 In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, excuse me, I get distracted. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment at the beginning of the meeting. For this meeting, the Allicton School Committee is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by videoconference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and that take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All of the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials, are available on the Novus Agenda dashboard or the town's website and we recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the Chair notes otherwise. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda. After they conclude the remarks, the Chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comments, questions, or motions. Please hold until your name is called further. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in the way that helps generate accurate minutes. Please confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. This exit. Here. Mr. Schlickman. Good evening. Mr. Thielman. Here. Dr. Ampey. Present. Mr. Carden. Here. Ms. Morgan. Here. Dr. Bode. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Ms. Elmer. Here. Ms. Keys. Not at the moment. And I'm sorry, I didn't get the student rep's name, is there a student representative present? Not at this moment. At this time, I will, the members of the public who wish to address the committee on the Zoom, there will be a 30 minute public comment, depending how many people sign up. Time allowments may be reduced, but will not exceed three minutes each. If the number of people who sign up exceeds that, a reasonable time of 30 minutes, the number of speakers will be capped. Tonight we only have, we have three people to speak. The first person is Mara Vats. Hi. Thank you. My name is Mara Vats and I'm a Thompson parent of a kindergartner and a third grader. Thank you for giving me time to speak tonight. I would like to urge Arlington public schools to adopt the quarantine guidelines recommended by the Massachusetts Department of Health and DESI, which would allow a return to in-person learning on day seven if the student has a negative test result. Right now Arlington requires a 10 day quarantine with no option to test back in early. On two separate occasions this winter my kids completed a 10 day quarantine after they were exposed at an after school program. They were either the only one in their class or one of two students in their class who had to quarantine. Their classroom teacher and classmates had not been exposed. Since this happened in January, my kids missed only two days of in-person instruction because they were able to fully participate with their class on the scheduled remote days. My concern now is that the same exposure would cause students to miss six full days of instruction while the rest of their class continued attending in person. If APS adopted the Department of Health and DESI guidelines, students would miss only three in-person days. For example, if the exposure occurred on Monday and families were notified on Tuesday, the student would then miss Wednesday through Friday of that week and if they tested negative they could return to school on the following Monday. With the current 10 day quarantine, the student would miss three additional days and return on Thursday. Those three additional days could cause serious instability for families where parents or guardians must attend work in person and they might not be able to take those days off or work from home or arrange childcare especially since the quarantine students will not be receiving synchronous or asynchronous instruction on those days as their classroom teacher will be teaching the rest of the class in person. Students who miss six days of instruction will be at a disadvantage when they return as their peers will continue learning new content during that time. I'm so grateful for the thoughtful and expedient communication we've received from the school regarding quarantine protocols when it has happened to us and we really appreciate all the measures that the district has taken to keep our community safe, especially the pool testing. Now I hope that APS will rely on the research and studies done by the Department of Health and DESI and follow their guidance by allowing students to return to school on day seven after a negative test. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Alham Sadat and Doris. I'm going to mispronounce his finger. Oh, super. Thank you. Doris, would you like to go first or second? No, it's all right. Alham, you go first. Hello. My name is Alham Sadat. I'm a hardy parent from 62 Magnolia Street here in Arlington. I'm kind of following up on some of the comments made by Maravats around Arlington's quarantine policies for close contacts. First, I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts to open our schools safely and thoughtfully during the pandemic. Our family who includes a second grader at hardy appreciates how well we've been able to balance as a district the safety of everyone in school buildings with the social, emotional and educational needs of our children. I am speaking tonight, as I mentioned on APS, this policy around close contacts and quarantines. And similar to what Mara had previously mentioned, I'm advocating that we follow Massachusetts Department of Public Health and DC policies around this, around how we follow either the option of a strict quarantine for seven days with a negative COVID test and a return to school on day eight or without a test after 10 days of full quarantine. This process played out for our family recently. And we were thankful that the student who tested positive was able to access the proper channels and have contact tracing enacted and was identified and our son was identified as a close contact exposure. We were also thankful that APS shared guidance around DPH and DC policies on how that should work. Unfortunately, one day after that information was shared with us, we received a second email stating that APS does not actually follow DPH and CDC guidance and only allows the option for students to return after 10 days of strict quarantine. Again, restating what Mara already did, requiring 10 days of strict quarantine seems unnecessarily restrictive and will inevitably cause additional disruptions to APS learning for our students. I had emailed with a few of our school committee members and Dr. Bodie and I appreciate everyone's responses. One of the reasons that Dr. Bodie gave for not following the DC policies was that it was not equitable to allow families to use a negative COVID test to reduce the quarantine time as some families more easily have access to testing options. While I appreciate our intentions of centering equity in all decisions related to APS, I do not think that this policy does that. One of the things that I thought about during our quarantine experience was that while it was very difficult and disruptive to our family, it must have been so much worse for families whose parents do not have flexible work schedules and finances like our household that allowed them to access things such as out-school classes. And for me to be able to take a day off of work to take my son to the aquarium. I realized immediately how privileged we were to be able to do this. Yes? Excuse me. You have three minutes and you've reached it. You need to recognize. OK, apologies. Just the final statement. We should be following DC recommendations around close contact definitions and quarantine practices because they center both the educational needs of our students and the safety of our communities. These decisions are made thoughtfully by leaders in education and in partnership with leading public health experts. Please consider aligning APS COVID policies with those recommendations by DC as they will provide safety and proper learning for our students. Thank you. Thank you. Doris. All right. Thank you so much. My name is Doris Phafinga. I live at 50 Colonial Drive. I have a second and a fourth grader at Hardy. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak. And thank you, everyone, on the School Committee for your hard and thoughtful work, especially throughout this challenging year. I'm following up on what Mara and Alham already said and briefly would like to share our story. So my son was also a close contact at Hardy. And of course, we were grateful that all necessary steps and procedures were followed and that we were notified of our son's contact. But we were surprised to learn that we or our son needed to stay home for 10 days per APS policy, a policy established last summer and is not what Desi currently recommends. And of course, we've heard by now that the reason for this kind of longer quarantine period is equity. Well, my son is on an IEP and some services were offered during the quarantine via Zoom. And we appreciate that he most benefits from in-person learning. Most kids do, right? Not receiving his services is detrimental to his educational growth. He also thrives on routine, again, as do many kids, but he especially needs the social component of school as many of his services center around social emotional challenges. As you can imagine, any disruptions longer than necessary have more of a negative impact on him. And secondly, our families scrambled tremendously during this week as almost no synchronous learning was offered. Yet we were lucky. My husband and I have flexible work schedules. We were able to take time off, hire nanny, et cetera. Other families may not have been so lucky. Again, if equity is at the center, then we should be identifying solutions that allow students to attend school and not fall behind, and parents to show up for work. My ask is, I'm asking the school committee to please consider aligning our close contact quarantine policy to align with recommendations from Desi for the benefit of students, parents, and teachers. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. That ends our public forum at this moment. At this time, I am going to invite the high school principal and the middle school principals to share an update. After each presentation, I'm going to go back to the school committee members and see if they have any comment or questions for any of the people at this time. So at this time, I would invite Dr. Janga to give us an update. Thank you. I don't usually get to go first. I appreciate it. So we're not as far along in this path. So we are the last we'll be first, who's presenting here. As folks know, the current plan is to return to full in-person instruction. Beginning on the sixth, then we're doing a three-day phase in. The sixth will have seniors, and the students are currently in person. And everyone else will be remote. The seventh, we will have the freshman, and everyone else will be remote. So the seniors will return to being remote for that one day. And then on the Monday the 10th, we're going to be bringing everybody back in person. We've been going on all guns when the whole team is working together remarkably well. We've done room assignments, given that we have to fit classes by the number of students. The result of that has been that many, almost all, teachers have some movement or an necessity of teaching in a couple of classes. We set up, we're working on the tech setup. So in addition to what we sort of talked about initially, which was to have a Chromebook, along with the teacher's computer, in every classroom, actually, we're setting this up now so that there are speakers, Chromebooks, microphones where necessary, and the screen, and the protection, and the connection. So the teachers are able to do the simulcast model. And as we've talked about, the plan is to have teachers teaching. It looks like we'll have about 85% of the students in-person so that we actually had about 10% of students shift from being in the item of 10 shifts to coming in to full-time in-person instruction. So that was a bigger swing than we expected, but we're excited about it. And we're able to make them fit. So we're happy to have that happen. And so about 85% of the students will be in the class with the teachers, and then the teachers will be working with the other students at home. We've done a number of trainings. The departments have been working on that. We've been looking at different models about how you do that in the different departments. And the teachers have a lot of good ideas. But I also hope folks will have some patience as we ease into that. One of the things we're really talking about is a fundamental purpose for this shift is really about building engagement and connection with kids. We've been being pretty successful with our all remote model in delivering instruction. So one of the things we're really going to be focusing on in that first week or so is getting the kids back, having them understand their routine, having them feel comfortable being in school, figuring out all the processes. We have one-way hallways. We have complicated things around lunch and all of those things. We are planning in terms of communicating about this to release a more detailed memo with things like exactly how lunch is going to work, how hallways are going to work on Monday. Then I'll be having a community forum again on Monday for parents and students. We'll record that and post that so people can watch both of those in the memo and the supporting conversation. Wednesday, which is the PD day, we're going to have three class meetings for students to go over the details again before they come in. We thought about doing it on the Thursday morning, but we're going to have a bunch of kids coming in. We really wanted to talk through it with each class. And so we'll be doing that on Wednesday while the teachers are doing their professional development. So important things that are sort of valuable to know in terms of numbers, not only is the 85% coming in, but one particularly exciting detail is that about 65, 65% of the students in the school were eligible to be vaccinated or vaccinated. The last time we checked, we had about 540 students vaccinated. About two thirds of our students were over 16. Currently the sophomore class has a special clinic organized by our sophomore officers. We couldn't figure out how to do it, but the students did. So the students are, some of the sophomores are being able to get vaccinated that way. And it looks like we're going to also be able to hold a clinic for students. I think I can announce this on the 12th in the school. So we'll try to catch up with other folks. Yep, Sarah Lee just said, texted me to say, yes, you can announce it. So we'll be doing that in school from one to three on May 12th. And other sort of important and exciting things going on. We've had a really energetic group of teachers and students, and then the, what is called the Senior Family Committee who are working on an enormous number of activities. Unfortunately, what happens is the, as you guys know, the guidance keeps changing. So we have planned about 50 activities. We'll probably manage to have about 10. But the exciting ones right now is we will be having an in-person graduation with the new guidance that was just released. We're going to be able to much more easily fit all of the students up into the stands and give the families more folks that can be in their pods or in their household groups out on the field. And we've switched the way we're going to do that because we need more space to spread out the audience than the students. That's why the parents are in the field now and the students are in the stands. We are planning for a prom on the field, a prom-like event. And that has been a moving target. We were at 150 people per prom, which meant two sessions. Then it shifted to 50 and went back to 150. And right now, our prom is scheduled for May 28th. May 28th, yes, May 28th. And the state limits go up to 250 on May 29th. So we're looking at which way we can make the best use of the space, the tents that we have rented and the guidelines to have the best activity possible. But there's a lot of other activities. Some of the big ones is there's a graffiti night where the kids are going to write in chalk and do other things outside of the school. That's now scheduled on Monday. It was rained out on Wednesday. There's about six movie nights planned, although I think they may compress them now that the numbers are bigger. And then Dr. Bodie mentioned that there had been some questions about transitions. We are currently planning to do an in-person transition program like we have done in the past on the very last day of school. So the eighth, rising ninth graders will come on the 24th to the high school. They'll be broken into small groups. They'll get tours and activities and speeches by teachers and by students. And then we will, there's also other planning going into how the transition will happen then again in the fall. And honestly, one of the transition pieces is the current ninth graders who have never been in the building or if they have been in the building they've only been to shift or to one corner. So we're gonna be spending a lot of energy going over with each of them, the maps of how you get around. We're gonna have tour guides in the school on Friday the 7th and the 7th when they come in. So thanks very much for your time. Thank you, doctor. Ms. Morgan, do you have any questions or comments? Thank you. Mr. Carden. Sure. So thank you for the update, Dr. Janger. I'm glad to hear about all the social activities for the seniors in particular. That's great that that's coming together. If there's any assistance that is needed with the health department or with finding tents or whatever, please reach out to us. I think we're ready, stand ready to assist in any way we can. Or also with funding if any funding is needed as well. And then my question is probably not for you, Dr. Janger, but for Dr. Bodie, but it relates to how in the high school we really aren't doing cohorting. So this issue with the new guidelines from Desi about who has a close contact and needs to quarantine is very sensitive for the high school coming back and also at the middle school. So I'm wondering, Dr. Bodie, I know it just came out last week, but have we considered adopting the close contact guidelines from the State Department of Health and the State Department of Education? The answer is yes. I was planning in the superintendent's report to talk more about this and I can launch into it now or we can just wait till then. But the answer is yes. One of the comments that was made is that we are evolving this year in many, many things. And we have evidence that supports the new guidelines and I'll talk more about that a little bit later this evening. Great, thank you, that's all. Thank you, Dr. Ampe. Thank you, thank you, Dr. Janger. I was wondering, I understand that it's only 15% who will be remote, but just thinking about them, how are their needs being addressed in terms of simulcast? Do we have all the equipment we need? Do we, is there any additional PD that we need to be doing or any other stuff? You're on mute. So, as I explained, one of the comments that I've sort of posted and talked about before is realistically, the current model is maximized for the remote experience. So there is a trade-off in bringing everybody back in person. And so I think we just have to acknowledge that, that when we're gonna have some kids in person and some kids participating remotely and most of the kids are in person, that's one more thing for the teachers to navigate. And so that that is a trade-off. But the teachers are set up with pretty good models in terms of the teachers will basically have their own computer, a second camera through the Chromebook. We've got good sound set up so people can speak and we've had a lot of conversations, then a lot of modeling and looked at a lot of models of ways in which you can do that in different programmatic ways. I think the answer to, could we do more PD is, absolutely, we could use an entire summer to prepare. We have teachers who are good and creative and they have been doing a lot of very thoughtful things. Sometimes in staff meetings, someone says, how would you do that? And I have modeled how I would do that and said, so this is to show you what the lowest common denominator is likely to be, because you are smarter and more capable of doing this in your own content area. The people have been working through that in all of their groups. It will be an adjustment and to the extent that some folks, people worked, we saw this as we went into the remote instruction, they worked at getting the beats right. The 80 minute period is an advantage actually in this model because it gives you the opportunity, we're gonna have to spend five minutes at the beginning of class distancing, wiping everybody in, that's gonna be a screen break for the kids who are remote and they're gonna need it. And then they're gonna come in and the teachers then gonna organize what's gonna happen in the class. But the expectation is there'll be some breakout groups, there'll be independent work, there'll be time for teachers to move around with kids because you can do that in an 80 minute period. I think there's a real fear, I've gotten this from students, particularly when they see the five minute passing time, that they're gonna be in 85 minute lecture classes three for five hours straight. That is not what is planned or intended or envisioned. So I think they will find they get a 10 minute break because we're gonna have to wipe down the spaces, go into the hall and take five minutes at the beginning and the end of class to get everything transitioned. So they will get screen breaks in those times. And then the plan is to break up those 80 minute classes. One of the things that I think parents are gonna also have to be alert to is that independent work during an 80 minute class does not mean that the class is not happening. And I know my own kids that I comes down to the kitchen in the middle of an 80 minute class and says, oh, class is over. And I'm like, so okay, well they said we could write a paragraph and I'm getting a drink. And I'm like, okay, so you're doing independent work, do the independent work. But I think that the teachers will manage and it's gonna be an adjustment. Okay. And then the other question I had was, I don't remember what exactly it was called but the kids who were brought back to school in person, the in-person academy for a small number of kids, what's happening to them? So all of the classes that were formerly in the four-day week in-person classes are remaining in action. So those classes are still working because those students were successfully in those classes. It may mean, although we're halfway through that a kid or two who's struggling in geometry too in a bigger class decides to get into the smaller section but for the most part those classes will remain as they are. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Mr. Thielman. Class called Geometry 2, I just wanna be clear. Thank you. Thank you and thank you Dr. Janger for this presentation. Mr. Carden asked the questions I wanted to ask but there is actually one point on one. I want clarity if I can get it on the funding for the senior activities. I've received a number of some correspondence from people who said there was always a limited budget but I was under the impression that we the school committee voted some funding that could be used for event planning and support. And I just wanted to make sure that there was sufficient funding for the support senior activities this year. And I know there's been fundraising in the town and businesses have contributed as well. I just wanna make sure we have the right. So there was $25,000 and Mr. Mason could probably speak to where the money came from and how it's been organized. But there was $25,000 specifically set aside for events. A pretty substantial chunk of that has gone towards supporting a graduation which needs about three times more sound and an extra 200 chairs. So that was about $7,000 or $8,000 about $5,000 that has gone towards supporting the teachers where it used to be that if you were the advisor of the prom of the senior class, it was a lot of work but the students could run the prom. Now it's a huge amount of work for that teacher. And there's other folks on the other assignments that have been paid to liaison with folks for the other programs. We are paying for the prom tents because the senior class has not been able to do as much fundraising as they would have been able to do and because it's a new venue requirement. And we set aside $5,000 for the senior family committee to spend on programming and other things. We could always use more money but to be honest, it's also hard to spend the money sometimes because one of the biggest challenges right now is not actually having the money to spend. I got two weeks, right? I've got two weeks to make something happen. And if I'm ordering blankets or imprinted mugs, I can't get the turnaround fast enough. I gotta find the guy who's got the tent and so we're doing it all pretty quickly. So if you guys want to assign us more money then Michael, Mr. Mason will probably find it but in most of this logistics bureaucracy and 500 different people in a good way, I don't mean this in a bad way but there's so many moving parts to every one of these events, right? If they wanted to do a senior sunrise, I'm not even sure if we're still doing that but you had to get a site and then you had to figure out whether the Board of Health would give us food and then you had to order the things you wanted to do and to figure out what the food, it was just an awful lot and there's one agency and one place and a different guideline for each of those things. So I don't know that we need money but if you wanna give us more, I will happily take it. Okay, well, I mean, we usually don't do a vote by a quick off the cuff thing. I mean, I would just say that if you and your committee and your staff feel that you need more resources, you would go to Mr. Mason and I go to the budget subcommittee and start a process that could result in more resources. I just was asking. Yeah, and I have to speak, I just need to say something especially because I've been hassling them a lot. Mr. Mason has been amazing about magically making resources appear when he can and when we need them. Like we have not felt want for being able to do what we need to do for money. Okay, that's what I wanna clarify, yeah. Okay, all right, thank you. Mr. Schleckman. I mean, folks have all asked the questions I was leading with and the biggest one I had was vaccination and that went by really fast. Can Dr. Janger please repeat the status where we are in terms of vaccination and the numbers? Because I wanna- The last time I looked, or we looked, 980 of our students are over 16. We have 1,400 students total and 540 of them had had at least their first vaccination. Yeah, and you've got another- The percentage is higher amongst the seniors. Over 60% of our seniors, including those, well, they're all over 16. Over 60% of our seniors are vaccinated. The fact that a lot of colleges are requiring vaccination is helping us out. And so I'm really impressed by the students who organized the clinic. My compliments to them in the whole Arlington IT for doing everything you can to make this work. And thank you. Thank you. Ms. Eksten. Thank you. I just want, I don't have any questions. I just wanna say thank you to Dr. Janger and all of the high school administration and the teachers. I think that you all have had to change models more than any other grade level in the district. And I know it's been really challenging and I appreciate all the work that you've put into all of that. And I'm especially appreciative to the teachers who are going to simulcast for the end of the year. I know that that's especially challenging and for them to all take that on at this point is really admirable. So I appreciate all of that. And I will just echo Mr. Schlickman's comments about the vaccines. I think that's terrific. And I think the sophomores, glad they were able to put that all together. Thank you. And then following them, we have our nurses who are gonna organize another clinic for us because they were able to get vaccines too. Kids got there first. I'd like to thank all the members of the committee. They've asked all my questions. I think it's a conspiracy to limit my talking, which I think is working really well. Mr. Merringer. Thank you. Good evening. So I think the reopening of school has gone fairly well as well as we could expect it. So today was day three that students were back in person. We had about 40 students join us from the remote academy. So we have 620 students, which is a little over about 70% of the students are now back full-time at the Odyssey. So it's been a great couple of days in terms of seeing a lot more faces in the hall. And I think it's given us a little bit more energy at the school. And I appreciate the students have been great with their masks, getting used to new classroom routines. So I think things have gone really well. I think we benefited greatly from having the Monday off. I think the teachers really appreciated coming back in, being able to set up their classes, transitioning and getting ready. The GOPTO, I know that I was talking to Fabian about this as well. And we appreciated them springing for lunch, which I know was appreciated by the staff as well. So we really appreciated having the Monday to kind of prep for the upcoming week. We obviously had the COVID pool testing. We have over 450 kids who are partaking. We still need to get our numbers up. It's a little over 75%. We'd obviously a little like to be in the mid 80s or up to 90%. So we're still pushing that as well. Kind of where we are right now is we think that successfully we've gotten the kids back in the building, but we now have to look forward to kind of the next few challenges. So the next thing we have to work on is prepping for MCAS, which will be in a couple of weeks. There was today a webinar for how remote kids are gonna take the MCAS that I know Maureen Murphy listened to and Michelle Rubino listened to so that we can be set there. We are also looking at how to transition. So I've talked with both Matthew about getting the kids up to the high school but also to Madame Pierre Maxwell about how we're gonna transition some of the sixth graders about videos. We need to send out letters for course requests and that will be in a couple of weeks that we'll start to look at the transition from buildings. The special ed department has meetings set up right now so that we can get information about the students that we will be receiving soon. So the transition in MCAS are really two of the main things now that we have to work on. We are a little bit behind this year with scheduling for next year. And we have to start thinking about the schedule for next year and also for hiring. And so that will be probably later in the month. And then kind of from a big picture, what we wanna do is there's really two things that I think at the Odyssey that we're trying to figure out in June and July, which is from this pandemic, what have we learned? What are some teaching practices that we wanna be able to incorporate into teaching next year? What are some things we never ever wanna do again? So we're gonna kind of look at the good and the bad with the teachers and what we should adopt so that it can be successful for kids. Cause I think there's a lot of information, a lot of data that we can look at to become a better school next year. So that's one of the things we're gonna work on. And I also, I think one of the things that we're also keyed in is the social-emotional aspect of our kids. We're looking at really making sure we're beefing up some after-school activities. So we're having some fun and some kids have a sense of belonging. So we wanna make sure that we're able to provide that to students. So when they're back, when everyone's back full-time in the fall, kids have things to look forward to not only in the school day, but after school as well. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. Mr. Merringer, can you speak a little bit just in preparation for Dr. Vody's discussion around the close contact policy about how the kids have been a little bit deco, like they were very strictly co-ordered within learning communities, obviously up until Tuesday. Can you talk a little bit about the places where they're now no longer with their learning community? Sure. So the biggest place you have mixes with cohort is in the world languages. So that's Mandarin, Latin, French and Spanish. There are also some reading groups that we offer and some math support classes, as well as computer science. So those classes, the computer science class, excuse me, ACE as well, and reading and math, but they tend to be smaller. The biggest place where you're having a mix of cohort is in the world languages. Great, thank you. And also in orchestra and band, right? Yes, yes, in end course. So band, orchestra and chorus. Yes, thank you, you're correct. Thank you, that's it, Mr. Hamer. Mr. Carden. Nothing, thank you, Mr. Merringer. Dr. Ampe. No questions, thank you, Mr. Merringer. Mr. Thielman. The general question, thank you, Mr. Merringer, and congrats on getting the school off for a good start and for good things from many parents. My question is this, a few people have reached out to say that they don't feel their child is ready for the next level of education, seventh, eighth grader or ninth grader. And they wanna know if there's gonna be any summer programming that gets them up. And these are, I don't know everything about the families that have reached out, but I'm presuming that these are students who don't need credit recovery, but need a feel and need the parents feel and need for additional academic support over the summer or enrichment over the summer to be ready for the next level of education. Have you thought about that at all? Is there sort of any kind of thinking about a summer, what a summer program might look like? I realize we're talking about the beginning of the restart of school. And if it's out of scope, then the chair can tell. No, I think Dr. McNeil, and I know some of the curriculum directors are working on what this will look like during and what certain offerings will be, whether they'll be open to everyone, or are we targeting certain groups of people and what that looks like. And I am mixed in some of my, I definitely wanna make sure that we're helping out certain students who need that extra help, especially in math and in English in reading last year. So we offered reading last year to some of our students, which I think was successful. We had two reading teachers that are at the middle school who were able to work with some of our students. So I think that was good. There's also a part of me that sometimes think that the kids also need to make sure that we're giving them a break. I think a lot of them just need some downtime. It's been a long year for many of them. And for some of them, I think they need to be kids. So what's the balance between making sure that their kids are not regressing with reading or with math and when they can be a 13 year old kid and get a break so that they're rested up for the fall. So I don't know if Dr. McNeil wants to weigh in or I know that I've talked to Deb Perry, who's the Curriculum Director for English and Matt Coleman and they have some ideas and I think that will be forthcoming. Yes, I'm on the agenda for a report for update. So thank you. I saw that, I don't mean to take out a scope. Another question, Mr. Merringer is, I mean, do you have a sense of the percentage of the curriculum that's been covered this year or that will be covered this year by the end of the school year? Yeah, I mean, I think most of it, some of it has not, I think gone into some of the depth but I think what we've done is we've covered a lot of things that really are important for the kids to move on and transition to the next level. So I feel pretty good with what we've covered curriculum-wise. It is interesting, I think the remote academy has been very successful at the middle school. I think many people have liked the schedule in many ways. You had contact with teachers and students for five days. It wasn't like the hybrid, sometimes you were with your class for two days, you had synchronous learning on Wednesday and then you had some synchronous classes but you were kind of out of school. And we have 30, little under 30% of our kids who are in the remote academy and from the teachers that I talked to, they feel like they are covering most of the activities. Obviously this isn't the same as any other year. I mean, if you get kids in school, it's gonna be better but I think it was fairly successful and I think one of the benefits of having K through 12 curriculum directors is they're gonna know what is being taught. So I talked to Dr. Hoyo who's the head of the science who's curriculum director for science and she was making sure both the remote academy and the teachers in the hybrid were at the same places. So if kids switched, they were all set but she also talked to me about the importance of making sure that the eighth curators were at the same place so as they entered into ninth grade. So I think the curriculum directors have done a great job of making sure they're at lockstep. One of the things we are looking forward to and what I'd like to talk to teachers is, what have we learned from this year? What do we think has benefited and what are some of the things that we haven't? In many ways, because of the pandemic, kids are all in rows and they're not doing as much kind of group activities. They are doing some on Zoom and they're, it's not all solo work, but it's a different setup and some of that hands-on learning that I think in project-based learning we haven't been able to do, I think is what we wanna transition back to. So while it wasn't ideal, I do feel like the kids are in pretty good space for next year. And I think Dr. McNeil has looked at with the curriculum directors of where to start next year and how to help kids during the summer if they need it. Thank you very much. Mr. Schlickman. No questions, thank you. Ms. Eckstein. I don't have any questions either, but thank you for that, D. Thank you, Mr. Merringer. Madame PM Maxwell, please. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So as Mr. Merringer shared, we had a really great beginning reopening with both sides of the A&B cohort coming in and the few students who transitioned from the remote academy to in-person. So the attendance was excellent on the first day and the last two days of school. I think the big part all the students and perhaps parent or anticipating us doing was holding lunch outside and the weather was good enough on the first day for us to be outside, even though we didn't have the seventies sunshine that was promised, but it was still good enough. Most of the students did opt to eat outside and it was nicely done, well organized because they had a chance to practice the week's choir. So obviously today we didn't get to go outside because it was raining and next week doesn't look too good, but we had a chance then to do it inside with the three lunch rotation, which was a change from before. So it's all working really well. The kids, the advisory committee did a really great job with the teachers. And again, we appreciate having that extra day on Monday the 26th for the staff to go over the advisory lessons, to look at the small details on transition outside, inside. So I think it was really well executed, the last three days go into the classroom, just watching the mood of the kids, their interaction together. So I think it's going well. So the transition, it's on its way and the kids are happy to be back. In regard to actual transition of our fifth graders coming into sixth and sixth to seven, there's been some preliminary conversation with all the seven elementary school just for looking at our children who have individualized plan and what to plan for as they transition. I'm hoping to be in conversation with the seven principal next week during their elementary principal meeting so we can have more specific conversation about the actual transition of all the fifth graders. So right now it doesn't look like we may have an actual in-person visit, the fifth graders into Gibbs, but hopefully some virtual visit will be possible and some conversation with the fifth graders virtually and with their parents. That's what we're hoping to do. We have already selected dates for the fall in August for the students to come for their orientation. So we can't promise much in regard to the next two months because there are too many uncertainties but certainly we'll be prepared to orientate the students in person in the building in the fall. In regard to summer, we are hoping to hold a literacy program in combination with some mindfulness and art activity. We really wanted to be something that will connect the students more to Gibbs and to some staff member versus really concerned about how did they actually do this school year? The whole objective is to give them a chance to come to see the building, to have some connections so it could cut down from their anxiety to transition because we know some of our students who have not been physically in school of the last year and a half are going to have some challenge running to transition. So any program that's being facilitated is from my reading teachers and our collaborating with the art teachers. It's really looking to make a fun experience for those students to come to connect with the school over the summer. Of course, starting this week and next week, we're going to delve into prepping for MCAS and doing all the housekeeping step and then communicating with parents and teachers on what this would look like. We do have official dates so we're able to start doing the preparations that are required. I know that the last time we present, we talked about our pool testing numbers and they have gotten better. We have 92% response from our parents of that 92% response, 90% are participating. So far only 2% have opt out of taking, having their kids participating and we still have 8% we're still working on getting one response, one way or another. So that's where we are. And we have a total of 355 students physically in the building and 126 in the remote program. This is how much I had to share tonight. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Ms. Morgan. So Madame Pierre Maxwell, I think that your strategy for pushing people to either opt in or opt out is really great. I've thought about this a lot about how to increase participation and I emailed Dr. Vodi at one point and I was like, man, this is genius. I can't believe I didn't even think of this because it's a good way to move the needle on participation without forcing people to do it. So I think that that's great. It's obviously been really effective. So lots of appreciation to you and your team for doing that. And I hope that your strategy can be shared across the district because it certainly is effective without being overly prescriptive, which is really nice. So that's all I had to say. I'm really glad that the reopening has gone so well and I wish you much good fortune over the next six weeks. Thanks so much. Thank you. Mr. Cogn. Thank you. So my only question is again about the lunches and the rain today. What was your first experience with that? I mean, does it seem overcrowded there? I mean, your building is much smaller than Audison. Where are you fitting everybody for lunch, basically? It's manageable. We have less desk and chairs in the gymnasium. So we have our distancing mark on the floor and we had purchased those little surf desk that the students are using outside. Some of them have opted to use it. It certainly takes less space than a desk and a chair. And some of them had opted to sit on the floor and it was much calmer than I expected. The students, the numbers in the gymnasium has not changed. It's just that because we had a third lunch. So that has kept it very close to what it looked like before. We are at capacity, but it's quite manageable. Great, thank you. Congratulations on getting it off the ground. Thank you. Dr. Mampi. Thank you. First, I wanted to join Ms. Morkin about the response for testing at the pool testing. 92% is really impressive. And I share her thoughts that this should be shared across the district. Second, when you talked about the Water Receive Program, I was just wondering, which students are going to be eligible for this? We're hoping to invite all the fifth graders. We know that the children who love to read most likely maybe will not need any convincing to want to participate. But one of the goal of my goal and that of the reading teachers is that we will communicate with the lower grades classroom from the fifth grade to kind of identify which students may have had a tough time with attendance. If they were in the remote program, would not turn on their screens. What are some of the kiddos that would benefit from a direct reach out to their parents to invite them? And also we want to kind of do a little video showcasing and advertising for the program to show why it's going to be fun and why they should try to join. We're not going to ask them to do a book report. That's why we want to involve the art teacher and a visual photography teacher. So they could be creative and think outside the box. They could write a poem. They could do pick a chapter and illustrate something that was fascinating. And we want to pick books that would allow the children to have conversation reflecting what's going on in our time especially in regard to inclusion. And just so they come and enjoy the school and we want possibly serve them lunch and have some ice cream bar and some fun game for them to do not just come to do the reading portion but trying to make it a nice two to three hours activities. So we're going to reach out to everyone. We're not saying no to anyone but some people may give them more of a reach out one to one to encourage them to attend. Awesome, it sounds really interesting. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Thielman. I think my colleagues have covered everything. I'm good. Thank you very much. Congratulations on a good start. Thank you. Mr. Shaliquan. I'm good as well. Thanks for the great opening. Mr. Eckston. I'm all set as well. Thank you very much for the update. I'd like to thank all three principals for coming and sharing with us. And I would ask Dr. Bodhi to make the determination whether they need to stay or not at this time. I do not. So could I ask whether I could give one report I was going to have from the super test because it'd be nice for them to be here to hear the recognition of students in their schools for National History Day. Go right ahead. If I could. Thank you. Well, as you know from past years we as a district have very strong performances in the National History Day Contest. And this year that is also true. So this involves a lot of work on students a lot of independent work. They are mentored by teachers in the schools. I think at the high school level it's a little bit more independent. Certainly it gives an audience and they have mentoring. This year you'll understand why I like them to stay. It gives there are two projects at Gibbs that are going on to Nationals this year. And I want to recognize these students. We recognize a lot of other things including athletics. But I mean, this is really quite a testament to the students as well as to our school district. So first is these are both junior projects. And the one, the first one, they're not in any specific order. It was about code breakers in World War II. And the two students who worked together on this were Anna McCock and Chloe Brentlin. I hope I pronounced those wrestling. I hope I pronounced those correctly. The other project that's going to Nationals is linking the North Atlantic, how the first intercontinental cable shaped communication. And that was Alexandra Lai and Wanyi Zhang. So congratulations to those students. But also at there was a project at Onsen and a project at AHS that received funding that received special awards at the state level. So at Onsen, the student was Gail Williams-Cletis. And the project was code ciphers and deceit. America's Revolutionary Spiring. Pretty input about that myself right now. So the best use of artwork to understand history of that recognition was for living a lie, the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. And that is Emily Neal and Clara Schneider. So congratulations to these students. And it gives congratulations to Tom Bushel, who was the mentor for the students this year. And I think it's a great accomplishment and they should be very proud of themselves. I know that we are proud of them. Thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you to the all three principals. Have a good evening. At this time, we're going to move on to the extended school year summer program update by Dr. McNeil. Thank you, Mr. Heyner. So the last time I gave my report, we had questions. There were questions around staffing and students, like how many students, whether or not we had sent out invitations. So I'll just reiterate some of the broad points of the program just to refresh everyone's memory. And then I will take it by level. So I'll start with the elementary extended title one program. And then I'll move to middle school and high school. So at the elementary level, we're offering a extended title one program, which means that traditionally we utilize our title one funds. And we focus on those buildings that are title one schools. And we provide a targeted assisted learning program for those students throughout the summer that runs five weeks. But because of the federal funding that we have been able to receive last year, we extended it to the non title one school. So we were able to broaden the scope and invite more students. And we're planning to do the same thing this summer as well. So for, we've sent out the invitations, and we've received responses back from families. So for the ELA program, we have received back. 52 students who are going to be enrolled in the reading only program, which will have 27 remote 25 in person 31 students enrolled for ELA and math 13 remote and 18 in person. And then we have so, and then for that program, we're looking to hire nine teachers. We have three teachers who are have already committed. And we're anticipating to interview six more. Some of the other, you know, facts about the program is it will run for five weeks for the ELA and math. And the teaching time will be approximately between nine o'clock and one o'clock. We're going to stagger the groups. So we're looking at having small groups of four to five students a piece in each group and it will be three days a week Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. The site will be Thompson or if it's remote. So, so looking at the invitations that were sent out for ELA and then now I'll move to math. We have 83 or 53 students or 83 students who have respond families respond to the invitations. We have 53 students that will be in person at Thompson and 31 remote. It appears that those students that were remote last year seem to have that preference for this year as well. We will need about eight to 12 teachers for the math program. And currently we have about three committed. And we're still trying to identify other teachers and interview those teachers in order to make sure that we are fully staffed. So I'll stop right there to see if you want me to go through the elementary portion and then I'll move on to the middle school if you want me to stop now for questions about elementary where I can move on and then take questions at the end. You're muted. Thank you. I knew what would happen eventually. Is there any member that would like to ask a question at this time or should we let Dr. McNeil continue? Go for Dr. McNeil. Okay so at the middle school level we're going to run the reading groups as we did last year. We're going to invite students so for the ELA portion and for the math portion and basically all of our programming we're trying to target those students who are in most need of support. So which is what we did last year. So we're going to identify those students who are currently receiving reading who are going to reading specialist for services or math interventionist. But it's modeled after the elementary program. It will run for five weeks. Right now we have four teachers who have committed to teaching in the ELA program and we're going to definitely target those rising sixth graders. And then for math again, five weeks, three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We're looking at the site, the onsite, the in-person learning will take place at Addison or it will be remote. So again we're going to have a blended program. And then we're looking at small groups of 8 to 12 students and again the selection process of those students who are in most need of support who are receiving, currently receiving math intervention and we'll need, for the middle school program we'll need three to six teachers but we're still, you know, we're struggling to continue to identify staff for the program. As of yesterday, we have two interested teachers for the math program and we're trying to identify other individuals who we can interview. And then so the invitations for the middle school have not been sent out yet but we plan to send those out next week. And so at the high school, again we're going to replicate the programming that we had last year. We're going to have credit recovery. You know, the high school just, you know, made available their third quarter or their report cards, the most recent report cards that we're going to utilize to identify those students. And then typical summer credit recovery courses are offered to students who fill a class with a grade higher than a 50%. If a student fails with a grade lower than 50%, they may get permission for a course replacement class that must be approved by a dean and these would typically be a community college course or course offered through a private program. And students may access outside credit recover recovery classes that have traditionally been offered at Arlington Catholic or other local high schools. So we're looking to identify those students. The term three grades were just posted. And so we'll utilize that in order to identify students. We're also offering other programs such as the mooks program, which we did last year. And then at the high school level as well. And then there was a question around the ELL summer opportunities. So based upon the feedback that we got from teachers, and I think that in order for us to get teachers to participate, a lot of teachers said they would, not a lot, but the teachers that are participating say they would if it was remote. So it will be remote only. We will not offer in-person option for this. So there's like two components of the program. One is for an enrichment opportunity for level one students. Which are newcomers generally. In order to provide further exposure to English reading, writing, listening, and speaking. There's an estimated of 15 to 20 students at this time who may be interested in taking the program. And we have two elementary teachers committed to teaching. But we're going to also post internally, externally again, in order to generate more interest amongst teachers and identify. We will also have a K through 12 program that will target students who do need support in certain areas for ELL and ELL students that do need support. Again, we're looking at about 10 to 15 for the elementary and 10 to 15 for the secondary. There are currently three ELL teachers interested in providing small group summer support. We can't give an exact number of these students at this time because we're still awaiting the results of the access testing, which we should get back, you know, relatively soon, hopefully before June 1. So that is the update. And this is a fluid situation where, especially around staffing, where we're continuing to reach out to staffing and try to, you know, think outside the box in order to identify and invite teachers to come and participate in the programs. Thank you, Dr. McNeil. Ms. Morgan. Dr. McNeil, did you say that the elementary program is not going to be in person at all? Correct. Okay, that's pretty disappointing. I mean, I, I, I appreciate that this is challenging and hard to staff, but it, it seems like a group that would really benefit for some in-person learning and learning a language on Zoom. I mean, there's just, there's so much nuance around in-person and you just hear, you hear so much more language. So I, you know, I, I appreciate that this is really hard and I don't, I don't know how else to say it, but I'm disappointed that that's where we're at right now. So that's my feedback. Thank you. Mr. Carden. Thanks. So I guess we get the internal, you know, posting notices. We're on the email list and they're, they're really other than the original official internal posting. I haven't seen much. So maybe there's, you know, department heads are talking with teachers or principals are talking with teachers, but I mean, maybe $175 a day isn't enough. Or maybe we need to do a more hard sell where, you know, we say, look, we know, we know you've had a hard year, but we really need to meet the needs of our students. Can we get some more people to step up? And Bill can do that as chair of the committee. If, if, if you're not comfortable at an administrative team doing that. I think I don't want to, I don't want to say that volunteer you, Bill, but I, I think. That's fine. You know, I, again, I just think we were frustrated last time with, with this being the roadblock. I, I, you know, we can't micromanage it, but we can try to suggest some ideas that may, you know, be more fruitful. Thank you. And let me just say that we, we, the teachers who are teaching in the, who have committed to the ELL program are not our, like we have one ELL teacher that may participate at the elementary level. The rest are elementary teachers. They have the SCI endorsement. And I hear what you're saying, but we are, I mean, I, I, I want, I don't want. I want to let you know that we're doing everything that we can in order to invite teachers to be a part of the program. We understand how important it is, but I can't stress enough to you. And I think that maybe if you did contact some of the teachers and you talked to them, you would understand what they're saying. That I don't think it's a pay issue. It's a, it really is the impact of this year. It has been a very difficult year for a lot of our teachers and they want to take a break. And we need, and we need them to be, you know, so again, like Mr. managers talked about the students. I'm on offense too of putting too much pressure on teachers to participate in something in the summer where they don't feel they have the capacity to be a part of, because we want people to be a part of, we want to be energized for the fall. So are we going, so I think that we have to make a decision and we're going to continue to do this. We're going to continue to reach outside the district to see where we can get ELL teachers to be a part of the program. But I mean, maybe if you did talk to the teachers, you would be able to get the understanding that we have. And then we have Cief who's here, who can also speak about it from the union perspective about how teachers are feeling right now. And if you look at the panorama survey data, that can also give you an idea of the insight as to how teachers are feeling. So it's not from lack of effort that we're trying to get teachers to be a part of. And I don't even hold this against teachers. I want to be able to be flexible in my thinking. And I want to be able to invite them and I want to, you know, definitely recruit them the best way we know how, but I don't think it's a pay issue. And if Cief can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you, Rod. I really appreciate your words about how difficult it's been for teachers this year. I really don't, I don't know. I know people know that it's been hard, but it, but it boots on the ground in the schools. You know, the preschool has been live since September, five days a week. And I know the preschool doesn't offer some of the programs you're speaking of, but we do have ESY. And you know, kindergarten, a lot of special ed has been there since September, five days a week, six hours a day. It's been tremendously stressful and difficult this year. So I know hiring is really important for the summer and getting everybody up to speed, but it's, it's been very stressful this year. And I think teachers are exhausted. You know, it's hard to get through each day with COVID and all the rules and, you know, all the different layers that we have to keep track of and we have to educate everybody. So, so it's just good fun. Thank you, sir. I don't want this to become a dialogue right now on teachers. Wellingness or lack of it. I want, I think everyone knows how hard it has been for the teachers and the staff and the exemplary job that they've done going forward. I'd like to stick right now with questions directed to what Dr. McNeil has shared with us on the programs and not the necessarily the deficits. Dr. Ampe, I'm sorry, Mr. Corden, I didn't mean to cut you off. Are you finished? No, no, I mean, my only other comment was that I do think, you know, some communication needs to go out, you know, soon to parents about what it is we're offering this summer. I mean, we still have, I don't know if there's any space left in summer fun. I don't know if, you know, I don't know if parents who were not invited into this program would feel their kids are struggling. Do they have an option to talk to their principal? Either way, if they don't, that needs to, that needs to, that needs, that message needs to go out to parents because we're getting questions about are we offering summer school? What are we doing? And we don't have any answers yet. Thank you. Thank you. I want to emphasize the fact that the invitations to those students who have been at the elementary level have all been sent out. We've sent over like 200 invitations. So they've been sent out. So the rest of the parents who are asking. Right. So, I mean, I can answer that question right now. Right now, we, we, the, the students that we have right now, as you can understand is that we're trying to staff this program for those students where we've sent out invitations and again, at the middle school level, we're going to send the invitations out in the next, within the next week. So, we're going to have the enrollment program. I'm going to have to, you know, lean on the side that probably not, but we will have other things that we can offer to them. To students like we have the online tools. We're going to update our enrichment site. We are going to have like calendar math activities and literacy activities that, you know, parents and students can follow along. But as you can see right now, we're trying to struggling to staff our targeted program right now and as summer fun, we don't run summer, I don't run summer fun. So I would have to, you know, talk to the person who runs summer fun about communicating with that, about that program. Okay, thank you. Yeah, my, my request to Dr. Bode is that a communication go out about summer programming or lack of thereof within the next couple of weeks before our next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not sure if I'm stepping over. Mr. Heiner's line, but I'm going to ask anyway. Because it seems like staffing is the big problem with these programs. And I'm just asking. Have we been asking any can hiring candidates? I mean, any new teachers who are coming in? Are we asking them, could you start in the summer? And maybe serve in some of these positions? Or do we have any TAs who have credentials. Enough that they could serve in some of these positions? You know, is there ways of. I'm sorry, that's well within the school. Okay. Yeah. And then the other thing is talking to the teachers. I mean, I brought this up last time, but talking to the teachers, is there a way that we can create. Staffing that works better for them like two people doing one role. And just. I don't feel we should be. Forcing anyone into anything. I think heavy handed is not the way we should be doing this, but is there any way that we can make. It more. Tolerable and then maybe, you know, then we can talk about incentives. But those are the questions that I have. Thank you. So your questions. Yes. We, I tried that. I mean, of course, we're going to keep in mind like TAs who have certification, but I also want to emphasize that, you know, I have a certain, we have certain standards of who we want to put in front of our most struggling students. And I think that we have to be careful about who is going to do that. And I, and, and so, yes, we are definitely interviewing people who we feel are qualified. And like I said before, we have a list of six people at the middle school level. I think that I think for me, the most, the, the, I think I, I'm very confident we'll be able to staff the programs that I have spoken about at the elementary level, at the middle school level for those students who are struggling. And then we have our credit recovery, which we use Plato. So the one program, I think is the most concerned for me right now is the ELL program that we are trying to staff. So I don't want to conflate, you know, what I've said about the ELL program with other programs, because I think that we're in good shape there and we'll be able to staff those programs. I think the concern. The questions that came up starting with Ms. Morgan around the ELL program. And that's the one we're trying to make sure that we have staffing for. So I don't want to confuse the ELL program with the other programs that I have discussed. Thank you. It's a little unclear from what you're saying and also I was in no way suggesting that anyone not qualified. Should be put in front of any of our students. I assume that that's a given. I'm just suggesting. Are we making sure we're looking at every route we have teachers in and especially teachers who may not have been in a lead teacher position. So maybe they aren't quite as exhausted as everybody else. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thielman. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. McNeil. How many people are we trying to hire for the summer program? So depending on which one. So I went over this information. So are you talking about the elementary program? Well, I, the whole thing, if you could. I mean, I didn't add them all up, but I mean, it's about nine to 12. So we're looking at the middle school program. We need about, you know, we have about four teachers that. I said that we have committed to the LA program. And then at the middle school level for the math. We're looking, we need a between three to six teachers. And then at the elementary level for LA and math, we need approximately eight to 12 for the LA and math programs. So it's approximately 30, 30 or so. Positions this summer, something like that. Yes, but I want to emphasize again, that I think we're in good shape in those programs is the ELL program that I'm most concerned about. Yeah. Okay. The LA program is what he most concerned about. Okay. All right. I mean, I guess I'm trying to understand. And in your estimation, I think that's the point. Yeah. I think that's the point. I think that's the point. Even if the school committee or the school department, Mr. More Jermason and Dr. Bode were to come up with additional funding that would not. Be an incentive. You don't think for teachers. They wouldn't, that wouldn't be helpful. I'm not saying it wouldn't be helpful. I'm sure like, you know, you know, maybe that would draw some people, but I'm trying to emphasize the fact that. You know, we have a salary structure that we adhere to every year, and then we will be setting some precedence as it relates to that. So I think that we need to, you know, talk about that in further detail in order to understand, because we have the ESY program and there's a salary structure there. So I also want to make sure that we're equitable and we're not overfunding one poor offering, you know, to pay teachers at a higher rate and one program, what other teachers are teaching in another program where they've had to be very thoughtful about that. But I understand what you're saying. And if I've thought that offering more money with attract teachers, again, I think that we have to think about that and think about the implications on the different programming that we are offering this summer. Okay, well, I mean, okay. I mean, I think sometimes you can, you can increase salaries and you can say it's for this year because of supply and demand and then because of COVID-19. It's not a precedent. I'm saying like, that's why I would think that we would have to talk about this a little bit more in detail and talk about the implications and what are the parameters. And, you know, so I would, I think that that would be something that we would have to have further discussion. I have not saying that it's not a good idea. I think it's all, all ideas are great, but I don't want to send the message that we have not explored the different things that have been offered today because we are trying very hard to staff these programs and constantly, you know, trying to get teachers to be a part of it. But like I said before, the ELL program is the one that I'm most concerned about. Yeah, I understand that. And I just want to say I echo Ms. Morgan's comments from earlier her sentiments earlier that if these are kids, if we can get people to teach in person and I understand the challenges. I heard all that already. I would agree with Ms. Morgan that that would be, that would be a priority for me, something I'd like to see. Well, let me just say this too, I don't necessarily, we don't necessarily have a space for the ELL program right now as well. So I have not been able to identify a space in person. And with that, along with teachers saying like, yeah, I will teach, but I will teach. It has to be remote. So, you know, instead of going with no program, I'm saying, well, let's go remote because we have these two things that we haven't figured out yet. And, you know, it's getting to the end of the year. So we said, we're going to go remote. And that's how we got the teachers that have said that they would teach in the program to commit. So, I mean, I understand what you're saying. And I do believe like we want all kids in person. That's our priority. But I mean, we have to go with what we have. Okay. You all said, Mr. Thalman. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I don't want to beat a dead horse. So I'm not going to go extensively. I think my colleagues have expressed it well enough. The English learner program did not happen last year. I did, I want to correct that it did. We did have an English language learner program last year. It was remote. And it was in small groups and they received targeted tutoring. And I know that there are English EL parents who were not offered the opportunity to participate. So we, we had unmet needs last year. Because I've been in contact with parents who were, who loved the program in prior years and couldn't get into it last year. This is a huge priority for us. And it's an equity issue. It's one of our neediest populations. And I really believe this has to be a huge priority. Because if we're going to move kids through the, through the levels to English proficiency. We need to have more intensive instruction and to. Be more dedicated to doing summer work to, to build English skills. So. I just view this as a priority. And if this is a constant that we're going to have trouble staffing a program. Second language learners. We need to rethink our program. We need to rethink our staffing. We need to look at the staffing for the school year for English language learners. Maybe we're short on L teachers as well. I don't know what the solution is, but this is a priority for, for a population that is not politically. In involved in the community. So it's not the squeakiest wheel, but it's one of the neediest wheels. So please, please, please make it a priority to offer. The very best program for our English learners is possible. Both during the summer and during the school year. And I'll just leave it at that. It's a, it's a priority for me as well. I just want to let you know that. It's excellent. Thank you. I share the concerns that my colleagues have. I already expressed about the EL program, particularly the piece about it being remote. I. I understand that teachers are tired and I understand they'd rather be remote, but the students really need to be in person. I actually want to. Follow up on something that Mr. Cardin had asked earlier about families asking. What's going to be offered. I'm curious. How many more students have you invited to the. Expanded tier one. Program this year, then you have in years past, I guess I'm trying to get at. How many more students are we seeing? Struggling with reading and math. Then. In past summers. To be honest with you, I don't have those numbers already available. I can get them though. For you and I can look at so I could go to our. Class list or a case load for the reading specialist. And the math interventionist, but that's the primary list that we utilize in order to compare what we have. Those students were getting that those services right now. And compared to last year. But just to give you an overview, we sent out approximately 230. Invitations. We are, and I want to, I want to say this. Is that over last year and this year. And I'm anticipating this year that we are servicing. More students over the summer. Through the extended title one program. So I don't want to gloss over that fact. Because before, like I said before. I said that twice, I didn't mean to do that. But in the past, we had. Just a title one program. So we were only able to focus on title one schools because of the title one funding. But because of the additional federal funding we got last year, we expanded it. So I think it was around 120. Off the top of my head students that we were able to invite into the program and provide support over the summer. So we have extended past the title one school. So we are servicing more students. Last year than we have in the past. And then I will check the numbers for your question. And get that information to to you. Thank you. Yeah. No, I'm just trying to. You know, there's, there's parents are absolutely concerned about how their students are doing. I'm feeling that way about my own child, but I'm just trying to put it in perspective of what is, what is a perceived concern? And what is, you know, what, what students are really struggling and are we reaching them? And it sounds like you are reaching out to a larger group of students this year to target for support. Great. We are. And I also want to say that I can have more, you know, numbers for you as we have our final assessments. So we're still going to have the eye ready. And we have our local literacy assessments that we're going to still have to give for the end of the year. And that will also be a metric we can utilize to understand where we are this year compared to the past years. That would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. McNeil for all the work you and your staff have done. I would ask you to the numbers that you're talking about, like giving Ms. X and would you just send them to Ms. Fitzgerald. And you can send them out to all the members of the committee. Thank you very much for all the work you've done. Thank you. Ms Morgan. I would invite you at this time to speak to the committee on the next item. Oh, good. Okay. Hi everybody. it's around a dedication in the new high school building. And so as some sort of background, we have a school committee policy, it's policy FF, I did look it up. And it states that the school committee can choose to recognize outstanding service to the youth of Arlington by dedicating an appropriate area in honor of an exceptional individual who has unselfishly given their time and energy in promoting excellence in education. So I read this today in thinking about this evening and I was so grateful that the policy was so well written that it gave me a good jumping off point in thinking about the motion that I have this evening for all of your consideration. So I believe that Dr. Bodie is an outstanding candidate for the first dedication of a space in the new Arlington High School building. I'm proud that the school committee is here tonight with the opportunity to vote on the dedication for her and to her in the discourse lab space, which is right off of the main entrance to the high school. The discourse lab is an innovative new space that will allow, again these are Amy Spears words or Dr. Allison Ampey's words from the website. They're very well thought out and I was grateful for that too, but it's a new space that allows for connection, scholarly discourse, interaction, and collaboration. It's an 120-seat lecture classroom that can be used for shared teaching, for staff professional development, as a community resource, for small group programming, and large group debates and dialogue. So this is a new space in the new building and I think that it's a really great option as a space that we could consider using to honor Dr. Bodie's many, many years of service to the youth in Arlington. There are a lot of spaces in Arlington that are dedicated to men appropriately. I'm sure they've done great things, but I'm also particularly pleased that there's the potential that this first dedication would be done on behalf of a woman leader, a longtime superintendent, assistant superintendent, math director, and educator, and to do so in honor of her outstanding service to students and to the community and to her unselfish gift of time and energy as the policy states. So I really look forward to an in-person dedication next spring when this space actually exists. So the motion that I have and then I can speak to the logistics around it during conversation. So in order to follow what's in our policy, the motion would be as follows, that the Arlington School Committee moves to create a dedication plaque to be placed in the Arlington High School Discourse Lab in honor of Dr. Kathleen Bodie. We would direct the chair to submit our proposed dedication to the Public Memorial Committee on the townside and to return to us with comment on our at our June 10th meeting. Is there a second? Mrs. Thillman, you got to say it out loud. Second. I know I have a good, okay. I second the motion. Okay, we got two seconds. That works fine. Ms. Morgan, do you want to speak for them? Sure. I can, all I can say is that, you know, this is something that I was able to work on with Mr. Thillman and Mr. Heim and Dr. Janger and Mr. Chapter Lane. And, you know, they were obviously extremely supportive of this dedication for obvious reasons. And Mr. Heim, as he does, was very quick to encourage us to follow our policy very, very deliberately and carefully as is his job. So that's what I'm trying to make sure that we do. And I think that we'll have an opportunity when we come back in 30 days time to, you know, to share other thoughts around this as well. So I don't think that all of the, you know, all of the things that we have to say, we don't necessarily have to say today, but we'll have another opportunity to do so because we would vote this motion tonight. And then Mr. Heiner would take it to the Public Memorial Committee. They will choose to weigh in or not. And then we would come back and do another vote on the dedication after that happens. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this motion within the parameters that Ms. Morgan has just stated? Mr. Thillman? I'll do my best. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. So obviously, I think this is more than well-deserved. And as Ms. Morgan said and the chair just re-emphasized, we'll talk about all this later. But I do want to just, I just want to give a high school building committee perspective on this. The Arlington High School Committee has a building committee, has a memorials committee. That committee has recommended that the school committee not name any portions of the building, but allow for dedication plaques, similar to what we did for Charlie Skidmore in the library when he retired. And so we had a meeting with Mr. Hyam, the town council, who said that the building committee is welcome to have its opinions on the high school, but it is actually legally owned by the Arlington School Committee and the Arlington School Committee has the authority to decide what it wants to do in that building. But in terms of naming or plaques or anything it wants to do, even if it's even before it's finally finished, actually the school committee is the owner of the property and has to follow the town rules regarding namings. However, I will say that the public memorials committee, not the memorials committee of the high school building committee and the subcommittee and the school, Ms. Morgan are aligned in this approach to this dedication. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak to the motion? Seeing none or hearing none, I will call for roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. I'm sorry, Cathy, I apologize. I've got this on speaker view and you're not out there. I apologize. Go right ahead. I'll just wait a minute. Thank you. Go ahead. Go right ahead. I just want to say, I mean, you have to vote on this, of course, but even the thought of it, I'm deeply moved and very grateful and quite humbled by it, honestly. I was one of the people that had advised not to do any of this until we have the whole building up. I'm particularly humbled because I know what a team effort this has been to be where we are today and we have a building committee like so amazingly by Mr. Stilman. But it's not just even been the building committee. There's been so many people who've been part of this, not to mention the voters of our Lincoln. We would not be having the school unless everyone really got behind it. And so I appreciate this. I never would seek this. But I would want it to be realized that this is really not just for me, but for everybody who's participated in this. And we'll have more time as we go on. As I'm getting closer to the end of my tenure, I'm particularly, besides all the people I work with and the work itself, I'm missing seeing the school come to its completion, but I hope to be back around a few times as they get to certain milestones. But again, I appreciate the thought in this and I'm so glad we are where we are with the high school. So thank you. You were not going to have the grand opening unless you come. So that's that's the deal. I will be there. That's the deal. Thank you. We all set on the motion. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Kiden. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. And the chair votes yes as well. Unanimous vote. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. No. I'm nervous and I lost my, let's see. We're at the monthly financial report, the big money. Mr. Mason. Good evening. Thank you. So included was for your review this evening was the monthly reports for the period ending March 31st, the ninth period of this fiscal year and the first, the report includes four reports and the first report is the report for the general fund or the town appropriation. That report includes a snapshot of the known expenditures and encumbrances as of March 31st by expense type or object codes. This report also includes the projection encumbrances and expenditures as well. The projection assumes that schools and department discretionary budget line items will be spent down to zero at that particular time. The remaining balance for our, for the general fund is close to $800,000 is $797,639. I know that there are some questions out there in terms of the prepayment of $1.3 million from the fiscal 20 and how that's reflected in this report. And more so, I would just state that that $1.3 million payment, a prepayment offset that current balance. So it's built into the current numbers, meaning if we didn't prepay, we would have actually had about a $500,000 deficit instead of talking about a projected balance. This report does not include any unknown expenditures that we didn't know after April 27th. So there are some, understand some expenditures after that point, but you'll get a more clearer picture in the next month's report. The other reports are the grant accounts reports. That report does not include any COVID-19 grant funding. That report is at the end of the report. The third report is obviously the special revenue and revolving. The fourth report is a report on COVID-19 expenditures by funding source and object code reports on all the general funds expenditures that are COVID related for fiscal 21 only. Total amount reported currently is about $3.7 million worth of COVID related expenditures of that $1.2 million is expenses currently sitting on the general fund. Many of those funds are ineligible to be claimed, but there are still some that will be claimed and then those monies will increase the possible return balance to the community or to the town's general fund. I will stop there to see if anybody has any questions and then there's another item I will talk about. Are there any members that have a question? Please raise your hand. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Just a sec. So, Mr. Mason, I have questions about the monthly financial report. First, what is professional technical services? Professional tech services are any service that we would contract out to a vendor. So that could be anything from professional development to a contractor that might work in facilities on the buildings. So it's a very vague object code. Okay. So it could be a bunch of things and it sounds like many could be COVID related. Correct. So one of the biggest expenses is some of the HVAC costs. There's a HVAC line item, but then there's some contractor services that are tied to that that are in that account as well. Okay. And then I just wanted to make sure I understand about the prepayment and how it's handled here. So if I just look, I'm on page four looking at line 83201, which is tuition to other schools. And looking at the available budget at the very end of the line being 830,000, if we had not prepaid tuition for this year, we would have been roughly half a million below in this line alone. Correct? Is that what I understand? So if you look at the starting budget that we budgeted on the general fund for tuition, that would be the very first column, the 5.7 million dollar figure. That was the original budget. Transfers reflect the amount that we transferred out of that line item, which was based on the prepayment, so about the 1.3 million dollars, which is covering other aspects of the budget this year, whether it's additional teaching costs and COVID related expenditures, which you'll see in the end of the report. So like there's about $900,000 that we budgeted in that account initially. So that was moved from this particular line item. So it's not, it's not, I can't read it that way. To answer your question, though, is that $1.3 million, it would have originally remained in that budget line item if there was no COVID. And in theory, we would have $1.3 million more of expenditures. So that line item would have probably still been, had a surplus amount, but it wasn't substantial. It wasn't to what we've seen last year. Okay. Okay, those were my questions. Thank you. Okay. Bill, I believe you mute it. Mr. Hanna, I'm sorry. Thank you. My wife keeps looking for that switch. Dr. Barney, superintendent's report. Well, before you move on, I'm sorry. I had one more other item. I'm sorry. We're ready. That item was basically, is this the winter sport athletic fee evaluation. It was a memo that was shared with the budget subcommittee meeting, the last budget subcommittee meeting. And it's here for your review. And basically, we did an analysis, as we did in the previous season, to look at opportunities of where we could provide refunds to families due to the changes in the athletic program because of the pandemic. So after doing the evaluation and applying a 60% subsidy to youth off the general fund of the school committee's budget, we are proposing that the school committee considers the following motion to temporarily change the following fees for this year only boys and girls ice hockey or hockey from $700 to $575 per student. Also the change gymnastics from $600 to $475 dollars per student and for skiing changing the fees from $600 to $500. And mainly a lot of the changes exist around transportation reductions due to not transporting students via buses or reductions in games. There's savings. So all that analysis is there for you to review and hopefully the school committee can approve this this evening. Before we discuss it, I will entertain an addendum to authorize the Mr. Mason to provide refunds to those people that paid the full fee. So many moved. Is there a second to the thank you. Discussion on on both pieces. Dr. Ampe. Okay, I wasn't seconding and what I was asking to speak was that budget subcommittee did pass a motion to recommend the approval of the various motions to the full school committee. However, because this personally affects me, Mr. Cardin led that part of the meeting and I abstained from that and I will also abstain from this vote. And I'm not, I'm not seconding it either. So that's all. We got the second or also any further discussion on the motion, the amended motion call the vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Abstain. Mr. Thelman. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. And I vote yes. So it's six. Hello. I'm sorry, Mr. Schlickman. Here I thought I had a great meeting and it's now falling apart. Mr. Schlickman, well, how would you like to vote on this motion? I would appreciate the opportunity to vote in the affirmative for this wonderful thing. Thank you, Mr. Schlickman. Six in the affirmative, one abstention. The motion is passed. Mr. Mason, do you need anything further for us with regard to that? No, I do not. Thank you. Is there anything else before I shut that this section down? Nothing else. Thank you. Dr. Bordi, Superintendent's report, please. Happy to give a report tonight. There are three things I'm going to talk about last year or before, but we've already gone through the National History Day. I want to talk about quarantine, which was brought up in public participation this evening. Of course, the high school update and also the networking social we had yesterday for candidates of color. So let me begin with quarantine. There was comments made this evening. I just want to comment on them because actually they very much late to what I was going to talk about. The policy that we've had all year had many reasons for it and the number one reason was safety. And the second, of course, there was discussion in the safety and not discussion, but bringing to everyone's attention is the issue of equity. And then, of course, there's also the issue, which is not a small issue of administration. So the safety one brings us back to last summer. When we were here almost a year ago, we were in the beginnings of a pandemic and we talked a lot about six foot distancing. And I think one of the things that we were just we get really, even as a country, didn't really understand completely is how contagious the virus was going to be. Whether there would be transmissions in schools, there are a lot of things we did not understand. And even today, they keep talking about all the still things we don't understand. But in the course of the year, there have been a lot of things that have evolved, our understanding of the virus, the transmissions in school, and what they've been finding in that regard. So as everyone knows, this spring, actually in March, hundreds of physicians, infectious disease specialists, pediatricians, public health experts, endorse the desi's guideline that the distance between desi and a classroom could go down to three feet instead of six feet. And actually, that really won the basis for being able to recommend that students return to schools full time in person. Because with that guideline, it would be possible that we could reduce the six feet to three in order to have both cohorts and any other students coming back from remote to be in person in the classroom. And there was there was a study done of the peer reviewed study in March published in the clinical infectious disease that that demonstrated that districts that had three three foot distancing, when they compare their infection rate to districts that here to six foot, they didn't find any difference. So, you know, our understanding continued to evolve. So actually on March 19, the CDC recommended three foot as well also, except in situations where there was a high risk of community transmissions. And then they would recommend going back to six. Well, Arlington this week is less than one percent in terms of transmissions. And we've talked about cases for 100,000. So the fact is the number of cases in general have coming down in Arlington. And, you know, we're we still at this point have no evidence of transmissions in our schools. In fact, when we've had classes that have been quarantined, this child or this teacher who was in that class, and may have tested positive or may even become symptomatic and test a positive event, they were in the class prior to actually the quarantine. And we know now that they weren't they were contagious at that time. And what we have found is that the students who were quarantined as part of that identification of the of the individual, we have not seen any cases of transmission. So our own experience along with the research has gone on and our understanding of the virus, you know, we're we're we've come to a point where there was a this week, the Jesse recommended that if students were less than three feet with a total of 15 minutes of contact over a 24 hour period, and I emphasize over total because they also came out a month ago or sometime around there that the 15 minutes was like was a cumulative. It wasn't a single 15 minutes. So again, this is evolving. And as we we evolve as also as a school district with this and yes, we are prepared at this point to there are two guidelines from the state with regard to quarantine one is that you don't have a test after after exposure that you that anybody can come back to school after 10 days of quarantine return on day 11. And that's what we've been operating with. But we all there was a there was an order to that or you could have a student or a teacher for that matter after quarantine test on day five and return on day eight. It's actually at the end of day seven. So effectively it's day eight. And we are prepared to align with that we've been talking about what we would do about equity. And we have not completely but we have we have looked at how we can make sure that anyone who is not have access to testing to be able to get access. And we've also looked at how we're going to do this administratively, because it's no small task if you have a group of students a whole classroom with the students or in the middle school, we've had all learning communities out, you have to be able to actually it's not just getting the negative test, it's making sure that the test was done on the fifth, at least no earlier than the fifth day on the day of exposure. So we are we are we've we've been working on this and we are prepared to move to that to align with that more minimal the minimal number of days that a student needs to be quarantined. And I think that, you know, the point that was made by some parents this morning, I think that we all realize that when we're now back full time in person, that the number of days that a student can miss actually grows from what it was before. And so that's certainly something that has been pushing us also, besides all the the data we have on our own experience, as well as what's going on other districts. So we are going to do that. And we we, you know, I think it's going to be we're going to have to sort of work with this to see what that is going to look like. And with a particular with a positive case that may come up. And for sure, a positive case will that's certainly been true all year. But I'm actually very pleased to report tonight that we did pool testing this week. We have a rate of our averages right around 90% in terms of participation. Every classroom was tested this week, and we had no positive cases. So that is tremendous. We're very happy about that. And we will continue to do pool testing because I think now it's even more important than it has been even before. We're increasing the number of students that are going to be in the buildings that we gave. And the middle school just started this week, as you know, we had those reports this evening, the high school into in two weeks. So the pool test pool testing allows the district to have us have an individual who tests positive, go into quarantine, and not necessarily expose a lot of people to the to the virus. What is going what is happening in the middle school this week is we're going to have more cross teaming and the potential for exposure only increases. So the more we can identify a case early, the more we can protect both the students and the staff in our buildings. So I did want you to know that. There are some exemptions now to quarantine that did not exist before. One that had existed before is that if you had a definite positive to quarantine the first 90 days after you're after having been tested positive. I'm seeing my internet is unstable. Can you still hear me? Okay, great. And then now the the second way that you can be exempt from quarantine if you are fully vaccinated. And as we have more, you know, our staff was absolutely amazing parents were amazing and helping to get our staff and vaccinated. We also now have a large number of students that are vaccinated. So right now the percent on the seniors I just checked yesterday was 67%. So that that increasingly is making our schools safer and safer. And so I'm hoping that as we go forward this spring, we're going to see fewer and fewer positive cases as a result of pool testing. Probably we'll still have families report that there's a COVID case in the family and have their their child not attend school. Those are going to probably continue. But even that those numbers are going down. And that is the trend that we want to see. So it's quite it's quite a year and we're learning and we're growing. And one of the things that we need to plan for for next year is that while the projection is that students that are age 12 and older probably have access to vaccines this summer and hopefully still have the same you know number the same percentages and higher in vaccinated, we will definitely not have vaccines at the elementary level. So we we will still have a lot of safety protocols in place. But I think that as we we move we grow and evolve and understand we are going to be able to minimize as much as possible students being out of school. And that's what we all want to see. And that's what we're hoping to achieve this spring as well as certainly in the fall. So I don't know actually if there'll be any comments or questions at this point. Let me see if my notes are presenting I wanted to mention. You know that you know some all of what I said also has impacts on buses. And you know we will continue to be in contact with with families to let them know that they're they're proven a positive case in their LC or their or their classroom. But we will we will have a different prism to look for toward in terms of the amount of exposure at three foot less than three feet. So before I go on then we want to ask a question about any of this. I may have missed something. Ms. Morgan. So Dr. Bodie just so that I understand and I appreciate your you and your team's responsiveness and iteration through this because these are they're challenging and I feel like I keep bringing the documents back up to look at them myself. So so what you're saying is is that it we we are entering a time where it may be that even though a student is in a classroom with a positive case that they may not automatically be quarantined. I think yes that is an accurate statement and but I also think it's a little bit more nuanced. We hope that that will be the case but we want to reserve the judgment given the particular situation. And who will be making those decisions? Who will be making those that will be actually a combination of people. It will be a school nurse, the principal of building, our coordinator of our director of nursing, our coordinator for pool testing will look at the situation as well. And I will certainly be advised and consulted on on these decisions. I have been all here so I don't think that will change. So it's not any one person it's a team of people looking at this very carefully. Okay I and I'm I'm glad that there will be a team. I hope that it's you know I hope the decisions are made obviously with safety in mind first and foremost certainly. But then you know secondly with a desire to keep healthy students in the building as much as possible and also you know to avoid quarantines which we've done in our family and it's it's not just about you know the kids not being in school and not learning remotely. If they're quarantined they're not you know they're not playing with their neighbors they're not in their soccer game they're not doing their first median they're not you know we're certainly entering a time period where there are more events and activities that become you know very challenging to not participate in and again you know gotta be safety is paramount and you know we certainly want to be um want to be cautious but I hope that it's done uh the decisions around quarantine for students is done really mindfully and with an eye to um being really consistent across buildings and schools um so that you know we don't start to hear things where we're like wait a second that doesn't make any sense so I'm glad that you know I'm I'm sure that you'll be on top of this because you have been all year long um and I you know I appreciate the parents that came to speak tonight we've experienced that in our family and the situations where students are separated from their classrooms and their classes and I've said this to you because it's happened to us it's it's devastating um and when they're we're when their classmates continue on without them in school um and and I'm glad that it's not 11 days or I'm glad it's not a return on day 11 but so anyway thank you that's all I have miss exton thank you um thank you for all of the thought and and preparation and updates um about all of these evolving things I'm just looking for a little bit of clarity on the return on day eight versus day 11 so I heard you say you're prepared to align and you're going to work with this and try to figure out how to test students I understand the administrative complexities um with the larger learning center cohorts is this a change that's happening tomorrow is this a protocol that you're still discussing like when when are you making this okay now we're doing it now we've been uh had a lot of discussions about this um I've also talked with members of the health department and um about about where we are and they are very supportive so you know we fortunately we did not have any uh positive cases this week amazing actually given the fact that we were very worried about this after a publication um but we didn't so but no that has in effect now um and I wanted to bring this up this evening so everybody was aware of that and at this at this point um you know we're just going to we're going to take each case as it comes along but I do agree that you know when when when the positive case comes from outside or family they get tested in the family and the students out of school we will work with the family so that they can you know minimize that tests on day five from day of exposure that that's one thing that is part of this whole formula is what is the date of exposure and that's one of the reasons why we need to work with our nurses and director of nursing on this because um you know that that is part of the calculus on the decisions as well great thank you mr clipman thank you mr chair i'm still a little confused um because if a school cohort has an exposure then it's obviously impacting everybody within that that pod or cohort so that if everybody in that cohort is quarantined that's one thing but say in the example that we heard tonight of an after school program that you have only one child within a grade level or a class that's impacted and we come back with a test five days later that's negative there shouldn't be a reason why we can't bring that child back into the class uh because we're satisfied with with a high quality negative test so my question is in the context of the discussion we had from the parents this evening that if we detect an exposure say in an after school program or some other exposure outside of one of our classrooms what is going to happen to that child in terms of a testing requirement and being able to return to their class um in that particular case it it rests on what was the exposure if it's less than three it has to you know if there are less than three feet um and there's been more than 15 minutes of exposure over the 24 hours 24 hours is from you know as a fair amount of time when you're looking at a total amount this is why so we're assuming there was an exposure i'm this is what the discussion was let's assume there what we documented exposure can this parent five days later get a test and not have to be out for 10 days they're not often yes they can get a test under no sooner than day five on the day of exposure the state still is saying that you return at the end of the seventh day which is essentially they all practical purposes um yes we're going to do that and we're finding the um the missed we've hired another person that's going to help in this process when a school might get overloaded with this and because it's you you do have to check those the date of exposure and the the test and while it says answering chess we have been saying by next now i said that a couple another meeting ago or you know it's a pcr if it or it's an antigen by next now you can get over the counter by next now i don't i know for sure at walgreens but i don't know other places but again it's the equitable issue is it's one thing to be able to go get us another thing to afford it and we know that there are families that do not have disposable twenty dollars or whatever cost i don't really know what the cost is right now but um it had been that expensive we are working on a way to make sure that that family has the ability to get tested that's what yeah that that's important because i know that when we have a low-income family we we don't let a user fee get in the way of participation in sports and rather than adding barriers or not holding the sport uh we're finding ways to fund for low-income families and i would think that some of the federal money money for covid related issues would certainly be able to be used to provide testing for low-income eligible families yes it can so i i just want to say that i i appreciate the care and concern but i think that we really need to cut short quarantines when it doesn't make sense medically to do so and if we can document a case a negative test we should bring those kids back and we should find a way to make the testing affordable for uh low-income families uh all all that we we agree we don't want kids out of school if they don't have to be out of school as they said i think that we are all and i say we as a society as a state desi we're all evolving and what um what is safe um and we've been cautious and that has been supported uh that particular our cautiousness and i think that it's paid off in the safety of our students and staff but i do agree that one of the it's it's easier when a whole class is out or how they because then they're getting remote what gets really difficult is the when a particular student made from a sports team be out or they might have been after school program it out because their class isn't out so we want to make sure that they continue in education and you know i i give a lot of credit to principal parents who was able to rearrange a lot of things on very short notes that's the other thing these things happen you know we don't get a lot of notice on this happening and um was able to get synchronous instruction for the students that were in those second and third grade classrooms but you know that's still not the same thing as being in person and we know that so i i i think that i i i welcomed what came out this week from desi i think that it it makes sense and um we certainly want to do everything we can to one keep the school safe and to keep kids in school as much as possible yeah i think that my colleagues understand and know that i've been one of the most cautious members of this committee in terms of reopening and bringing kids back but the on the other side is that given the evidence that we've gotten now given the fact that we've got a really good cool testing program running um when parents come to us with concerns over our policy or our protocols if they're conflicting with current state or federal practices uh you know we we we have to think this out and figure out what what what inappropriate responses to the parents and i was very sympathetic to the parents who were coming before us on this topic tonight and i'm glad it's going to be addressed like we need to get these kids back in if we know that they are not uh contagious uh and uh through through the testing program we can do that and i'll leave it at that thank you thank you dr buddy you're going to mention uh talk about the uh can you get an enrollment oh yes that was one of the uh the yes you all receive the uh the chart um in yes that should be my other one it is it depends on which paper i'm looking at i do have enrollment here too and i know that dr alson ampey um also would like to have enrollment numbers for the other grades as well and i will get that too um i think that the the the way it looks right now you talk and i think what you're asking for i just want to clarify that are the the students that are in registry now um that are new that will be new new school next year i will say that we also had students that many but we've had a number of students have um enrolled even the spring of course that's always true enrollment goes on throughout the entire year um but it has picked up a little bit more so yes did you have the chart um there's two categories which are important to understand in the chart it's the number that are approved which means that all of the documents are in and those that are pending waiting for some other documentation and right now with the pending we're about 426 which is about where we would be this time in the spring i i i often expect to get a little bit more towards the mid four mid four hundreds when we get closer to kindergarten orientation and this year that will not be similar to last year is going to be much more virtual we are are going to do kindergarten screens and all of this information will be will be sent to kindergarten parents but generally when we there is a certain bump as we closer to kindergarten orientations in terms of registrations so we'll keep you know monthly we'll get we get those reports um weekly they don't change very much from week to week but we're happy to share it with you um as we get them all right so anything more enrollment any questions for dr bodi on that go ahead dr bodi i will say one more thing on enrollment we're up to date on buffer zones and um we'll keep once we got through the major group we're staying up to date pretty much on a every couple day basis so uh with respect to the high school it's been a busy time for subcommittees of the high school building committee and the two busiest right at the moment are the interior subcommittee and the exterior so both both of which i chair the interior is uh we're we have met already a week ago and we're going to meet again next week it's it's about colors in the building and designs and patterning um so that is going on i've talked about that the last meeting the exterior's committee um is uh looking at mortar for the bricks and um um that that i mean that there's a certain time element and getting this decided i think um we have a mock-up that's been we that's been put up so we can also see what we look like with windows and the different designs so that even though you have the same color brick there's different designs the brick whether it comes out or listen different patterning and there is at the on the on the part of the building that faces the fields the uh bottom of the building is going to be a CMU which is very close to the color of the brick but not quite and so it's not only just the brick it's the CMU the CMU's um which is a it's a form of a brick it's a natural material it's a it's a bigger um we talked about that when the building was being designed but i think that you're interested in seeing the mock-up it's in the old basketball fields behind the high school i think it may only be up another day or so but in any way it's very busy that the um the building committee is meeting next week and people are most welcome to to link into it and mr. Steeleman has agreed to give a report to town meeting i don't think we've figured out what night is going to be um but uh i i know that there's a wider audience uh with town meeting people are listening so it's a way to have people understand what's happened since last this time last year to now and you don't have you know you go down mass ad you can see what mainly is is happened and it's really every day it just it changes so uh those are the the the updates right now on the high school and i will i want to thank Dr. Allison Ampey and Amy Spears who uh Amy Spears is the chair of the communications subcommittee i should say that's been active committee as well uh because they're helping organize some of the photos that will be shown in the report and of course keeps the website up to date and i really encourage people to look at the ahs building website you can actually sign up to get notices so it's a great way to stay on top of the building project and then the last thing i wanted to mention is that yesterday you know for maybe about 12 years down maybe i think it's been at least 12 years we've had an annual coffee social for candidates of color that has been um partnered to to um to have with the super intense diversity committee and and clearly we're not doing that this year but i have to say the zoom networking social that we had yesterday was actually very very successful and i want to acknowledge Mr. Spiegel for organizing it and thank Mr. Hayden and the section for coming because i think it it is important to have a member of the school committee there it shows that we we have shared goals about and our seriousness about hiring staff of color we had um i think we had i didn't count i went into different breakout rooms we had a general introduction and then we went into breakout rooms we've all become very adept over the year and moving in now to breakout rooms uh but uh the breakout rooms went by um elementary middle high school and then any district-wide positions so um we had what about 20 or so candidates come told something like that yeah they said they were going to come they registered but didn't come but all in all was very successful and i'm hoping that we're going to be able to hire um some people um that that came but the one thing that we do guarantee them for sure is that they will have an interview um sometimes people come that they have a certification that's not relevant to what we're hiring at the time but we encourage them um and we'll keep there we will keep watching if there is a position that comes up to make sure that they have an interview even if it's a position that comes up you know later June or during the summer um so that's my report for this evening thank you for um uh having the opportunity to give all these reports thank you dr boaty move on to 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 request in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant for approval warrant dated April 13th 2021 warrant number 21233 total warrant amount $651,758.94 minutes for approval school committee regular meeting April 8th 2021 is there a motion to approve is there a second second roll call vote miss morgan yes mr cardin yes dr ampie yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes miss exton yes and the chair votes yes subcommittee and liaison reports uh budget dr ampie can't talk now sorry okay community relations miss exton um thank you so uh mr heiner held a chat on april 17th for grade six through 12 and there were 10 participants um and there were some questions that um dr boaty uh responded to in her update and then there were some other questions about um quarantining protocols perhaps changing in the fall and questions about locker use next year and those will be updated uh in the summer in august and we will share that out at that time there is no chat this weekend the next chat is on saturday may 8th for families of children receiving special education services um but all of our meetings are open to anyone in the community to join um and i also want to encourage families with children on 504s um to feel included in that special education um group even though i realize that's not exactly the same um and i think that's everything thank you thank you the curriculum instruction assessment and accountability mr cardin uh i have no report do you want me to give a budget report in kirstie's absence sir thank you i appreciate that uh so we did we did meet i don't remember it was the last week of the week before um i think it was last week before the long range planning committee meeting um the uh long range planning committee meeting um uh the finance committee as i think you all saw saw approved our budget but also approved the creation of the recommending supporting the creation of a study committee basically to study our budget and are the formula that's behind that's that's in the long range plan for our budget um there was discussion about that at long range plan um it's unclear to me how that's moving forward but the there was um agreement that we should move forward on that the question is timing i think mr foskett wants that to happen um immediately i think everybody else thinks it can wait till oh we get a better idea of how we can spend our federal aid money and some other things so um that will proceed uh or not proceed over the next few months did i get that right jane yep that sounds good thanks thank you mr god facilities mr thielman no report policies and procedure mr schlickman a couple things first of all uh just to touch back to my friends in the budget subcommittee the statement was made in town meeting the other night that uh our costs are exceeding the inflation rate but uh i i think the point needs to be made that schools buy things that are not on a consumer price index such as uh medical care and out of district special ed services uh which have increased in costs far beyond the consumer price index so that to compare what we do to a consumer price index really is invalid and i think that we really need to be very specific in terms of cost drivers on the school side uh even without the enrollment increases we faced uh so i just think that's important on the on the uh policy side uh we talked earlier about uh indigenous peoples day and this was adapted by town meeting through articles 12 and 86 in the consent agenda so it is now town policy and i think that we should put on the agenda for next week a motion to uh change our district calendar to reflect indigenous peoples day consistent with the vote of the town article 85 established the land acknowledgement statement and we can either decide that we want to announce it at all meetings or refer it to either policies or community relations as to how often and where to state it so that that's certainly is a topic that we need to uh to resolve that we talked about earlier and finally uh at the request of the chair uh i've talked to mr kutcher about doing a retreat in the summer uh i think that all of us agree that doing a retreat in orientation to build our skills at working with a new superintendent is important and it would probably require for an initial phase to get started of two four-hour sessions be it on a saturday morning or on an evening and in the summer we should be in a position where we'll be able to do it in person together so uh if you can communicate to me parameters over the summer of when you can do it when you can't do it what days or hours would be wonderful or awful uh just as a sketch so i can go and talk to mr kutcher and get some proposed times at work with with the rest of the committee uh does that meet with your approval mr chairman sounds good thank you thank you uh eilington high school building committee mr philman we meet on tuesday dr bodie summarized everything that's going on we meet on tuesday may fourth at six p.m liaison reports does anyone announcements the chair has one announcement uh the rory club of eilington is doing its uh flags for heroes uh at the top of park ava around the water tower i would uh suggest uh members of the committee and the public to go up to the top of the hill there's two giant signs that have been put up it gives you things this fundraises supports uh scholarships for high school seniors future agenda items this is a short one just gave me one a second ago is there any other members that would like fun i would like to i'm uh suggest that uh on our next meeting uh discussion and materials that we sent forward to change our school committee meeting of uh june 10th uh there's a conflict with teacher recognition day so um i will see i will be talking to dr bodie about this and getting materials out to you folks and so it will be discussed to what extent i don't know we all said on this okay we're gone yes mr philman wait a June 10th you want to move the June 10th meeting i'm a discussion on it because there's a conflict with teacher recognition day yeah yeah i'm just okay you don't know the day of the time no okay thank you i just wanted to give people a heads up for our next meeting of potential discussion dr bodie and i will get together and we will get you the necessary materials so that you're prepared for the discussion okay we're going to at this time enter executive session to conduct strategies in preparation for negotiations with union and on non-union personnel or current contract negotiations with union on non-union in which if held in open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct a strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which it's held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective uh the collective uh the issues that we're going to be discussing are principal contracts and a a a memorandum of agreement we will be returning to a regular meeting at at the end of the executive session do i have a motion to go into executive session so moved is there a second second thank you miss merrigan yes mr kyden yes dr ampey yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes miss exton yes the chair votes yes we will now go into executive session uh welcome back everyone the island the school committee has exited uh executive session at this time i will entertain a motion uh with regard to the approval of uh the memorandum of agreement for the triple a contract move approval is there a second again any further discussion roll call vote miss morgan yes mr cardin yes dr ampey yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes miss exton yes the chair votes yes unanimous thank you all i will now entertain a motion for adjournment so moved there a second second not debatable uh miss morgan yes miss mr cardin yes dr ampey yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes miss exton yes chair votes yes thank you folks one down 28 to go whatever have a good job bill have a good weekend night good night