 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington school committee on Thursday April 28th. I'm Liz exton The chair permit me to 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 I don't think we need to do this for the people in the room. So Dr. Janger Hi, Dr. Janger Thank you, and then we're expecting Amy shell a roux at some point as our AHS Tonight's meeting of the Arlington school committee is being conducted in a hybrid model on February 15th 2022 governor Baker signed into law a new session Law extending certain COVID-19 related measures the new law chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 includes an extension until July 15th 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of the governor's March 12th 2020 executive order Suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law the governor's order Which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website 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 Before we begin permit me to offer a few notes First this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded And it's also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI Persons wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website Persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate You're asked to provide your full name in the interest of the interests of developing a record of the meeting All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves Both zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials Also found on the town's website using the novice agenda platform and finally each vote tonight will be taken by roll call All right our first item on the agenda is the school committee public hearing on School choice, so this is something that we need to do Every year it is the policy of this school district not to admit non-resident students under the terms and conditions of the inter district school choice law Massachusetts general law 76 chapter 12 This decision must be reaffirmed annually prior to June 1st by a vote of the school committee following a public hearing So I will open the public hearing on school choice. Is there anyone here who would like to speak on? on school choice Okay, seeing no one we need to If anybody is a participant on an attendee on zoom they can raise their Virtual hand Mr. Slickman and I'm sure I move that we direct the superintendent to notify the board of the department about elementary and secondary education that Arlington will not Be participating in the school choice Program for the 2022-23 school year For the reason of no available seats second All right a motion by mr. Slickman second by mr. Hainer roll call vote mr. Hainer Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yes, dr. Allison ampy Is Morgan. Yes, and I vote. Yes, that's a unanimous vote All right, our next item on the agenda is a nomination and election for the office of vice chair. I Am If anyone would like to say something now, I will let some people speak But then I'm gonna open this up for nominations and we will vote and then we will move on Mr. Slickman madam chair I'm up for reelection next year I am not certain whether I would choose to continue on the committee beyond the end of this term for that reason I will be withdrawing my candidacy Thank You mr. Slickman. I Will now open The floor for nominations for vice chair for Arlington school committee Miss Morgan. I'd like to nominate dr. Allison ampy for vice chair of the Arlington school And I get a second Any other nominations Seeing no other nominations. I will now take a roll call vote for Dr. Allison ampy as vice chair of the Arlington school committee mr. Heiner abstain Mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yes, dr. Allison ampy. Yes, it's Morgan Yes, and I vote yes, that is six in the affirmative and one abstention Congratulations, dr. Allison ampy or the vice chair of the school committee Not happy about taking my name tag with me Okay, well Musical Cheers The next item on the agenda is Public comment for members of the public who wish to address the committee there will be 20 minutes of public comment depending on the number of people who sign up time allotments may be reduced But will not exceed three minutes each Dr. Allison ampy will be the timer and will give the speaker a signal when they have 30 seconds left If the number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 20 minutes The number of speakers may be capped and will be invited to speak based on the timestamp of their email to mystigans The school committee respectfully requests Participants of the public to utilize their camera if possible while speaking and to adhere to the public comment policy BEDH that requires participants to provide their name and address Speakers may offer subjective Criticisms of the school operations and programs as concerned them But in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel Nor against any member of the school community Except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as the operational leader of arlington public schools The public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than the superintendent Additionally the committee will not hear anything that might identify And or infringe upon a student's privacy by name or incident If you would like to sign up to speak, please email e diggins at arlington dot k12 dot m a dot us By 12 noon on the date of the meeting. We have one person signed up for public comment this evening Um janine duffy You might have to yeah, you might have to just move it in right in front of you I have to tell you the last time I was in front of a lot of people like this. It was in court, so Be be gentle with me as I do this again Um, my name is janine duffy and I am a parent of a high school freshman A sixth grader and a third grader at stratton elementary I am also a substitute teacher mainly at stratton since november 29 2021 where I have been almost every day I have worked in every class in that building kindergarten through fifth grade SLC classes gym classes art classes and my favorite music I have worked as the lead teacher or the paraprofessional in those classes I have seen firsthand how the classes work Well and not so well I am aware there are some discussions about downsizing teachers and increasing class sizes As a parent as well as someone who is working in that building almost every day I want to say I am firmly against getting rid of any teacher No matter the school And making class sizes bigger Many of these students need more one-on-one assistance for things like math and reading Not necessarily IEP level help but help nonetheless Making classes bigger will not allow teachers to work with these students Also, larger class sizes are not helpful to those children Not at the social emotional levels. They should be thanks to schooling over the last two years I am a parent of children during the first use of modulars at stratton It seems super easy to use these modulars again not problematic I am uncertain as to why one or two modulars cannot be you cannot be used Until a way to make stratton bigger is figured out Possibly moving the fourth or fifth grades to those modulars to make space for smaller To make space for smaller classes is an option that could possibly work To ease lack of space issues in that building I truly feel class size should either be kept the same or smaller I am I am not happy that my soon-to-be fourth grader will be in a class with possibly 25 children or more in that class I am hopeful that school enrollment increases as arlington is a great town to raise children in And I truly hope any teacher who may be told to start looking elsewhere is able to stay within the arlington school district Thank you Well done Next on our agenda is the ahs student representative to the school committee. Amy, but i'm not seeing her Okay, if she comes we can loop back to her So we'll move on to our next agenda item Report from cpac on the survey that they Shared with the community. So Welcome sarah burton in a huang and jessica dombrowski And you'll need to pass that mic along as you are speaking And someone's gonna share I guess I am I thought you have I love these slides. I just have to sign into the meeting Yes, it'll work I'll come get it It's gonna work. Hold on that the clicker will not work. So I will I'll tell me when you're ready to go All right, yep Thank you for having us today on your agenda As you know, we are special education parent advisory council Which is mandated by massachusetts state law for every district that has a special education department Our volunteer board members are in a huang our chair sarah barton our co-chair and i am jessica dombrowski cpac secretary We conducted a survey to determine how well cpac was known to parents in the district and also to identify the parent concerns We based our survey on surveys of others others area cpac and In order to distribute the survey we sent it out to the superintendent newsletter To our own list serve and to our facebook page We realized that the survey was only available online and in english And we also knew that the people who were responding to our survey were already highly involved in the district Uh to go over our survey results here sarah inay Thanks jess a quick look at the makeup of our survey respondents Um, this is our first year of what we hope will become an annual survey So this will act as a baseline for comparison in future years The survey was open from mid january to mid february and we got 136 responses all of them identified as parents Of those 105 reported having one or more child served on an iep Um for context uh according to the desi profile for aps We currently have around nine hundred and fifty students on ieps Um as you can see from the second graph their respondents are weighted towards parents of elementary school students And I think that may be partly because we had quite a few respondents with multiple children at different age groups That kind of end up having at least one in that group, but also I think that um Elementary school is a time of high parent involvement and I think that's indicated by who Completed our slides Next slide One back The largest number of respondents reported autism or adhd is their child's primary disability Followed closely by learning disabilities and quite a few parents who indicated a learning disability went on to further indicate that their child was dyslexic The placement data was roughly in line with desi as you can see in the second chart Uh with the exception of that other choice category, which um includes several students attending minuteman high school As well as parents who um independently placed their children in private school or home school and I think um It's important to keep in mind that this is the first year we've done this survey and I think that there was um some pent up feedback from Uh previous years from parents who have since left the district and that's what you're seeing indicated in that other choice kind of category So before I hand things over to in a for a more qualitative look at the results of the open-ended questions Um, I want to take a quick look at these questions. Um that we asked about the district on a five point scale So one was strongly disagree and five was strongly agree Um, I think they tell the story of the data as the whole and what you'll hear from some of the the quotes that we have coming up So the first question was I know who to contact regarding my students IEP and I feel comfortable doing so And you can see from the the graph that that's a very positive Result so most people in this district with a child on an IEP Who responded to our survey felt like they knew who to contact and they were happy to do so Things start to level out with the second question, which was I feel like an equal partner with APS And then the third question I feel like my students rate of progress is measured effectively Has a negative trend. So we have more answers in that one or two than we do In the four or five And I think the story that we're seeing here Um, and which in a is going to pick up on in just a second is a very engaged parents Who are comfortable reaching out? But who are feeling sort of less confident when they're they're actually having that conversation So the response that they're getting is is the one that's in the middle there So once you're once you've reached out and are in conversation that conversation Is mixed as far as how it's going and then um In that final graph, I think you're seeing frustration Of trying to understand exactly why and how the district is making decisions for their children um And tracking the outcomes of those choices, which I think is where the frustration is coming from in those conversations So in a I will turn it over to you on the next slide So because I don't want to crane my neck Because you pulled where we are So I have more of the qualitative work so uh, I'm just going to stop here for half a second So this is what I'm going to go over as our key takeaways from our our um presentation here So, um First we have a couple of um Strengths in our very caring incompetent staff people reported multiple times. Oh, can you switch slide? Um That I don't know if you can all read that there are we have so many quotes about how loved our staff members are how many teachers are loved And uh to move on to the next slide that goes in hand with we'd love to see better attention And I know that we as a district are working on this We've we've put in that the the five-year plan to increase budgeting And I know that the covet is really put a dent in our ability to hire as as quickly and as Well as we'd like, but it does, you know in this next steps slide The quotes really were like I had a different Coordinator every single solitary year that we've been doing our IEP process thus far and that doesn't lead to good communication And feeling as if families feel Supported by the district Moving on to the next slide Um Most families are incredibly enthusiastic about seeing more scl content across the board Obviously most respondents were in the lower grades, which is where the big push has been thus far. We are moving into Some number of middle schoolers our families are seeing that their kid is coming home with more of that content And they're enthusiastic about that um but But the concern is that There there is increased absenteeism and at the lower grades under the k8 numbers are increasing not decreasing and um And a lot of school refusal is about social emotional learning and social emotional support In our in our district and I think that's indicative of that Um One of the other pieces which we're actually going to address at the state level is is how do we also Change absenteeism, which is a social emotional mental health often issue into one that is not a a penalty driven You know truancy Issue so that it's actually about supporting families and students better in our schools and in our in our districts So, uh, we're actually going to be speaking with shon garbally at our next meeting Um to try to bring that up at the state level as well But we want to bring that to the school committee into our district as a whole to know that this is a trend We're seeing and have been seeing for quite some time next slide I'm going through this quickly communication and transparency um Show me the data like we are we are collecting data across the board. I know that we are it's happening all of the time But as parents We don't have ready access to that data and we don't have All of the information on how that data was collected collected So we'd love to see a sort of a place where what data is being collected? How is it being collected? What type of testing are we doing? What's a sort of like just a rundown of what are we doing with the data that's being collected? And what is that data? I do Start of the process first Sorry, do you want to do start starting in special ed communication? Well in a minute And and and we'd love to see you know some more of the tools that teams are using The other piece is is the the ability to access Special ed has been a challenge for a lot of families. They don't know how that's actually the number one phone call slash email that I get Personally because I put my personal information up on our webpage Is how do I how do I start the process and while we do a basic rights workshop that That alice and elmer helps sponsor every year. It's it's a huge information dump And it's very difficult for a lot of families to really go to that and feel that they understand what they're supposed to do To get that process started. It also only happens once a year and children struggle all year long Uh, so we as c-pack in conjunction with miss elmer are working on Creating a beginner's fact sheet so that it can be available in every building So they know that what the sort of process should look like Um, not the whole process, but just the how do we get our kit assessed? What does that mean? What's the timeline just the basic first steps? um, and we Having spoken to miss elmer and we actually did bring this up with dr. Homan would love to see the district as well and also actually, uh, mr. Marin drew behind us We'd love to see a fact sheet of or some sort of presentation for families to understand What types of supports are actually happening every day? What does tier one support mean? What does mtss actually look like? What are they doing in that time? Who's doing it? How are we evaluating? Many families have not a single clue what that means or don't have a robust enough understanding of what that is To figure out whether or not they feel that their kid is being supported if if if this district even knows that their child Is start struggling yet when they're seeing their these struggles at home So we'd love to see those be created, right? What is rti all of these acronyms that those those of us in education understand but not everyone else does um What was the next thing? Next slide Oh, that was to show me the data I skipped ahead and skip ahead to the next one after that too. Um A communication inter-school and between schools and within schools There's information that seems to not cross Borders between schools the there when a kid is moving up into with a 504 for instance We're hearing this from 504 families who are often people who have had IEPs as well Um, not all that information seems to get transmitted to the next building Not every service provider for a kiddo seems to know what other service providers are also doing And there is some amount of overlap sometimes So we would love to to just know that this is something that's being worked on And we actually applaud the district for Promoting mizalma into an assistant superintendentship for student services because we feel this will actually help communication Across things like scl and guidance and special ed Have better lines of communication and therefore better communication out to families Oh extraction of pets um reading curriculum So we did this back in december January February so we we created this for survey back in november and We're working on november december and uh, which is also the time you all work talking about and creating and coming up with better um ways of of Reading instruction and so the thing we got from a lot of the parents is this as you guys were doing this too is They'd love to be a part of the process. They want to be involved in how you create You know and and bring in and support that that initiative So that was one the other thing is a lot of people said we'd love to see PDs for neurodiverse folks being done by neurodiverse folks and not just in special ed Not just for us for our service providers But for our general educators as well A lot of people are finding that while there is the occasional general educator that seems to be up on this data Most of them really don't understand that About half their classroom is actually neurodiverse uh, and and they're not quite To use a layman's term grocking the the process of what's going on in other people's heads in that classroom So we'd love to see them come, you know people who have Who identify as neurodiverse come in and actually do PDs for our for our faculty and staff And uh, finally, um, again communication communication communication We'd we'd love to see more of it hear more of it and have it be more clear And and as a c-pack we we'd love to be better utilized honestly I think that we can get messaging out to families better in ways that are more readily digestible Then sometimes the district does and and conversely we'd love to actually be able to participate more on uh district Decisions on what's happening. Um, and how we're coming up with new initiatives And that is the whole shebang and I did it. Well, not as quickly as we have to It's a lot of information questions Thank you Um press turns from the committee Mr. Slickman I'm impressed by the report I also By by by my very nature worry about the stories that are not being told Um, and I'm sure you're aware that you know, I'm looking at the um 135 responses and I figure that We've got about 930 or so special, uh students with disabilities in the district. So we're Catching about 15 percent of the population with the survey Um, I I would guess it's actually closer to 20 because many many families have more than one more than one child Yeah, that's that's a valid point The other thing is I'm looking at your distribution and the responses half half the responses came from grades three to five Uh, which is probably Which makes a lot of sense in my mind is this is at the age where People are into the system long enough. So they're interacting with it. They're aware of it. They've had experiences and can More likely to make a response So my question really is Looking at the high school looking at oddison looking At the people who are not Represented demographically by the distribution Do you think there's something that we need to go looking for that isn't reflected in the results? Um, I think that's always the case. I mean we did state up front that that there are real limitations to this survey And and and I think that that You know, um, we didn't take any real demographic data of families. Um, and so that would be an interesting Look at what populations we may also be missing but If if these are the complaints of the most Engaged families because they're going to be the ones that are most likely to Participate, right? Um If these are the people with the best access and these are the the the Concerns they already have It it really does mean that we have bigger and greater problems for those who have a harder time accessing Everything from language learners to people whose parenting and family systems are not as privileged It just is but this is a place to start from And this is a place to grow from was this a very small survey because you're showing us three questions No, there were so, um The survey also had a component of questions that were more c-pack focused. So is c-pack useful for you? What kind of You know workshops, would you like to see from c-pack? Do you have a suggestion for? um c-pack Because I really like your use of so statements here and the strongly agree to strongly disagree paradigm I think it's a very good way to construct the survey and then the other the other component that's not really discussed here was There was a small section on Sort of covid related Discrepancy so did you feel as though you lost any services and where were they compensated for? But the data from that was just so fuzzy and people's understanding of whether they had or had not received services Was really fuzzy was very fuzzy. So sometimes Parents are replying that they don't feel that they received enough services But that's a different question than whether or not you've been denied Services so that was that was more difficult to draw conclusions from Sometimes fuzzy questions lead to good questions. So, you know, keep keep on keeping on I mean, I'm really interested in what you're doing and I think this this is really Good conversation. We're starting to happen. I hope we continue to do this more And you span you learn from your fuzziness and do another survey and get more participation but Congratulations on this work. I'm very very pleased with what I'm seeing in the work that you're doing Thank you Mr. Cardin Thank you. I also want to thank you all for your hard work over the years I know you Several of you have been offices for a very long time. So thank you for for keeping these seatback running And for doing this survey because it takes a lot of work to put it together So just a couple of comments and thoughts For for miss Elmer and and dr. Holman to help follow up on So communication is is very important and I think Helping c-pack communicate is also something that we can do In the past we didn't have emails with parents, but now we have Parents getting documents through easy IEP. We should have a easier way to email parents That are special education parents To say we have a c-pack meeting coming up. We have a survey. We have this Seminar happening. So hopefully we can start doing that in a in a more Institutional manner to help you communicate with parents that they're they're not quite aligned with power school And so that's how the majority of emails go out. So it's actually an it problem. We've discussed this in the past So, you know, yeah, and then you make a very good point about mtss if you look at our website There's really no information about it. Um other other districts have At least the sheet describing what it is not as much detail as they should but So obviously I think that's something we should as a to-do we should work on And the child find the the whole You know besides putting out that statement in the I guess it's still in the newspaper That if you you know have an issue you contact Arlington schools, but for current parents that are already in the district I think you know reminding them about About how to request an evaluation talking to your teacher Getting I forget what the teams are called at the elementary school that meet Weekly to to review Yeah, yeah, um the support student support teams just just communicating to parents that those are available Because it's almost like it's a secret so So I have an anecdote there for student support teams because I agree with you. Um I'm a very clued in parent Right and I have a child with an IEP and for my younger child who is is not on an IEP I had some concerns and because I was already clued in I could go speak with the social worker And she said oh the teacher already flagged him for a student support team Meeting and we've already put these various structures in place and I had no idea That that was even a possibility and I felt Much better Knowing that that level of support was available because I knew that probably we would not qualify for any sort of Special education or as a disability or not accessing the curriculum But there was a need for support there and I didn't even know that Teachers were meeting teams of teachers were meeting in that way To address it. So I really think this could be an easy win for the district if More information was out about what support does already occur Yeah, and then the the last issue that you raise which is also very important is is the turnover issue I see that we're already advertising for two team chairs at the elementary school for next year I you know, I don't know we need we need to start if we're not tracking the data We need to start tracking the data on team chairs and coordinators in particular Because there does seem to be a bit of a revolving door and I hear well It's the same in other districts. Well, let's get data from other districts and compare To verify that because we need to see is it is it salary? Is it people Advancing in the careers and it is natural or is it something else that we need to address? So hopefully we can we can look into that and I I also want to say Let's think more than just what other districts are also experiencing Let's actually survey people and say what is it that they need to stay in a spot Right, our families love our providers So why are we losing them and many of our providers have also said they really enjoy working with our Families So yes, it happens systemically where there is turnover Education is a relatively high turnover profession. However There seems to be a higher turnover rate in in special education and related services. So The like I think there's a bigger question than just what are what are we doing that that everyone else is also doing Great. Thanks again Dr. Allison ampe Thank you for your presentation. It was really helpful I wanted to follow up on one question that Len had mentioned um Again talking about cpac and its communication. I just wonder what What kind of reach out do you have for parents who Just had a child who's identified and and Getting an IEP, you know, is there a handout or anything that Is given at the IEP meeting, you know that describes cpac and and so we have in the past actually had a handout But the the challenge is when you when you walk out of that meeting you're especially when it's in person You're handed a stack of papers, right? And it's incredibly difficult to digest That much information especially and it's it's also generally a very high stress moment For families and that anxiety means that you can't digest half of the information that you've just been given So even with the flyers that we have provided in the past and the district Actually, I like I send allison the the pdf and she sends it to the admin to make sure they'd get all photocopied out into the all of the the mailers It doesn't register the challenge is that doesn't register So one of the things that is part of what we're we're looking for As a cpac to be better utilized is that I think if the district as a whole utilizes us as well in more committees in more Various workshops, then other people will see our presence It otherwise we we're sort of behind the scenes and it becomes very easy to miss us Okay, thank you. Sure. Yeah Yeah, no, thank you for doing this I had a couple of questions just about the structure of the survey because I I have to know that so that I can like take all of this and turn it into something that Speaks to me. So so the the The narrative were they in response to Questions about communication and transparency over these these were things that you Somebody elected to sort of tease out Yeah, so the questions were actually about Of qualitative analysis on all of our data The question the questions were actually What's working well for you in the district right now? And what where do you see a need for improvement or have you struggled? So they were open-ended in that way and then I went through And kind of did a tally of every time that that something was mentioned and communication and transparency those actual words Come up in in by far the largest number of responses Okay, and so are these the way that they're presented in the slides? Or is this they're just pulled they're pulled from different. No, so they're not it. It's just it's just a That that communication and transparency is the first slide doesn't Is like then it's like Okay, I see so then this so we've got this I get it. I get I get how they're grouped So so it was just those two open-ended questions that generated these primarily. Yeah, and then From parents who interpreted some of the coveted questions in that way Where it was obvious that that they were really talking about some of their other struggles I would include I included some of those. Okay. Yeah, yeah. No, that's helpful. I think you know, I So I can give you we still have the survey It's closed, but I can give you a copy of the survey and the questions that were okay. No, no I mean, I'm sure that it was like I I think that it's been like Holistically pulled together and it it makes sense for yeah This is more of a story like the story from reading all 136 responses. This is the overall feeling that you get from them Yeah, no, definitely. Okay. No, that's helpful and um, you know, I think we just always want to be You know, I I just always want to be careful when I'm reading something that's Being publicly presented that I don't I couldn't ever figure out who any of these kids are Right and it because it's it's a small group and then you know, it I we didn't send it out over email, which I I mean It it seems that that's something that that as a district we could figure out how to do for you I would I would oh it did it did go out over email sent it out in her newsletter. Okay And uh, and we sent it out on our list serve. It was also on facebook Oh, good. Okay, and the superintendent sounded out more than once so like sent it out initially and said we're closing soon and sent It out it again. Oh, good. So it wasn't so this is no, so this is a pretty good sample I honestly 20 of any survey is actually really great for responses like for sure I don't know how much statistical analysis people are generally doing these days, but I've done a bunch of it and 20 Percent response. It's fantastic. Pretty good. So Great, just you know Another thing I forgot Dr. Allison ampe was that we also do a meet and greet every year with the district the cpac and district Come together and do an in-person meet and greet and we publish that size that as best we can as well But again, that's at the very beginning of the school year in september. So in when you're struggling in like january I just want to echo my Thanks for all of the work that you did to to put this out and analyze it and bring it back to us It's a lot of important information and we really appreciate it and I hope we can continue to to follow it on a More regular basis so that we can keep working together. Thank you very much. Thank you All right, we're going to loop back to the ahs student representative Amy Hi Welcome in person. This is exciting I guess a little update for ahs all the spring sports. They're about in the middle of their seasons. Everyone's doing really really well I think spring sports are probably like our best season by far. Everyone's only lost like one game. It's crazy Overall people have definitely been feeling that april break was very well loved and well appreciated Everyone definitely needed it and everyone's grateful for it Um People are also really happy that we're finally ending school on a friday this year I don't know if that was your doing but that was very well planned I'll take it Um Right now most people are thinking about the end of the year and the start of next year regarding like welcoming the freshman to the High school and saying goodbye to the seniors Yeah, great. Thank you so much From district suspensions and school discipline reports and My understanding is that they're broken down. So if we can do One group and then we'll do some questions and then the next is that We'll do I think we were thinking we would do elementary give some time for questions on elementary Do both middle schools give some time for questions on those and then do the high school Time for questions on those I do want to clarify that we're focusing on last school years discipline data You might get some previews about what we're seeing as far as trends so far this year And I'm sure our school leaders would be happy to answer any questions generally But obviously this year's not over. So we're still compiling and gathering All of that and we'll have reports to you earlier in the school year next year is my goal Then then right now, but I will turn it over to dr. McNeil who's going to be doing the elementary discipline report Thank you So I will start off We will start off with the elementary report and we'll have our middle school principals present And then we have dr. Janger who is zooming in So let's make sure this works. So as dr. Holman said the discipline report Is starting off from the 18 or 19 20 school year for the elementary so in this in this particular report We'll look at the data overview steps for that are in place for supporting behavior And then all the data that we're presenting and all the reports has been disaggregated Based on the demographics of our students and then I'll open it up for comments and questions at the end of the this report so just Overview of the data without getting into all the different graphs, but I will Go through each slide and show you what the graphs represent But this is the overview between september of 2019 and up to april of 2022 There's been one out of school suspension at the elementary level And I just want to point out that during the 2021 school year. We were uh hybrid remote So that was because of the covid 19 pandemic And I just want to highlight some of the things that are going on at the elementary level that are supporting And we're trying to be as proactive as we can we understand that you know the pandemic coming out of the pandemic that has Definitely impacted students social emotional learning and their mental health development So these are some of the things that we are putting in place. We realize that Impact on our students Okay That was me. Um, and so just looking at that. We are Continuing to implement responsive classroom. Is that me? Okay, I will pause at this particular moment. You want to go to the Slide show Is this going to work still? Oh, perfect. Thank you So again, just going back to this slide now that all of our viewers from home can see this who are zooming in um So again, I'll just reiterate that we are very invested in Implementing the responsive classroom approach to building classroom communities We actually have training that is going to take place for our middle school educators and we have our Elementary basic and advanced courses that are being offered this summer We've had a number of staff sign up for that and I want to just Recognize sarah bird for being able to find grant money in order to support Of the offering of these two courses We have our second step curriculum that has been adopted for the explicit scl instruction We have three of our schools that are participating in the Multi-tier systems of support academies for positive behavior intervention and support also want to recognize Madame Pierre Maxwell and Gibbs who are also participating in that academy We've hired a scl coach who has been spending time within classrooms and coaching Our teachers on how to integrate scl strategies into their everyday instruction We've hired full-time assistant principals at the elementary level. Thank you school committee for approving that And that has also been helpful with behavior management within the schools We have the panorama student data results that we're using to actually Hone in on certain areas this spring. We just had a meeting with the principals today They're going to identify various things that they would like to focus on because they've developed action plans based upon the data They're received and we're going to customize our Surveys to see how we are Progressing in those areas of concern And then we also have the social social and emotional learning indicator system Which is a basically like a common assessment that we've been given to students in grades three through twelve And there is a self assessment of how they Are on their own perspective and how on their various scl skills So we're also going to look at that data in order to be proactive and to understand how to individually support The students in the classroom. So i'm just going to flip through the charts as you can see The I think the As you can see at the bottom The zeros and you can see at the top is how the data has been desegregated and that's for uh 1920 As you see in 2021 we had our one out of school suspension And then this is up to april the data. So we have zero Suspensions or other discipline consequences and so I will now open it up for comments and questions and I also wanted to Definitely applaud our The building administrators at the elementary level and all of our teaching staff for being very proactive and just taking of Of a different approach to how we address discipline situations and And trying to use it as a learning situation for the students and hone in on the skills that we need to focus on in order For them to be well adjusted to their environment So now we'll open it up to questions. Mr. Hayner Dr. McNeil, uh, thank you for this. This is really great. Have you had an opportunity to look back be prior to 19? 2019 to do a comparative I think this is great where it's coming from. But yes, if you can remember we did do a multi-year discipline report. Um I'm I'm everything pre-pandemic is kind of fuzzy to me, but we did do a multi-year That's why we picked it up from 1920 because the multi-year discipline report was up to 18 19 and we but we have looked back at that data Um, and so yes, we look at I guess where I'm coming from is this looks really great If we had problems before and things are being resolved If the if we had the same results prior with No discipline problems are very few Then keep up the great work and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you miss morgan so I guess for me, I appreciate that we're getting a report and this is part of what we're expected to get I Not a whole lot to like pull out here, right? I mean other than like so, I guess, you know, I'm mostly interested in slide One two three four, right the sort of behavior support piece Right because that's kind of where the rubber is meeting the road if Um, and and that's I think sometimes where we see the tension And where you know, I sometimes hear from elementary teachers that Yeah, well, of course there aren't any discipline problems because we're not Supposed to refer students to the office. We're not supposed to ask for administrative support to Help with with behavior issues in the classroom. The expectation is that we're supposed to deal with them And so I guess I don't I don't really think this this slide is is the intent of the presentation Today, so I don't I don't want to get too deep into it But I do think that that this is the this is the piece that that I want to know I want to learn more about and and how As a committee in our budgeting and policy making process We can support Both administrators and teachers in this behavior management because obviously like we're we're keeping the students from being Detained, I guess you detain nine-year-olds. Um They're not being detained. They're not being spelled. They're not being suspended, right? So like that's good Um, but but what's happening? Before that right and and that's And that's that's I think where we We need to learn more and especially as we come and start to have a few consistent school years and You know, we're looking at the the pbis and the mtss and the elementary schools You know, I think this is where the real conversation is. So I'm glad this slide is here I appreciate it's not this is a very like this is like this is part of what you guys have to give us Um, but this for me slide four is the the meat of all of this, especially at the elementary level So I appreciate it being included. I think this is the beginning of a really good conversation. So thank you I just so I for me this report reinforces the importance of the assistant principles Was that kind of like one big that's a big message out of this is that that's critical for maintaining Supporting behavior in the elementary schools making sure teachers are supported to make sure The principal is supported. So I think it's I just think it's something when it comes to budget time That's what we have to be conscious of That's my takeaway. Is that would that be like I think that's a fair assessment and I also want to I don't necessarily think that the message to the teachers are like they don't report discipline behaviors I think that we do a lot of support and try to be proactive and we a lot of teaching And so I will say if you walk into any elementary school and I've been in classrooms Dr. Holman has been in classrooms I mean kids are engaged in learning and we do have behavior This is not to send a message that we don't have behavior challenges But I do want to applaud the principals and the teachers at the elementary level for how we address those behavior challenges and not use discipline as a way to Resolve those issues. We have social workers that are very involved. We have principals So it's a it's a team approach to how we address behavior And so I just want to make sure that I'm emphasizing that and And we've known through research that suspending kids out of school And even in school suspensions detaining them that is not really the most proactive way of resolving any type of Behavior issue And so I just want to make sure that I and yes Assistant principals are part of that team And so the consultation and the things that they do with the teachers and other support Within the classroom has definitely be added to that Number of support or that amount of support that we have at the elementary level So I do want to on the behalf of The elementary principals. Thank you for approving that initiative And we want to keep it in the budget. That's the idea. Well, yes That's the point I'm trying to make. Yeah, okay. Thank you. I appreciate that and I appreciate your support for that Thank you I wanted to know if you can speak to how responsive classroom and the second second step curriculum work together, you know, what Are they overlap? Are they totally separate? I think they complement each other I think again responsive classroom is an approach to building like different Classroom communities. I think as you get into the explicit A second step curriculum. We're talking about understanding and having kids understanding like Just teaching like the different feelings that you may have and how to address and manage your own behaviors There's like five different competencies under castle that we tried to make sure we Integrate into those lessons. And so I think those lessons are talking about language Understanding your emotions and how to respond and how to manage them. So I think that's where those Explicit SEL can fit into the responsive and responsive classroom can complement each other Thank you Thank you for your question. So I'm going to turn it over now We're going to madame pierre max. Well the principal of the Gibbs is going to do her report And do you want Just do you want to do them both together and then have questions Okay, and then mr. Mairinger mr. Brian Mairinger who's principal of Of the Addison middle school will do his next. So I'm going to give you the the key Good evening everyone. Thank you for having us madam chair dr. Holman I am happy to be back here tonight to talk a little bit about How we're doing at Gibbs this year with Supporting our students and our approach to discipline We are a continuation of what's happening in elementary school in regard to using responsive classroom as the core philosophy we use with our students and We all know that our students were in a very different setting the year before coming to school and they all back full time So I think the staff The support staff the teachers have done an excellent job Using our practices that we have in place for the children. There's many of these practices They are not new to the children, but we we taught them to them and using our core values the three years We've brought on a few Surveys that really helping us collecting data to really help us decide on how we're supporting the students This year we we added the cell survey that Definitely give us a good Overview of the children's capacity when it comes to their executive functional skills Dr. Magnal alluded to the castle competency. They are self-awareness self-management responsible Decision-making relationship skills social awareness So that cell is survey is just like you do give an academic survey to see where the student are This one does the same from a social emotional Aspect to really give us a sense of where are their strengths? Where do we need to support them more? And the staff really has been working Relentlessly on really trying to understand the students differentiating for them We really make great use of that advisory block in the morning to really teach them those intrinsic values And see that that they transition throughout the school day We added a social worker last year that has been really phenomenal Expending the kind of support we have for the students We met we meet regularly using our mtss leadership team our We met with the teachers in learning currency meetings and then we have a social emotional wellness team And those teams function In sync to really trying to differentiate what we're doing for the students. So for example the mtss team is looking more at Based on the conversation that's happening in the learning community meetings What kind of capacity do we need to build for the teachers or what do we need to reteach for the students? When the social workers or the councils push in what can they support? What kind of short lesson they can do to help the students through a conversation We had one else in particular where we saw Those students had even more challenges social emotional challenges So we send the entire team to receive a professional development on really understanding executive functional skills And what does that mean? How do you put that in a classroom in real life to really looking at our students? We're neuro diverse. What do we do? They went they came back and they really made quite a few adjustment On helping those students the wellness team is actually looking at every student by students What's going on that students what intervention is in place? Is it working? What information we have from the home that can assist us on making better decision keeping the line of communication open So these are some of the things we are doing this year to help maintaining And keeping the students in school engaged in class really using that logical consequences We also use the result from the panorama survey to really listen to our students and go back to them And give them a voice really make sure that they understand how to access the support and what does it mean? When you need a service, we're doing relationship mapping That's really helping us to understand making sure every child has a caring adults They can connect with if they are something we really want to make it three to five adults But we know we're not there yet. So that's what we're working on that children Feel safe in the school. They feel that they have someone they can go to Come to with any kind of information that may be battering them or causing them not to be able to access learning So last year We presented this data. We had two external suspension one intervention and three logical consequence slip This is in addition to those Conversation the counselors would have in small group during lunch meeting with the students This is when those t1 intervention have not worked We're getting to t2 and we really have to put something on the book because we've spoken to those students and we also identified the Race of the children and in their sex. We add that this is the Graph and this is the data for this year Again last year most of our students were also A third were remote learning remotely and the other two third were in person in a hybrid format So this is the data for so far this school year We've had three interventions seven logical consequences two external suspension And this is the breakdown of the students who have received those Consequences and this is the graph So next step we are continuing to really looking at the resources that we have How are we using those resources? We are still in training with pbis pbis is helping us Having a format to collect the data and to compile it to have a better understanding For example, what what time of the day what day of the week or what classroom Where we're seeing that children needs more support. We are making sure that all of our staff are Responsive classroom train. We had quite a few new people in the building this year. They've been Paired with people who already understand responsive classroom In addition to that as dr. Magnal Alluded to miss bird has gotten a grant where we're going to have a responsive classroom come to Gibbs To do an assessment of how well we're doing Implementing the program so we can plan for professional learning for the entire building for next school year In addition to that all the new staff to Gibbs will have signed up to receive the full training during the summer in the month of june Just to make sure that we are all have a good understanding on how to support our students We are giving those the mental head screener really tried to help us identified From early in the year which students really need co2 or co3 intervention. We've done that last year. We're doing it this year It's been very successful. I spoke about the cellist earlier the sign of suicide We just went to take that training noticing that we had quite a few Young of our trailblazers who were dealing with this You know trauma base So we are learning how to respond to it how to notice it We are setting to do professional development for the teachers In that next week and then we have another group of staff who's going for the training so we can really be Better capacity improve our capacity how we noticing what the students need and Uh Also the parent panorama survey as dr. Magnus suggested We are looking at what section that we want to focus on so we can continue to support the students Just two days we started in conversation with the fifth grade elementary school principal to create some alignment As the children transition from elementary school coming to Gibbs. They're coming from seven different schools We will be in conversation about what can we do to make that transition a little easier On how we're collecting data from them in the spring So Gibbs can be ready to use that data in the fall to assist the students and plan for them So we are looking at different aspect of transitioning the children for the fact that it's it's a short year Because we have to transition them again to artisan So we are creating a bridge on both end of the sixth grade to collaborate at elementary and uh speaking with Mr. Merringer to plan that bridge just today we met on our first official Transition conversation on making sure that children we've worked with we are supporting They have a good sense of what's the support that's in place What made it successful if it's not quite there yet? What can they do to make sure when the children transition? They don't have to learn what we've already learned in helping them Having access to learning That is my presentation if you haven't well, we'll wait and voila Oh Thank you very much for having me as well tonight. It's good to see everyone here in person It's been a while since we've all been in the same room I just wanted to report on the last three years of discipline I don't have an update for this year, but we're more or less on Kind of the same trajectory this year that we have been in past years. So The views that the discipline at the artisan is that all students should feel physically Emotionally and psychologically safe at school Safety is what I usually tell a lot of people is my number one job is to make sure the students feel safe in school At the artisan in middle school We have a lot of 13 and 14 year old students who make mistakes and we want them to learn from their mistakes We want things to be a teachable moment as best that we can When possible, we'd like to have students take responsibility for things that they do And hopefully to fix them with restorative justice when possible And we really try to make sure that students know that they shouldn't have their education disrupted by their classmates If you look at the data for the last three years You will notice that students who identify as male are much more likely to be suspended or received detention than students who identify as female Special education students are disproportionately suspended or are issued detentions African-american students are disproportionately suspended or issued a detention For the last three years. There was less than one detention issued per day And a majority of our suspensions are in school Instead of going over all of the kind of data in the slides that I've provided You will notice I just want to go over them real quickly For example in year 2018 to 19 You'll notice that If you break it down by gender 30 students were males that were suspended opposed to four female IEP's half the students who were suspended were on IEP's one of the big things that we were really dealing with at that time was vaping It we're seeing a lot less vaping right now in our schools I think parents are really looked at What vaping is about nicotine and addiction? And I think they've become more vigilant and I think we're seeing a lot less vapes right now in our schools Um detention data kind of tracked a lot with suspension data The 2019 to 2022 Once again, you'll see the disparity between males and females You also see the high number of students who are on IEP's Um the biggest conflict that year we really had student conflicts We had some physical altercations that happened at the oddison and Then for the 2020 2021 year in which we were in hybrid for most of the year You'll notice that we had 15 students who were suspended Um a lot of these students were on IEP's most of our students who were on IEP's During the hybrid year were actually in school four out of five days So they were a little bit more in school and some of these students I think struggled with being in school during a pandemic um We didn't have detention last year many of our Kind of groupings were pretty small class sizes were really small We didn't really feel that There were a lot of students that were really served by having any sort of consequences and the students for the most part Were extremely well behaved Um looking at the combined three years You'll notice the discrepancy in gender 62 Students were male and 10 were female. You'll notice 60 percent a little bit skewed by the year previous But we're still over 50 percent of the students who are suspended are on IEP's If you look at the racial breakdown You notice that our white population is a little over 70 percent Where the number of students that are being suspended are about in the mid 60s Our african-american population is about three and a half percent And we suspended 10 students over the three years, which is about 14 percent. You notice the disproportionality there Four students identified as asian that's six percent of the students we suspended 11 percent right now is our asian population Five students identified as multi-race non hispanic And we had about six percent And we suspended about a rate of seven percent of the students There were five hispanic students or seven percent and our hispanic hispanic population was seven percent They do break out one as one ELL student as someone who was a european student The next step and what we're trying to do is continue as an administrative team to make sure we're taking a consistent approach to discipline Continue our professional development around antiracism and the topics of implicit bias white privilege and systematic racism I think our administrative team tries to look and try to feel Like are we bringing any of the biases that we have when we're Going to have certain consequences Analyze the data to identify student needs and appropriate supports Especially when you're looking at students at IEP's are we meeting their needs? And then just making sure that we're looking at ways to get all students feeling successful in school And have a sense of belonging because I think if we have students who feel successful and feel like they belong To part of the community. They're less likely to have consequences and to act And so with that we'll take any uh questions And before we move forward, I just want to add that um part of our practice here in arlington is like principles get a updated Monthly discipline report So we send that out to them and they so they can analyze it They can look at the trends and then they sign it and they send it back to us So we keep track of this and we uh of the discipline on a monthly basis So I just want to let you know like building administrators at all levels get that monthly report So I will now open up. I just wanted to add that Mr. Heiner Is this for both of you and I'll be asking the high school as well Bullying, uh, I didn't see that as a it crosses all areas gender race Size physical size Is that an issue and and how are you dealing with that aspect of it? currently I'm in the process of completing Two investigation with uh alleged bullying complaint. Um, I think Um, it took a great deal of hours to to investigate the matter Part of what I think we need to do is to really provide the education necessary For parents to understand that this is the age where children are getting to know themselves And sometimes they do misbehave. They do get mischievous and um Disagreement between children. It's not always a question of bullying is really teaching them how to be kind How to not Make comment that's not thoughtful in anger when you don't like what you're hearing. So, um, I think um When you're walking in our parent shoes and your child is upset It it can be very difficult for you as a parent to respond to that So we don't have too much of it, but this would be the third one we are addressing The first one was not substantiated and uh, I'm not I haven't completed this process yet So I can speak to where we're going to be on it. But certainly We also are very proactive when We have to investigate this kind of matter of putting safety measure in place and making sure that Both sides get extra time with the counselors to really address whatever lacking skill that may have been Upset so the children can do better and also keeping everyone aware. We don't make sure the same thing doesn't repeat Yeah, I think we take bullying extremely seriously. We've seen You know what the results of bullying Um, anytime there are any allegations made by either students or parents or teachers fill us in We're going to investigate that fully Um, sometimes we find that it is bullying most times. It is not mostly times It is peer conflict, but in both regards we try to bring in the students and try to Be able to solve the problems to the best of our ability. We bring in the counseling staff um, I think the You know counselors at the oddison do a great job of making sure that they're proactive as much as possible and find out What's happening and for a lot of us It's making sure that the kids feel comfortable and if we can get them together There are some instances which bullying happens in which we have to separate make different plans for kids So that we keep them safe, but it's something that we we take very seriously and we investigate You know as soon as we hear something Thank you. I appreciate that and you resolved the second question I was going to ask if you have reoccurrences You say you stated yourself that sometimes you have to separate when you say you separate. Is it changing the schedule sometimes It all depends if if we do have something that is bullying then we need to protect the victim And so it might change a schedule or it might change a classroom or a teacher that we need to separate from And I assume you're working with the person that the perpetrator as well to rectify it So it won't happen again. Yeah, we have to work obviously with both families and both and both parties that are going to be impacted, you know, you know at 13 or 14 years old Kids are making mistake. I think over the last few years. We're seeing increasing problems online As we're seeing more things in in the cyber world that we sometimes Don't get at don't get information But we talk to parents all the time that if you feel like your child is going to be impacted Educationally because of something that's happening outside at school in the cyber world like we need to know Are you getting support from the parents for the most part? Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, I would think I mean I think people right now Especially with the pandemic I think you're seeing increased levels of anxiety and depression And I think parents are very concerned of the social emotional well-being of their children and they They want to make sure that their kids are safe. Thank you for all your work both of you Thank you miss morgan um But i'm pure max. Well, I I swear I asked the same question last year when we were here uh Can you Interventions and logical consequence slips right are like new buckets Where where do those Is that like are those More serious than a detent like i'm pretty clear on in school suspension out of school suspension and detention I can like I know where things I know how that looks but where do interventions and logical consequences fall in That like hierarchy of severity So it's the intervention could be A project the child has to work on It takes a little longer. There's a lesson. There's a skill that's being taught By the social worker or with the teacher or with the assistant principal Whereas the logical consequence could be something so for example Can I give an example as long as it doesn't identify a student? So maybe a hypothetical Okay, hypothetically Hypothetically a child may take a pencil And go and scribble On the wall And then we speak with the parent and the parents like they should clean the wall You should give them a glove and give them a bucket and they clean the wall that would be a logical consequence And it doesn't take time during school Classes it takes time where it's not we're not pulling the child out of learning To to remove to do that A child may have to stay after school to have a conversation with a teacher About an incident and something they have to learn because they didn't have a chance to learn it while something was happening So is that one an intervention or that will be a logical consequence? I guess i'm just surprised that there's only seven of them I I would think that those conversations happen because it's not every conversation that's listed as a logical consequence We do have a lot of conversation in between. There's tons of them Mrs. Greiner One of the you know Advantage we have we have an assistant principal who was the former coordinator of special education She truly sees the children with that udl mindset and really approach from a corrective measure you know listening Counseling the teachers and the students speaking with the parent all that we don't list all of that We certainly have you had a fun call home or you had a conversation with the parents and the students But when we actually these have not worked and we've had the conversation a few times And there's actually a deed that needs to be rectified Then the children actually has to do something outside of you had the conversation Let's say you not remembering to bring your homework So you're going to have a conversation with the teacher about okay This is three strategies you can use to remember to bring your homework Or you have to write your homework on the agenda It's not necessarily a logical consequence, but we're having conversation that They're not always taking place after school. They are taking place in a instance during maybe an mtss block or Mrs. Gardner would just talk to the children for a few minutes. So Is that a logical consequence or an intervention or none of the above? They all add up to they all add up to Getting to that place every time I speak to a child or Mrs. Gardner would address a child Yes, we want it to be logical whether it's a short-minute conversation or not But what you asking am I list? Listing every single conversation. No We're not I guess I'm just confused with like the seven and the three and it feels like very precise, but I don't understand How like this conversation and that and that plus that equals like I don't I don't I guess I just don't I don't know how We get to seven Maybe they were more on the child had a specific task To work on on improving not repeating the same mistake Okay, whereas the other one were more okay We had a conversation and then you went back to class Or we had a fun call with your mom and your mom talked to you and we kind of monitored It was that you didn't have to actually do a task and an intervention is probably more extended of a Project it wasn't just a one time you work on a long Project sometimes your parent may assist you we may have two different like we had someone who had Challenges with not telling the truth. So we selected a few different books that makes that point and have conversation about okay What was the story in that? What did the character do? How was that helpful? Okay, so think about what happened with you. What can you do differently? And why is that you go think about that and then we come back yet another one to make sure that it's not a one time You done you have a long time to really Understand what was your mistake what you need to learn to do differently? And we kind of watch over time a little bit and until it's done And you can have more than one person working with you on that Okay, thank you. You're welcome very much Dr. Allison amp. Thank you um Mr. Merringer I had a question for you. I'm hoping my The presentation that I've got here has my notes is in the process of crashing So we'll see Anyway, when I was going through first, thank you for giving us this in advance. It was really helpful when I was going through The thing that really stood out to me is how high The representation was for students on IEPs And when I did some when I looked up some numbers and did some math When I'm calculating and this is for 2019 2020 school year That that year disabled students as as they are turned by the A department of elementary and secondary education had a 20 times rate of suspension versus non-disabled and This makes me feel like Maybe we're doing you know, is there something more we could be doing for these students? Is there something that we're not doing for them now? That would help them With their behavior problems before they get to suspensions and So from what you've said that was a Somewhat anomalous year, but the numbers are pretty high in the other years too So it I I still you know, I'm not discounting the need for The professional development around anti racism and etc But I'm also concerned about the specific population of students on IEPs and whether we're missing something or Not doing something right Or anyway, I just And I wonder if you or the administration could speak to that. Thank you. No, I you know, it pops up like obviously It's one of the things that you can see really clear that we're Suspending our kids on IEPs are getting more detention. That's it's clear. It's glaring And you know, we want our kids to be successful and have a sense of belonging and so First of all in the academic world We know the kids who do well usually in school are a little bit happier in school And usually are better behaved in school. And so how are we reaching these kids? So, you know, over the last couple years We've added a bridge program. We've added a counselor. We've added a reading teacher Luckily the we've added an LC which has gotten classes smaller So hopefully we're targeting the academic success of some of these students and Realizing how we can successfully teach them so they feel like they're successful in school So I think one is the academics and I think another sense is belonging and whether that means extracurricular activities whether it means Next year we're going to look at piloting some advisory lessons. So they have connections with teachers I think the two, you know, we're looking at some Ruler as part of an SCL And we're trying to make sure that when we go back to and you know, madame said earlier We want to make sure that students have a connection with an adult And we want to make sure that they're happy coming to school and they feel successful And I think that's really what we're working towards and hopefully we can look at, you know, what we're doing academically and I do think having the extra counselor the bridge program we've added special educators to the budget. So hopefully Class sizes are also smaller like I'm hoping The success the student feels just because they might learn differently Will make them more enthusiastic about coming to school and also a sense of belonging and how we're reaching kids And how we're explaining to them The different ways that they can be successful in school And I think those are really the two things we have to look at but Going back to your original question. If you look at it and you look at the disproportionality. It's something we have to work on Thanks very much for the report. I guess this is a question to to both of you This is a report on discipline from f y 19 to f y 21 school year s y 19 to s y 21 and we're now in The fourth quarter of this school year and we'll get that report sometime next year. So I'm I'm wondering what what trend you're seeing this year because this is a year in which students are coming back to school after being out of school for a year they're relearning in some cases how to Import themselves within a school building My own theory about some of the turnover you had and teaching is that It's been tough to teach this year because kids are Getting used to being back in the building and it's and that's a challenge for a teacher and there's probably days where the teacher says I'm not going to do this anymore. I think it may be Part of the rationale while we have some vacant positions my own theory may be wrong, but that's what I think so, I mean Could you give us a preview like what do you think this report? I don't need the number I'm not asking for the numbers, but what do you think the report's going to show us next year? That's a big question. I mean, it's you know, yeah, I think we are seeing Different students this year. I do feel like being out of school being in masks I think a lot of the things that we've had to do because we've had a worldwide pandemic Has affected 13 and 14 year old children. It's affected 50 year old adults So you know That's where I am You know, I think that's what's affecting we're seeing, you know, if I had to describe some of the students. I would say A little bit more handsy I'm dealing with a lot more Vandalism than I have in past years I've gotten more complaints from the neighborhood from neighbors in and around the school It's really been the unstructured time. I think when the kids are in class With the teachers, they've been fairly well behaved as they're adjusting back But I think some of the down unstructured time I think has been a little bit more difficult and I don't think that's Something that's just in Arlington. I think that's you know, when I talk to principals from other districts They're having similar things things that are happening on the weekend And I think kids are adapting to the structure. I feel like it's better now Than it was three or four months ago If I could change and I if I could go back in time To september, I might have started the year a little bit differently I think we were so happy to have the students back and we were so concerned about the social emotional learning That we forgot some of the basic structures of talking about like this is how you line up in a lunch line This is how you get from class to class I think we Not to be more structured discipline But just to make sure that we were reminding them of how to do school And I think if I could go back in time I would I would emphasize some of the just basic things Of getting to school But you know for 13 and 14 year old kids who might have missed a full year of school who have been masked for two years I think overall it's been an adjustment period And I think they'll do much better coming up next year in the year before but there has been an uptick I think in certain behaviors I would agree to most of what uh, mr. Merringer have shared We are noticing a greater number of children who's dealing with suicidal ideation Which is a really young age for them to be tackling that which is the reason why We are receiving the training to really have a better capacity on servicing them and supporting them But we are also going to double down on our transition Practices what we do when the children come spending longer time Really teaching them how to use their executive functional skills so they can access learning Spending the first two weeks of school really orientating them. We did do it But I think we move a little too fast through it. So we're going to rethink our Practices how we operate the first two weeks We are hoping to spend sometimes for the staff to really connect with the children playing with them And organizing different fun activities where they can kind of connect the seven schools together So we can assist the children better in making that transition and not just stop there but continuing Being very intentional about what are we teaching them how we're teaching it? And how we assessing that they they know it And so they can be better ready to transition and the connection piece is huge to really making sure that We are Making sure there's a lot of opportunities for them to have voices to feel comfortable to to get to know us and to speak with us so I I would hope that We'll we'll see less children who are Trouble and feel isolated in the school because we're going to try to even harder To give them the services and using the data coming from fifth grade To to get a head start and not just wait till what we're collecting in the fall But how they leaving the seven schools collecting some of that data to start planning ahead Yeah, and the other thing I thank you very much that that helps the um I appreciate the honesty and the candor the other thing I You know, I do I like the fact that our district is focusing on trying to do in school suspensions Someone who experienced that it's apparent. I think it's a good thing. So I think yeah So I I do appreciate that and I'm grateful that that's that's mostly our focus Yeah, I mean, I think we realize kids are going to make mistakes And so we need them to learn from it and it's much better if they're still in the school learning And around adults they can see counselors during the day. Yeah, it makes a it makes a lot more sense Yeah, I think the parent community is Grateful for that I just want to add to what mr. Merringer said I think the word you used was handsy That we've seen some other interesting data trends in the district too that aren't necessarily disciplined But we've had more injuries Particularly during unstructured time than is typical Particularly at the beginning of the year lots of broken bones. They were accidents We assessed playgrounds for safety, but often during some of these unstructured times we've had Total accidents happen But that are sort of the reflection of students just sort of getting used to having their bodies in school all day And some exhaustion that came with that because the Need to sort of persevere through an entire day and have the attention span for that would often get sort of We come out at recess and they would need to be moving around a little bit more So that was one thing that has that really peaked in the fall and has leveled off I would say discipline was also heavier than anybody expected it to be in the fall And has improved over the course of the year at a district level as trends. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Schlegman. Yeah, mr. Thielman basically went in the direction I wanted to go because I was concerned too about Particularly at the Gibbs because they're moving into a new and unique situation with an expanded cohort After being out of school largely the prior year. So that's a huge adjustment and so I'm wondering if In particular there's something you learned this year about the culture rating your rising Fifth graders Fifth graders moving into sixth grade at the Gibbs and the sixth to seven that the building transition to the oddison This year that was sort of different than the past and that you might be Looking to change as you're meeting the needs of this year's cohort moving up It's only been year number two So But we did notice having the children Coming into the building being virtual and doing Hybrid it wasn't having them the entire day all year long. So I think hence maybe the reason why we didn't spend as much time we should have on Transitioning them and we teaching and we teaching those skills and taking longer time We recognize and realize Our school centered around social emotional learning and transition It's really important that this takes a priority and that we pace ourselves I I don't think the teachers are not quite comfortable We want to start learning In the subject as soon as we enter But we also understand the benefits and the teachers do realize that the benefit we get From really taking time to teach the routine the procedures the expectation And giving them time to learn them because as soon as we hit January the children are only developmentally are shifting in their body. They also have to be Ready to transition to OMS and there There are expectation that there are some things they would be able to do better From when they left elementary going into middle school. So we're really working on a unintentional way of transitioning them and part of that at the beginning It's also the connection piece the connecting adult piece. We we working as a whole staff We're doing a book study right now on this book is anti-racist and a big part of it is about identity It's about connecting with the children So for the last three months and until the end of the school year the staff has been Being facilitating in doing the book study themselves So then we can understand how to roll it out with the children And we're hoping to also connecting with parents over the summer so they can be privy to What we're doing what we're planning to do and get the cooperation Another area to connect with the children and hopefully hope helping them to to access learning Much better and being happier being in school I think one of the first aha moments I had in September was I was Talking to one of the seventh graders and I was like well at Gibbs. How did you do this and the and The student looked at me and was like I didn't go to Gibbs. I was remote the whole year I never stepped in there and I was like oh, okay So we have literally gone from an elementary structure Up to the oddison and we have taken for granted that there is this transitional school that we had that was introduced to lc's and A lot of kind of the kind of middle school and for some of our students We didn't have it. We did talk today about transitioning today in terms of Myself an administrator counselor is going down to talk to students at the Gibbs later this month and then them being in the school And I think we want to get back to making sure that kids are being able to come to the school see the school feel familiarity and You know, I think we're looking forward to To next year a lot in terms of seeing how kids have kind of recalibrated So, um, you know, I think one of the things that Unfortunately, you know when madame came aboard and I've you know, I've been here four years I mean If we've been here six years Most of it's been during a pandemic And we're looking to try to merge a lot of things that the schools are doing successfully When we're not kind of in reacting to a pandemic And I think getting the time especially the summer To try to look at some of the things that we both can learn from each other will be really beneficial. Thank you Thank you. I just um, I also wanted to mention the disproportionality of the special education um discipline at at oms and On dr. Alison amp be asked, you know made a lot of comments that I was thinking and asked the question But I appreciate you sharing some of the things that have been put in place And if there are other things, you know moving forward that that oms needs to support that I hope you'll keep us informed because that's that's it's a big Big difference with those that number. Okay. Thank you Thank you, uh school committee for members for your questions and now we're going to move on to Dr. Janger and the high school report. Okay And dr. Janger, I will be the one clicking. So if you just let me know when to click the slide But I'm going to turn it over to you at this point Is he muted? Yeah, you're muted right now if you're trying to talk It takes me a second to find the clicker. Yeah, got you. Um, so anyway, thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes Thank you very much for this opportunity and uh So today I'm talking about discipline and discipline data And a lot of this data and a lot of the the more interesting data You've already seen I went back to 29th this cool 2018 school year So we had a three the three year trend Before the pandemic And then I'll talk a little bit about last year and then I have a little bit of information about What we're seeing this year But I think one of the things that's been clear in all of the conversations we've heard Is that when we're talking about Discipline data We one of the really positive things in all of the schools in Arlington is that we very rapidly Switch over into our systems of social emotional support And that's because as a district we've really shifted away From the punitive approach to discipline. But when we're looking at this discipline data In this case suspension data We're looking at two things We're looking at what kind of student behavior Warranted the disciplinary response and then what was the response that the staff undertook And then we're looking to see both that that behavior gets better We're looking to make sure that our practices are equitable with different student populations And we're looking to make sure that we're using effective staff interventions And so we want to look at the differences one of the things we're looking at Is do we have different responses for different populations? But also whether or not our responses have been effective for the different behavior so When we're looking here at Out of school suspension and in school suspension For the most part we have eliminated the use of suspension separating schools from students from class For anything but relatively serious infractions. So we're talking about substances in school fighting theft or Potentially criminal behavior outside of school Are things that result in separating students from school And one of our biggest strategies for addressing behavior overall Has been collaborative problem solving and I've talked to you a lot about that So I'll I'll only touch on it briefly here. We've also done a lot of work on anti-bias and equity training We've been reviewing our support programs We've been doing curriculum review to make sure that our curriculum Represents our students and therefore they're more engaged and reflected in their class And a wide range of climate and culture efforts with student clubs activities Advisories all those sorts of activities that we've been doing And so at the heart of our disciplinary philosophy Is this idea that student behavior the challenging behavior is primarily an issue of skill Not will the kids succeed if they can And so that rather than focusing on making students want to behave We really want to focus on what is the underlying reason for the challenging behavior And then work with the student through the collaborative problem solving process To develop those skills And we recognize that problems are solved in an interaction between this situation And the student and that we often are the ones that control that situation And we are As well you'll see in the trends seeing consistent reductions in challenging behavior you can go to the next slide And this slide is really nice because even though we lost the last Bit of 2020 what this shows is month to month patterns and it shows it across all discipline But you'll see that in out-of-school suspensions as well as detentions and in school suspensions And you can see that over the three years prior to the pandemic. We saw consistent reductions across the board But one of the things you'll notice when we get to the data at the end of the presentation That i've presented before we still have these issues of disproportionality The nice thing is that by the end of 2020 We were down to 19 suspensions out of school And so when you're talking about disproportionality We're talking about anything more than one african-american student anything more than three students In special education would be Disproportionate and so the numbers really then come down to stories that are a lot more close to the ground And honestly sometimes difficult to discuss In this context if we're talking about one or two incidents and why a student And how we understand what happened with that student But what we look for and one of the things i've talked about before are issues of the suspensions around Events that are either the result of our interpretation of behavior Or the result of interactions between students and teachers And in both cases those have fallen almost to zero and that's one of the things that we're most excited about next slide So 2021 Our length in high school was predominantly remote last year We were only back in school for about a month at the end of the year We had about 200 students a day in the school special education students and general education students in Our millbrook workplace and then the in-person academy that we created were in school every day or four days a week But um one of the other things that happened because it wasn't that we had no Challenging behavior. There was out of school behavior that affected students There were students who were in the school But the incidents so there were fewer incidents of in-school behavior There was only that one suspension. We did not use detention Um either But there were also different options for intervention with an empty building Often what we could do when students were experiencing challenging behavior Was actually give them more interaction and more supervision During the school day in school rather than needing to separate them from education or have them after school So a lot of our efforts on challenging behavior last year and this now Fortunately feels very far in the rearview mirror Was around attendance and engagement So last year if you you may recall we actually had real-time monitoring of attendance So our attendance office was actually checking in with teachers 15 minutes after classes started And beginning to contact students to get them engaged in classes And that was really important to keeping kids engaged Through all of the difficult disruptions of the last year And then there was a lot of emphasis on staff follow-up to make sure that the students were falling behind them Papers that they could follow up if they weren't doing their work If they were disengaged that they were looping back around to contact those students either the teachers were Or they were reaching out to the deans or counseling staff Um, and so that was reflected At least in the level where we were able to track it in the dean's actually logging almost 5 000 student contacts So when they were reaching out to students to reiterate expectations to reengage them They were logging that and in a little over a thousand of those cases They logged that they were having a cps Conversation so what does that mean they would initiate those contacts reiterate expectations Part of the approach with collaborative problem solving Is to not be punitive in the conversation but trying to identify with the student What's going on? Why are you having difficulty meeting that expectation? And then often it was what's called a spontaneous plan b teachers were trained in that the deans were trained in that Where you start that small conversation To try to focus in on drilling down on what is the challenge for the student And how can you come up with a solution so they can meet the expectation? And then proactive plan b where we sit down we do a form we plan ahead That happened in approximately 50 Situations that were logged by the deans although I think there were many more It didn't make it into our records And then in addition there were a whole lot of layers of behavioral support One of the major ones was the covet 19 mental health screener which we conducted in january Next slide So I know folks are interested in this year And this year's behavior is As the others teachers have the other folks have explained It's a little hard to map on we're very much in the middle of it I was pleasantly surprised to be honest when I went through the data to date Because I know how hard folks are working on adjusting to coming back to school Adjusting to school post pandemic everyone has seen this we have sophomores who've really never barely been in high school Freshmen who've never been in high school and didn't have much of an eighth grade or had a fairly disrupted eighth grade experience And we have juniors whose last memory of being in school Was their freshman year and seniors as well And so one of the things that we've discovered is not only that the students didn't sort of Understand things but that a lot of our relationships that would help us to know Who we were reaching out to or the students to understand what our expectations were Were not there, you know, we don't have freshmen Who have seen seniors and how the students behave in the school and so in many ways This year has felt like rebuilding the whole school culture instead of relationships from scratch so As I said, we've had 10 out-of-school suspensions to date Substances in school some out-of-school behaviors some behaviors that actually occurred before students arrived in school And some students who are new to Arlington We've had nine in-school suspensions And that's really been something we've been trying to do more of And I'll talk about that at the end ways in which we've been trying to shift with some of our most common suspensions which are around substance abuse to a more A more intervention approach a more treatment approach So we had a lot of suspensions in september october that was that adjustment to period and this would be Wonderful if we continued at this rate through the year But most likely given past experience. We will double these numbers between now and the end of the year Next slide So this is just a quick reminder of sort of what the tps Focus is on and we can come back if you'd like a larger presentation at some point I would love to come back in the fall and talk about how we're rolling that out in the future But the idea is that plan a right? disciplinary consequences do this or else Is helpful in making it clear to people the rule is a rule And that you want them to meet expectations But it also tends to dysregulate students and break conversations and break relationships and doesn't build skills plan c Which is to reduce the expectation to not hold students accountable for some behavior is useful And it's something that we engage in Sometimes when we don't feel that a student is able to meet an expectation or that the expectation Is not so important that it disrupts other people's experiences or the student's ability to be safely in school but plan b Is an effort to work collaboratively with a student to find a lasting solution that meets both our expectations and their needs And in that case it reduces the challenge of behavior Meaning we don't have the disruptions We don't have the escalation to behaviors that lead to suspension It builds skills It solves the problem and it builds that helping relationship now sometimes in the initial cycles of plan b What it does is it builds the helping relationship and it reduces the challenging behavior and build skills Sometimes it takes a few rounds for the problem to be solved next slide So in 2021 it was challenging during the pandemic year We had a leadership consultation team Meeting two times a month. That was a small group meeting for coaching and review of practices And that was to develop leadership in teaching and leadership and folks that work with the teachers We had coaching support for teachers and conducting plan b conversations So sometimes when teachers were finding challenging Students we would meet with them and coach them in the process or they would work with folks from think kids We had staff training on applying cps to kovat Yep Just looking at the time. Can we focus on the the discipline piece of this? Absolutely this evening. Thank you Next slide So i'll skip over that because that was what you wanted to hear So this data if I go through it is actually data that you've seen before so I don't really need to discuss it in great In great detail out of school suspensions as you've seen Have dropped over the three-year period prior to the pandemic. We had only one last year next slide You can go quickly through those to the next one next slide Next slide. So that's just a visualization of the disproportionality But what you'll see here is out of school suspensions. So dating back to 2018 We had a very high proportion of our suspensions were african-american students Which led to a disproportionality of six times and we saw some of the other patterns that brine maringer explained In terms of higher rates for boys. I'm in higher rates in special education Next slide So you can see as you go forward the disproportionality continues although it gets significantly better But also as the numbers drop the overall numbers drop substantially next slide So by the time you get to the year prior to the pandemic while we have a disproportionality of five times That's actually four incidents and actually it was only three students next slide In-school suspensions were a little bit more complicated because there was an increased use of in-school suspensions for some kinds of behavior in the past we would have Potentially had an out-of-school suspension for so it stayed a little bit more flat overall next slide And again going through those next two slides You can visualize the disproportionality and you can see here There was a disproportionality again, but a little bit less. So in this case it was hispanic the numbers are relatively small 19 you can go to the next slide Again, you can see as the numbers dropped a little bit the disproportionality is still there but the numbers overall are small and then 2019-20 And so you again can see that shift as we get a little bit smaller next slide So I didn't talk in this. We we had a large presentation about Detentions those were pretty complicated to interpret. I didn't include that here Because that was a much larger conversation and is not as reliable a set of information But the things that we want to make as I said, we want to keep track of Our discipline based on an attribution and relationships Discipline based on student-teacher interaction and those have dropped almost to zero next slide And things that we were looking at it's continued our cps training Continuing ongoing training on equity and unconscious bias We've done a lot of work in terms of student culture The anti-racism working group is really sort of a touch phrase for all of our work with affinity and anti-bias groups in the school Um, we've been reviewing our interventions and that's something I talked about a little bit Having more of a treatment model for drug offenses That doesn't always mean that there isn't an out-of-school suspension because if someone is If someone is under the influence of substances in school We end up having to send them home Although we may be able to shift that to being a medical withdrawal And then shift to the intervention for the students and then one of the things we've been focusing on a lot This here has been the issue of truancy. And so we're looking at an academic support model for those those absences Rather than a disciplinary model One of the things you should also be aware of is that going forward. We're looking at A card based system which will help us with attendance tracking And should help us a little bit more with control going in and out of the building Next slide Is that the last one That's what we have Did you have another slide that we're missing? No, no, no, I couldn't remember Okay, so now I'm going to uh, so you're done with your presentation. We can open it up for questions and comments Okay, and I can go back over the um The the discipline data, but that is actually all data we've reviewed in the past Which is why I didn't want to spend a lot of time on that Okay, thank you Is the open campus uh, have any uh reflection on the discipline issues that you've seen So I will say open campus is a necessary situation in the current building because in terms of where students can be I think that if we had students in the building one of the challenges Prior to open campus in the building, which would be a very significant challenge now Is that students end up finding themselves hanging out in corners and places where they're not supposed to be And that leads horsing around horse play Kids hanging out to lead to negative interactions with staff and negative interactions with other students So I think that in that way clever, um, the open campus is really assisting us in giving students an ability to take a break from school Open campus is challenging. It's not really open campus. Actually what is challenging this year Is that with the high rates of absence, right anytime Um, a teacher's kid gets coveted or they get coveted They're out It's been harder to find subs. We haven't had paraprofessionals to sub in classes So there are higher levels of kids in what we would have been old hall But having them crammed into old hall would I think have been a disciplinary challenge And I think right now the kids actually for the most part make really positive use at that time to go out Take a break and come back into the school Or they find places in the school and what we see is the kids are pretty, um, constructively studying And we're really excited to get a year from now when we have the Central commons where there will be a lot more common spaces and a lot more places for students to work constructively During the school day if they're not in class I guess my question When I see students over at the cvs when I see students Down at the bagel shop when I see students a couple of blocks to the the other direction of mass av on both sides of the street I'm concerned about our Responsibility for them and what they may or may not be doing So I'm that's a comment. I'm not looking for any reaction to that at this time. Thank you Okay In the interest of time All right, mr. Heiner you're you're okay. All right anybody else want to say something questions Dr. Allison ampe Thank you for this mr. Janger um Dr. Janger, sorry You mentioned having ip data In terms of suspensions and stuff but it wasn't included in ours and I'm just wondering Again, this is partly for the administration whether this is something that we want to be looking at I mean that school committee wants to have presented to them and I personally would Vote yes because I was really impressed by what we saw in the autism data. Yes. Yes As we look at our discipline data We will make sure that we update our reports to include, you know, special education status But we do want to disaggregate it including all those different types of identifiers So thank you for that and we will make sure that we are as we move forward We'll conclude that in our reports. Great. Thank you very much Miss parking. Yeah, just some consistency across levels of what we're seeing. This is um, I appreciate this is a lot of work and there's um Last year's data is real weird and it's so it it feels to me like this is a report that we want to get in October for the year in a rears, but but to see something similar presented similarly across Yes levels and schools would be more Yes actionable and For us, I think yes, we will take that feedback and implement it Mr. Slickman. Yeah, I I've had a hypothesis For the past few years after looking at the data uh that The high school and maybe elsewhere in the district Has different issues with students who are relatively new to the district versus students who have Uh an extended time in the district. So for example a child who has been in our elementary schools Has moved up through the Gibbs oddis or the Gibbs wasn't there before moved up through the oddison into the high school Hypothetically I'm running off the theory that those students are having an easier time with it at the high school And are less likely to encounter negative Issues at the high school be it academic or In terms of behavior As compared to kids who are transferring into the high school In the middle of their high school career so The reason why i'm asking is i'm sort of thinking that we may need to Look at ways we can Acculturate and And serve kids to bring them into the community and make them feel a part of it as well So i'm i'm just sort of curious in going through the report that Keep your eye out for that and if you start to see something that looks like a A differentiation between long standing arlington students and in kids who transfer Uh, I think that maybe there'd be programs who'd be looking to do to meet that need Yeah, well we can take that in consideration. Thank you So can I take a moment just to thank, uh, my ampere maxwell, mr. Merringer, dr. Janger and our also our elementary principals for Putting together these reports and uh, hopefully you were able to you know, get some it was giving you some valuable information And see some trends and how we're moving forward. We understand that behavior challenges are a part of you know Schooling and we are going to continue to try to make sure that we're being proactive in our approaches and how we address those Challenges, so hopefully saw them trends throughout elementary and middle and the high school levels Thank you, mr. Heiner. I'd like to also thank dr. McNeil and dr. Holman for putting this all together. Thank you very much Sure thing. Thank you Thank you, dr. Janger Thank you and dr. Humano to Yes, have a good night folks All right, um monthly financial report mr. Mason Good evening the school committee members. Um tonight you'll have Okay, tonight you have the monthly financial reports for the district For the finances as of uh, april 25th And included in the reports is the normal Reports that you will normally see for the town appropriation, which we also call us the general fund Special revenue and revolving and the grants so we'll start with the general fund and the the general fund Currently this month. We're at as april 25th. We're at about 56.6 million dollars Expended Which is about 10 million dollars higher than where we were from the last report And we are around 23 million encumbered between salaries and our you know vendors that we Provide that provides services and goods to us And what you'll see is under projected expenditures is a net of projected expenditures and Expense transfers which actually led to a net credit or reduction to expenditures on the general fund Which left leaves us with an array number a remaining balance of about 600 thousand dollars Now what you'll notice in this report normally there's a lot more projected expenditures As we're in april we're coming to start our close of the year so Where the department budgets are now? being held On hold and so we're not projecting Complete spending of the remaining of their their balances Many of their balances are depleted At this point as well. So those that did have minimal amounts are are being held at this point All right And I didn't know other notes that I'm Missing and as I was noticing today as we're doing someone to close out cleanup We're noticing that there are some encumbrances that actually are no longer needed In departments that are actually requesting to close some of them So the remaining balance can move either way this number is still sort of fluid So I wouldn't bank on it a hundred percent at this moment Um This slide I discussed with you last time. There's not much differences in terms of what the driving factors whether between the salary savings And the out-of-district tuition and transportation as well as expenditures that have been you know That has hit us It may may not probably be reflected on the report which are tied to the ventilation costs and medical supplies for covet 19 Also, which added though to this is we did make a premium payments To to our staff And that is reflected as a pending expenditure On on this report, but it will be posted as a expenditure for next period And this is an acknowledgement of staff that For the instructional related work due to the transition of covet that the ARPA funds did not acknowledge Due to the regulations tied to ARPA funding The next is uh, what I want to talk about is the special revenue and revolving. Um, and so overall We're projecting a 4.4 million dollar balance by the end of the year for these funds We collected and spent about the same amount 2.9 million dollars The revenue is a big as a large uptick from last month tied to a third quarter payment to circuit breaker Um, we do have a large amount of projected expenditures that are going to be higher than what we do project Remaining in revenue. Uh, the projected expenditures are tied to projects that are going to be listed on the next slide Um, and the projected revenue was a third quarter payment I mean a fourth quarter payment to circuit breaker And as well as collection of rent from our after school vendors and community education Here are some of the projects that I did outlaw. I did speak about last Last time and those projects are still remaining as as initiatives that we're going to be doing Um, we're starting likely in May And the final uh slide is the overview of the grants and at this point we have about 5.4 million awarded 2 million of that is covert related grants and uh as designed those funds were going to be used over multiple years Um, we're projecting to carry about 1.7 million over Uh over the next two years to help cover any initiatives that we already proposed to the school committee Um, and as well as any other buffers that are needed in the out years Now I can open up to any questions Mr. Cardin Uh to take a quick comment that we we need to discuss the prepayment issue We pledged to the finance community. We would discuss that with them. So Go ahead. Dr. Alcinemi I just wanted to ask a question publicly about the maintenance salaries where it shows That we have a remaining balance of 200,000 over 200,000 And just ask does this mean that we aren't getting maintenance done or or where um, what What's happening with that? So we have several vacancies in the facilities department specifically on the maintenance team Those positions have been hard to fill due to the salary schedules that are in place Um, we have tried to make adjustments with working with the town Who manages those unions? We haven't been able to fill many of those positions even after those adjustments Um, so obviously it's also a hot construction market So it's hard to compete with the private construction agencies that are around the area Including the one that we're building here in Arlington um, so What I will say is that we had a uh, many of our we had two HVAC technicians one was here in the beginning of the year who then left for a teaching position and We instead are using contracted services and so what you'll see is what you What you'll see is that those those costs are higher than prior years Um, what you won't see is that it's not reflecting a deficit Because there are proposed transfers reflected in the revised budget amounts and The work we're getting done with the lack those vacancies Besides isn't there's a handyman and there's another position that I just can't recall at the moment, but um Those those four positions we are able to still get work done in the district But we're getting work done. That is we're deeming necessary and to make sure the buildings are safe and being able to be occupied Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Mason and the superintendents are for dr. Homan Let me pull up my slides Start with the regular numbers for covid cases in the district We are tracking right along with some of the m w r a Data we saw a pretty significant uptick in cases that sort of came in after the break That was happening over the past couple of weeks, but that has begun to decline this week We keep a close eye on things We've really enjoyed being able to open up some windows some of our schools this week because the weather's been a little warmer Go outside for lunches or for recess And that should continue to have a positive impact We did rounds of pool testing and have had some positive pools come back I think we've had um It was close to 20, but I would have to go back and look positive pools come in this week. We're able to isolate those cases um overall Things are going okay, but we did have a little bit of staffing challenge this week because we had a number of staff Who are out taking care of children who had gotten sick over break or who are out themselves? So but we are starting to see that level off of it and hopefully begin to decline as the weather gets warmer I want to give a strategic planning update and you have a number of documents available to you in In novice that are coming from the strategic planning team We had our first meeting on the 12th of april. It was a virtual launch Folks shared in some small groups their hopes and dreams for the school system And also for the process itself of developing a mission vision and overarching strategic priorities for the district You have a copy of the notes document that came from that that's quite lengthy In your materials if you're curious or would like to review it and then from there they We had our first in-person meeting on the 26th. We did three rounds of data analysis at that first meeting That was just on tuesday. There's a picture there Of the team doing a little bit of a warm-up activity that was quite fun They first took a look at data sources that they had analyzed or chosen to analyze that we had dropped into a resource folder of artifacts In groups that had of people who had looked at the same artifact and then they Divided up into groups that had looked at different artifacts and tried to build conclusions from that The agenda from tuesday's meeting is available to you and i'll share some additional resources from what folks generated during that second meeting The next time we meet our next meeting is on the 9th of may and at that point We'll be analyzing mission and vision statements from various organizations and talking about how values are reflected in vision And mission statements as well as the values that Arlington holds dear and would like to see reflected in a vision or mission statement that we might have So we've gotten off to a great start. We're having fun It's a big group and it's very organized. Our facilitators have done a spectacular job keeping documents Pretty organized and keeping us pretty organized and also on task So i'm really looking forward to the next several meetings. We have five meetings left And i'll keep everybody posted. We should have a draft towards the end of may That the school committee can look at before you're brought sort of a more official first read second Read and we can have more discussion about what the team has been generating a few other updates I want to acknowledge hannah markelson andrew yang who are the Sills awardees this is a middle sex league award and i can't i don't have my notes in front of me That tells me what that acronym means and i don't have it memorized But this is an award that's given by the middle sex league Annually and it recognizes students for their exceptional leadership skills for academic achievements And we're very proud of these two students for earning this award I want to thank our excellent administrative assistants because it was administrative assistance day this week And there were a lot of celebrations going on throughout the district to say thank you to our fantastic Assistance all over the district including miss diggins. Thank you Um, we have some upcoming lab events to celebrate that i wanted to share with the committee Special olympics is monday may 16th At lexington high school. This is a great event if you wanted to stop by and cheer on students Feel free to do so. I believe the festivities get started at nine o'clock I can double check that if you're interested in going and i'll send you the details The graduation is um, they have two Monday june 13th 2022 is the middle school graduation and thursday june 9th 2022 at the high school which actually conflicts with one of our school committee meetings But so i'm not going to be able to attend that high school one But if you have any interest in look attending the middle school one, let me know I'm hoping to make it down there for that Administrative hiring searches that are going on right now the bracket assistant principal position is either about to be posted or posted today posted today High school special education coordinator position is posted Director of social studies k-12 has been posted Dr. McNeill has taken the lead with mr. Spiegel on the Searches for director of visual arts k-12 first round interviews for that took place this week Flip it the other way director of health and wellness took place earlier this week Director of visual arts k-12 is happening on may 9th. I have my dates backwards on those two searches So I can fix that and then also your enrollment reports are in your folder and i'll take any questions that you have Mr. Schlickman, so we're moving our graduation to a thursday No, no, no, this is the lab. Oh, oh the lab graduate. Yeah. Oh, yeah Okay Wait a minute. Whoa what Ms. Morgan, um, I had a question about the the mission and vision work and the the the goals It's been brought to my attention that I was elected chair of the cia committee last um two weeks ago Really, man. I'm spoke. Yeah, it's about that so Typically I've actually been the subcommittee chair before of that group and typically what we have done in the spring is we have taken The uh district goals and we have worked on the sub goals and there's been understandable Pressure to do so so that we could get those goals to teachers before they left for Break so they could do their work. So Am I right in that we you've decided we don't have those goals or like are those a thing? Are they not a thing? I'm confused trying to do like the minimum I need to do but that we all understand like where we're going. Yeah, that's a great question So one of the things that's on my list to do is to reach out to you So that we can get a meeting together of cia so that we can talk about this exact thing Because it is a little awkward in that this group is working on this at the same time as we Should also be thinking about what our plans and major initiatives are for next year And it's not as though the district doesn't have things going on that We know we're going to continue working on next year So what dr. McNeill is going to work on with the curriculum team We're at a conference next week But what upon our return is getting together an initiative preview Which is sort of like the goals that you've reviewed in the past that will give sort of an overview of In the different disciplinary areas here and at the different levels here the things we know will be working on next year Will we can align those to the current overarching priorities because they will align well to the existing overarching priorities and that would be the version of what you all have looked at as district goals for this year So long as this approach works for the committee and ciaa agrees with this approach And then we could bring that initiative preview alongside whatever this the drafts of the mission and vision statement are To the full committee for review or we could go through ciaa for a first round look at the drafts I'm open to different iterations of that but that's sort of how we were thinking about it because Okay, so we're gonna we're keeping the overarching goals In some format for f y 23 Yes, because the strategic plan so the strategic plan itself with benchmarks and outcomes and all of the details of it It won't be totally done and ready to launch until an implementation date that we had projected of january of 2023 So we're going to stick with mission and vision as stated And overarching priorities as stated for next school year And then that'll sort of switch over mid next school year will have those big priorities But we should know pieces of it before the end of this school year It just makes the most sense for us to stick with what we have for right now for next school year's planning Okay, all right sounds good. I just want to make sure we've we uh, have have not met our obligations to our staff in the past and I I believe we didn't actually the year that I was chair of cia, so I want to make sure that we don't do that again It's what You're all set. Yeah, okay Okay, uh school committee representative for 2025 patriot's day celebration committee, so um Select board member john herd reached out to mr. Heiner and I Um about a committee that the select board has decided Will exist to plan for the semi quintentennial Patriots day celebration And I've been practicing saying that So we The details about the plans are in Novus, and I know you all read it really carefully to know the details, but we need to Select a representative for this committee Mr. Carden just to clarify it's a representative or a designee Right, so it doesn't have to be a member of our board. Okay, it may it may actually be more appropriate to Look for a social study teacher or someone else who might be more interested in The 250th anniversary of Arlington of monotony So it sounds like we should have the community relations subcommittee Find someone yeah, it's me She's learning how to delegate very well I'm just Why don't we just nominate bill Bill will not be available. It goes through 2026. Yes. Thank you You don't have to be a member of the school committee. That's right. Yeah, it could be if we could be one representative or designee I am very happy to take this job over so I can control it. Mr. Filming Mr. Carden so be careful Thought it was a good idea. Thank you It was a good idea. That's a problem You don't need to follow motion, right? So are we so are you assigning it to you mr. Heiner or community relations to community relations? I will contact mr. Herd and get the full details and report back to the committee as soon as possible Do you like how I passed that right back to you? The detailer in the document It's like watching ping pong I feel like we have a little bit of time, right? Yes. Well, I I was like, this is quite the plan, but apparently okay Um 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 the member of the committee So requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number two two two three two dated april 19th 2022 In the amount of seven hundred fifty eight thousand five hundred seventy dollars and ten cents Uh regular meeting minutes dated april 14th 2022 and the organizational meeting minutes dated april 14th 2022 so move second Motion by mr. Heyner second by mr. Thielman roll call vote mr. Heyner. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Morgan Mr. Schluckman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes dr. Allison ampe. Yes And I am a yes that is a unanimous vote All right subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget dr. Allison ampe budget will be arranging a meeting Either next week without the superintendent or the week after with I'll discuss what works best thank you Community relations mr. Heyner. Thanks to the chair. We will be having a meeting I will arrange it with members as soon as possible Curriculum instruction assessment and accountability. Ms. Morgan Also, I need to make some kind of a plan which Will be done imminently. I'm sure Facilities mr. Thielman when we get the report back from the Addison will schedule a meeting. That's probably going to be later in may right? Yeah sometime later in may Policies and procedures mr. Schluckman. We're going to need to schedule a meeting as soon as the superintendent returns High school building committee mr. Thielman tours this Saturday 40 people something like that have signed up so far. So go to ahsbuilding.org Sign up come Saturday from 10 a.m. To 2 p.m We're going to be fun We may We need volunteers. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So if you want to volunteer to help kind of direct things You could You don't need to know anything about the wings. You can just you're just standing there to be a Adult present. There'll be children. I mean, there'll be students and stuff too But I think I'll send the link around to everyone and if you're Willing and able to serve a two-hour shift that would be wonderful I checked the sign ups before meeting and where you definitely are in need of some more bodies. So And I I suspect we may have well over 500 people. Yeah, we we've got a lot coming Good big day, and it'd be a big day. So thank you Great. That's exciting Lee's on reports Uh, I'll note again the um af 5k is coming up on sunday may 15th At 8 a.m. Right bright and early the registration is full You can still participate in the virtual 5k if you're interested But they're very excited to have their first race be fully subscribed Great. Thank you. What do you think your time will be this time? You gotta help set up, but I'm not gonna I would just like to note that there are mile markers along each of the miles for the route and the strategic planning work that we're doing with The partnership and the support of af is mile marker number two. So as you go by You can celebrate strategic planning As you pass mile two Great. Thank you announcements. Mr. Heiner I'd like to share with the Community and the committee the third grade at thompson will be having their mark town meeting Next thursday nine o'clock at the town hall So they will they have their articles all set and they will be debating them and we'll be going forward Looking forward to it Future agenda items Miss keith Hi, the aea would like some time to discuss A potential endorsement from the school committee for the fair share amendment Which is going to be a ballot question in november And then I just if committee members have things that they would like for the fall Curriculum presentations or i've asked aef to come do a presentation for us in june before the end of the year Feel free to email miss diggins and she can send it on to me But be thinking about what what you might like to hear about in the fall Mr. Heiner the superintendent And the chair I assume we'll have specific items that they're going to have on a regular basis So if you could give us a broad outline of what's coming each month, it will help us To either add or not bring things up that since you've already scheduled them. Thank you. Thank you Executive session To conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union In which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect Collective bargaining may also be conducted Approval of the minutes from april 14th 2022 executive session We will not be returning from executive session Into open session. Is there a motion to enter? second Motion by mr. Heiner second by mr. Thielman roll call vote mr. Heiner. Yes, mr. Cardiff. Yes, mr. Morgan Mr. Schlickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr. Allison ampe. Yes, and I vote. Yes It's a unanimous vote. So we will enter executive session You