 So, good evening. Welcome to the Arlington School Committee meeting on September 10, 2020. This open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so as long as reasonable public access is afforded, so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. For this meeting, the Arlington School Committee is convened by Zoom, as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that others may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Everything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. For Novus Agenda-supported meetings, all of the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials, are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard. We recommend the members of the public follow the agenda as posted in Novus, unless I note otherwise. Our ground rules, I will introduce each speaker. After they conclude, I'll go down the list of members. Please hold until your name is called for any response. Wait until the chair yields the floor to you. Let's see. Each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. So, as a preliminary matter, let's do our attendance. So, members of the committee, Ms. Exton here, Mr. Cardin. Yes, it's based part of work. I'm here. Dr. Allison Ampe here, Mr. Thielman. Here. Mr. Schluckman. Good evening. Mr. Heiner. Here. And I am here. And Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Ms. Elmer. Here. And Mr. Bowler. Here. This is where it gets dicey, because there's a lot of you. And then we have our principals. I see Mr. McCarthy. So, Dr. Janger, is he here? Here. Great. And Mr. McCarthy from H.S. Here. And Mr. Merringer. Here. And do you have anybody else with you, Mr. Merringer? I do not. You're all alone. Okay. Thanks a lot. Okay. And Madame Pierre Maxwell. I don't need to hear it. We're now just on a hope and a prayer here. So, we can introduce the people who are going to be speaking tonight. So, that would be, we did Madame Pierre Maxwell. And then we have Mr. Dingman. Are you here? Bad Dingman. And then we have Kate Parrots. Here. And Mr. Dingman will be along. He'll be along. So, those are the primary speakers tonight. So, we have other additional staff members or administrators here that will be here in support in order to answer questions. So, I mean, at the time when they speak, they can introduce themselves. So, those are the primary speakers for tonight. Excellent. You're all very welcome. One note, Dr. Bodie is unavailable this evening for our meeting. So, Dr. McNeil will be providing that information for the reopening conversation. So, the first item on our agenda is public comment. And we did not receive any requests for public comment tonight. So, as is my as I can do as chair, I'm actually going to move the 745 item, the discussion and vote on false sports for AHS up. I don't anticipate this will be a long agenda item. And I want to provide Mr. Bowler the opportunity to speak with us and then leave us. So, Mr. Bowler, if you'd like to go ahead, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope everyone's doing well. So, quick update, you know, from the Ellington High School athletics, the MIA board of directors voted to have four seasons of athletics this year, a fall season, a winter season, a fall two season and a spring. So, the fall and the fall two season will be made up of sports we cannot play in the fall. So, based on recent guidelines established by the EEA, DESC, MIAA, Middlesex League, athletic directors, and superintendents for the fall, boys soccer, field hockey, boys soccer, girls soccer, field hockey, golf, and boys and girls country will take place this fall. Trials and practices will begin the week of Monday, September 21st. Football, cheering, girls volleyball, and girls swimming, traditional fall sports are moving to the fall two season, which is February 22nd to April 25th. The MIA Sports Medicine Committee has approved sports specific modifications. Examples like soccer will have no headers, no corner kicks, no throw-ins, field hockey has gone from 11 on 11 to 7 on 7 with no penalty corners. Cross country teams will be 14 feet apart with race times staggered. Mass are required by the MIA for all sports, you know, when you arrive at practice during practice during games, there's times where they can have breaks to take the masks off. Gators are not permitted for athletic events. Mass must be won. The Middlesex League varsity teams will participate in 10 games this fall with the exception of cross country, which will be five. All sub varsity teams with the exception of cross country will participate in eight games this fall. All sub varsity games in most varsity games will be played on Saturdays. Additional varsity games will be played on Columbus Day and Veterans Day. Middlesex League golf matches will be played during the week based on course availability. Allington will compete against one school in all sports in the same weekend to limit contact exposure and to also help us contact tracing should it be needed at any point in the season. There will also be no school provided transportation since meets are on Saturdays and holidays. Families will be responsible for transportation to practice in games. Varsity teams once the season starts will practice three times a week with the game on Saturday. Sub varsity teams will practice two times a week. Practice times are still being determined. Attendance at all practices and games will be strictly monitored. Every participating student athlete will be required to answer four questions related to COVID screening with their coach before the start of every practice in game during the 2020 fall season. In an effort to remain in compliance with master's of state law, philodge gatherings, the Middlesex League will only permit one span per student athlete at each home in a way contest. Attendance protocols will be strictly enforced at all locations. Mask and social distance will be expected for all spectators in attendance. The standard Allington High School user fee for each school will be collected at the start of the fall season that is at the start of each student that is successfully rostered on a team following the trial process. Fall registration is open now and we'll close it on September 16th. So we basically can get a number of how many kids we can have at each tryout. We only have 25 kids on a field depending on how big the field is. So we're going to try to stop enrollment on Wednesday so we can get a good idea of how many kids and how we have to split the kids up for tryouts on the 21st and beyond. So my motion is basically to get approved for boys and girls soccer, boys and girls cross country, field hockey and golf to be played this fall 2020 season while following all EEA rules, DESE rules, MIA and Middlesex rules. Okay, so is there any discussion? So what we need to do tonight is we need, if members of the committee, if this is what you want to do, we need a motion to allow, given that Arlington High School is starting in a remote model per the plans that we've seen to date, we need to approve the participation of our student athletes in these sports. So moved. All right. Second, discussion. Okay, discussion. I'm going to, let's see, do you want me to call on you guys in order? I guess so we can try and do this expeditiously. So Ms. Exton, any comments or questions? No, thank you. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. I just want to note that in a lot of the other states that may not be practicing mask use, we are seeing schools are seeing clusters within their athletic programs, both at the college and high school level. So I do hope we'll constantly reinforce the mask requirement at, you know, any gatherings or practices or, you know, coaching sessions, etc. On the sidelines everywhere, so that we can hopefully avoid that. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. I just wonder if there's a place where parents could find the information that you just read to us because I think they might be interested. Yeah, I'll email it out to all the parents and students tomorrow morning and I'll put it on our website as well. Mr. Thielman. Hi, John. Will the, if a student plays a spring sport and a winter sport, will there be overlap? Nope. So all four seasons do not overlap. So that, so they, you can actually, a student can actually play in all four seasons if they like, but there's no overlapping between seasons. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman. No questions. Mr. Heiner. I have a couple. Number one, this motion is just dealing with the fall season. Am I correct? Would you be coming back again for the other seasons? On October 29th, the Board of Directors of the MIA are going to meet and talk about winter sports. So I think I'll come back at that point because, I mean, after they have a meeting on what sports they're going to offer or any modifications, I'll bring it back to the school committee. Thank you. Is the school going to be doing any testing or is that, is that left to the athletes themselves? With the school, we won't be doing any testing. That would be up to the athletes. Thank you. Okay. I don't have any specific questions. So just to clarify, Mr. Bowler and for Ms. Fitzgerald to make sure she has accurate notes, can you just give us the list again of sports that you're looking for approval for? Boys and girls soccer, boys and girls cross country, yield hockey and golf. Super. Okay. Who made the original motion? I know Mr. Hainer. So motion by Mr. Thielman. Second by Mr. Hainer. Roll call. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. I'm also yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bowler. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much. I'll be welcoming you back sometime later. Thank you very much. So the next item is plans around fall reopening. This is a pretty broad broad topic, but we're going to try and deal with it in a couple of sections. So I'm going to start with Dr. McNeil. Thank you very much, Ms. Morgan. So the first, so I'm going to go through some recommendations that we've made and but I'm going to start us off by making an announcement that in order to provide the proper support and leadership for the Remote Buy Choice Academy at the elementary level, Dr. Bodie has appointed Eva Liner and Sam Carustas who are both here. They wanted to say hi so people could see you. Hi. Good evening. That's Eva who's currently the assistant principal at Bishop and then we have Samantha who we call Sam. Thanks for having us. And she will, she is currently the assistant principal at Dallas. So both of these people will be the co-administrators for the Remote Buy Choice Academy at the elementary level. So they will be responsible for supporting teachers, collaborating with them, providing professional development, interacting with students, interacting with parents, and also for observing and evaluating instruction. So I don't know if we have any questions or either person or any comments from school committee members. Yeah. So does anybody have any questions or I see Ms. Exton and nobody else right now but we can come back. All right, Ms. Exton. Mr. Comet I just want to say thank you and I know Dr. Bodie is not here but I appreciate that there are point people for this to support the teachers and the curriculum in this specific remote learning academy. Thank you very much. Anybody else? Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. Dr. McNeil I'm wondering if you could at our next meeting just give us like an org chart as to how these people fit in with everyone else partly in terms of supervision and stuff and also in terms of you know who does a parent go to for problems? Well I can answer that question right now so if in the remote by choice academy parents will be reaching so the philosophy is that Ms. Leiner and Ms. Carustas will be the point people so if a parent has a question about instruction or about any of the programming that's going on in a remote by choice academy they'll reach out to these two individuals and so it would be the same as if they were principal of a physical building that we have in the district so we're treating the remote by choice academy as like a virtual school and so these are the administrators or the co-administrators of that virtual school. Okay I guess I'm wondering the relationship because I know that we were trying to keep the students in the same classroom I mean in classes with their you know the school that they would have been associated with. Anyway okay thank you. And you are right I will say that for our specialist programming that students will have be connected to their individual home schools and this will also be part of the responsibilities for Ms. Leiner and Ms. Carustas is that they will maintain that connection with the teachers in the remote by choice academy the teachers in the remote by choice academy with the teachers in the hybrid program so we have appointed these two individuals to maintain those connections and so but if there's like specific questions that parents have about the programming or the things that are going on in the remote by choice academy these are the point people so they will work collaboratively with the other principals to maintain those connections but you know if parents have a question they will go to these two individuals hopefully that helped if not then I can I can answer more questions about that. Mr. Schlickman or Mr. Heiner Mr. Mr. Heiner. Just for clarification when you talk about them similar responsibilities of principal would they be responsible for such duties as evaluation and things of that nature. Yes observing and evaluating instruction absolutely. Thank you. Okay so my comments are just I'm you know welcome I mean you guys have been here before but it's I'm glad that we have you know dedicated administrators in this program I think it's really important I think it's particularly timely as we're moving toward you know K-5 class assignments and cohorting and all those pieces for you know getting all of these groups sort of set up and I'm glad that our teachers have have you guys too as as support as we move into this you know move into a new phase of this transition so welcome I hope that you'll come back and tell us how things are going and I look forward to hearing more about that so thank you. All right Dr. McNeil. So the next order of business that I have is to talk about some recommendations that I need to apprise the school committee on regarding our elementary hybrid plan and and I do want to make sure that I'm using data to support this recommendation so based upon our current staffing needs and the fluid situation as you know resulting from you know staff members who have left the district we've had to promote some paraprofessionals into teaching positions are highly qualified paraprofessionals who have a teaching license in order to fill some of the positions in the remote by choice academy and just in overall an overview of what we need my recommendation and I can go further into this but our recommendation at this point is to go for early dismissal for the students who are in the in-school portion of the hybrid program so they would get out at 145 and the reason why we need to do this is that we don't have right now the proper staffing to provide preps or classroom teachers this has been something that we've discussed before and we've tried all different types of alternatives in order to fill these positions we're also looking at some of the needs as for building subs to cover teachers who may become ill so we have a myriad of different staffing needs that we have not been able to fill at this time and because we are starting school in what 11 days I feel that we need to I mean we feel as an administrator as an administrative team that we need to alter the dismissal time in order to meet the needs to meet our needs so that we can open with proper staffing so we can support the hybrid program so I can pause right now that's like an overview I have you know spreadsheet that can show this this information with more explanation but I will stop right now I do have Ms. Parritz and Mr. Damon who are here who are going to who can also speak on this so I'm just going to stop right now and open it up for questioning or comments from school committee members all right thank you Dr. McNeil just to clarify for the community so what we're talking about is for K5 for students on their in-person days so let's say somebody is cohort A so they would be in person in the building Mondays and Tuesdays instead of being released at 230 which is what our typical and traditional contracted release time has been students would be released at 145 which would allow teachers to have their you know contractual and necessary prep period at the end of the day instead of so I think might be helpful Dr. McNeil before we do questions can you share with us what what was the plan before this plan what was that what was the initial vision because there was there was a different vision for how this was going to work before this new one and I think it's helpful for us to understand I think we understand that there are staffing constraints significant staffing constraints that mean the recommendation is shifting to this current vision but could you just tell us what the former vision was yes I can so in the former vision the hybrid our initial recommendations that we're going to have a hybrid plan we're going to have cohorts of students we divided them up as AA and BB so meaning that students would come in the A cohort A students would come in on Monday and Tuesday and students in cohort B will come in on Thursday and Friday so in that plan we have our specialists who are teaching in the remote part of the hybrid plan and normally if we were you know pre-pandemic the that would be the time when teachers would receive their prep when the students go to art music library and and PE and so you had art music and library once a week and you had PE twice a week so that's where you get your prep time we have had to shift those specialists to the remote part because we wanted to make sure that we weren't exposing staff to multiple cohorts of students so they are going to be they will be providing synchronous instruction on the remote day so they will have a full teaching schedule on the remote day so when cohort A is at home on on you know Thursday and Friday they will see their specials and when cohort B is at home on Monday and Tuesday they will see their specials now this caused a challenge because now you have your students who are in school that have their core content area classes and they have their lunch period and so you have the the contractual number of blocks of instruction that teachers have to teach which is we have eight blocks of instruction two of those blocks are for lunch and a prep and because we don't have those specialists during the day because we've moved them to remote the remote part of the schedule we need to have someone to physically come into the classroom to provide supervision for students so that the teachers can have their prep now our original plan was to utilize our online tools and other things that we have developed so maybe centers that students can engage in during that time but there will be somebody physically there a paraprofessional a building sub that can provide that coverage that supervision during that block of time so because we don't have we have not filled all of the building sub positions the paraprofessional positions that we need in order to staff that part or that component of the hybrid plan we are that's why i'm making the recommendation or we are as administrative staff not just me but we've talked about this so that we can now have an early release at 145 therefore the teachers will get their lunch a duty-free lunch and they'll get their prep at the end of the day so we don't have to worry about staffing or we have to worry about a lack of staffing in order to provide the supervision for students during that block of instruction now we'll add on that our high need students students that are receiving support pullout support this is also actually a benefit because now they can get that pullout support during that time because those students are in that high needs category we're recommending that they stay until 230 so those students will still receive the support and actually it's a benefit because they won't be pulled out of their core content area classes to receive that support so this is our recommendation in order to this is our alternative to what we originally planned to have and we've tried very hard to fill these positions but you know we're not able to at this time so in order for us to open on September 21st this is why we're recommending this so we don't have to worry about that lack of staffing and providing that supervision during the teacher's prep so hopefully that was some more details I can give some context as to you know where we are this at this time great thank you Dr. McNeil um so let's do a round of questions just on this particular piece um so Ms. Exton thank you for the update in the details and my first question was about how it would affect um students on IEPs and high needs students and so the fact that they can continue to stay till 230 I'm glad that you shared that um my other question is is this something that you anticipate we'll be doing for the whole year is it something that we can revisit oh absolutely so yes this is not indefinite like I said it's it's this is you know based upon empirical data and this is something that's you know really beyond our control so you know our recommendation so that we're not you know flip-flopping back and forth to parents is that we would come back around November 1st to give uh an update as to how we are progressing with hiring the the staff that we need for the hybrid program in order to make a determination do we finish out you know up until mid up until winter break on this um you know early dismissal at 145 or do we have the proper staffing in order to you know expand the day out to 230 which was the original plan thank you um and this is it's disappointing but I also um feel incredibly strongly that teachers have their prep time so I I understand um you know where this is coming from so thank you yes and let me just add it's disappointing for all of us I mean we try you know this is what we've been planning on doing especially at the elementary level we understand that we we were everybody wants to do the hybrid plan but you know it's just because of the lack of staffing at this time and we would be remiss if we didn't bring this to your attention and try to open on uh just September 21st without the proper staff uh Mr. Cardin thank you um Mr. Spiegel maybe can you can can through the chair can we find out how many building subs we've hired out of the ones we're looking for yeah I mean I was gonna say I mean just since august 20th we've had resignations from 13 paraprofessionals that include the teaching assistants and building subs in elementary and middle school levels um so that's just in the last couple weeks and the reason um you know the last you know several weeks the reason has been um you know a lot of those people have become licensed teachers and the demand in other districts is very strong for licensed teachers so they were able to get a teaching position and they took it we've also been able to have we have some paraprofessionals who have teaching licenses we've been able to move into teaching positions um just in the past few days we've we've finalized those hireings um so we've lot you know we need them to be lead classroom teachers now but that takes away some paraprofessionals we are um working you know on several fronts with different um different sources to find building substitutes and paraprofessionals both school spring talented uh postings and linkedin I've gotten some contacts from linkedin and have referred some of the people who've responded to some of the principals for different levels also um our linkedin afterschool employees who um because of the nature of the after school program this year they're going to have less staff than they've had in the past so there are some staff in the afterschool program who will be available and may be taking some jobs as building subs in different schools so that's what we're we're still finalizing some of those hires and I think um you know I can let you know I finalized one building sub today for hardy and working on another one for hardy as well sending resumes to other schools all the time so trying to um you know put people in the positions that make the most sense for both the school and the person coming in and on that no can I also have mr. Dean and chime in now uh and miss parrots so they can also give some more detailed information as to the staffing needs mr. cardin so they can also maybe add on to what mr. speed and I just want to turn my camera and I'm not ducking anybody I've put in my help desk ticket I've got a camera issue so I'm going to instead just turn that off um I think first of all I just want to say I hope everybody realizes how how much this team wants students to return to school that's been a consistent priority in the hours that we put into this so this recommendation one positive is that it gets our students in school on September 21st as planned and all the work around our hybrid scheduling and programming remains moving forward so we're not actually making recognition of change our hybrid plans it's this piece of the schedule and when we put that final prep block to allow us to get our kids in school and meet all the other agreements that we've made with our staff I mean that's part of what we have to do uh to lend question if we just zoom in a little bit to the last two weeks since the last time we talked just looking at the last two weeks we've lost um six pair of professionals Rob I think if you want to spot check this six pair of professionals and another four have been recruited for uh professional assignments taking on classrooms so just in the last two weeks there's 10 staff across our building that we um you know unanticipated that we've lost I think one other piece of this and right and I think any of us could actually speak to it as the remote academy came together and what we saw is that we have enough so many students and if we're creating class lists that are actually going to allow us to do the type of remote programming that we want to do high quality instruction we've we've I think we're at 41 classes that we've we've needed to put together and without doing that we are looking at classes that are with 30 plus in seats in those remote classes and I do not believe that that is in anybody's best interest especially our students especially at our first time designing this program so in creating those seats we are recruiting more teachers um and then what we're seeing is and Rob you know thank you to human resources because Rob has been an absolute gem in everything that he's done we are not able to fill these seats that are being left available for paraprofessional coverage and our paraprofessionals are a critical component to the hybrid model the the one other thing I'll say about paraprofessionals is just for a perspective um as we're putting this together our paraprofessionals we're connecting them to coverage but they are also critical staff when it comes to supporting high-need students and students who need support through their individual education programs or intervention in RTI and other programming that we've traditionally done so every time that by by limiting their role as we're having to do just to get this original schedule off the ground we are not really able to anticipate what that impact will be on our students who have benefited from that support I mean they are a critical part of the educational program and unfortunately because of how we've you know staffing shortages we've had to limit and limit that particular part of their job and shift to more of a coverage responsibility so okay I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that I just wanted to say a couple thank you dad I just wanted to say a couple of things about how fortunate I feel as a principal that we have such an incredibly highly qualified staff that many of our paraprofessionals with people who were in that role because they were teachers and they love teaching and they were looking for the opportunity to um stay on in a school in a district that they love so the fact that we have so many people who had committed themselves to that role and stayed and now we're able to move them into these classroom positions I think we should just recognize how how fortunate we are that that happened but now that that's happened we really need to make sure that we're supporting our entire schools as best we can and many of our paraprofessionals are people who are supporting students who are within special education and so we can't use those people to always do things like cover you know for lunchtime or whatever they have a real purpose and so our point was that we were looking to fill in a couple of weeks ago I feel like we thought we were in a pretty pretty good place is that we had openings but we were going to need to fill them but that's you know what happens at the beginning of every school year is that we fill some positions right at the end that's always happens every year pandemic or no pandemic but this year because we weren't moving forward we were actually you know creating more of a need when we shifted these roles and people took jobs in other places that we're just not able to keep up with that in a way that's going to allow us to really make sure that we're covering the needs of our students but you know what Mr Dingman said at the beginning about how you know really really important it is to us to be able to get these children into school we didn't want to do what you know some other districts might have done which is to recommend that we start remotely we want to be able to be present for the children that we want to be present and if we need to be a little earlier in the day then we understand that that's difficult um and we hope that we can find ways to help support families with that but that this seemed like the best way to be able to do what we had planned all along in a way that is safe and that will be educationally sound for everyone yeah and keep talking i'm not i'm not questioning the decision i'm questioning where we are as far as recruiting for positions that we posted on july 28th right we first posted for building substitutes on july 28th and i'm hearing we only we only hired once since then which is which is fine because we've slotted people into paraprofessionals i understand but i'm trying to see where we are in meeting the needs that we need to be able to do a full day right so so how far are we are we still looking for 49 people where are we so i can help with that so i'm going to share my screen okay and then on that screen will be a spreadsheet of what the needs are and it's directly to your question thank you no problem and we've hired and i mean we finalized a hire today we've hired like four or five building subs but we are the pool is not as deep as we would like to see because these are these aren't people that are supporting individual students like paraprofessionals these are people that are just coming in for 45 minutes to cover a classroom or to cover a day if a teacher is sick right so i'm going to ask mr uh i'm going to ask mr demon to walk you through this chart yep so uh in in taking into consideration exactly what you're talking about we have to look at paraprofessionals that are available for the hybrid schedule so if for example there is a paraprofessional and their responsibility is one to one then they're not available for some of the other responsibilities that we need to launch the hybrid schedule so across the top are our in-person classrooms you can see in the far right we have 41 remote academy classrooms we can see that conversation for i think for a different time but just focusing in on the in-person classrooms that we have next are the parrot you just slide to the left a little bit next are right now the paraprofessionals that we have available in each of our buildings to help us uh to run the hybrid schedule to provide the coverage and supports for prep and for lunch and then underneath are where we are in unfilled positions so even though there's not a it's not totaled on the uh that row four we're 16 positions right now away from being at a minimal staffing level to run our hybrid schedule without um without hiccups so then the next piece that we've all talked about we need redundancy so we need those building subs that are going to provide either short term or long term coverage if we run into a medical situation or different uh the recommendation that we talked about with Dr. Bodie is three we've been looking to hire so you can see the building subs that have been hired in each of our buildings to fill that need within the last week or two weeks there've also been teaching positions where teachers have for different reasons left that position vacant and they need to be filled teaching positions have proven to be a little bit more just easier to to fill at this time than the paraprofessional positions but you know just to be really um concrete about this this is where we are at great thank you um so my other two just two points of clarification so even though they're dismissed from school the school day continues to 226 because of learning time is that right Dr. McNeill sorry so that would be theoretically the um yes what you know if they were dismissed you know we would want students to go home and continue the structured learning activities uh when they get home so they'll be given a structured learning activity to take home we can provide that yes okay and then the other question thinking of families and and other districts that are I mean one of the first district's plans I saw had the prep period you know kids at home for the prep period but it was first thing in the morning so I know my kids are older and sleep later but even looking back to my younger kids wouldn't families be uh less inconvenienced by an 845 start rather than an early dismissal was that considered it was considered but looking at you know trying to support the students who are receiving support in order to give excuse me in order to give them support it's a lot easier to do that when you have them just remain in school and then we also talked to the after-school programming and they said that they could meet the needs of an earlier dismissal so it's just it's a little bit more of a smoother transition uh for students to remain in the building as opposed to coming into the building and not starting instruction so you know we would already have the supervision there and then we could just they can come in and receive their support but so because of that aspect of it we are recommending the early release at 145 as opposed to the late start and we did talk about it okay thank you hi Dr. Allison Ampe um Mr. Cardin and Ms. Ekston answer ask the questions that I had I just want to comment that I am I appreciate why you're talking about doing this I am concerned that this is going to be difficult for families it's good to know that the after-school programs can pick things up but you know it's school's going to start in just in less than two weeks and now we're telling them oh by the way your child's going to be home 45 minutes earlier I mean and you have to go get them 45 minutes earlier on the two days that they're in school so they the parents if they're working have now an even more truncated workday so I do hope that we're able to find the additional staffing to make this happen and extend the school day longer in person thank you Mr. Thielman yeah the previous speakers have asked all my questions and I have the answers that I was going to ask questions about my you know I would say just to echo what Dr. Curcie Allison Ampe said is that it would be helpful if you can keep us posted on your progress in making these hires because it I mean as Curcie said this is going to be an extra burden on families who we're hoping to have two days of school that would be you know normal or full-length so if you can just keep us posted and you know if if you see trends in the market I'm kind of curious to know how Arlington is doing compared to other districts I don't know if we have any data I don't know if you guys are in touch with your colleagues in other districts but it would be good for the community to know that I know it's probably anecdotal but it's still helpful to know I was just going to add actually it's anecdotal Mr. Thielman but this morning the threat among the SPED directors is exactly that help we're looking for prayer professionals across the state okay yeah okay yeah I had a sense that that's our reality but I just wanted to know if we were any different okay thank you and Mr. Dingman also wanted to chime in on that particular question well yeah just I want to make sure that it's clear that what we're I feel weird having a camera when you might want to turn it off because you can't see you at all right a little it's when we're looking at this particular staffing issue it really is a question of do we not open or do or can we think creatively lean on each other ask a little bit more to get our kids in those seats so I want to recognize that please understand that this is not an easy recommendation and particularly the impact on our families which is what we have considered through all this getting our kids in trying to make this a full-day program has always been about lifting the burden of our families who have felt this since March but given the the the possibility of not being able to open we would much rather try this model and ask for just a little bit more consideration and support so we can get kids in the door as opposed to start a process of phasing or something like that which would be buying time to do what it's still we still could be two weeks at a time and not finding that critical staff this we feel this is an important decision because it it keeps us on track and we'll see our students on the 21st and we'll particularly see our students who we know need the most who've been disproportionately affected by this so I just wanted to put that out there yeah let me just say I'm going to vote for this at this point I'm the perfect is is the enemy of the good so yeah I I'm just making a point I I appreciate what Mr. Dickman and the and the principals and Ms. Perez and the team are doing to get students in the building I am and I and I love your your approach and attitude towards this you know we want kids in the building we want them in on on the 21st of September so I appreciate that I'm rave of where I'm just pointing out the obvious I guess so thank you Mr. Sikman yeah my my question is within all this and the lack of pairs and the adjustments we're making is there a budgetary impact of where we are with the set of changes well let me just make it clear this has nothing to do with our ability to finance the positions I don't know if that that's at the part of your question when we get the people to it was not no I'm wondering if there's going to be extra costs that we need any additional costs or any additional any unspent revenue that would be directed elsewhere no this is all under the what we if I'm understanding your question correctly we have the budget to finance these positions and it's not taking money from any other programming well no if we're not filling the positions because we can't are we going to use yeah well I mean our our our hope is that we're going to eventually fill the position so I would not make a recommendation to divert the finances to something else because our hope is to have you know this only be a temporary situation we'll be able to go back to the 230 a dismissal once we get the staffing issue taken care of okay thank you Mr. Hayden I hope I answered your question Mr. Sliman I was trying well sort of I mean as soon as I see a couple of a bunch of unfulfilled parapositions if this appears to be extending out into time it would be able to combine those a couple of parapositions to fund one teacher position if that's easier to fill I don't know got you I understand now okay thank you Mr. Hayder thank you first off I'd like to thank Dr. McNeil and all the staff for the cannot imagine the time that you and frustration that you're going through first question tag on for Mr. Sliman and this may go to Mr. Spiegel we're not known Arlington is not known for paying exorbitant salaries at any level I realize the pool is very thin but if we raise the the para salary might that attract more is there a possibility in that well we're in a contract with the union and we'd have to you know we're bound by the union contract both I understand that I'm talking hypothetically right at the moment your profession it might I'm also yeah I mean I've thought about different things to create different you know I mean we do have different levels of paraprofessional in our contract and we could consider hiring people at different levels but then that has ripple effects on the people who have already in those positions in I understand the school so I mean that could be expensive the the other question I have is there a certain that chat that you presented to us for the needs is there a certain number that we can start considering going back or do we need to fill all those positions before that thought happens uh mr hangman jump in on that yeah I was just gonna say uh Mr. Inter yeah we this is the what we're talking about is the minimal amount of staffing okay thank you and I just to you know the other thing that we've talked about is that it's important to think about that it does not have redundancy something happened it's sick you know I I appreciate that thank you and my last question is in all your planning I'm sure you've done it but I want to put it out there on the public thing uh medco students and families have been considered in all these decisions I hope yes I had a conversation with uh mr thomas our medco director today uh and we talked about this scenario so we we are going to be able to provide supervision and those students will be taken care of in this new scenario my last question is do we have to inform desi that we're changing the time even though it's a temporary thing not that I know of thank you but but I will check on that to be sure yeah we would not be changing structural minutes I understand that but I know we had to present a plan for hybrid and oh right I will check out and just cover just keep us covered so we don't get caught in the technicality later down the line absolutely 100 thank you for that um so I guess my comments are um first of all as a uh as a former classroom teacher I'm grateful for our teacher's flexibility in doing an end of day prep period it wouldn't have been my preference when I was teaching to do that at the very end of the day I would have wanted it in the middle of the day and I know that some it's always moves around um but I'm I'm grateful um and that we can make that happen or that they can help us make this happen um you know it's a it's certainly a significant burden on families especially those with young children these are predominantly kids who need to be physically picked up especially in the early grades um and they need to you know they need to be there to um you know they need to physically be there to pick up their kids so um uh the one thing that I was hoping and uh Dr McNeil I'm glad that you have been able to liaise with some of our in building after school programs um and it's good that if they can absorb this time you know we do need to recognize that that's coming at cost I suspect there will be some cost to parents to take that time after school programs also need to pay their staff and if they need them for an extra 45 minutes they're going to cost that cost along um but I hope that you can use the full um uh Dr Bode has been very successful in the past um at liaising with some of the in-town after school programs even the ones that are not part of our uh that are not hosted on our building at the boys and girls club and fidelity house and I know that many of those programs are no longer providing transportation for students for this coming year but we do have a significant numbers of kids who will be uh at uh the boys and girls club and I'm not sure about fidelity house but other places and to the extent that your office can work with those programs and encourage them to absorb some of this time um that would be that would be great um because it would be very hard for a family with a kid at um at the boys and girls club to have to pick them up at 145 and then not have uh after school care begin there until 240 or 245 that would be tremendously challenging so to the extent that you can work with those programs I recognize they're not under our purview um but we have been successful in the past um and so I think that's those are all of my questions and comments um I want to call on uh Ms. Keys briefly and then I want to talk about um we're gonna need to sort of craft this motion on the fly here um so but uh Ms. Keys why don't you go ahead and then we can come back to me. Hi um just I know that this is very new and that we don't have all the details of it worked out yet uh traditionally when our teachers have prep periods their students are going to do their specials classes or lunch and recess um and you don't have to prep for that like you don't create activities for the students to do if we're now talking that the kids are going to go home early and they're going to go home with some sort of structured activity we are now asking our teachers to prep for their prep and that's one more thing that's being put on to staff so as we continue to work out how this is going to go I want everyone just to keep that in mind we're already asking people to do two jobs this year and we don't want this to be like the straw that breaks the back of our teaching staff thank you yeah and I can just make sure I I definitely can appreciate that comment but you know we have various online tools we have purchased we have other things that we can provide for students like uh you know SEL activities things of that nature that can be integrated into their structured learning activity so we are not going to be burdening our teachers to prep for the prep so I think we have enough content and enough activities that we can provide for students where it could still be considered a structured learning activity where the teachers don't have to plan for their prep that's a very excellent point and uh I hear you and we'll make sure that that doesn't happen awesome thank you let's to tag on to that it was part of our original planning is that because it's never correct never would have been and still right not to be our intention to have teachers have to prepare for their prep period because it does it completely defeats the purpose the one thing that I think we will find is nice that we were going to lose is that at the elementary level our grade level teachers um previously might not have had their prep periods at the same time as their colleagues and while this isn't something that we necessarily wanted this could be kind of a a good a good silver lining common planning time yeah absolutely we'll all be having their prep set the same time okay so um because this is a change uh to the august 10th plan um and recommendation from Dr. Bodie that we um we approved um I think we need a motion on this I um I was hoping that uh with the motion and unfortunately it's we don't have something written at this point but I would like to include some kind of report back to us um I would expect that we would hear from Dr. McNeil and Mr. Spiegel at at every meeting uh that we have we meet on the 10th and then we meet again in two weeks time so I you know would certainly be something that we would put on the on the agenda as an update I assume we meet on the 24th and then uh I have a lot of Thursday activities apparently uh the 8th and then the 22nd so I guess um it it seems to me that it would be nice to put in the motion another uh another decision point so that we can sort of cue to the community you know when's the next time that we may be in a position to or I don't know I'm up for um you know up for debate about how we want to do this we're just going to have to do it here in front of everybody so uh Mr. Cardin and then Mr. Hayner so I move that the school committee approves the recommendation of the superintendent to um change the elementary hybrid program so that students leave school at 145 uh on their in-person days and that the administration is directed to continually report to the school committee on its hiring efforts and any changes in evaluation of this dismissal time. Mr. Hayner can I also just add to this I just want to make sure that it's I just want to distinguish this we're only talking about the in-school portion of the hybrid plan students are in the remote part their day will still go to 230 so you have the students in a remote cohort they will still go their day will still be 230 I just want to make sure I'm making that distinction we're only talking about the in-school portion. All right and only k5? Only k5 yes. Okay look uh Mr uh do we have a second for discussion for Mr. Cardin and then I will call on Mr. Hayner. I will second that he covered everything that I was interested in doing. Okay anybody else so uh any discussion I see Dr. Allison Ampey right Dr. Allison Ampey. This isn't exactly to the motion but do all the schools have to go back full time at the same time? I would make that recommendation I mean I feel like and I can I can talk this over with the administrative team but I would say I think that we need to go all go back at the same time. It really has been our objective and our mission since this all started to keep our elementary schools very much on the same page so that the children would have very similar experiences and we've been working really closely as a team to ensure that so I feel confident that we would recommend that we should stay on the same page and we'll support each other actually in these hiring efforts. Okay any more discussion? All right so seeing none on a motion by Mr. Cardin second by Mr. Hayner um Ms. Eksten yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampey yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schuchman yes Mr. Hayner yes I'm also yes all right Dr. McNeil back to you. Thank you very much Ms. Morgan and thank you for your support to all the school committee members with this motion this recommendation. Our next recommendation I guess and I just want to make sure I'm doing this the process is correct is that we have provided Dr. Janger has provided a memorandum that is making and presented it to Dr. Bodie and the administrative team that the high school go remote for the first semester and what I mean that is that they don't have a remote academy like all students go into the remote program and that they have a remote program of instruction for the first semester and the reasons for that have been laid out in that memorandum Dr. Janger is here to talk more about that so if I would like for him to speak on it and also Mr. McCarthy is also here to speak on that so I would like for them to you know provide some context for the public and then I'll you know we can go over to questions and comments from the school committee so Dr. Janger sorry about that first thank you very much for everyone's time I know the school committee has put an enormous amount of effort into pouring over the details of these decisions and I'll try to be sure we've already gone over this in some detail most recently with the facilities committee and then just a week before we went over the facilities reports as well this simple version of the story is that it's the high school program has always been faced with sort of a cascading number of issues we've had a construction project going on we have a building which was already too small for our programs and a building which was in challenging repair and so over the course of this summer as we've been working forward trying to build the hybrid model that the school committee has set us to we've done a lot of things to create more space we had the period we moved a lot of programs to remote physical education wellness music computer science and then last four languages and a Hail Mary to make extra space and to create programming options we had to cancel courses we combined our heterogeneous courses our curriculum and honors courses so that we can more smoothly distribute folks across the school we move classes to share rooms and the facilities department has been making a heroic effort to review all of the spaces but unfortunately all of that's working backwards against something that Mr. McCarthy and I've been working on for the last seven years as we've been taking storage closets and other spaces and actually over the last 50 years the building itself dividing classrooms into spaces in order to create classroom spaces because those classroom spaces while we could fit numbers of kids in them if they were willing to be close together under the current conditions where they need to be spread apart and the current conditions where the ventilation needs to be fully functioning and we just haven't been able to do that so depending on how you count we've lost anywhere from 20 to 30 operating classrooms and we've had most of our classrooms reduced from many of our classrooms reduced to where they can hold fewer than 10 students there's fewer than 10 students that means the whole class size and the 50-50 hybrid is maybe 18 students sometimes fewer than that having done that the reality was they're just worn enough seats even having done all of those things to move different programs out in the end the sort of bottom line is that they're worn enough seats so one can go through the bullets in the report and I'm happy to answer questions about any one of them but most importantly really is the last the second and third bullet under results in the memo which is that having run the program after on the 28th we got what was then the most recent facilities report we had classrooms near 100 capacity which makes that program impossible to schedule more than 1700 students not getting their course requests and most importantly over 500 students not able to get core course requests those are course requests that students need to get and then again from there you have a cascade so you now have students who don't have classes that means there are more students don't supervise that means we need more space in the building to provide study halls which we don't have and so having gone through all of those things it finally came clear in the couple of days after that facilities meeting as we ran the final programs and we sat down with the department heads and tried to problem solve that in the end starting the year with the first semester all remote which allows us then to set class sizes to their normal size because they're not constrained and to let the calendar load was really necessary to let our teachers begin to do things and so we've made that proposal and then along with that proposal we talked a little bit about the the framework for instruction within the semesterized program we've been proposing all along which is that we are still planning on the 21st to bring high-need students in so those would be special ed students who are identified as higher moderate needs those students are all being contacted right now and having their programming put in place we can give them larger amounts of space because the building is not crowded at that point as well as some of our general ed programs that are tier three for high needs and again those students are being contacted as soon as we get that programming set up we'll set up programming for what the state calls level two three and four students which are all various versions of students who don't have an adequate home environment to work and so we would set up a kind of a learning center where those students could come in and have a study on environment where they could engage in their remote classes but be in school with access to Wi-Fi and a place to work and we have to first figure out what spaces are available and clear up some of the larger spaces so that we can support that and then we'll do some needs assessment over that after we've got the high-need students in place and then the other thing that we're working on right now is thinking about how do you support students this is not going to be what we did in the spring in the spring we started fairly quickly and the expectation was one point of contact a week right now we have a group of teachers who are working on the expectations for classrooms but the basic expectation is that every day four days per class you would be coming in to a Zoom meeting having attendance and then breaking out into a combination of teacher work independent work group work like you would in a regular class with the teacher checking in over the time during that 80-minute period and you'd have three or four of those classes in a day for the four weeks the main classes are happening and then on Wednesday you'd have your remote PE classes advisory and opportunities for club and support and guidance work during the explore and then last but not least we're working on we think it's very important as everybody else we want kids in the building we want to meet with kids we want to see kids as we've been working through this whole COVID thing we all have a lot of experiences we had experiences in the spring with car parades and photography for graduation and other ways that we can bring things in and have activities in person so we're talking about what we call reverse field trips where a teacher plans to bring a group of students either into a classroom that they reserve and smaller numbers or to an outdoor space where they can spread out and there's a lot of different options across each department about how they might do that for labs or how something like the performing arts might do that so that they can sing away from each other in ways that are safe and promoted by the performing arts associations so there's a lot of work going on around figuring out that and then last but not least making sure that we have a system in place right from the beginning for clarifying work habits for success in a remote environment and following up quickly to make sure students are connected engage understand the expectations around what they're doing during the class getting their work in in time and knowing how to work on that so actually we're pretty excited I think when we finally kind of put our heads around this and start moving forward the teachers get excited about actually being able to move forward and making a plan for what we expect to be a pretty enriching we've had a lot of experience now with online instruction there have been study groups working all summer and they're all pretty eager to bring that expertise to the rest of the school so thank you very much Mr. McCarthy may want to speak a little bit to scheduling I don't know how much time you want me to take up and we do have the department heads here we're all ready and willing to kind of talk about their vision of how this instruction will work in their departments and how they think that we can effectively serve students in this way thank you Dr. Janger excellent job um Ms. Morgan so from here how do you want to move forward so I made the recommendation in I'm in place of Dr. Bote so it's the recommendation of the administrative team that we will move the high school that the high school will start the year for the first semester in a remote environment on a remote learning program for the first semester okay and Mr. Thielman had written something up earlier okay we can either take that up now or we can do some questions actually you know what I'm going to do what I would like I'm going to put him on the spot here because he doesn't know I'm going to do this Mr. Thielman we spent a lot of time well over probably 90 minutes yesterday discussing uh things about the facilities and the schedule and I saw that your meeting minutes came through to the committee today which was great would you be able to summarize that for the community to you know or you know give us some sort of oration from the minutes um just so that you know I don't know that we need to necessarily replay that whole conversation but we did have a very long meeting uh as a facility subcommittee uh yesterday afternoon where we did take this up at length so would you be able to do that for us happy to thank you Ms. Morgan uh so the facility subcommittee met yeah yesterday afternoon at the one o'clock and we um spent some time talking about facilities in general we got a very good report from Mr. Feeney Mr. Feeney gave a positive news about classrooms and facilities HVAC improvements in all schools that house students in grades K through 8 there was a lot of good news he's in the process of securing tents for most of the schools that will allow us to have some activities gatherings instruction in those in those spaces in the fall then we just asked the high school so he is in the process of repairing HVAC in several classrooms there is still work to be done there are some classrooms where there are fresh air intakes in HVAC but those classrooms don't have windows Dr. Janger has determined and his staff have determined those aren't places where he wants teaching learning to start at least at the start of the school year and we then received the report from Dr. Janger Dr. Janger and Mr. McCarthy did a very good job of walking us through the limitations on the site and there was a lot of conversation questions by members of the committee finally the committee asked so we we we asked we talked about both facilities and curriculum we had four members of the school committee participate in the meeting and the committee asked if I would put together a motion I put together a motion which I wrote in consultation with Dr. Vodi to put some time frame around the work that needs to take place over the next few weeks and there's two there's three parts in the motion one is what the district and high school leadership are going to do related to the in-person instruction program and then the planning for a hybrid model and then the role of the school committee I can put the motion on the table if you want Ms. Morgan and then we can have a discussion whatever you'd like me to do um sure let's do that and then that sort of structure okay conversation okay so it's it's uh that all the members of the school committee have this um if it was a sentiment Fitzgerald earlier today this morning um so I'll I'll just read it and uh hopefully the public can follow on moved that the Arlington school committee accepts the superintendent's and high school leadership's revised plan to postpone a full hybrid instruction program with live in-person teaching available to all students who desire it until the second semester of the 2021 school year which commences in late january 2021 with the following conditions by no later than friday october 16th 2020 the district and high school leadership shall present a written report to the school committee that includes an update on hvac heating ventilation and air conditioning issues in Arlington high school including the cost of installing new equipment and other upgrades necessary to make all spaces used as offices classroom classrooms and gathering spaces in previous school years accessible to students and staff during the current school year uh and a specific plan for remote instruction in the first semester of the 2021 school year that contains opportunities for all students to have contact with teachers and staff on the campus of the high school through a variety of means including some in-person instruction orientation and extracurricular programs a robust system of follow-up with all students particularly those who do not submit assignments to their teachers on time or otherwise struggle with remote learning and other pertinent details of the remote instruction plan second part of the motion by no later than friday november 13th 2020 the district and high school leadership shall prepare a written report to the school committee that includes a summary of student experiences to date with remote instruction including participation rates and the number percentage and frequency of in-person on-camp campus contacts ahs students have with faculty and staff a summary of the school leadership's evaluation of all reasonable hybrid models they have research that allow students to experience live in-person instruction uh for example grades of students going to school at different times and in school schedule for select core courses etc a plan to implement hybrid instruction at a hs in the second semester of the 2021 school year that allows all students to experience live in-person instruction if their parents or guardians make this choice for them and a summary of any new costs associated with the transition to hybrid instruction in the second semester for example audio visual equipment additional staff etc and then the final part is uh as information becomes available the school committee shall evaluate proposals for facilities improvements and other expenses associated with the implementation of hybrid instruction that are linked in high school prioritize needs and work with the district leadership and town officials to identify funding sources to support a full hybrid program subcommittees of the school committee shall meet as appropriate to review information and reports prepared by the superintendent and her staff so that's the long motion but it gives guidance uh to the district leadership and the principal and his staff um to prepare reports for us back in the motion so um so let's do just we can discuss around the motion but also um you know ask questions uh so let's direct questions I think to Dr McNeil and then you can distribute as you see because you're you have a better sense of who you have here I think um does that work for you Dr McNeil if we direct our questions if the committee directs their questions to you and then you can volley those out okay sounds good okay um so let's do um this is a big topic and a like a hefty motion so let's we can certainly take up multiple rounds of questions comments or feedback um so that but we'll go through our regular order so Ms. Exton well thank you for sharing all of this and I wasn't at the facilities um subcommittee meeting but I did read um through all of that um one of the things that I'm thinking about a lot are our ninth graders and sort of their transition to the high school um and how there can be more in person outdoor things for them at the beginning I know orientation is in this motion but just what have you already thought about in terms of particularly supporting the freshman in transitioning to the high school thank you Dr. Janker so actually um I may take advantage of deferring to Mr. McNeil who just sent me the proposal he's here to talk a little bit about the freshman orientation plans that we were just clearing with the board of health Mr. McNeil are you willing to be put on the spot there yes how could I refuse good evening everyone um yes the one we are we do have a team of staff that are working on a freshman transition program series of events and that includes actually working with our student leaders and our student council so it is predominantly through our advisory program um we have solicited the volunteers of a ninth grade uh or sorry upper classmen to be volunteer co-advisors and peer mentors who would be assigned to ninth grade advisories we are creating a ninth grade welcome website that will have a lot of information about how this program will work and in addition to a ninth grade welcoming events through their advisories we are planning a series of in-person orientations to be done with several advisories at a time on the field we are in discussion with the board of health about how those those can happen and are looking to do those in october so we are looking to connect ninth graders to the facility to their advisors and to their the peer mentors who will be helping with those advisors as soon as possible so that's one way that we are looking to do that we are looking to the ninth graders are actually going to be one of our first points of contact in terms of in-person programming there are reasons you're waiting till october i'm just thinking i'll have had about two weeks of classes first um so some of that is just um logistical planning in terms of going around the the clearance to make sure that our events are going to be uh safe um and well staffed um we are working on advisory assignments um at this time in terms of pairing up so we want to make sure that our you know the staff and staff and students are available at those times and we want to give parents and students a sufficient notice for when these things can happen we just we we typically do have class assemblies one or two weeks after school has resumed and we do a freshman team building thing each year usually in october so it's not um it's it's not uncommon for us to have some kinds of orientation activities after the school year has begun but we are definitely thinking about ninth graders a lot thank you um the only other thing just thinking about the motion um it says opportunities for all students to have contact with teachers and staff on the campus and i'm wondering um if regular contact with teachers and staff i don't i know that there's supposed to be a report about how frequently it's happening later but um and i i realize there's a lot of space constraints but i'm just you know worried that when someone it might be once some might not do it at all so um i'm sort of thinking aloud here but that's just something about if it's a possibility to have it be something regular or predictable or consistent more a comment than a question so that that that was a comment not a question and if if someone has an answer for that that would be great but if not can you define consistent or like regular um i mean i again i can't i'm not going to say what it should be but is it is it only going to be you'll see your teacher once over this semester from september to january could it be regular i guess that's some kind of a schedule whether it's once a month or so i i i do want us to distinguish that i i don't i want to be careful with our language students are going to see their teachers every day they're just going to see them in a virtual environment so i want to make sure that we're clear with that because when we talk about seeing your teacher you know people might think back to the spring but i want and and dr jenger did a good job of outlining that this is not the spring right they're going to i'm i'm looking at um opportunities for all students to have contact with teachers and staff on the campus got you thank you for i'm wondering if it could be opportunities for students to have regular contact with teachers and staff in person on the yeah so can i can i speak to that for a second absolutely so i think a reasonable expectation but i i don't know that i want to set it in these words is for every teacher in every class to have at least one activity where the student is expected to participate in an instructional activity not necessarily a meeting but an instructional activity um per semester but i think to understand like if we get to regular then we're back into the same thing of having to put together a dance of a whole bunch of schedules all around trying to focus on getting people in class and when people in class think about reverse field trips um when people when you're doing that all of a sudden i if i'm bringing six kids in do a lab in my class those kids have to get to my class i have to coordinate with where they have to be for their other classes um i have to figure out how i'm going to do that with everybody else if i'm starting to do that once a month for every kid i'm back in the hybrid we just told you we couldn't do um it's just becomes a huge logistical thing if it's an expectation that once over the course of a term each teacher is going to think of a meaningful way to have instructional activity or an academic activity or team building activity with their class either all together outside or in small groups inside um i think each person can figure out ways to do that meaningfully but if it becomes regular and then of course if i somebody's gonna have to define regular and then all of a sudden i'm back trying to create a schedule um and the teachers are trying really hard right now to create a really meaningful schedule for four days a week for you know i mean like i think that's i think that's going to become a problem of definition or it's going to be overly restrictive okay no that i mean that helps me and i i guess if the expectation is that each teacher will have at least one in person that ends up with being four a semester right they're taking four courses three or four courses yeah thanks this keys and then mr carton um i just want to make sure everybody understands we do have some teachers and it's not a very high number but we do have some who are very high risk for covid and we are still in a pandemic and these are teachers who had requested remote teaching positions because it was not safe for them to be in groups of people so mr jenger dr jenger is absolutely right that like this is the goal is to get kids in and meeting with their teachers and everything like that there may be some who cannot do that and i i just i don't want to come back with like well my kids science teacher didn't come in like there might be a few teachers here or there who are not able to do in person so i just want to make sure that that's stated okay um mr carton uh miss exton are you on that thank you okay great thank you um mr carton uh thank you so i have mostly uh comments not questions um we had you know the high school team there at the facilities meeting yesterday we went over the numbers um in some detail um i think just explaining it the way i think of it um you know we we have a tight we had a tight building to begin with some of the rooms are very non-standard sizes we have rooms that are triangles and so when you try to fit six foot spacing in those rooms we get very small numbers some fit eight a lot fit 10 or 11 or 12 and that means our our class sizes are capped at 20 22 24 at the most and that limits the number of seats that we have available uh with with people teaching the same number of classes with using every available space in the building um there just aren't going to be enough seats to run the hybrid schedule the way it was proposed and i said yesterday um and i'll say it again that i think it's a little bit unfortunate that we are where we are um you know certainly we had a wait for the facilities assessment but we knew that a few of the rooms were were were likely not going to be usable um we could have made some educated guesses and sort of realized that this wasn't going to work back in july and came up with a different solution because there are other solutions that are out there winchester has a model where they're only having core classes five core classes per student in a hybrid model in person two classes for per student that are remote newberry port has a model where they're bringing in only 25 percent of the student body each day so there are other models that we could have explored and that we need to explore for the second semester so i think that's um where we need to go um i think there's definitely um an undercurrent in some of the conversations about um is this really all worth it right so in a hybrid model you're exchanging two days and you know an ideal hybrid model you're changing two days of in-person learning for um you get two days of in-person learning and then three days of mostly asynchronous barely guided by a teacher learning and i think some people think that that's not a good trade-off but i think our state board of education and lots of other educational experts think that we do need to have in-person learning i think the parents overwhelmingly feel that and i know that they're not necessarily the experts but i think their view has to be taken into account so as we move forward to the second semester um i i strongly support the aspects of the motion um that do require some sort of hybrid plan be put forward for us um in november uh lastly i mean i think there's always also always a temptation to say you know we're gonna we're gonna make this great we're gonna you know do the do our best um and i know we have a great team and we will but i but for the people that are watching this you know i always hear this this comment of you know only looking on the bright side and not acknowledging that this is a huge disappointment for our community for many of our students we're letting them down i feel like we're letting them down and uh and and it hurts so um you know i i know we'll do the best we can i know there'll be great education happening but there'll be a lot of kids that are struggling and we need to make sure we do everything we can uh to address those students thank you um dr alson ampey thank you um mr cardin made a lot of comments that i thought were really helpful um i won't repeat them we did hear a lot at facilities um and because of that i don't have questions at this time uh except for one oh first i want to make a note about one of the things that wasn't mentioned in the facility summary is that we asked the question of is it possible to find space outside of the school system to basically expand our school kind of virtually um and unfortunately in town uh the administration had already looked for space for other uses but similar space and there is nothing so the chance you know the idea that's suggested by like the harvard global health initiative of having classrooms and churches and things like that won't work here because there isn't the space to do it um the question that i have is just i appreciate that we're bringing our hiding students in to the building but how will inclusion look for these students thank you for that uh dr jenger um so i i mean it depends on the students iep but if i'm participating in a general education class in the zoom call i will participate in a general education class in the zoom call i will set up an automatic background if i don't want anyone to know what class to mine in which is something that's available to everybody and as far as anybody's concerned i'm just like everybody else on headphones in my zoom call during that class i'm in the cotots um if students in the cotot choose to have their instruction um take place in the building they would participate in the zoom calls like everybody else in the zoom call but if they were doing a breakout room with the individual teacher then they could um they would you know they might do in person breakout times during the 80 minutes with their individual teacher with the students who are there in the school but most of the time they're going to be participating in breakout rooms with everybody else and the teachers there it's going to be sort of the teacher there to check in with them during some of the time during the class so their experience and everybody else's experience of their participating should be the same as everybody else's thank you um mr. galvin yes uh thank you miss morgan um i'm just going to probably put a few questions out there so the public has a better understanding of the motion and then i'll make some comments as well uh and i guess i can um you know we had a conversation yesterday about uh how important it is uh or you know the definition of a robust uh remote instruction program and one of the things i think everybody in the room concluded is that you know we're talking about 14 to 18 year old students who are in a variety of home situations and we talked about how critical it is for there to be follow-up phone calls texts and emails when students don't submit assignments on time when students miss a class or miss a time when they're supposed to be online and so the motion that gives the district until it gives a superintendent and dr. janger until the 16th of october will give us some detail on what the follow-up process and procedure is but i was wondering if through mr. mcneal dr mcneal i could ask dr. janger kind of to talk about some of the school staff's thinking on this absolutely yeah so um one of the things that we actually the teachers have been asking for since very early in the summer is to have a consistent approach to teaching monitoring and assessing work habits and so we've been developing a work average rubric and then a set of responses to that there's a group of folks working on creating a consistent both how that's represented in grading how those specific expectations are taught to the students and then how there's a process for teacher expectations around following up and then the support structure around the dean's paraprofessionals who are sort of being signed up and tasked with that and our student study group to sort of follow up so i couldn't agree more i think the first two weeks of the sign-up period are going to be really crucial kids are going to need to be signed up online understanding expecting expectations getting into that routine of getting you know it's it's a little hard i don't know about you but when you look closer to the school you're often later because you think you can just flip it open two seconds before so it's a little bit hard for kids to get used to it 8 30 i need to push start and i need to be there in my meeting and the expectation is that at the end of this time even though i'm sitting in my bedroom i have to hit submit and that work has to come in and so i think it was really helpful to hear from dr morgan about some of the options around how they do that it was at southern new hampshire university which has a whole system i don't think we'll be quite there people calling and following up but i think that set of expectations around that kind of practice is something that we're rolling into the beginning of the season with is spot on i think it's something we need to do with something we're planning on doing okay thank you um to to the point that miss exton was making um that that's idea i and i think mr cardin made this point yesterday is that's what we wanted um with a hybrid model a regular schedule in which students are in school and um it became apparent in yesterday's meeting that the best thing that we could do is um um uh include that and direct the leadership of the district uh and the high school to come up with different hybrid options including what we've heard about in winchester new very important other places where students are not in school two days a week but fewer days and hours um to see um if what those models look like for the second semester so there is the provision in there to look at other other options for the second semester what kids want is i mean these are 1415 60s are teenagers what they want is some predictability and regularity in their lives they may say they don't but they do they would like to know that every monday i'm going to be at our length and higher every wednesday um even if it's for a few hours so the regular regularity that liz exton was talking about is really what what what students want hopefully that's going to be an option that is going to be one of the options the district will explore as they present a plan to us about eight or nine weeks from now um the comment i want i want to i want to make is this can i just say something as well i think that we have to be very careful about comparing us to other districts because we don't know all the intricate conversations that they've had and all the things that they're able to offer and their staffing needs and their and the condition of their buildings so i mean i just i just want to throw that out there like because i understand that and we use we say that a lot and we look at other districts but i mean we also don't know the the pushback that they're getting also from parents so i don't think any district has a perfect plan and we have to do what within arlington we have to proceed with the resources that we have available to us in this particular situation you know the building is providing us with limitations so i just want to be i just want us to be careful about comparing us to other districts because unless we work in those districts or we've had like very detailed conversations with those individuals in those districts i'm sure they're making their best decision on how they're going to be forward based upon their resources such as what we're doing so i understand that this is a disappointment to the to the public but i also think it would be even a bigger disappointment if we move forward and we weren't able to follow through with the things that we're promising and we say we're going to promise this type of program and then we start the program and we don't have the resources and then we fall short so i know that this is going to be a big blow to the public but i also want us to keep the understand that you know we want to do this but we don't you know currently we have conditions at the high school that is not allowing us to do this correct that's fair i would say that in that second bullet in the second section of this document the expectation is is that dr janger and his staff will evaluate other other programs and other high schools by taking a deep dive into two or three other schools plans so that's an expectation in the report that's fair on the 13th i want to make that very clear the 13th the expectation is dr janger and i think he agreed to this yesterday we'll take a look at a few other models and a few other places do a deep dive find out what the constraints were in that system and see if it can be applied to our place we don't want a superficial report that says you know winchester high is a brand new school it works great over there and they don't have any limitations it needs to be a better and a deeper dive than that so i just want to make sure we're clear about that that's an expectation in this in this motion that's why it's a written motion that's why it's that clear so a point i want to make here is that you know 87 of the parent population indicated they wanted a hybrid model for their students and there are various motivations for that 87 percent it's it's like all voting you never quite know all of the reasons why people pick a certain option but um i would say that there is widespread concern not just in our only human across the country among parents of teenagers that you know we may lose districts like arlington schools like arlington high school may lose many kids and that would be sad and tragic so i mean we have you know i'm sure of the 1450 students that are enrolled in arlington high school a vast majority will connect with teachers will have a good experience when there's a follow-up phone call or a text or an email from a teacher they will respond the parents will get involved they'll do what they're supposed to do but there are going to be kids um that we may lose uh in this system uh in this lack of of in-person uh education um and you know those of us who've worked in education have worked especially in high schools we know that once you you know once you let a kid down it's really hard to get their trust back um so i'm just encouraging and i encourage dr janger uh on this point yesterday in the meeting i'll just say it again publicly is that you know we gotta we gotta be concerned about every single student in arlington high school every single young person um because if you know we don't do our job now we don't try to reach out to them we don't try to take care of them we don't care about them um we're we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna we could have some serious regrets we could lose some kids uh and that would be a tragedy that would be the responsibility of the entire adult community that's been involved in the decision making this summer about about the high school and about the district in general and so um i just i just i just want to i just want to say that um but can i just i just i just have to say this can i actually say something yes after after our speech this is not our care for our students and the way that we take care of them is not going to change because we're going to the remote learning environment you're you're we are a a district of qualified highly capable professionals that we have spent literally hundreds of hours in meetings and talking about planning looking at the at the spring re-evaluating our efforts in the spring people have it have availed themselves and sacrificed time with their families in order to prepare themselves for the fall so everything that you're saying we already do and we we have certain values that we adhere to we have a vision of students as a global citizen and and learner we have district goals i mean we are a district of qualified professionals who are dedicated to giving the best learning experience to our students this situation that we're in is no different than any other school district within the country everybody is struggling to meet the complex needs of all of our students in this global and the global pandemic and so like i said before we are moving with the best plan possible with the goal of servicing the needs of all students so we do that on a regular basis when there is no pandemic so that goal and what you just stated is not going to change and we understand that it's even at a heightened sense that we need to do this in this particular environment because we know that there's going to be those students that we need to reach out to and give that extra attention to so i just want to make sure that the public knows and understands the amount of hours and financial resources that have gone into planning as dr jenger everybody on the administrative team has been meeting like 12 working 12 14 hour days in order to make sure we are prepared to go into this fall and we understand that the things that we have or plan to do have been you know put off you know have been altered based upon our resources and it's just like a perfect storm at the high school we were in the in the midst of building a new high school and then the pandemic hit so we already knew that the high school needed to be updated and torn down and built a new structure in order to move forward without a pandemic so with all these things coming into the mix we are recommending this based upon the fact that we are going to spend another countless hours making sure to do just what you just explained but i don't want the public to think that we're not already thinking that and where we have to be directed to do so we are going to do that regardless of whatever situation we're in so i don't want anybody to think that we are not prepared to meet forward and that we have not put lots of thought time and effort and sacrifice to our own families to make sure that this happens so i just want to be very explicit and making that known because i don't think that anybody understands unless you actually have lived the experience so i just want to make sure that i make that statement go ahead dr janker thank you rod so jeff i couldn't agree with you more but i think i want to go back to what len said earlier about what question he wishes had been asked and i think that the question that we should be asking and we should have asked from the very beginning was what model will provide the best instructional outcome for all of our students equitably not how do i get to hybrid it's not that hybrid instruct as if hybrid was a thing right hybrid is not a thing hybrid means you do some in-person instruction and some remote instruction we're planning on doing some in-person instruction and some remote instruction we have met in terms of deep dives i've been leaving a meeting all summer long every week with all the middle sex league principles a number of them belmont watertown are going remote because their facilities and their programming doesn't work a number of them are achieving blended instruction because they worked out with their union in the past how they could do a different format in terms of having some students in the classroom and some students at home that has not been worked out and so what we were doing along every step of the way was looking at the facilities we had and trying to maximize how we could get kids in the most productive interaction with their teachers in person and out of school at the point where we are now we have stripped it down to where kids are only taking four of their core academic classes in person and one elected that's fewer than what they are planning on doing in west windchester and even under those conditions we were not able to fit students in this school in a 50-50 hybrid and so given where we have been pushed to and trying to make this decision this is the best option and why are we using the building the way we're using it because on september 21st we can reach out to and are reaching out to our highest-need students our deans are in contact with our harbor program is in contact with those students who we are concerned about falling through the crack and getting them to come into our workplace program our harbor program our milber program getting those people connected to those folks and so focusing those resources on making sure that we can follow through you said right from the beginning you said that if we don't follow through with kids we lose them the kids don't care about a hybrid the kids for care about the expectations being clear to them we're already behind the eight ball because they're waiting to know but they care about when we say this is what's going to happen instructionally in school it happens instructionally in school what happened last spring was that every two weeks we changed the set of expectations and by the time we started actually doing instruction that was supposed to matter those kids we were going to lose were long gone and let's be clear the day we left school the day we left school the instruction was to the deans the student study team and the guidance department and the social workers to contact in person every single student on their case that they were concerned about every student who's failing a class was put on playdough for credit recovery that within the week after we left school because we knew that by the time everybody else got organized those students were going to be gone and so you have to understand that we've been running along the whole time contacting with and following up with those kids while trying to put these models in place so i share your goals 100 but i think that we cannot characterize where we are now as a failure on the part of the teachers or the administration we have been set a task of figuring out the best thing to do and we have worked as hard as we could to hit the targets that we were set and then we have come to the point where we are saying to you the best option right now is to do this and we are committed to by november i i said that right in the proposal by november having learned how what works and what doesn't work and how things are and look and seen gotten the ventilation reports back found out whether or not we have a cafeteria or a gym or an auditorium when we know all those things then we can give you a couple of options about how we can structurally set things up in a timely fashion so that we as a group can make a decision on what is in the best interest against okay so i i saw the floor thank you very much rod and and matt i um i didn't use the word failure by the way of the administration so i never used that word i would say this so let me just finish the thought i had second you know first the first point i want to make is the motion specifically requires the principle to evaluate other models that requires sharing information from other schools in the middle sex league or wherever the case may be so i'm expecting we're expecting that was pretty clear yesterday in our meeting a report that has some paragraphs summarizing other situations so the public is aware that's not hard to do happy to do so that's that's straightforward that's some point by november 13th that's that's the clear expectation the motion to rod's point i mean you know the school committee's job is to is to pass motions and we use language that says we direct the superintendent to do x y and z that's she's expects that that's been part of her experience with us for 13 or 14 years so that's why the language is we direct that's how it works um so i mean that's the language of the of all the motions that we've given to dr bodie over the years and she executes it so i would say um that the i made i made my point um that uh and i and so since rod and and mad have said this i'm going to take it your word you will be following up intensively with all students the robust remote in person at remote program requires uh intense quick prompt follow-up with students who don't hand in assignments so thank you both rod and matt for reinforcing that and stating that public i think that's important that you kind of agree with me on that point very important i thank you for that um i want to also say that um you know i appreciate and understand that people are working very hard i've never said otherwise i've never said that the people aren't working very hard i've never said that the people are not doing all they can to help our students i do think we have to have a further conversation about um a philosophical difference that may exist between the school committee and some people who are in the district and that is that some of us on the school committee some of us voted for the original hybrid motion because of a belief that getting scared the getting kids in school with teachers and friends and peers uh in a structured format is good for their social and emotional well-being and that and that and that and that philosophy was based in large part on the frustrations parents and families had with the experience of remote instruction in the spring so um i do think there needs to be further conversation it's not so much picking the best instructional model that's certainly a part of it but there's another part of it that is that is that that was expressed by the school committee and that is a concern about the social emotional well-being and health of our students so i've said all that i that i that i need to say i appreciate the dialogue and i also appreciate matt and rod reconfirming the importance of of a of a prompt response to students needs uh in the uh in the uh remote instruction i appreciate you reinforcing that and look forward to working we didn't make that happen thank you um miss keys it's great to hear the different perspectives i really appreciate being here and having a voice um we have a lot of students in our district who the hardest thing that they do every day is get dressed and walk into the building um with the peer pressures and the bullying and the anxiety of being in a crowd of people and the pressures on our teens today we've had rising numbers of school refusal for the past several years and we've been making programs to help kids with that and deal with that we've upped our social emotional learning because of that we've always had a group for which school doesn't work that's not new with remote it has shifted it might be a different group of students and some of those who didn't do well in person are doing well with remote but this is not increasing a problem there are creating a problem that didn't exist before we've always had kids who don't do well with the model of school that works for most kids and we know how to address that and we've been we've been perfecting it we've been improving it we have sarah bird is wonderful with all of our social emotional learning we have harbor programs we have bridge programs we have ways of reaching these kids um but i just don't want the public to think that suddenly we've got all these kids we're leaving behind there's always been a group that hasn't done well with the model that exists and we reach them and we're going to continue to do that um all right mr. Thillman you are done is that correct just double-checking all right mr. Schiffman wow um uh let me just say that uh i appreciate the little bursts of candor that seem to pop out of these discussions every once in a while we seem to be circling back to where we should have been at the beginning before we made the decision that we're going to go hybrid and dr. Janger is certainly asked the question that i would have liked to have discussed in far more depth uh uh when he said the the the goal is not how do we get to hybrid but how do we do what's best for education and safety among our children moving forward um i will vote for this motion i think this motion is exactly where we need to be right now uh i think this is the approach we needed to take overall as we look to move back our dismissal times for the elementary side uh we pushed too much into the hybrid that we couldn't deliver and i think that the best starting point was to start with the remote thank you dr. janger for your comments thank you dr. mcneil for your comments i know that you're looking out for what's best for the students in the district mr. hainer thank you both to my members of the school committee and the administration for all the work and time you put into it quick question on mechanics if we reached out uh are we aware that all the students that we're going to be servicing in this program but the high school have all the technology that they need computers and things of that nature yes we have uh we're going to be a one-to-one district pre uh pre k to 12 and every student is going to get in a a learning device a technology a technology excuse me a digital learning device okay great uh just for my own clarification we when we talked about hybrid at the high school we talked about uh going back to the four basic core courses and stuff as we go remote and if we committed to this will we be expanding the curriculum back to where it was or to some way some something close to it i'm gonna let bill take this one i saw him raise his hand i might regret that but um what we're not going to be able to expand the curriculum and add back courses we removed but what we are going to be able to do is create more seats so for example our foundations of art class typically has 24 students currently it's cut down to 10 in order to accommodate the hybrid we're going to be able to bring that back up to 24 that's 14 additional seats with nine sections that's going to open up over 100 seats foundations of art alone and that's our hope with every section uh to once we come out of the building and we can expand the number of seats and therefore students can get what they've requested i understand that but that's basically back a you've gone virtual from the building to the to virtual the amount of seats the reason that you cut back the the the programs if my understanding is correct was because you didn't have the space for them so now you have to clarify well i can clarify that dr jenger some of the courses that were cut not all of them but some of them are based on equipment needs for example the one i'm thinking of at the top of my head is bicycle bicycling we can't offer biking to students because we can't offer them the bikes they can't trade the bikes i'm not bill i'm not worried about those types of courses i'm worried about the the the additional courses somewhere between bicycling and english and math so i think i can answer the question bill could answer it better but i think i understand the question differently so the issue was when i say we were only offering the four core classes plus an elective those are the only courses that were in hybrid right pe had already moved all remote that will stay all remote music had already moved all remote although music will have access to more spaces in the building for some of their activities so they'll actually probably do more things the students themselves will not be lacking anything on their transcripts with for the future the students who would have been in the all remote would have been limited in terms of what they could do for ap now get the same ap courses as everybody else because they're joining in with everybody else so everybody can take bc calculus everybody can take world language everybody can take any course that we could have offered we're offering thank you yeah you got me it takes an older person to understand an old person's thinking dr janger that's why you didn't get it bill i'm not that young anymore um so i think you know i i plan to support this motion but i'm i feel really sad about it for a lot of our kids um i think that um coming to high school in ninth grade and and leaving at the end you know beginning your senior year and doing it remotely on zoom um or google hangout or whatever it is um is is just a sad experience for some of our kids and i understand that for some of them it might work better but for a lot of them it's it's just not going to be the experience that they um that they were hoping for and that their families were hoping for um and i do think you know as i've thought since yesterday's facilities meeting and today where i've landed is is that there's just a lot of room between implementation of an a a wednesday bb hybrid model with you know core classes plus an elective in person and all remote right there's just there's a lot of space there it feels like to me and um the reality is is that you know we we kind of ran out of time to some extent um and we're running up against you know these schedules need to be created obviously teachers need to know what their schedules are going to be these are you know really reasonable things that people need uh students need to know what they're going to be scheduled into they need to know where they need to be on monday the 21st um so i i i i i get that um but i am uh i'm really sad about it because i think that we have a lot of students who uh who haven't been seen who we haven't there's there are students that we haven't seen since march right and um i would like you know what our responsibilities as a committee are to you know to manage the budget and um i i really want to throw whatever resources we need um behind making sure that we can reach every single one of those students if we have 1,450 students and we get to 1,449 of them that's not good enough we need every single one and i you know i guess the only thing that i would consider adding to this motion but i i don't want to edit it on the fly so i'll just say it is that you know if if there are things that this administration needs to make sure that we are able to follow track up track down support engage any student that we have at arlington high school we need to make sure that we are able to do that um and we can't we i don't know what that is but we need to trust you that you will come to us and you will ask us for those things so that we can move heaven and earth to provide that for our kids because i'm really worried about about some of them i'm not worried about all of them some of them are going to be fine they're just going to do along and this will work but i i've never been more worried about kids going into a school year than i am about some of our high school kids so i understand this is where we're at i appreciate that it has been a herculean task to turn over the rocks to get us to this point and so you know this is what we need to do now um but you know i'm still i still feel sad about it and and i won't i won't apologize for feeling that way um so uh so let's see um i think we need so are is there any more discussion because i did say that we can go through again if people have more that they want to add i'm looking sort of at the people who were from the beginning mr cardin miss xden dr elson amy we're good okay so oh yes mr delman so just you know to your point um the fourth bullet of the second part of the motion says a summary of any new costs associated with the transition to hybrid instruction in the second semester so dr janger says that we need x number of additional staff he can he can put that in the report for the hybrid model and um in the uh report at the beginning uh for that's due to us on friday october 16th 2020 on the current plan the uh input the remote plan uh that can include uh information about additional resources needed to support students so that can certainly be in both of those reports great thank you um so motion by mr thielman second by mr hainer um so we're gonna vote on this um miss xden yes mr cardin yes uh dr elson amy yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes mr hainer yes and i am also a yes all right um dr mcneil did you have anything else that you wanted um to share with us yes i have i have to give some um and thank you very much for passing that motion we appreciate it and i promise you we are committed to making this work and we will definitely adhere to the various components of the motion um so i do want to share some updates as it relates to uh some things i'm going to also need the school committee to uh vote on so um when we're looking at the calendar we have that early release day and in the original district calendar we had our we had scheduled our parent teacher conferences on the early release tuesday so i would like to recommend that because we're moving that early release tuesday and it's going to be an early release wednesday that the conference dates within the district calendar be shifted from tuesday to wednesday and that would be the november 7 at the secondary level is the november 17th conference that will be moved from tuesday november 17th to november 18th the the tuesday conference for at the secondary level january 12th be moved to january 13th is the wednesday date and then at the elementary level we're looking at the tuesday um december 8th parent teacher conferences move to december 9th uh the parent teacher conference scheduled for december 15th moved to december 16th and the parent teacher conferences move on i'm sorry scheduled for december 22nd moved to wednesday december 23rd i mean i'm sorry that's strike that so dr mcneil what i think would be easier for us since um we traditionally approve calendar changes as a document um would be if you could work uh mizfitz gerald keeps that calendar document if you could work with her to edit it um and give us a new uh a new version for our i'm going to call on you in just a second dr ellison ambe um a new version for our uh our next meeting so that and just can we we can approve a document instead of a list of changes i think it would be easier i i i can only speak for myself i would certainly support those moves and i think we can you know certainly we could do a um sort of a straw poll tonight to cue the community that we intend to make those changes but i would much prefer to uh because the calendar is something we vote on i i need to vote on it like on a on a piece of paper um dr ellison ambe um i don't think we have to vote on when the conferences are i think we just vote on when the the early release days are i think the conferences are an administrative thing okay i just wanted to make i just wanted to be sure uh so okay mr heiner we vote the calendar they're on the calendar so if there's a change in the calendar where they are located on the calendar we leave that to the administration you're right on that gargampi but the calendar itself what miss morgan was saying this is considered a change in the calendar so we should still vote for i have no problem giving a heads up that we're gonna all support the idea there's no problem with that right so dr mcneil if you could just work with mrs Fitzgerald to edit the the paper the calendar we're all familiar with with the like gray stuff in the middle and all those numbers on it yes then that would be that would be perfect thank you so much okay um the next thing is that um we had a bus bus that we had to cancel the bishop bus again because of staffing issues uh we've diverted the the remaining the the the bus drivers to the buses that we are going to keep in the district and the impact is is that those students that were elected to take the bishop bus it you know they were doing it it was an option that we afforded the parents at their expense to take that bishop bus but because of staffing issues we had to cancel that bus and so um if if um mr mason wants to comment on this as well um i would i would uh like him to if he has some comments he could say them right now in support of this particular development thank you dr mcneil um you basically stated what the situation is um it is a is a logistical issue that we're going to have to be able to provide the services to students that we've required to provide services to if we um continue to run with the bishop bus so therefore it is best that the administration has decided to um remove the bishop bus um for the time being this is just a temporary uh removal until staffing issues are resolved and our current situations change okay um yeah do we have any questions or comments regarding that i don't want to move on without um if now you need comments or questions i see dr allison ampie mr hainer so dr allison ampie i just wanted to be clear first i'm disappointed that this is happening i think this is going to be a problem for parents um in families especially at this late time because now they're going to have to figure out how to get their child from school to school um in the middle of the day in the middle of an earlier day now um and um i also want to make it clear that although mr mason spoke to it this is not because we don't have the money to do this it my understanding is it's because we haven't been able to find enough people to hire but it's not a lack of money um in terms of because this is a problem that i would be very happy to throw more money at if we needed to to to get the people so that's all yeah i just want to confirm uh is not a budgetary issue it's a it's a issue related to human resources that mean not not saying that mr spiegel isn't we're all trying to do the best we can to recruit and hire people to fill these vacancies i guess the other question is how are you notifying the parents who are involved in this we will be notifying the parents um starting tomorrow we wanted to let the school committee know first prior to notifying the parents so we've been surveying the parents for in regards to trying to estimate our and plan out transportation um for in-person hybrid model and when these unfortunate leaves happen with our current base and then we couldn't get substitutes and also trying to make sure that we do have the capacity in case anyone does get sick during providing the services likely to a covid or others uh during this time typically people will um work you know throughout the year whether they have like a small fever or a headache or whatnot people more likely now not work as in those days and we will need the the capacity to fill in on those routes so um i hope that i mean i i getting lost in that tangent overall we will intend to provide the services when we can meet that capacity and in terms of financially or outsourcing it at the moment we cannot uh get those logistical issues uh resolved in time um mr. hanner dark ambe covered everything i wanted to say thank you mr. cardin thank you um so yeah i just want to point out that you know this is this is not a route that can be replaced by walking these kids can't you know walk from where they're going to to the bishops school they will have to be driven so i mean i think it's a even though it's a voluntary paid option it's a it's a crucial service and i i do think we need to look at it with that lens as we go forward see how the first few weeks are with our staffing maybe we can squeeze in an extra run um you know with gib starting a half hour later i thought we were going to use the bus for the same purposes so what i know you i know you've looked at that i'm sure but i i do you know want to emphasize it's a critical service it's not just something to offer as a nice thing and i do hope we'll be able to restore it quickly thank you i just want to i just wanted to provide context of and so i'm saying like when i say these things i'm not putting it as an opinion i'm saying fact factual these are these are uh people because we have certain criteria that we provide where we do provide transportation you know and if parents fallen within that criteria then we provide the transportation then there's but there is a distinguish i'm just distinguishing between the parents who are this is an option at their own expense that they're taking this bus so that was not opinion related it's just based upon the facts um so i and i know that it's going to have an impact i know everything that we've deciding to do is going to have an impact on families i i definitely do and we we definitely understand that um so on onto my next item is that i was going to ask that the principles uh miss morgan if you could allow me one last item i'm going to ask the elementary principles the middle school principles and um the uh dr janger to comment or give an update as to when parents are going to receive their uh at the elementary level their class list like so they'll know who their teacher is what cohort they're in if they're in the hybrid program who their teacher is if they're in a remote my choice academy and then at the secondary level when the parents can expect for their children to receive their schedule so can we start at the elementary level and uh miss miss parets and mr deamon can give an update on that um we will be sending um the information out from the classroom teachers tomorrow afternoon um so people should be looking for that it's a they'll be an introduction from the classroom teachers and people will get information on the um for in the hybrid model that a or the b from the teachers yep and uh sam and eva are making sure and monitoring that uh remote classroom lists and those families should also all receive a welcome from their teacher um as well okay thank you uh can we move on to madame pierre maxwell good evening everyone um the schedules are ready at gibbs uh with the grouping in the classroom and the teacher's assignment unfortunately we had a power school error today and uh our assistant principal miss salvator has been working diligently with our support person who's working on the schedules they are ready to upload the schedule but unfortunately we're not able to use power school today since one o'clock uh the goal was to send that invitation to the parents the list to the parents while they could access power school and get that with the invitation for different forums based on their aabb or remote grouping so if tomorrow morning we have access to power school we may still be able to send those invitation late in the afternoon otherwise we're hoping to send them out on monday all right thank you uh mr marringer yeah we're hoping to send those out about noon tomorrow um i will agree the power school shortage uh was not really helpful today um but we're hoping to get everything out by noon tomorrow thank you dr janker so mr mccarthy has a little army who's ready you know he's waving his hand i'm gonna let him answer that he first piece and then i'll answer the rest yes so um we actually knowing that this might come about uh the the agreement that was just reached in terms of the high school going remote we actually i have a team of people that are ready tomorrow we're gonna shift around the course the cast clap the class caps in all the classes so we can run a schedule my hope is that the start of next week we'll have one ready to go um as soon as we can make those changes because we want to make sure the students get the schedules that are accurate and they get the requests that they want i know that's been very important uh to all of us in this process so just to be clear schedule going out at the beginning of next week uh the high school mailing with now an explanation of what this program is and plan is should go out on monday um the guidance counselors will be set aside and we'll send out a schedule about when they will be available to fix errors in people schedules not to change preferences we do that later and then i'm going to plan on having a forum for families to ask questions on pictures tonight thank you very much dr janker so miss morgan that concludes my report thank you very much um miss mogan yes mr fernan yeah i don't have anybody else's questions yes please um so dr mcneil i mean you you said earlier that everybody will get a device but that message has not gone out uniformly by has not been sent out either by the central admin or the administration so it is is that happening and when when will devices be distributed so we're in the process of putting together a plan because as because we've we've had you know i'm working with uh david good our director of technology um so we will be able to i anticipate we'll be able to put out a some type of communication to parents about the distribution plan of those devices next week okay and then just just you know since all the principles are on tonight you know some of the feedback that we've been getting as the committee has been about the communication and i know you've been spending all week trying to get these schedules sorted um and some of you have been communicating but but uh uniformly there's been sort of a significant pause in communication so now that some of these issues are resolved and and i know uh some things went out this evening um but for those who haven't been who haven't communicated with your communities this week i would urge you to send some communication tomorrow thank you thank you very much for that feedback we'll we'll definitely be on top of that mr. salmon just one question um i have been getting questions uh from parents about how the tents are going to be used uh in the elementary schools i guess at all schools is there is there a can you can anyone speak to the plan i'm not sure if this is the right one of the many to ask this but i meant to ask it earlier is anyone uh can anyone speak to that uh any other principles i'll open up to principles about the tents about the tents now my parents have asked how the tents are going to be used yes well if they'll be used so petting zoo that's their use for the petting no i'm just funny that i like that that's good yeah um they'll be used for a couple of purposes but you know a big part of our planning is to have the children be outside as much as possible um as the weather is still nice so be used for eating outside but also what it's not time for lunch it could be used for outdoor classroom space we have a wonderful group of parents who have been working with us and mapping out spaces all around the schools which has been incredibly helpful um so it won't be just under the tent but it will be other spots around the various buildings and areas that we can use um that that outside square footage as much as possible so we'll have as well for the for one bed for the tent and other other spaces okay i would like to add two different questions right sorry mr. Thielman i'd also just like to add that for in schools where there's a need for more closer contact during service delivery that's also going to be a really hospitable space uh to work with students who need to have um a little bit more close support as they go through their programming so we're really appreciative uh for that most definitely looking forward to that thank you thank you appreciate that anyone from the secondary level want to talk about the tents brian um we're we're looking into having one tent but the tents aren't um we don't have a large amount of tents at the odyssey you don't have a tent i don't think yet that's that's what jim said yesterday we uh we are looking at the aef is for a grant for a tent that we have uh parents looking at right now high school we're us we're getting to 20 by 20 tents which essentially makes one outdoor classroom space for breakout space and space for lunch we get a circus tent um out on the side find a place to put it i'm sure we'd put it to good use but we don't have one yet but those that seem in the courtyard correct in the courtyard correct because everything else is parking lot or construction yeah and dr jinger your intention is to use those tents during that you know starting on or about september 21st even with your high need students who are coming in absolutely good and can i just i just want to also go back to mr cardin's point about the technology so if you look at the reopening plan that we have posted on our district website i just want to make sure that parents if they go to page 25 it states very clearly that um the district will provide an individual device for every student at all great levels grades pre-k through set two will receive ipads grades three through 12 students will receive chromebook so i know that we still have to talk about the distribution plan but it is very well stated in the plan that everybody will all students will receive a device so i just want to just make sure that parents if they go to that reopening plan which is on our district website they will be able to read that information and also embedded in that are the online tools that we've purchased in order to integrate and support instruction mr hainer uh dr mcneal i i've just heard from teachers in other districts friends of mine so the chromebooks i've had a lot of problems with breakout and things of that nature i just want to make you aware of that i think uh mr good was just made aware that a lot of problems with that one-to-one doing what we're doing right now that's fine it was the breakout issue that they had a lot of problems with just sharing that with you thank you for that and i do i will say this that before before we purchased zoom dr bison who is our director of digital learning she did some testing with with actually students at each level in the district and uh we did test it out so i will definitely look into that and make sure we get the model numbers and try to figure out uh are those are they the same models of chromebooks that we've purchased in a district so thank you for that information thank you any other questions comments i just had one final um reopening question about um and actually it's good that miss liner and miss christis are here about uh email access for elementary students especially those in the remote academy do we have an update of where we're at with that i know that was something that was requested many many times from many parents and many members of this committee in the spring we never got there um and i was wondering where we were at with that um i'm i'm i'm less concerned about students in the hybrid but um i'm especially concerned about our remote students fourth and fifth graders um and the usability of google classroom without receiving notifications over email so i guess i'll address my question to dr mcneil but happy to have it farmed out uh did i'm gonna give our co-administrators the first crack at that did you want to talk about that so they can display their leadership skills thanks rod um i would say that we we do need to talk with the tech department about that we were aware of the issue in the spring as well um and we we just came on yesterday so it is on our list of questions to ask great i hope you ask them early and often um as somebody who had two fifth graders as a parent last year um it was extremely frustrating uh to help them engage independently with their work and they have access to their um to you know getting notifications about their their you know feedback um and you know i don't want to speak on behalf of teachers so i won't but uh maybe you should ask them too because they might have some feedback for you on that as well um i think that's it um anybody else okay great um so the next item on our agenda is the superintendent search process update mr schlickman okay um when we flip uh screens here because i was at the policy procedures um okay uh we send out to everybody the draft minutes of the september third meeting uh we've completed a document which we call the invitation to apply for a seat on the superintendent search screening committee i want to go first through the recommended composition of the screening committee the school uh one notice we're saying and we really mean it the school committee will strive to ensure search committee members include underrepresented constituencies as members are chosen to fill the seats as described we'll have three school committee members three parents one central office administrator two principals or assistant principals representing different levels two teachers representing elementary secondary one municipal government representative and three other stakeholders preferably including a student and we stress that this is an open category may include additional teachers parents or members of the community who would add value to the committee so that's sort of a wildcard category to bring in a committee of 15 that is representative of the community uh one of the stressors is that uh people who volunteer to be on the committee must attend the orientation meeting and state that they will attend the orientation meeting which is scheduled for september 29th it's seven p.m it will be zoomed um and we will start screening uh resumes on the week of october 12th uh there the deadline for filing this will be next thursday at three p.m so it is a very tight turnaround uh we are going to ask everybody here to go and send the invitation out to uh all constituencies that you know uh it is posted on the irlington super dot com website uh we are asking people to send a statement of interest of why they would be a good member of this uh screening committee plus identify any and all categories they may qualify for and so the timeline would be uh tonight we'll approve the size and composition of the screening committee deadline for applying for a seat is september 17th the search process subcommittee will be to recommend screening committee members in september 22nd uh the full school committee will approve the screening committee membership on september 24th orientation on september 29th it's seven p.m and the first screening meeting is the week of october 12th so i move that we approve the timeline and the uh the structural membership of the uh screening committee second uh discussion um let's i guess this is a big one so let's um so miss exton um can you can then um subcommittee just talk a little bit about why a student was not sort of identified individually and just preferred in the in the other group of three uh the feeling in discussing with mr kutcher and masc is what we want to do is state that we want one but not to limit the seat so that i think the intent is that we will have one but uh uh we're trying to keep this as flexible as possible i so i'm with that because it sort of feels like it's subtly in there i'm just trying to figure out thinking of as we're sharing this out to everyone like encouraging students to apply to to have a seat on this on the screening committee because i i would really like to see a student on the on the committee as i would too dr jinger so this is a question uh apropos of this we have as part of the anti-racism working group a student group working on personnel and staff diversity um and one of their proposals which actually was at one point brought to you in public comment was to we've been sort of gathering a group of students interested in helping out with the hiring process so i guess my question to you is whether it would be helpful if a recommendation came from anti-racism working with the bsu and the student council or the student representative um or whether you'd prefer just that we encourage students to apply and fill out the form and then you select among the applicants mr shuffman do you want to take that one or yes yeah i uh the uh the intent is that you should identify all affiliations and that if you are being backed or coming with the membership in in that group i think that would be looked upon very favorably all right thank you very much we will promote the uh the effort and get get folks to apply yeah we would love to have we would love to have a broad representation on the committee and that's sort of the intent but we also don't want to force the issue of uh from folks who are not necessarily interested so that we have a little more flexibility as well you know we have a cohort they're they're rare in a go good so make sure that uh they send it in and if there's a preference from the group we certainly want to look at that great um other comments i see dr ellison ambi so dr ellison ambi um i just wanted to point out that we did um discuss the uh request that we had had about student seat um that came from nois weeder um earlier this summer both in email and and presented to school committee and we didn't feel comfortable with specifying seats for these positions in part because then you start having other groups come and say well we want to see two and we and and we're really limited in terms of the number of people that we can have on the committee and still be functional um so this is the manner in which we chose to handle it but we did bring this up and and discuss it great other um feedback or questions from the committee looking okay so mr schlickman you do you have a motion did you already make your motion now i'm losing yes i did i moved that we accept the uh structural membership in the calendar outstanding and who gave you your second sir i didn't hear where mr hainer and by mr schlickman second by mr hainer um so let's vote miss exton yes mr carton yes dr ellison ambi yes mr hillman yes mr schlickman yes hainer yes and i am also yes all right um do you have more for us mr schlickman on the search timeline or was that all did you sort of wrap it all up for us in one go i did wrap it up in one go however i'm talking to mr kutcher uh and i just want to state a couple of things first of all the brochure is out they've mailed it out to their mailing list it is posted online both on the masc mailing list and on the earlingtonsuper.com website um there are inquiries being made as we speak this is a desirable job and mr kutcher says he's fielding inquiries from some excellent candidates so i think that we're on a good path great thank you mr schlickman uh moving on uh only an hour behind to the 810 agenda item policy first read kd8 kdab temporary signs and banner bedh and bedh dash e public comment at school committee meetings and acab uh harassment uh mr schlickman do you want to give us uh what we need on these they're all you know if members of the public wish to read them they are all in novice um and this is a first read so uh is my understanding correct mr schlickman that we will be reading these tonight and then voting them at a subsequent meeting no and let me just uh get to the uh uh we need to vote them tonight because we're gonna we have one that we're going to uh waive request to waive the uh the the rules but i've just got to find um the original email um where i had it all written uh oh let me let me go through it this way uh first of all um the the one that is uh tricky here just in terms of the timeline is acab harassment that this is required to be passed um and we needed town councils advice one of the things that we were checking with council on was whether or not what the evidentiary evidentiary standard was connected to this policy he opined and then made some technical corrections acab was recommended by masc to fulfill the requirements of new federal regulations uh moraheeley and a bunch of other ag's are suing to block these regulations uh but uh they're they're still before us so that we do need to adopt this and if our good attorney general was successful uh in in her litigation or new administration changes the uh the the federal regulations we we go back and revisit this again but uh because of the august deadline for having this policy in place i move that we uh suspend the rules to consider acab on the second read discussion on so this is just the motion to suspend the second read so any discussion okay uh so just for that piece um we're going to vote miss exton yes cardin yes dr allison ampey yes dealman yes your shipment yes your heiner yes i'm also yes okay now i move adoption of acab harassment second discussion all right motion by mr schiffman second by mr heiner adoption of policy acab harassment miss exton yes mr cardin yes dr allison ampey yes dealman yes mr schiffman yes your heiner yes i'm also yes okay um and then do you need anything else do we need to do anything else with tady abe or bedh and bedh dash e tonight okay there are just for first reads i just want to report out on what they are very briefly first of all bedh is been and bedh dash e have been circulating around for some revisions uh uh to change some of the language to be more inclusive so we're taking out the word citizens and bringing in residents um we're adjusting it to fulfill the legal requirements of the natik decision um it's just a little more clarity in terms of what we're doing so it's not a drastic change in what we're doing but we're making a clearer policy kdab temporary signs and banners this is brought to us by town council is something we should be doing because of the issues surrounding the posting of banners and temporary signs on school policy on on school department property and that we need to have clarity so that we do not inadvertently create a public forum on our property so that we have control over what is posted both in our right to express government speech and for our right to uh control um speech from the school within certain uh certain guidelines and that's laid out in kdab great thank you mr schickman um any discussion about any of these seeing none um subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements budget dr alson ampy nothing to report community relations mr heiner nothing to report yeah mr cardin uh nothing to report at the time this time uh facilities mr thielman we we had a good conversation there we're all set uh policy mr schickman we just reported sure did all right uh superintendent search process again we just reported uh arlington high school building committee mr thielman no report uh liaison reports seeing none announcements mr heiner yes i'd like the indulgence of the committee uh joseph albany's a resident of brightview here in allington turned 100 years old today joseph graduated waltham high school in 1939 later served in the united states navy from 1942 until 1946 he attended training in menthess and chicago he was assigned to cherry point north carolina and flew numerous flights up and down the east coast of the united states searching for submarines following that he served on the uss ranger as an aviation ordinance first class in the pacific theater after his service ended he attended northeast university where he received his bachelor's degree in business in 1951 he eventually went to work for raytheon where he met his wife adeline joseph lived in summable and then moved to arlington where he lived for over 50 years he finished his career as a human resources director for unitrobe in watertown joseph is the father of two children grandfather of four and great grandfather of five they celebrated this morning up at brightview uh a whole group of veterans had a car parade went around the circle waved at him his family several members of his family came from all over the united states and they were able to set a room the side farm i've had the privilege of having breakfast with him prior to coveted once a month with the veterans group and i hope i i wish i was as active in my mind today as he is right now thank you for let me share that with you thank you mr heiner any other announcements or future agenda items okay um so our last agenda item is executive session to conduct strategy sessions in 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 um so we need to vote to go into executive session and then um my expectation is that we will adjourn from executive session so we will not be coming back so um we're going to take um so what i'm gonna ask we're gonna go ahead and vote to go into executive session and um i'll ask that members of the public who um are we can't continue our meeting um with members of the public like in it so if you can leave if you're still around your device and if you're not we will leave for you um so that we can keep keep moving and we may maybe i think we'll make our 10 o'clock tonight which is i think a first during my time as chair um so that's exciting um so uh to uh can i get a motion to go into executive so moved back in uh mizeksten yes mr cardin yes alison ampie yes this is thielman yes mr schlickman yes mr heiner yes i'm a yes all right guys thank you thank you to everybody for coming i can't bye guys