor's budget as well. There's that, that's a possibility. So by the time, I think that by the time the school committee needs to vote on the budget we should be much clearer as to what the number will be. It probably will not be as clear mid January as it will be the end of January. One thing I've been thinking about down at this end is that the pressures that are being put on our budget by the new evaluation system and by the common core to me start sounding very much like an unfunded mandate. And no, I know I'm kind of preaching a choir here but I'm asking my more politically astute colleagues if there is, I'm thinking we should be at least communicating this to our legislature, legislators and I know that sometimes the Attorney General and stuff have taken up unfunded mandates. I'm not sure how you would go about kicking that upstairs but I'm just, I don't expect money coming down to address this but I still think it doesn't hurt to complain and to point out what the problems are. And so I'm saying, does anyone have an idea of what to do? Correct me if I'm wrong. Common core is federal, am I correct? It's state. State accepted? It's state accepted. From a federal. No, well the federal government's really not in. It's a consortium of governors. It's a collaboration between different states. As far as unfunded mandates, my understanding is you can file suit with, and it's not the Attorney General, you, I'm trying to remember her name. To say I'd bump the auditor's. Yes. Oh, is it the auditor? And if it passes that stage, it then goes forward and that's how we got the schools, got the money for the transportation. So there is a precedent for it so if you want to make a motion to at least speak to the. Can I? Oh, you can. I just, I'm wondering can I do it at the next meeting to figure out what the motion should be? But I'm just thinking we should do something. Chase, any dollar we can get? Yeah. Anyone else that would like to speak at this time? Thank you. Sorry to add more to your burden. This time the superintendent's report. Since last week there's not much to report. The only thing I would like to, or just actually a couple of things. One has to do with snow. Snow. A snow that I've heard from traffic supervisors that asking me if I would say to parents and the community to be extra cautious. They're finding that people are still trying to drive around schools the way you would when there's no snow. And that's been a problem, especially with the roads more narrow. And I think that particularly that's happening down at Thompson, there's a North Union is a bit of a speedway at times. So I just would urge parents and people in the community to use extra caution in these narrow roads. We are starting to see students, I've seen some students walking in the street and I just want us to be conscious of that. And hopefully we, maybe we've had our, be nice if this was our share of snow for the year. Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming. I was blown away. You know I woke up, when I woke up Wednesday and I went to the, you know, the storm force or whatever the, you know, website is where there were cancellations. There was not one delay or one cancellation. And I just was, well, not on the website. I mean, I'm sure that somewhere there was some district that did, but there was none on the channel seven, whatever I was looking at website that I usually go to to look at for that. And I was blown away. One, because I mean, it was pretty nasty. I mean, I live on Pleasant Street. It was like a parking lot for at least three hours. It just, it says so much to the people who I know were up all night long clearing that. I mean, because when I woke up Pleasant Street was down to pavement. And I thought, oh my gosh, like they have been out there doing that the whole time and every school, at least as far as I can see, was open, there wasn't a delay. You know, I was, I just wanted to say thank you so much to those people because that was, I was for sure that it was gonna be a delay. I was absolutely certain I, and it wasn't even a delay. I mean, we were actually ready to, ready to roll. And it was, I mean, I got to work without a problem. There was parking, there was, I mean, it was. It did a great job. And our DPW does a great job. Arlington Roads tend to be a lot better than some of the surrounds. Yeah, so they do a wonderful job. Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. Besides being able to, again, give some kudos to them and to our own custodians, they're out there early and we have some plows, too, that we help out with as well, it's just so when it really gets heavy our plows are not as heavy duty as with DPW. So we have to wait until they get the major roads done before they can get into the parking lots. But some people ask, would, you know, if it looks like it was going to get bad, would we do an early dismissal? And I just want to say, there would have to be rather extraordinary circumstances. I mean, really extraordinary to do that because we just can't, parents might not be home if we were dismissing early, because they depend on a certain time that they're gonna get out. And we do not want any particular elementary children to be going home to no one at home. So it's very hard to really do, well delays we can do, because that's happened in the morning, but to do an early release day, that almost has to be decided the night before, like five o'clock by six o'clock news because parents have to be able to scramble and provide some coverage. So it would never happen in the morning. I mean, we have to be so extraordinary to do an early release at the last minute. The other thing I wanted to mention is that the, even though it's still a ways away, but just bring everybody's attention to the MLK observance which is going to be on the 20th and we'll talk more, we'll have another meeting before then, but there will be as in the past a program this year. They're not doing a potluck dinner, but they're doing a potluck, I think dessert. And I think that we've, one thing I think that you find very interesting is that not only are we attracting greater enrollments, but one of the other things we're attracting are more programs for international students who want to tour the school or come here to school. We might have had in the past, our sister city come for a tour. And we do that annually. We've been doing this for a long time, but this year at the high school, we have another group from Japan coming. We have a group from China, South Africa and Israel. All happening within the next couple of months. Yeah, so it's very interesting. And of course, the number of people who would want to come to school here, the list is much longer than we feel that we can accommodate. So that's all I have tonight. Thank you. Yes. I'm wondering if we could put the appeal during this meeting because the DPW and the school's staff did a great job in terms of the public roadways and the sidewalks that our school department property. But a number of children did have difficulty on the sidewalks that access to the school from Mass Ave, to the various buildings, just neighborhoods. And it's always a challenge through snow in a timely manner, but just putting the plug out there that we are a walking community. We do have neighborhood schools, even when the weather is bad, a good proportion of our students do walk. And so we certainly would appeal to the community members to make sure that their sidewalks are clear for our children. I don't like seeing students walk in the street. Right. And I'd add to what Ms. Hyam said, is to also clear the crosswalk and the corners. So you have to, I know that DPW does a nice job and makes a nice big mound, but if there's not a cut through, that actually impedes kids. And also as they go up and down, they fall into the street some of the times they just walk around in the street much longer. So that's important too. Yeah. Need a shovel brigade. Thank you. You're the new FISAD requirements. There you go. Everyone carry a shovel to school. At this time we'll do the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant number 14082 dated December 12th, 2013. Total warrant amount $865,662.30. Approval of draft minutes November 14th, 2013. Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Thank you. Subcommittee liaison reports policies and procedures. No report. Thank you. Ms. Starks. We have a budget subcommittee meeting was rescheduled due to the weather. So we will be meeting on Thursday, January 2nd from five to 6 p.m. Shockingly we will be talking about the budget. Thank you. Community relations. Nothing to report. Curriculum instruction assessment accountability. We had a meeting last night where we just a quick meeting because of schedule constraints where we discuss the tools of the mine curriculum and we learned that we're going to be seeing a redacted text as an example for us to look at. We also heard from the Vision 2020 Education Subcommittee and we discussed the new athletic handbook which will be coming again at another meeting. We're going to meet meeting again on January 6th at 7.15 here. Thank you. Facilities, nothing at this time. And the chair take privilege. I would like to commend two third grade teachers from Thompson, Siobhan Foley and Laura McKinney. They prepared their students for a mock town meeting today and they each class brought a warrant article and the other class opposed that article. I wish again I had taped it because it would be a good example for our town meeting how to argue points respectfully and nicely. One article was to eliminate smoking from the entire town. It passed. The second article was to increase and the only reason it failed it was just identified as one school. Increase P.E. and. And art. And art. And the students that there are arguments and you could hear it. They were very in opposing the cigarette ban. They were not arguing with something they actually wanted but they had good arguments on freedom individual freedom and it's the credit of these two teachers. They walked all the way up which it took because of the snow and I think the teachers agreed to do it in non snow time in the future. It was a wonderful time. It was a wonderful time. Secretary's report. We have received the following correspondence from our last meeting. Email regarding the death of an AHS student who was in an out of district placement. The commissioners weekly update dated December 13th, 2013. The flyer announcing the 26th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday observance to be held on Monday January 20th, 2014. An email about icy conditions at Hardy School. An email from Andra and Barry Shea bishop parents opposing the tools of the mind curriculum. An email from Heather DeGregarrio and other bishop parent with concerns about the tools of the mind curriculum. Further communication on the paperless meetings and requirements thereof. And a copy of the letter from DESC informing the superintendent that AHS senior, I'm so sorry, Zaharullah Blannis has been invited to apply to the 2014 US presidential scholars program. That's it. Thank you. There is no executive session tonight. I will entertain a motion for adjournment. It's up and I'll move. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. This meeting is adjourned.