 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, October 13th, 2022. I'm left next in the chair. We have a lot of attendees on Zoom this evening, so permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schulman and Mr. Heiner are here. In the affirmative, yes. Mr. Thielman, is he? Mr. Thielman? All right. Well, we have a quorum, so we can keep going. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. As this is our first meeting since Indigenous people stay on Monday, I'd like to start by acknowledging that we are on the traditional territory of the Massachusetts tribe, part of the Algonquin group of Native Americans. The Massachusetts tribe lived on the land around Mystic Lake, the Mystic River, and the Owife Brook, as well as a wider area that extended from what is now southern New Hampshire, west beyond Concord, and down to the south shore of Massachusetts. We acknowledge that the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of Indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province, and Commonwealth have taken their name. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. Our first item on the agenda are school committee appointments to town commissions. We're going to start with an appointment to the Rainbow Commission. Kim Goldsmith, if you want to just step up to the microphone, welcome. We would just invite you to say a little bit about who you are, why you would like to be appointed to the Rainbow Commission, please. Thank you school committee for having me here this evening. I decided I wanted to be part of the Rainbow Commission after having been an Arlington resident for now I believe about 14 years and coming out in my position at AYCC and being rather supported. Being able to feel comfortable as somebody who identifies as non-binary and also having my child Lycea who is non-binary and is now a Gibbs middle schooler and my lovely partner Dan who's our only sister and a member of the family but incredibly supportive. That this is my home and it is a place that's very important to me. Also is a counselor at AYCC. A lot of the clients I work with are part of the LGBTQ plus community and it feels really important to take that servicing care that I'm doing within the agency that much farther by being a voice for them. Thank you. Committee members want to say anything. Thank you for giving your time. I really appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you for taking on this position on our behalf in an effort to make this the most welcoming and supportive community in the Commonwealth. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Well I just want to I'm trying to I'm struggling to see the remote members. So if if you're so Mr. Seelman Dr. Allison Ampe and Ms. Morgan if you would like to say anything if you can use the raise hand feature just because it's hard to see your images otherwise. I'm good. I don't have anything to say. Me too. Periodically would you through our administrative assistant make an appointment to come back to the committee and just let give us an update of what's going on. Of course I would. I represent this. Absolutely. At this time I'd like to make a motion that the school committee approve Kim Goldsmith appointment to the Rainbow Commission on behalf of the Eileen the school committee. Second. All right. We have a motion by Mr. Heiner seconded by Mr. Schlickman. Any discussion. A roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Ms. Morgan. She nodded her head. She nodded her head. Mr. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Seelman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. So that's well I got five five four. I didn't hear Ms. Morgan and Mr. Carter is not here. Did Jane drop off. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations to the Rainbow Commission. Thank you. Thank you everyone. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yes. So now. At this time I'd like to make a motion to appoint Michael Bronstein to as a reappointment to the Envision Arlington Commission at Scott Lever as a reappointment to the Envision Arlington Commission also. We have a motion by Mr. Heiner seconded my Mr. Schlickman to reappoint two members to the Envision Arlington Commission. Any discussion? A roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Seelman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And Ms. Morgan's in the attendees again. She needs to be promoted. She needs to be bumped up to a participant. I mean to a panelist. Yes. So that's another five zero. She has to accept that. You're doing a great job. All right. Public comment. For members of the public who wish to address the committee the early 20 minutes of public comment depending on the number of people who sign up time allotments may be reduced but will not exceed three minutes each. I will be the timer and we'll give the speaker a signal when they have 30 seconds left. The number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 20 minutes. The number of speakers may be capped and will be invited to speak based on the time stamp of their email to Miss Diggins. The school committee respectfully requests participants of the public to utilize their camera if possible while speaking and to adhere to the public comment policy BEDH. That requires participants to provide their name and address. Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations and programs as concern them. But in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel nor against any member of the school community except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as the operational leader of Arlington public schools. The public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than the superintendent. Additionally the committee will not hear anything that might identify and or infringe upon a student's privacy by name or incident. We have two people signed up for public comment tonight. The first is Rebecca Gaffey. So if you just want to step sit up to the microphone so we can hear you and just if you can give us your name and address before we start. Thanks for having me. My name is Rebecca Gotti and I live at 3 Osborne Road. And we moved here about a year ago and I currently have three students at Hardy Elementary School with a fourth that will be coming in a few years. And overall it's been a wonderful experience and my kids are so happy to be here and we're very happy to be in a good school district. We were homeschooling during the pandemic. So it's a big relief off me to have kids in school. Just like two things that that they were struggling with a little bit was my daughter is in kindergarten and her kindergarten classes 24 students. And I think it's a little bit overwhelming for the kids and the teachers right now to have that many. So I think there had been some talk of maybe adding a fourth classroom but I don't think that's going to happen anymore. And it's not you know she's overall having a good experience but it was something that was a little bit concerning to me because it felt like a lot of five year olds. And the second thing I just want to address my friend has been working on this issue and she'll speak after me for many years. But my kids have been seeing that there isn't quite enough time to eat lunch at school. They I guess between they have 20 minutes but between like waiting online getting their food sitting down getting settled that they end up kind of ending up throwing away their lunch because they're they're not able to finish it. And I had wondered because I was thinking about the logistics of getting six grades through the cafeteria and you don't want to extend the period too long because you don't want kids eating at like nine in the morning. I had heard from some parents that during the pandemic kids had been eating in their classrooms which then made it possible to have a more normal lunchtime like noon and have a little bit longer like 30 minutes. And I just wondered if that was something we had spoken to the principal about it and she said that we should it was something we should just bring to you as something to discuss and you know keep the discussion going. I've only been in the school district year but I understand it's been a kind of ongoing discussion. So that's it. But yeah thank you for listening and I really appreciate what you guys do. Thank you. And just so you understand we don't typically respond to your comment right here right now but it might be something that comes up later or another meeting. But thank you. All right our another in our next public comment is Laura Saylor who I believe is on Zoom. I don't see her. Okay. If she reaches out she's welcome to speak at our next. There is one telephone number here but it doesn't and it doesn't identify the person so I can't do anything with it. And the raised hand is not. The raised hand is just Stephanie. Okay. Okay. So we will move on our next item on the agenda our student representatives. Welcome both in person this evening. Super. It's hard to see everybody. We would love to hear about what's been going on at HHS recently. So welcome. Recently I think the mic. Oh yeah we got slide the mic sorry. Thank you. So professional. Okay. Recently I guess the biggest buzz around the school has been the PSATs and how those went especially for the sophomores and juniors. Obviously nobody like standardized testing but I think it went really smoothly this year. I think the fact that there was only two classes at the end of the day afterwards was like a really really good choice because if we had to go through a bunch of different classes that were really short that wouldn't have been very like well focused. The fall sports teams have been doing an awesome job. I think soccer is like practically undefeated. Good for them know anything else. Well we did have our prep rally and that went amazing. There's a lot of school spirit is really fun all around. And then I don't know if I said the last time but homecoming does have a date and we've got that all sort of planned out. We're working on it but it's November 18th I believe. Yeah. So that'll be fun. The school spirit's doing amazing this year and overall really good. Thank you. Tamaki did you want to add anything? Not really. I think Amy and Mo covered it all. Thank you. No. Possible vote to approve the cafeteria workers contract for July 1st 2022 through June 30th 2025. The reason the word possible was that we weren't sure if the cafeteria staff had approved it by this meeting they have. Therefore I moved to approve the cafeteria workers contract and authorize the chair to sign for the school committee. Second. All right we have a motion by Mr. Heyner second by Mr. Schlickman to approve the cafeteria workers contract. Any discussion roll call vote. Mr. Heyner. Yes. Miss. Miss Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. That's six in favor. Next we have the Pierce School Improvement Plans. I'll turn this over to Dr. Holman to introduce the Pierce team. All right. Well the Pierce team makes their way up here. I'll say a couple of words. Pierce and Dallin will be presenting their school improvement plans this evening and they are the first two school improvement plans for this school year. I think I just want to commend these two groups because they have gotten things together quite quickly in a year where we're really trying to involve as many people on our school's new instructional leadership teams as possible in the development of these plans. And I know that Principal Amati has some folks with him who will be helping to present and welcome. Thank you for coming. I think these are two fantastic school improvement plans that you're going to hear this year and my hope is that you'll see continuity across the work we're doing in schools and also focus on the specific work that needs to happen. In school communities where those schools have unique challenges that they're trying to solve and work on together. So I'm looking forward to these presentations. Very grateful for our teams for being here. Mr. Amati you have a slide advance right there that should work for you and I'll turn it over to you. So funny first question to move forward. Is that the right button? That's the right side button. Okay. See if it works. All right. Cool. There it goes. You're at me. Okay. Amen at me. All right. All right. Thank you for the opportunity to speak at school committee this evening. I'm joined by a team behind me. So I'm going to introduce members of our team and then each member of the team will share a brief part of tonight's presentation. These are members of our instructional leadership team and educators at Pierce Building. So I'd like to welcome Alicia Coletti, second grade teacher, Colleen Lloyd, kindergarten teacher, or a Goldstein ELL teacher, Sarah Huber, science coach, and Steph McKenna math coach. Alicia, I'm going to quote and show the agenda for the evening. Come on up. I'm just going to read from. So tonight we will briefly discuss our school community about the wins at our school and about some of the challenges we face as a school. We will also share some important initiatives that our instructional leadership team has identified, along with some actions that we plan to take. And we hope that you enjoy our presentation. This is. Not the right back. The one that we. The next slide should be introduction to Pierce. That was the wrong year. That's the right wrong year. Yeah. What's it the file called Andrew? Here it is. This one. No, it's right. All right. Here we go. Okay. So the work that we've started this year and have continued from last year is really centered around the Arlington public school vision statement and have bolded the only line that I'll read, which is we're centering our work around all learners in our school need to feel a sense of belonging and experience joy and growth or growth and joy as it's written because it's really important academically and social, social emotionally for all students. I want to thank members of our instructional team because we've been working very hard over the course of the last six weeks to review data and to understand the importance of our students. I want to thank members of our school council who we've met with this year to revise and draft this plan and I want to thank our PTO for their generous support of all teachers, families and children and make a plug for our fall fest, which is on October 29th at 2 p.m. at the Pierce building for any members of this team that would like to be there. We're going to share our wins first. So I get the easy job of talking about a win. So last year, many of our A-cycles were focused on our students. So we're going to share our wins first. So I get the easy job of talking about a win. So last year, many of our A-cycles were focused on our students. So last year, many of our A-cycles were focused on student voice and discourse during math discussions. Often we spent time discussing strategies. Teachers might want to try to increase engagement in these discussions, particularly with students who might not always feel comfortable sharing their ideas. It felt important to provide opportunities for teachers to observe each other in this work. So we spent some of our ACE time in another grade level during math. Teachers were able to record teacher moves. They noticed and strategies they wanted to discuss and try in their own classrooms. And just this week, one of our wonderful second grade teachers shared with me that she started incorporating something that she observed last year in a fifth grade class and how much of an impact it's made in her discussions. Thank you. Sarah? So last year, Pierce, in general, demonstrated strong performance in science. You can see the stats. 78% of grade five students at Pierce met or exceeded state standards compared to 69% of the district and 43% of the state. I'm the science coach for the district, but one thing I noticed at Pierce is that across the board from grades K to 5, the teachers teach science and they teach you with fidelity and with enthusiasm. And I think this conveys to the student learning so that even though MCAS is only given to fifth grade, it's indicative of all the science learning that goes on throughout all the years at Pierce. It just builds on itself. Thank you. Colleen? Thank you. Last year, we focused on improving student-teacher relationships. We set up informal mentors, which we did by asking all faculty to create new relationships with students outside of their classroom. So it was someone that you didn't already know you didn't have a relationship with. And teachers nominated students that they thought would benefit from just another check-in, another trusted adult in the building just to deepen their sense of belonging within the school community. So when teachers intentionally got to know students and they got to know a little bit about their lives, interests in school experience, teachers prioritized saying hello to students, chatting briefly with the children in the halls during less structured time. We believe that this in part allows students to build trust with more teachers in the building. How many would you like to think? I'm doing it, yeah. Thanks. We could have one more win slide. Thank you. All right, so there's a lot happening on this slide. So one of the things I want to share as an additional win is that we've started to more informal groups, and it's similar to what Ms. Lloyd just shared. We started having more lunch groups, particularly with our fifth graders, to get a better understanding of what their life is like at Pierce, to understand what they enjoy about school, what is challenging to them. And I want to share a few quotes. These are fifth grade students that I've met with this year. One shared that math is my favorite subject. It is hard for me, but my teacher helps me. She believes in me and encourages me. She reminds me that when I do not know how to solve problems and tells me that which makes me work hard. Another student shared, I enjoy social studies because the questions are interesting and make me think. And I share these tonight because these are a testament to what our children are saying within our schools. They highlight what they're really thinking. And this is part of our action moving forward this year to incorporate more student opportunities to chat with educators informally. The last one I'll share this evening is centers around two-way communication with our families. 85% of families have responded favorably to communication from both the home and the school. I'm just going to angle this way a little bit. And these are measures around how comfortable and confident they are talking with their teachers, with administrators, with getting kind of robust feedback on how their children are doing. And we see that 85% number as a win. We also face some challenges. And the first one is perhaps our biggest challenge. I think as a school, as a district, and I could go on as a state and as a nation, too many students are out of school for various reasons. So at Pierce last year, 11.8% of students missed 18 or more days of school. For our African-American and Black students, that number was 25%, which mirrors Arlington Public Schools. And for students in the high needs category, that number was 20%. These are 20% of a large subgroup of our students that are missing more than 18 days of school. And I share that this evening, because I think at the most fundamental level, students really are not going to learn what we expect them to learn if they are not in our school. And so we're prioritizing this challenge and taking it on in a number of ways to make sure that we are getting our students that are healthy and able to learn in our doors as frequently as we can. We have some remaining concerns around reading literacy achievement, particularly around phonics work at the youngest. Grades, particularly kindergarten. And of course, as they move through first through third grade. And we have some more nuanced concerns on reading comprehension in the upper grades, notably around nonfiction texts. And when I move through later on, I'll share some of the ways we're going to explore and try to tackle this challenge. And lastly, while we know that we have some real growth, student growth in math, we also know that our achievement is not where we hope for it to be. And this is on the MCAS. 52% of our children are meeting or exceeding state standards. And we don't think that really matches what we see in the classroom right now. And so we're going to take a deeper dive to figure out kind of what we can do to improve that and to make sure that all of our students are mastering the standards of the grade levels. And I made a mistake and I spoke for Laura Goldstein and I'm very sorry about that. Laura, would you please come up and I'm so sorry about that. I just wanted to add a little bit more specifics in regards to the high needs students that we mentioned in chronic absenteeism. One portion of the high needs groups are EL students. And the number of EL students is increasing at Pierce. We don't have 34 students as active ELs. And their absence can exacerbate learning gaps because they need targeted language instruction and grade level learning opportunities. I feel that students feel more isolated and less connected to school when they're absent. And right now teachers and administrators are following up as best as we can to support families. And the range of need is significant to improve this. And the number of families that are frequently with families that have been chronically absent and we feel that additional support from APS could benefit us. So I'm just going to highlight a couple of the priorities this evening. One is to continue to build a more cohesive response to chronic absenteeism. This is the work of our teachers, our administrators, our central office and our family partnerships. We are going to continue to try to build a sense of belonging for our students. And there are a number of ways that we're going to continue to try to do that. Continue with student focus groups in multiple grades. Some informal mentoring, which we are going to revise based on what we did last year. And trying to model for our students what it means to have growth and joy, both in the classroom and outside of the classroom, too. We believe in those pillars. Next slide, please. And lastly, I just want to share some of our overarching goals and I won't read from the script. We want to engage all of our staff, students and families in culturally responsive practices. We want to provide students with opportunities to deeply engage with grade aligned materials every day in all content areas. And we want to focus on best practices, particularly around using high quality universal screeners in the area of literacy to ensure that our students are getting what they need to learn how to read. And some of the resources we've touched on this evening, but I want to call attention to just a few. We're thinking a lot about our language learners and considering how we can best serve them. We are working through our literacy core team, which I'm a member of, to think about our literacy resources and how to best serve children moving forward. And we're going to center school-wide professional development around student discourse and student engagement strategies. And that's what I have for you this evening. And thank you to the team, our Pierce team. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Heiner. First off, thank you all for taking the time and excellent presentation. One question. Is there anything that's consistent with the absenteeism that's similar with the students or is it across the board? So there are a number of things. I mean, I could probably talk about three. So one is COVID, which last we know impacted many of our students. It impacted families and adversely impacted children that lived with multiple family members. At the beginning of the year, students were staying home as contacts. So there is a technical piece to that. We have students where transportation can be an issue, particularly in the winter. There appears to be some trend data that transportation can be challenging, especially with folks that are working in different places and or living further away from the school. And then I do think that there is an area to address in some of the older rates, too, is working with our families to make sure that when they're taking off school days for whatever they need to as a family, that we're doing that strategically so that our children are in school. And those are kind of, I think, the three areas I would highlight, Mr. Heiner. Thank you. Mr. Schleckman. Okay. Thank you for the excellent report. One thing I thought was heartening is when you mentioned that you were seeing a disparity between fiction and not fiction. And when I saw your gender gap in terms of growth and literacy, that was the first thing in my mind was there a disparity in terms of teaching fiction and not fiction. And when I have all the raw data, which is what I used to do for a living, that was one of the first things I checked was disparities on that access. I'm glad to see that you're looking at that. That's really an important thing that a lot of schools tend to miss. I'm very, very impressed with your growth scores overall. You can't control what a kid knows when they walk in the door in the first day of school, but you have ultimate control over how much they grow over the 180 days you have them over the school year. And so the big marker that's important is your growth numbers. And your growth numbers are outstanding with the exception of your high needs cohort. And I know that you've looked at that and you're looking at that. I appreciate that. The other thing is in terms of gender, again, you've got a huge gender gap in growth in terms of mathematics, which is the opposite of your ELA problem. Have you thought about why your female students are not growing at the rate your male students are? In mathematics. Yes, Mr. So it's a good question and one that we have thought of. I mean, I could hypothesize. I think one of the things that we know is that in area of mathematics, oftentimes as a generalization, boys tend to share strategies and or be more comfortable in some of the discussions, both whole group and in small groups. And so I think thinking about ways to be inclusive around discussion strategies around engagement strategies that make sure that every child of all genders has an opportunity to take part in those discussions that are student to student. If we can keep doing that and learn new ways to do that. I think there is a through way to improve some of the metrics that you're seeing this evening. Yeah, the answers in the district was the district scores don't show that split. So I appreciate being aware of that and think in collaborating with your colleagues who might have an idea of what to look for as well. Thank you very much. This is an excellent school improvement plan and I'm very happy to to receive it. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. And I enjoyed hearing about your schools and was impressed at the increase in both. What was it? Sorry, I'm looking back at your slide on my computer. The student teacher relationships between fall and spring. That was really impressive. But one question I had when you were discussing, you mentioned that you were hoping for additional support from APS regarding the chronic absenteeism. But I'm not sure I understood what specifically it is that you're hoping APS can give you or will do or what. Thank you. Would you like me to kind of share a bit what I think? There are some students that are chronically absent that have a lot of things working against them. And it may be transportation. It may be not having access to the same resources other people that live around here. It may be not knowing much English right now. And I could go on. I think that there is a portion of our student body and their families that right now the way we're addressing it is by me calling. Or Ms. Goldstein calling and trying to get translators bringing folks into the building when we can. And I would say from the human side, we are doing, I think, close to all that we can. And I often wonder what are the additional resources that we could have available to us? Could we have people go to houses? Could we have a centralized way for families to be able to walk in somewhere off-site that we're closer to their home? Could we have perhaps a rotating group of people that would make house visits if necessary to be able to assist families around whether it's chronic absenteeism or any other area? And so I think Dr. Allison Ampe, that's kind of what I'm alluding to, that perhaps there is something bigger than we can do than just one school to address some of these issues. Thank you. That's very interesting and a good thing to think about. I see Jane's picture. I don't know if Mr. Steeleman is even still with us. Ms. Morgan, did you want to say anything? Okay. If you do, just jump in. So Dr. Allison Ampe sort of asked and commented on some of the things I was thinking about. But one of the things that your comments brought to mind was I know that when we were thinking about sort of what options we had with the ESSER funds, one of them was some kind of sort of central outreach EL, some community sort of hub. Is that sort of what, that's a little bit of what you're describing. I've worked in other, I mean, I've been here a very, very, very long time, but when I worked in another district, we had a community outreach center. So they met the families that came in. They had ways that they could identify what the needs were that those students had. We sometimes get students and we don't, they're not even in the right grade because there's a miscommunication because they don't speak English. So I think if we had a center, we had a bigger group working with these families. If we showed we cared in Arlington about these families and we say that we do, it would be a district coming together, not just Andrew and I and the classroom teacher chasing down the parents and trying to work on these things and trying to get them food and trying to get that. There'd be a bigger resource that would address the needs of the families that live here in Arlington. And that means Thompson and I know that they have a more centralized piece, but I think if we had that for all of us and we work together on it, we could pull from the greatest resources, the greatest minds here to work together to support these families. Thank you. I was on the call. I listened. There's did a great job. Laura always does a great job. You want to add anything? No, I can't, I can't add. So I just want to add to the conversation we're having now that I know I'm glad Mr. Thielman is here because he's on this strategic planning priority for group. That's right. One of the conversations they've been having is about Welcome Center and having these resources somewhat centralized and having central resources that we can deploy when we know that we have a situation at a particular school where a family might need some additional support to be hooked into some resources that would help them get their students to school. And I also think that messaging together all of the schools around the importance of being at school for mental health and for students development is something that we all are thinking about a lot and want to work on together now that we've dug into these data. Thank you. No, I think that's helpful. And I think it's important for us to hear how it's what it looks like in the school so that we can think about it from a bigger picture. Tamaki, did you have your hand? Yeah, so for the African American slash tricky to hear you. I don't know if you're where you're because I very much want to hear. I'll get closer. For the African American slash black section of the frequent absentee's table. Is that including mech students? I'm sorry. I just similar to other districts. Tamaki, say the question again for the African American slash black section. Hold on. Don't. Sorry. Oh boy. Okay. Try again. Okay. So for the African American slash black section of the frequent absentee's table. Is that including that go students? Yes. Students in the MECO program. Yes, it is. I just want to say that when I was a principal, we had these issues with supporting families and had a social worker in a 500 student school who was just full time on all of this. So I see the need. And I hope that we if I hear this theme coming from other schools that we view this as a systemic question that we should be addressing because that's really critical. I mean, we're not a home community. If we don't make sure we're home for everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to show this evening. Thank you all very much. Next we have the Dallas school improvement plan. So my first question for you, Mr. Dingman will be, are these the right slides? I'm going to flip through the really quickly. Okay, great. Yes, at least the first two. I am happy to steer for you if you just give me the signal because I'm not sure that's got it getting a signal all the way across. Thank you to the pier steam and I'll hand it over to you, Mr. Dingman to share the down school improvement plan. Yeah, I feel kind of lonely. That's true. And my my co admin, my support network, the wonderful assistant principal, Samantha crustis plan to be here tonight, but some family responsibilities called so I'm here on my own. I'm going to do my best. There's one goal area that she's very tuned into and is leading. So I'm a little disappointed. That's our goal for but I'm going to do my best to talk through it. And I guess I want to start something I've been thinking about. This is my starting my ninth year down elementary. And when I think about, you know, all of you and being in this district and knowing you for, you know, I get to come here every now and then, and the importance of sustained leadership. And I think back on the people that I've worked with, I really feel grateful to be an administrator in this district and do this work. And I think it's pretty special that our administration has been in place in a lot of cases for as long as they have. And I think that's the reason why we'll look at some wins on why we're having success and why we've overcome some pretty impressive challenges as a community. I'm happy to be here with everybody tonight. You want me to try it? So I, you know, tonight I want to talk to you a little bit about down in our wins and challenges, which will be thread in to our priorities that we will be looking at for this year. I'll talk to you about our key initiatives, some action steps and some some things that are important to our school for competing with us never going to work. So here we are down a learning community. One of the things of note for us, which, you know, is what it is, is we're a school that has decreased our enrollment just a smidge since some of the heights of our enrollment challenges were 425 students. Several years ago at our height, we were upwards of 500. So we've, we've come down where we've decreased a little bit in our class sizes and in our amount of staff, but we're still a big, beautiful and active school of 22 sections. And we also are privileged to support the supported Learning Center, one of four in our district for K2 and three through five students. We have a very active PTO. We have an active school council and we have an emerging active dig in our communities all playing important role in our school down in our school culture and our climate are always priorities. We capture some of that work through our three core values of courage, respect and responsibility and feel free to quiz any down student on the street. If you see them on those core values just to make sure I'm not blowing some up. You might have to take that list. You did take it in you. I didn't touch it. Oh, okay. So, you know, all the many things that I'm proud of in my time there is supporting our community and the families in our community in keeping diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as a priority that began early in my 10 years. So around 2016, 2017. We also feel really encouraged by the work that we've done with our grade level teams around our what we call our ace blocks, which is their time with teachers. The ability to grow our teams, the ability to collaborate across not just teachers but coaches and specialists. Down has always been a school where folks move grade levels. So reforming teams every year has to be a priority. So that time, you know, has been pretty precious for us because each year, usually the folks around a table are a little bit different. And so we need that time because when we're at our best as a teaching team, we're best for our students. We will talk about this tonight. We'll continue our strong commitment to early literacy and ensuring that our students in K through three are equipped with the early reading skills that they need for future success because literacy is equity. Mathematics is another area of practice that I'll spend a little bit time talking about. We were proud of the work that we do in our classrooms and we see opportunities that we want to build on to ensure that all students are learning and benefiting from the curriculum. I have one part I am going to read. So at the start of our year this year, down staff reflected on Arlington's new vision statement. The words belonging, growth, joy and empower resonated with our educator team after a two year stretch where our ability to connect authentically with one another has been greatly compromised due to a pandemic. So now in this new phase, we're beginning our year thinking about ways to heal relationships, amplify connections and design new systems or redesign systems to increase our community sense of belonging. So the question that we're asking and we have asked and talked about, what do you want to heal? What do you want to amplify? What do you want to design? At Dalin, we are focusing in four different areas for goals this year. Two instructional objectives, an equity and school culture objective. And we have an operations objective that's important to our school. In a moment, I'll talk a little bit more about each. But as a high level overview, continue our focus on K through three literacy, ensuring that our students are benefiting from systematic sequential early reading strategy development. We want our kids to have all the skills to be confident readers moving forward in their curriculum experience and across the K through five time at Dalin Elementary. This year, we're working a little bit more closely on our progress monitoring. Progress monitoring allows for our groups that work in the classroom or teachers work outside the classroom to ensure that students are getting what they need in a timely way. We want to look at the effectiveness of intervention and ensure that our groups are flexible so that students that need support are getting support when they need it. And when students are ready to return confident in the classroom, we're making space for new friends or setting those students off to be successful with confidence from the adult team. Our second objective, instructional objectives in mathematics. I'll talk more about what compels this goal. But what we notice is that not all students are benefiting from the instruction and our goal is to continue to implement strategies and ensures that we have all inclusive environments for mathematics. From a school culture lens, our objective like other schools is on belonging. We want to ensure that in this post pandemic or at least post restriction time in our schools that we are refocusing our energy on the quality of relationships with our students, with our teachers and with our families. And again, I'll speak more to that in just a moment. And then Dallin Elementary has had a persistent arrival and dismissal safety challenge. And so we've been working collaboratively with our town government and different groups within the town government to change some of the ways that our students arrive and leave school because our safety is an important part of what we do every day. So looking at some of our wins and speaking more to some of our priorities. Last year I talked a little bit about a cohort of kindergartners that we began to pay attention to in 2019. Our school at that time had been piloting new assessment tools, normed assessment tools, known as dibbles. Since that time we have universally used those tools across all of our elementary schools in the district. We have also brought in very important curriculum resources and we train often our teachers professional learning to bring those into their readers workshop. So in 2019 in the fall we saw a concerning statistic that only 56% of our kindergartners were leaving kindergarten with benchmark phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness is a very important indicator of future reading success. Since that time they've been through a pandemic, but they have benefited from new ways of instruction that are more aligned with early reading science. So looking now at last year's the same group in the fall of third grade, looking at a composite score that includes their oral reading fluency, their accuracy, their ability to decode words, and their comprehension. 96% of our students are at benchmark in their composite score. So we are now sending 96% of that group on to fourth grade with the tools that they need to be successful readers. And this is the result of great work by our teachers, great work by our directors and coaches, and obviously great work from our students. So we feel incredibly encouraged by this story. Just looking a little bit closer at some of the discrete skills and doing sort of taking a different type of a look, looking just across from a curriculum focus. So again that group of kindergartners back in 2019, looking at their phoneme segmentation and their nonsense word fluency, you can see that a little under 60% of those kids were at benchmark. But with new curriculum tools, our kindergartners now almost have 74% in 2022 and 85% of our kindergartners left with benchmark nonsense word fluency, which is a decoding skill that is critical to future reading success. So just well done all around. It's exciting to see it's exciting to be in classrooms. We've shared some of this work with our CPAC too because it really is students who have more fragile learning profiles that we want to do our best work for. So we're going to keep going. We have this hunch that it's working and from just on the ground level our teachers are really excited and our students are doing wonderful things. In mathematics we started last year working towards the goal of creating equitable and inclusive mathematics environments. Just a quick, I'll save the story, our action steps you can see in our school improvement plan really focus on using culturally responsive strategies of instruction, specifically to academic discourse, teaching kids specific skills for speaking in class and also ensuring that our students are engaged in productive struggle so that the mathematics challenges that all of our students are receiving a mathematical challenge. So if we were to look at aggregates and if we were to look at comparisons, we see some encouraging statistics when we look at high level MCAS and things like that. But when we look at desegregated data and we look at the experience of students who are falling into that high needs category there's a different story that's unfolding for them and a persistent gap that continues. And it's our gap and it's our school systems gap. I included a little bit of data on what it looks like for 3-8 in APS. This summer in one of the retreats I was talking with a high school teacher, he teaches both in the A-track and in the honors track. And I asked him, what do you notice is the difference between students in those tracks? And he said, I notice in my A-track students don't have the confidence to talk as learners. They don't have the same degree of academic discourse. And that's just an on the fly question and you see it in mathematics classes across the district. These are percentages but these are students and these numbers aren't high enough that we don't know who they are. So we will continue our work. It's great partnership. We have a wonderful math coach at our building who's connected with other wonderful math coaches across the district. You heard a little bit from Pierce in a similar way about a similar goal. Because the curriculum and the way that we teach mathematics students sharing their ideas in math classes is an important part of their experience. Our equity goal centers around our sense of belonging and our student sense of belonging. And I'm going to go off script here. You have this you have this data in front of you but I'll tell you I'll tell you this. Our families, 95% of our families on our surveys that we administered say they believe that their teachers respect their students. 95%. 94% of students say that my teacher respects me. But when you ask students questions about belonging, I feel seen. People care about me if I came in sad. Those statistics dropped to about 60% or under 60%. That same data is replicated in our staff data. Less than 60% of our staff say that they feel they they they do not feel connected to other staff members in their building. However, they will say to 90 plus percent certainty that they would recommend working there to their friends. So there are intentional things that we need to be doing to ensure that our students not only feel like they're respected but they feel like they belong. And one example of that is we're starting off our year challenging everybody to learn as many names in the building as you can. And I'll tell you what nothing lights a student up more than knowing their name when they walk in the building. But we also in our in our work this year we're going to purposefully engage staff across the school K through five with leadership opportunities. We're also creating more opportunities for affinity groups which have been successful for our students and designing family engagement purposefully with the goal of connection. It started with our curriculum at Open House and it's continuing with activities planned with our PTO across the year that brings low stakes interaction as a priority for our community. Another important goal for our school is the development of our instructional leadership team. So you're meeting members of other schools instructional leadership teams. I hope you hear a lot about instructional leadership teams on this reentry into or this idea of excuse me of healing and amplifying and designing. We want to design instructional design and instructional leadership team of educators who feel very connected to the work talking about the actual practice that happens in their classroom. So we are very much this is an example of where we are in close alignment with the Arlington public school system with Dr. Homan and Dr. McNeil's vision for instructional leadership. We have a wonderful group of teachers and specialists special educators coaches and directors working together. We've started our year creating a vision for quality instruction and learning that represents the belief system of our school. We're going to continue working on indicators that guide that work and also bring our students into that work to get their feedback. So we have also mapped out in our school improvement plan is important priority for this year. Yeah, you can do that one. Yeah, thank you. So just a high level overview of some of our initiatives and action steps where we intend to focus spend our energy. You know, it's not it probably will not capture everything that we do in a school year, but this focuses on some of the things that we were putting the most energy in. And I'm a little bum that Sam couldn't be here tonight our assistant principal, but she's done some wonderful work with the select board and the attack in formalizing some important traffic changes at our school, which we continue to build on. We're working with the DPW to update science. We're looking at some bigger aspirations this year in terms of grants that will help fund some of the recommendations we have about sidewalk additions, painting and other things that we would be happy to talk more about it future date if it's school committee would like it's just in its kind of second phase of that work. Thank you everyone for your time and love to answer some questions. Thank you. Your colleague was talking about challenges with the tenants and making family connections. Is that a thing that you're experiencing to work? Is your population different enough that your challenges are different? Yeah, you know, even though we're under a mile away, I think, you know, Andrew and the Pierce School have some challenges that are unique to Pierce. We certainly have some stories. I think last year in prior years, we dealt more with school refusal and school anxiety. I don't think that those numbers, though, are at a frequency that matches some of those challenges. We've got more single-family homes and homeowners. Yeah. And transportation is a bit less of an issue. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fair question, though. Thank you. I thought this is a thoughtful presentation and it appears your school is moving forward. You're disconnect among the teachers. Is this sort of like the fifth grade teachers? They'll talk to kindergarten teachers that much, one of those kind of deals. You know, we spent our first day doing a lot of connection work and then we talked about this with our instructional leadership team and somebody said this, you know, there were teachers that were hired during the pandemic and I never got to know them. And even if we were there together, there was this sense that we weren't. It was a sense that we had to be so careful. And we did. We did need to be careful. And so all that came out. This is still with us and we need to put it in front of us and make time for each other, which we've been doing a lot of. Yeah, well, that's a challenge of having new people come in during the Zoom world. Yeah. And if you just one last thing I'll say about it is, you know, it is connected to the idea of we want to retain and recruit BIPOC educators. Well, we need to make space to ensure that belonging is a priority for for folks. That's how it's one of the ways that will make progress there. Thank you. Sure. Morgan, can you help me understand a little bit like we're seeing a lot of the culture and climate data in these steps, which I think is appropriate. And I appreciate it. I'm trying to sort of understand so at each school are the students and the staff and the families ask the same questions. Okay. So ish ish. Yeah, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. Meaning like belonging may be a through line in all the surveys, but other categories might not. Okay. So so you picked were these you picked the questions that were reported here. Yes. These are these are trying to understand is so why these ones I mean, for obvious reasons. But why these ones, as compared to some of the ones we saw from here, and then why for some, do we have the fall results and some we have the spring. Is it because those the ones we just have the fall. There wasn't much change to the spring or like I just like I'm trying to I'm trying to read between the lines like is there something here that we're not seeing or that I'm just not that I'm missing like. So, because I would expect that I would hope that a sense of belonging those might increase over the course of the year. Right. So I guess I'm just curious why why these ones and why reported this way. Yeah. So I'm going to take this because of process. I was ready. You were ready. You go for it. Let me then became and then build. Yeah, please. Okay. So I think these give a taste of some of the some of the groups of questioning that focus more on the quality of connection and belonging that students experience that staff experience and that families are experiencing. There's certainly not all the questions. So that that's part of it to to hit the hit the point home I think maybe a little bit. And secondly, to the second part of the question. We haven't had the. We haven't. This isn't surveys and students or family surveys, students surveys and staff surveys are still new to our system. And so the amount of participation has fluctuated. So I would anticipate so these sort of our baseline for us this year we come back to these surveys in the fall and in the spring having had the experience of doing them last year. But for example, our students 200 plus students responded in the fall of 2021, but we had dramatically less in the spring of 2022. So to make the comparison would be a little disingenuous because they looked pretty good when you had 85 kids respond. But I don't think it's where I don't think we're ready to move past those. These particular outcomes yet I think we want to pay attention to them. And I will add that process wise last fall we did comprehensive survey with the whole community and got participation that's usable as a benchmark. And it was a completely different survey than the one we had done in 2020. So we changed the questions so comparison from 2020 fall to 2021 fall isn't really possible because a lot of the categories and questions changed. And then in the spring we wanted to do another round and then last year we had several more waves of COVID that sort of got in the way of some of the things. And we didn't want to press too hard on doing another full round, which is why the spring results have some varied participation rates, some schools prioritized doing that in the spring. I think the focus one of the things we did at leadership workshop was really hone in on what is the panorama data telling you and here's some time for you to really dig into it and pull out those things that are standing out to you and so different schools had different things that they said well here's a disparity that we're really noticing and we're going to let that drive our problem of practice and therefore what we do with the school improvement plan. So you may notice that different trends emerge for different schools and it's because of the data work that they did during leadership workshop and they're pulling out trends that are compelling to them and then building action steps around those. And when we do another round this fall, it's going to be the same survey that we did last fall. So noticing a trend from last fall to this fall should be much easier to do. Yeah, I just want to make sure we're using good stuff. Yeah, if it's not good stuff, then we're kind of still chasing ghosts, right? Well, I'll just say conversely we did have we did have a lot of families that completed the survey in the spring so is able to share some of that data. Sure. So on the on the literacy intervention. I know the district is looking at a new program, a new complete program. Can you share a little bit more about what intervention you use. Yeah, that was seems to have been so successful. Yeah, so it's a combination of things we work closely with coaches. We also have worked with an outside group called crafting minds. So they've done they do consulting with their district. The doctor Melissa Orkin who works with that organization has done some work with the state. We continue to work with their consultancy group last year in first grade second grade third grade and somewhat in kindergarten and throughout the year and the focus was on something called a structured literacy routine. So a discrete lesson plan and delivery. It's a pedagogy for ensuring that students in a 20 to 30 minute small group format receive phonemic phonemic awareness instruction phonics decoding letter ID letter naming depending on the grade and some fluency and automaticity work to so yeah really working at the lesson level. Sure. Mr. Carton kind of asked the question that I wanted to follow up on just it's really more of a comment. I hope Dr. Holman that their success can be transmitted to other schools that might be interested. I think the literacy work that they've been doing is really intriguing and great the results. So that's all. Thank you. Yeah I just had a quick question. Thanks very much for the presentation is always always good. On the safety issue you're working on what where does that stand and would you just give us an update on that. So in the spring we implement our pilot and those aren't familiar with it. Essentially we're shutting down through traffic in front of the school every day. We're rooting traffic through the neighborhood. So we had a really successful spring. We had a great weather spring. I'll say that to just to be fair and we've had a great launch where we just did our first walk to school and we actually I want to crunch the numbers before I start throwing them around but I will say they were high. The amount of families that were noticing walking to school which is what this is really about in a community school. You're walking to school significantly up. So in the this latest phase is we are looking for new crosswalk additions. We're making the recommendation for another crossing guard with the amount of traffic that we have which does have a budgetary conversation. So we understand that may be an aspiration that's unmet. But we're looking for new crosswalks. We're looking for an extension of sidewalk. We're looking for some new painting to the streets haven't been painted or repainted. No parking areas and signage replaced in a long time. So that's you know we've last see our last move is we had DPW and APD out to do a walk through of everything. Officer Ratau has been our liaison. He's been great. We had signage changes and now we're working on probably what is the more complicated stuff which is getting some street painting and the addition of a crosswalk. Michael's not here. Oh he's on Zoom. So Michael is this coming up with capital planning or not really. He looked like he was in transit. No this has not come up in capital planning. Yeah so far. Possibly. Yeah. Okay good. All right for approvals. Yeah. Thank you. I just want to echo some of the comments about the literacy the the that slide was very impressive and very exciting. And so yeah I would just echo I don't I think it was Dr. Allison Ampe about what what you can do and your school can do to share that that success and that expertise across the district. Yeah. It's commendable. Thanks. Give it to the teachers. They've been awesome. They're really dedicated. Anybody else. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody. Thank you. I got everybody in person. How about that? Take care. Thanks. Now we have Dr. McNeil and our 2022 MCAS accountability. So this is Dr. Holman has also has some slides in here so we did expand it beyond just the MCAS results so we have some other data that we're going to talk about. That includes panorama data absenteeism data and some from some different data sources. Perfect. So the purposes for this or here's the agenda for what we're going to cover in this slide deck. We'll look at the purpose vision and mission. Some of the wins we have noticed from the outcomes from the MCAS results. Some of the challenges that were highlighted by the data and some of the next steps that we'd like to put in place in order to address those challenges or continue to get the wins that we saw. And then we'll open it up for questions and comments. So again we're going to talk about areas of success and areas where we want to see a growth for Arlington public schools across various outcome areas using multiple measures like I said we have different metrics that we're going to highlight. And we're going to look at areas where we've had success and shown a commitment to equity areas where we can continue to adjust our prop patterns of practice to achieve our shared mission and steps that will take this year and beyond to address our areas of challenge and growth. So again looking at our vision statement. I think that this is a very powerful representation of things that we're trying to achieve our horizon. What we are striving to be so it's very aspirational. And again looking at the bolded language. We definitely want to achieve to be an equitable educational community. And then we have highlighted as you've seen in the previous school improvement plan presentations a sense of belonging which is actually a theme that we've adopted for this year. And looking at where we can see provide experiences of growth and joy. And we want to empower our students to use the knowledge that they achieve in the classroom to shape their own futures and contribute to a better world. That's what we're sort of vision statement. And then this is our mission statement. This is the how we're going to get to the vision and achieve our our aspirations. And so we've all had a chance to read this and we've thanked the school committee for helping us to edit it. And you know this is our final mission statement that we have adopted for the district. And so this is just a reminder of what that mission statement is. So we're going to start off by looking at some of the state results and the trends from the spring MCAS. And I'm not going to spend too much on time. But I do want to point out to everyone about the just the implementation or the administration of the MCAS and how it's changed over the past years and the impact and the impact of those changes from the pandemic. So you see in 2020 we didn't have an MCAS because that was at the inception of it in the spring of the pandemic. 2021 they gave half the test. And then so the full test was administered in 2022 in 2019. So a lot of the comparisons you'll see in the data that we're going to make is between 2022 and 2019. And that's the reason why because of the fluctuation in the way that the MCAS was administered over the past few years. So here's some trends from across the state. And then I'll refer back to this because we have some of these trends we've aligned with some of the challenges we have in our own data. But just looking at that you see that the math scores have increased. Some of the ELA scores have declined and our science scores have increased slightly. And I would say we've had we've done some gains that you'll see from the data that we've had some lots of wins with our science results. And then so to focus areas for improvement is the lower writing scores and that has aligned with our results and early literacy challenges. As Mr. Damon pointed out we have universally across all schools. We've made adjustments to our early literacy instruction where we are focused on and implemented those structured literacy routines across the district. And we've invested heavily in the resources to focus on our early literacy instruction. And then you'll see that student absenteeism across the state remains a challenge. So this is just a reminder or a slide that they will let you know how to read the student growth percentile scores. And it shows the different levels. And this this is also you'll see on those slides you'll see that so you can refer back to it on those slides on how to read the various the mean student growth percentiles. And we're not comparing it to 2021 because of the fact that we only administered half the MCAS across the state. So we're going to look at our ELA. And I thought these are the charts that I used last year in order to show the different differential from from 2019 to 2021. And so I'm doing the same thing this year. Looking at it disaggregated by race, ethnicity and gender. And so you'll see the changes if I want to direct your attention to the meeting and exceeding trends. And the one that's highlighted is where our males have shown an increase of percentage of students that have meeting and exceeding for grace three through eight and ELA. And then you'll look at the scale score all the way to the right. There's a comparison between 2019 and 2022. And you'll see the differential. So that area is we're aligning with the state in our ELA where those that's a challenge. And we're meeting that challenge and we'll talk about the steps that we're putting in place in order to meet that challenge. And then this is the same data for 10th grade race, ethnicity, ethnicity and gender. And I want to also mention that the big debt we also shared that with you and it has all of the charts. But these are the ones I wanted to highlight for this presentation. So you can go to the big deck. You'll see in the novice materials where you can see all of the data. So just looking here is a when as you see our Hispanic Latino student population at the 10th grade. Again, I want to direct your attention to the meeting exceeding. There's a big increase in students that are meeting exceeding in that category. And you'll see that the scale score is also an increase between 2019 and 2022. And then you look at our white students, there's also an increase. And then for our female students population is an increase even though that the scale score is slightly decreased. So this is looking at our student growth percentiles. And again, this is just for 2022 because you cannot compare the student growth percentile to 2021. So this will be our benchmark year. But I want to highlight the fact that for our students from grades three through eight, race, ethnicity and gender is disaggregated. Disaggregated by race, ethnicity and gender, you'll see that we had typical to high growth and we exceeded the state in each of those groups. All of our student groups exceeded the state. And again, looking at grace three through eight, looking at economic disadvantage. So that category is now low economic. It is a broader net. So they've adjusted the criteria to meet that category. And so now it's low income. And again, looking at these other student groups because we wanted to disaggregate it beyond just race, ethnicity and gender. You'll see that we have typical to high growth and we have exceeded the state in each one of the groups. Again, looking at our 10th grade, again, where you'll see the typical to high growth. It's disaggregated by race, ethnicity and gender. And again, we have typical to high growth and exceeded the state or aligned with the state. And so we're going to look at math. And again, using the same tables or charts, we're looking at the, I want to direct your attention to the meeting exceeding. Increase in percentage of students and our Asian students, grace three through eighth. There's an increase in percentage of students meeting and exceeding and looking at the scale score in comparison 2019, there's an increase. And then looking at the other identifiers, our former ELs, you'll see that there's an increase. And then there's no change, which I considered that a win based upon the challenges we've had over the past few years due to the pandemic. And then for our 10th grade, race, ethnicity and gender, you'll see where those we've had those increases on meeting exceeding and in the scale score. And which of those student groups have shown that increase. And again, for math, this is a challenge, as you can see that we've had a decrease. And again, but looking at the scale score, the reason why it's highlighted is because it's an increase in the scale score, but we want to see more of our students in the meeting exceeding category. So it's a challenge and a win. And then looking at in math, the student growth percentiles, again, lots of high growth, typical to high growth. We've exceeded the state. So this is definitely a win. Looking at the other groups for grades three through eight, again, typical to high growth, exceeding the state. And then looking at our science, technology and engineering outcomes. This is where you see a lot of growth, where I think you saw the state, the increase in scores across the state. And this is our grades five and eight, because that's those are grades that take the science, technology and engineering MCAS. And we have our science coach here. So I want to highlight the work that they've done with science. And you'll see that this is the results of that hard work. Looking at grades five to eight, five and eight, the other groups, you'll see that again, an increase. So here's some more additional accountability outcomes. So when you compare our school district to other school schools of similar size, you'll see that our two thousand twenty two percentiles. Are very high. We've shown I'm definitely a win when compared to two thousand nineteen. And again, you take into consideration the challenges that we've had that we are and we compare to other schools. You look at each one of the individual schools, other K through five schools and middle schools and our high school. You'll see that our percentage percentiles are pretty high when you look at the accountability criteria and how we performed in comparison. In comparison to those other schools and school districts and you'll see that, you know, we've increased our percentiles. So that definitely is hats off to all of our staff for the work they've done. And again, addressing the challenges. We know we still have challenges, but this is definitely a win. So I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Holman. And she's going to talk about the wins and challenges with chronic absenteeism or challenge. All right, so we are tag teaming a bit because we really want to sort of present a full picture of all of the different data points that we look at when we think about outcomes. We don't consider outcomes just what MCAS tells us, but also what the accountability system tells us. Accountability takes into account other factors like some of the ones that I'm going to talk about here, one of which is chronic absenteeism. You heard from our team at Pierce. And I know that this is something that's on the minds of teams across the district that our chronic absenteeism has gone up and went up even from the pandemic year of 2020 to 21 into last year of 21, 22. And this is something we're monitoring closely. It's important to note that the state, this is a statewide trend. The state has taken this into account in the accountability percentile calculations for this year. And they've actually considered chronic absenteeism for this past school year as 20% of days missed or more. But what I'm reporting here is 10% of days missed or more. And that's intentional. I think it's really important that we look at the graph for what it is and then we not compare apples to bigger apples or different apples because it is still a good comparison to make. But if you start looking at it as 20% for last year and essentially saying it's because of the pandemic, I think to some extent that's up to a lot of extents. That's true. However, it's going to go back to 10%. And this is something that we have to recover from and that we have to work on and that we need to understand is a major challenge for a lot of our families. And that if chronic absenteeism continues at this rate, we'll start to see big impacts on other parts of students' lives and their connections to school and their sense of belonging and in their academics. So our chronic absenteeism also displays the same gaps that some of our academic outcomes do. Our students with disabilities last year missed school at a higher rate and at an increasing rate over the past several years than their peers. Our students who are identified as low income are missing school at a more significant rate, particularly last year than their peers. And so those are two of the trends I'm highlighting here. You have more data available to you broken down at the school level in your materials for tonight. And this is going to be something that we focus on both in strategic planning and as we think about what kind of data we want to track throughout the year. So the principals and I are working on how we keep track of these data throughout the year, how we do some dipsticks on a quarterly basis at least to see what our chronic absenteeism is looking like and what kinds of mechanisms we can put in for outreach with the resources we have this year to make sure that we're articulating to families the importance of making sure that students are in school so that we can have a big impact and see some of these trend lines go a different direction next school year. I'd also like to highlight a couple of wins and some challenges when it comes to advanced coursework completion. This is another data point that the state takes into account when they look at accountability and factor in accountability. We have an increase in our participation in advanced coursework for our students in the high needs and low income areas and subgroups. This is only for the high school. This is worth noting the state sort of qualifies certain courses as advanced coursework. And then when we report what students are enrolled into the state, they use that data to determine what the advanced coursework rate is. And then they factor that into high school accountability metrics. We are seeing, however, that some of our students from subgroups like our Asian students, our African American and Black students, Hispanic, Latino students and multi-racial students are not participating in advanced coursework at the same rate as their peers. And so this is something we want to take a look at, pay attention to. It's not something that we've sort of historically paid attention to, but is a factor when it comes to our accountability ratings. And obviously it's something we've spoken about when we've talked about heterogeneous grouping. So it's worth us taking a look at. We also identified some errors in our data reporting at the high school. As we were looking at advanced coursework completion and we have resolved many of those, we actually weren't reporting some courses that are considered advanced coursework as advanced coursework to the state. And taking a look at this helped us identify some of those flaws and we're working on correcting that in our systems now so that the data that goes to the state is accurate and we can get credit for our students who are taking advanced coursework and getting credit for that. We're also, as you noted, in the school improvement plans, tracking climate and culture data from our panorama surveys. So we're really looking forward to having two years to compare when we do the surveys this fall. Some notable challenges and wins are that when we disaggregate student sense of belonging by race, we see some of the same trends that we do academically. The sense of belonging category is one that a lot of folks honed in on this year, as you'll notice. And as Dr. McNeil has noted, that's going to be a theme for us. We really are also quite focused on student sense of belonging by their identification as transgender or their identification by gender because we are noticing that our students who identify as transgender not only report higher rates of suicidality on some of our surveys that we do with the middle sex league or our youth risk behavior survey, but also that they're reporting more challenges when it comes to sense of belonging at school, feeling connected to school, feeling like they're held high expectations at school and the relationships that they have between students and teachers. And so this is a big concern, something we want to make sure that we're addressing operationally and making sure we have inclusive environments for our students at school and in our relationships with students and making sure everyone feels represented and included at school. And as Mr. Dingman noted, our student belonging data often is mirrored by our staff belonging data. So we have a lot of students and staff who say I feel very respected at school. And then when you dig into that data at the district level and you ask deeper questions like how well do people understand you as a person? How connected do you feel to other adults? How much do you feel like you matter? Do you see those numbers dip? Respect is one form of trust, but when you really sort of unpack trust when scholars have talked about what trust is and what the components of it are, feeling a sense of belonging is sort of a deeper version of trust that it needs to be developed among staff if we're going to be able to model it well for students. And so we're keeping an eye on this as well. If you disaggregate this by race with staff, you'll also notice that our staff of color report even lower sense of belonging in our schools. So of course it's not a surprise that that's mirrored in our student population. All right, Dr. McNeil. Thank you very much. I'll tell you what we're going to do about it now. So I know I'm reading all of your minds. So you're thinking like, okay, so what are some steps we're going to do to address these challenges? And again, I want to, I don't want to miss out and saying that we still have an achievement gap amongst our students of color and other students from other groups when compared to our white students. So we know that that is a challenge that we're going to continue to try to continue to address. And so some of these are some of the things that we have identified would be some next steps. So as you have learned in previous reports, we are definitely continue our work to identify a new core literacy K5 core literacy program. You can see some of the artifacts around the room. We actually had a core literacy team meeting today and we talked about the process that we're going to implement in order to select that new core program. And that's going to take place this year with the target of implementing and coming up with the implement implementation plan for 2023 and 2024. We did a complete comprehensive equity audit and I was just at the department meeting yesterday for one of at math department meeting for middle school and they were talking about they're going through the findings and talking about the things that they would like to select as goals for this year from that equity report. So our curriculum leaders and our coaches and our teachers are building administrators are diving into the findings and and that is also taking being taken in consideration as they're creating their school improvement plans. So just looking at some of the common themes. As you see in the school improvement plans is increasing belonging through a focus on student discourse and academic content areas and you saw evidence of that from tonight's presentation school improvement plan presentations. We have a common theme in the secondary department which is a focus on equitable grading practices. We also are diving into a text for for our curriculum leader meetings and it's called grading for equity. So we're going to use that as a foundation for that discussion. And we also have one of our staff members that's leading a district wide three part or actually six part six part module for a district wide professional development sessions that we have going on throughout the year. It's focusing on equitable grading practices using that text and we're looking at another common theme is continued work increasing representation in curriculum materials based on previous SEL and the curriculum audit that we had completed by Dr. Dena Simmons. And I just alluded to it that we reformatted our professional learning. If you Mr. Hainer has taken a look at it and seen the menu of courses that we're offering covers a wide range of interests and topics that we utilize surveys from teachers in order to identify those topics and we have contracted outside consultants and we also have many of our staff have stepping up stepping up to the plate and leading and facilitating those learning sessions so I'm very excited about that. The first session starts next Wednesday and lots of positive feedback from staff as they're looking at the menu of courses and they're excited about the learning that's going to take place. And the common theme is the tier one universal instruction. So looking at priority area to valuing all staff and I'm sorry I didn't let me go back to that last one that was the. I want to say priority areas we look at our strategic planning process. This is our priority priority area one ensuring equity and excellence and so all these action steps are aligning with that priority area. So the next one is priority priority priority priority area to valuing all staff. So again one of the sessions that we have if we have our DEI director and our social studies director Caitlin Moran they're leading a group. And they're which is talking about how to work set up affinity groups and it actually is an affinity group for BIPOC staff and our white staff. And so we want to set up opt in affinity groups across the district for all staff and that goes to that theme of a sense of belonging. And so I just talked about reformatting the professional learning its choice base and sustain engagement and topics of interest and relevance to staff. So that we just talked about that and then number three implementation of options for non professional status educators to meet that we've negotiated through the contract. The negotiation for a new contract new 18 hours of racial identity professional learning. Again we have staff can achieve those 18 hours definitely through our district wide professional learning sessions and on November 8 where the theme is around DEI. And then we have our DEI and human resource office checking in with new staff members at the start of the school year making sure that they feel supported. And also looking at our new staff orientation we have ideas how to improve and have have that process evolve for next year. And then number five focus on putting belonging for staff through small actions and you'll see what those steps are greeting everybody doing a follow up of if you have a conversation give specific gratitudes. I know that we've had our instructional rounds and I myself I can talk about things I've done as I've lost left very specific sticky notes for teachers as I do walk through through their classroom highlighting the things that they're doing well. And taking learning risks so we have to build trust so people are going to take learning risks in order to facilitate growth and joy. Again we talked about that productive struggle. Now turn it over to Dr. Holman to bring us home. I'll do the last two priority areas so priority area three which we are currently doing planning around is improving infrastructure operations and sustainability. We have accelerated our update of playgrounds in partnership with the town department after several of them were closed down last year. We're very much looking forward to opening up some playgrounds and I have some updates on that later on in my superintendent's report. We're obviously continuing the work on the new high school watching it go up right outside my window every day and it's very exciting. We cannot wait to see face to continue to take to take shape. And we're we've really been collaborating on a supportive start to the twenty twenty three twenty four school year as you all know for our students as we look forward to moving into phase two. We're still refining our budget proposal and planning process and we're making some tweaks to that this year to make sure that we're sharing out sort of what we're prioritizing as we go and as we make decisions and involving our administrators and stakeholders in that process this school year even more. And we are looking forward to doing some planning as part of our strategic planning for eventual improvements to Audison Middle School and our planning some HVAC upgrades at the Dallin Elementary School later this year as well. And then in priority area for which is focused on sustaining collaborative partnerships with our families and our community. We will be doing for actually the numbers five community forums for interested stakeholders to learn about the equity audit recommendations and provides and feedback on strategic initiative drafts. We appreciate anybody attending these who has any interest in them. You only need to attend one but we're definitely looking forward to getting some feedback on initiative drafts. We will be doing a staff forum which is why I say there will be five. We're planning a staff forum. We haven't quite nailed down a date for that yet but one that will allow teachers to participate in this without needing to add another evening to their schedule. So we're working on a date for that and we'll advertise it soon. We're continuing our design work on the new website and the migration of school sites to that new content management system in hopes that our website can be easier to access easier to find information on for all of our families and improve our communication systems. As you're aware we're piloting the before school care program and are looking forward to reporting back out on that as families have articulated a need for more care opportunities on the front and back end of the school day. We're also working on making sure that we can include more students in our after care programs and have continued hiring staff as we have moved into the fall and have welcomed more students into our after school care programs as the fall has gotten started and some of our staffing challenges have been alleviated. Still exist but are improving and we're continuing expansion and accessibility updates for our APS communication systems including the systems we use to message families and to ensure everything is translated and easy for families to access. And with that we will take any questions that you have about this year's outcomes. Before I take questions I just want to let Amy Moe and Tamaki know that if they need to go home or would like to go home you are welcome to head out but thank you very much for being here we appreciate it. And the other thing I just wanted to mention is I called this the MCAS report on the agenda because I know when people go back and try to search for it MCAS is sort of a tag or a search item that they that they use. I wanted to make sure this was accessible for people in the future but I appreciate the broader outcomes report questions or comments from your committee. Mr. Slickman and then Ms. Morgan. Yeah there were a couple of things I noticed. First of all is that the auditions percentile ranking among all the middle schools was outstanding. I mean what were they 97 98 97 97. I mean that's that's outstanding. And the Odyssey 20 years ago was a school we were worried about now it's the crown jewel of the system at least in terms of the accountability they're doing quite well and I think we have a lot to be proud of. The other thing I want to know is that when we report out data for schools for growth scores. It's a measure of central tendency so a 60 isn't high. It's really in the 85th percentile of schools about because you're looking at a distribution of means and that's a very tight distribution so that these 60s that I'm seeing here are 85 90th 95th percentile among schools in the state. So when we see that it's even more impressive than it looks if you're comparing that to the kids scale scale. So it's really really really good news in the outcomes and the discussion of where we're going from here and how we're going to build upon these strengths. I think it was a very impressive discussion. I feel we're in good hands right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. Miss Morgan. Dr. I just wanted to sort of talk about the take home on the SGPs. I just want to make sure we're sort of being you know as as clear as possible because so so what you're if can we go back to the slide. It's slide. Oh gosh. 14 of 38 in the presentation deck. Yeah. So I mean am I right that a that a that typical growth is 40 to 59 right and high growth is 60 to 79. So we're saying for for ELA it's it's typical to high growth. But I mean it's like really typical growth right for a student not for the the average. But I'm looking at this like this like right here right our scores are all 5951. There are a couple of 61 for Asian students and female students in our district right. I guess to me this looks like typical growth. It doesn't look like typical to high growth in in ELA. It's typical and high growth. Yes. But it's a lot more typical than it is high. That's the mean. Yes. And it's on the top end. The typical growth scores here are for the most part on the high end of that typical growth range. Right. Okay. So it's the high end. All right. But yes they're typical. They would be in the typical range. But I think what what I I guess my what I find difficult about how this is presented is that it I feel like it it doesn't really. Like you're telling me that in ELA it's all typical to high growth which for 10th grade ELA it's all of our district growth scores are all 5153 or below. So they're all typical anyway. So there's no high growth there. And it to me I feel like it then sort of dilutes what happened in math which is like legitimately high growth in math. Right. So I guess I just want to make sure that when we talk about it we're talk like I feel like if we're if we're trying to like squidge yourself over and be high or high typical it I feel like it then dilutes when it is actually truly high growth which is what happened in math. So I guess I just as this sort of goes out and we talk about it in different Meetings. I I just I think it's really important to be really true to these the scales that That we've been given and make sure that that you know when we talk about math That's like the the idea that all of these growths are all being Represented as typical to high to me feels a little squishy. So that's my feedback. Thank you. Just quickly could we do that chart instead of doing it with the means is do a Chart a bar growth of the percentage of kids in very low low moderate high and Very high. I guess did there are charts that are available for that that that I think Would paint the picture better because the the graphing of the means doesn't Really portray the distribution. I will I will look at that graph and we can insert that in there. Yes. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. I guess so I appreciate the presentation and especially the backup Information at the end. But one question I have is when or will we be discussing the achievement Gap. So when are they being discussed in your professional means how is Because that's what one of the things we want to be focusing on but we Haven't even discussed it here. Right. We're just comparing groups to what they did prior which is useful information But part of what we're trying to do is decrease achievement gaps and we Haven't even talked about them here and clearly I mean I I know Dr. McNeil did mention it in his summary at the end but the the Sides and the data don't have anything about that. I'm just wondering what's the next steps with that. Thank you. So that is one of the reasons we are adopting an I'll give an Example that isn't one of the reasons we are adopting a new K5 Core universal literacy program because we've read the research on Our current program. It shows that it's not and looking at the adult the results from Not only the MCAS but our I ready looking at our ELA scores And understanding that it's not servicing all of our students so as Our hope as we continue to focus on early literacy we adopt a new K5 literacy core program that that will raise student Achievement and decrease the achievement gap between our Students of color other groups and our majority white students So that is something that is embedded in every conversation that We have. I don't think I've ever had a conversation with any curriculum Leader Dr. Holman anyone that does not take into consideration the Achievement gap that we are continually trying to address which Is another reason why we had the comprehensive equity audit Take place so we have looked at those findings and again taking Into consideration the recommendations and seeing where Where that implementation can take place and over time as We implement these things as we continue to address the Achievement gap. Another example would be the equitable grading practices Looking at how that can present a barrier how we are grading Our students to some of our students based upon their race And ethnicity so again looking those are two examples three Actually with the equity audit that we are that could be Considered a next step as us addressing the achievement gap An opportunity gap that exists within our our district Right and I understand that those are solutions intended for that But my point is just that we're not even looking at what is the Achievement gap now what was it how is it changed Do you see what I'm saying I do but the charts are also Showing it how we disaggregate the data that's one way that We present the achievement gap because if you look at the charts It's comparing how those different groups of students are doing In comparison to the last time they gave the full MCAS so I will Pass it over to Dr. Holmes she has some comments as well Before Dr. Holmes I also just want to point out that That all of these these results were released not that long ago And Dr. McNeil went through all of this and created this Presentation to have it ready for us on this state so I will let Dr. Homan share but I also think that if the committee feels Like they'd like to have another discussion at another time That more specifically addresses something we can do that But I know Dr. McNeil did a lot of work to get this presentation Ready for us for this evening and I I do see a lot of Of addressing that gap in in what you have here but if It needs to be something that we talk about more explicitly we can Certainly absolutely Dr. Homan I mean there is some of it In the big deck the 52 deck 18 slide 18 has the ELA slide 8 has a much better description of it but that's The state data only if we get slide 8 for the district data That I think is what we're looking for slide 8 in the big Deck in the big deck so I this is like 18 is the one we're familiar With that we've seen before but it is I like slide 8 but yeah So yeah slide 8 slide 8 right so if if if that is the Type of representation of the day that you would like to see I Could do that because then I could it would show the The discrepancy or the gap between the different groups And our white students so I can definitely represent the data that Way and yes and slide 18 is missing the yeah it's Missing the other categories is only doing race and ethnicity So I think that's sort of the analysis I think we were looking For I'll yeah I think there's there's a lot of different Ways you can sort of slice and dice these data and we Certainly were in a bit of a crunch for time I did Want to share with everybody here not this but this What the administrators get and one of the ways that we Do look at data as a team is with graphs like these that We do that show that have those same trend lines that the Chronic absenteeism did and they get access to the Administrators get access to this and we break it out By scaled score we have growth on the other side We do it by all the different subgroups that were Focused on in all the different content areas and then They look at year over year trends one of the and so They've used this to build school improvement plans you Can see at the bottom of the spreadsheet it's broken out By each individual school these are representations that We can also provide and have access to if that's Something that the committee would like to see some Analysis of but I just wanted to emphasize that our Leaders do use these in order to sort of identify What the gaps are and whether they're growing or shrinking And where gaps are growing and shrinking and so that's Another way that sort of we can convey some of these data And I had one other point but I've lost it so I'll Stop talking. Mr. Thelen. I didn't know Dr. Allison. I'm sorry. Did that answer your question? Yeah, that helped a lot. The graphs especially that Dr. Holman was showing are Really helpful and I would like I'm personally Interested in seeing some stuff like that. I don't know if the rest of the committee is and I'm not sure how much but I just get concerned. I understand that there are a number of things that Are in progress and my initial question wasn't Why didn't we see this now but when will we or are we going To see this. So I also understand that it hasn't been that long that The data's been released but it's just I feel like If we're going if we're trying to focus on something We need to look at it too and you folks may be Looking at it because you have access to a lot of data That we do not and I was just pointing out that We can't look at it because we don't have it or it Is not in those forms. I understand there's a couple in the big debt but The stuff that Dr. Holman was showing us is really Getting it kind of what I was wondering about. So thank you. Okay so if we could if you want to send me some questions Or some examples that you would like to see like again The data as Dr. Holman stated can be represented in many Different ways and so I could work on another deck That's more explicit showing the achievement. Okay. I'm just going to we've been on this topic for 40 Minutes just to give everybody a time check. I'll be quick. There's a lot of data here. Thanks very much. When you saw the data I guess Dr. Holman Like what jumped out of you is like oh my god This was really good or I'm surprised by this data And then what trumped out is wow we got to like We got to do something about this issue. Well yes I think for me like I said before As I look at the data the continuation of the gap Achievement gap that we have between our Especially our black African American students And our majority white students and looking at The other groups of students as you look at the Low income students our EL students And our all of all of our groups I would like to see All of our groups achieving at a much higher rate And I would like to see the us continue to Decrease that achievement gap. I'm very excited about the early literacy work That we're doing. I think that is definitely going to have an impact Not only in literacy but it's going to impact How our students are able to comprehend and Understand non-fictional text. And I know that another thing I did not talk about In this data report or this outcomes report Is the work that we need to do with our writing And that is something that did come out That jumped out at me as I have right here When you look at the standards and you break it down By standards and understanding why certain groups Of students are not achieving at a certain level Writing is a big part of that. For ELA and then in math it's like geometry So being able to break it down by standards And look at those items. So again I want us to continue to look at Our universal instructional practice. Our seventh and eighth grade math teachers Adopted a new curriculum resource last year And the student growth at Ottison in math Was off the charts which is very exciting It means that resource was well implemented The teachers were on the same page in working with it That it was a new resource so for growth to be so high When a new resource is being implemented Speaks to the quality and power of the planning That they did with the math department Like wow I would attribute Ottison's excellent percentile To the work of all the educators in that building But the student growth in math in seventh and eighth Was definitely a big part of that. I would agree with. Surprise was science. Our increase in science. The increase in science was a great surprise. The gap for low income students is significant And when you really look at what you want to see In student growth is that student groups Who you need to accelerate have a higher growth Percentile than student You want to see high growth for all students But you want to see a higher growth score For groups that you're focused on Than you do for groups that you might not be As focused on because their achievements are already high And we're not seeing that as much as we might like to So and we're not you know the pandemic One of the reasons why I might hesitate to throw Some of those graphs like I just showed you On a slide with the trend line From 2017 to 2022 is because that's showing a trend Over five years of pandemic learning And we know that the pandemic had all sorts of impacts On students that were not within the control of the school system And so what we really want to try to do this year Is establish a baseline. We can compare it to 2019. That's useful in that it tells us where we're at Relative to before all of this happened But this year gives us a really strong baseline For establishing whether or not the work we're doing Is closing gaps or not Because we know that the pandemic widened gaps Really significantly and that that was only exacerbated Last year. So we can share trends absolutely And take a look at some of that gap analysis But I would say take that with the grain of salt Required because of what the pandemic did To some of those equity gaps across our society In all sorts of areas. Thank you. Anybody else? Camp overnight experience update And Miss Diggins Amber Bus was going to be a part Amber Bus was going to Is she a part of it? She wanted to, no she just wanted to attend Oh she just, okay I didn't know if she wanted to She's more than happy to Do you want her to Miss Duffy do you promote it? To as a participant? You can put her as a participant absolutely I want to welcome Miss Duffy Who is the PTO president for Gibbs and Addison And Miss Huber is here One of our science And I will say this So The immersive science camp materials are in there So welcome So Thank you Okay Do you want me to Add the science immersive Slide deck into Novus So that the full committee could See them because these And I'm going to talk about the slide deck But I was wondering Miss Morgan Do you think that would be a good idea? Yeah they were great slides They did get sent out to the full committee Via email I believe Prior to that meeting but I think If you're going to reference that Which I suspect you'll reference that Part of that conversation potentially Then I think it's helpful to have it there After the fact, thank you So we did meet with the CIAA Subcommittee When was it last week And we presented our slides And we focused on Science camp And we were given some Feedback and we took that feedback Because we did not have an overnight option And so One of the things that we did decide At the end of that meeting Is that we were going to separate Because and I'll get more Into the reason why We're going to separate actually The focus on science We're going to not Use that as a focal point As we look at the overnight experiences So you will look and you will see In order to avoid Like having the overnight experiences Be just like an ultimate Sleepover or something like that We also wanted to have a focus We wanted to have a focus around leadership Around community building But as you think about a sleepover You want to still have that type of joy And that was something that was Expressed through the different emails And letters I received from parents And so I wanted to give some context there So that everybody understands As we're going through the slide deck That you'll see that you'll say Probably wonder well It's not focusing on science Well that's intentional And we also wanted to It's not going to be couched in Fifth grade because Of the Not really focusing on science So we're looking at sixth grade And so I reached out to Madame Pierre Maxwell I reached out to Miss Duffy Who was the PTO president And we had an initial conversation So I'm going to get into the slide deck That was some context So that everybody understands Where we're starting at So we're going to share options We did reach out to other vendors Again looking at just an Overnight experience but still Focusing on community Building And we looked at certain vendors that Had Gave us an opportunity also customized That experience for students And so we could align it with The core values Of Gibbs And so we could make it However we want to make it So going into the next slide So the slide deck is just going to Look at the options for the overnight Experience, discuss the pros and cons And then we'll open it up for questioning I promise you I'll make this quick So again looking at the context It will be explored For sixth grade students It will not be attached to the Science curriculum We would like to partner with the Gibbs PTO and we'll talk about our next steps That Miss Duffy Whoops sorry Thank you And then our initial inquiry Included a three day Two night experiences Alright and then And it only includes vendor costs So we still have to as you look At the cost we still have to add In transportation So our first option Is the Morse Hill Outdoor Education Center And what we did we called And I would like to highlight Chelsea Austin who works in our office At admin assistant She did a phenomenal job Researching some of these options Because I have multiple reports to do So I just want to give Highlight Chelsea and her efforts But you'll see we took notes And these are some of the highlights From those notes So you can see what some of the Experiences that students can have As they can learn SEL skills And they can also do Fun activities Thinking about that sleepover Experience getting that Integrated in there Not just focusing on these things We want to make sure they're having Joy they're having fun But there's no nurse on staff But all staff are Trained on medication Administration first aid and CPR And for students who are on an IEP Students making sure that we are Opening this up to all students That they could participate So what type of support Are the different vendors going to Provide us when we have students That may learn differently And so we have students on an IEP Or need a behavior support So they have staff that have been Trained in order to support those Students who may have certain Challenges And they train their staff Companies philosophy But we still need to do more Research to determine the cost They weren't really forthcoming with the cost I don't know why But they wanted to know specifically the day The date Everything before they were going to give us a cost So we're going to continue to reach out to them To determine that to get that information And then as you can see If you click on that link It will take you to their website So if you need more if you want to Visit their website and learn more about that vendor You can do so I'll have to send you the one because this is a pdf So I just highlight some of the pros and cons It can be Some of the pros, it can be customized To fit our needs It appears that the program can be Differentiated for different learning styles Staff have been trained to administer Medication But there's no nurse on staff So we need to bring a nurse And I have to It's me being overprotective But I want to understand What that looks like when you have staff Just administer medication Without a nurse on staff And any other students who may have More significant health issues How does that work So we still have more research to do As a relates to that Option two, the farm school Has anybody heard of the farm school? You have, right So You have? Yes, okay So it's actually running a farm So the students, depending on the year Is that's going to determine The activities that they will participate in So I've never lived on a farm I've never worked on a farm So I know that I would have to Learn more about this But you see some of the examples Of some of the activities they can participate in And the teachers would have to Have teachers come and provide supervision There's no nurse on staff All staff are trained In providing first aid And CPR They do have Staff trained to provide support For students on an IEP They allow parents to chaperone But a lot of the vendors Were not, I mean they said They can come but traditionally That's not what happens And then the cost One thing I liked about this It seems like they were willing to Work with you on the cost So that students could participate It wouldn't be a barrier And then you see there's a link To a sample schedule I think it's a sample two day schedule And again the pros There's flexibility with the cost per student When you do send adults They are not charged But it's limited Students learn about working on a farm Very hands on Supervision relies on teacher participation Again there's no staff These are our cons Limited scope of the program Everything revolves around farm activities So, you know Not a lot of options there This one I really The kids may like it Some kids may not like it I'm just saying you want to have choice You know I don't know how much choice Is going to be there This is one I was very intriguing To me I really like this one Craft the program That lines up with the values of the school And the support What our school is already doing Again Gibbs has a strong focus On SEL so I really like that And they have engineering Concepts built into this They can build a raft Depending on the activity Shelter in the woods Learn how to build a fire This seems like a true camp experience Which I've never had Overnight supervision Will be the teachers It's one adult For every one to twelve students They ask that staff That the school bring a nurse Again that remains to be A concern of mine As long as we can provide Have a nurse come We don't have to think about how that's going to happen But their staff is trained in first aid And then you see the cost And adults are free For every one adult Up to twelve students And then you see a sample Got to correct that type of two day schedule Pros The vendor works to align the program With values of the school Students learn about engineering Relies on teachers These are some of the con On teacher participation Another typo I have to fix that No nurse on staff And staff cannot Administer medications So that is a con Nature's classroom I know a lot of people are familiar with this When parents email me They put this up as an option And again you can read about that They have a ropes course We have to provide Overnight supervision But we can pay extra For them to provide the overnight supervision And we have to understand How much of a cost that is And there is a nurse on staff 24-7 And available Overnight for emergencies So that's definitely a pro And then this is more bullets With that And then the pros Program can be customized Can be connected to science If we would like it to be If you pay extra Nighttime supervision Staff are trained to address different learning styles They are nurses on staff This cost The cost can be very expensive With the add-ons And so I'll open it up To questions and comments What you have Mr. Heiner You mentioned The programs adjusting to the curriculum I have a concern With time away from the regular curriculum Especially tonight When we're talking about absenteeism and stuff Do you see Our curriculum Being continued in these programs Potentially It would be more from a SEL focus looking at Which is important So we're looking at the whole child Their mental health SEL skills I think that would be something that Students can definitely benefit From going on having experience like this But I have some ideas That I've shared with Ms. Duffy Do you want to say anything about Our conversation that we had And your thoughts Because I definitely want to give you an opportunity To share your thoughts So as I said When we spoke a few days ago We were having a PTO meeting On Tuesday evening And my plan Is to talk with the board And any parents who attend that meeting About this I know a couple of the board members Are on this call Listening I think In my initial Ideas of this That to me Seems like this should be a Pull out For the PTO Towards Gibb's parents Because It's those parents that are going to Have to participate Especially if You know I looked at the slides I looked at the costs If parents have to Attend What parent is going to do that I mean I know My son went with Ms. Morgan's Daughter When they had the science camp And I was very happy to write that check And to let somebody else take him For four days And have a great experience You may Have a lot of pushback With I'm happy to write a check But I don't really want to go I think Putting Feelers out to Gibb's parents Once we have our meeting We will see Where the rubber meets the road And how many people really want The camp So I mean that's just my My initial Feelings on this Do I think it's a great idea Absolutely But it's a big undertaking for Just the PTO I think to take I want to add Because I think I heard some in your question About the role of this when it comes to curriculum And I think we are tasked As a public school system to ensure That anything that is part of our curriculum Is something that every single student can participate in And so If we were to pursue something like this I think our preference And one of our goals would be To consider whether or not this needs That takes time out of our school hours That we are Required to provide to all students And the way science camp worked Previously was that it did Take days that were school days And students would leave But not all students were able to go And we said it was part of our curriculum So if we were to pursue this One of the things I would hope An organization or a group of parents That were to take it on Would pursue is Making this part of days That are not school days Because the reality is We cannot ensure that all students Are able to participate in a lot of these Options and we know that there are going To be challenges associated with that And in the same way That some students are able When we partner with other organizations To have experiences that are Overnight or international Some students attend that and some don't And it's an extracurricular opportunity That we consider these options As potential extracurricular opportunities If I may just You brought up a very good point But as a teacher Who participated in one of these programs When I saw it I never thought about That interaction with my students On a 24-hour period And I got to be very frank And honest with you I loved teaching for 32 years I did it once, I would never go back To the relationship, it's important And I support Dr. Holman 100% This should be for everybody If we're going to have it I think the logistic part Of it and I think going forward How many parents are going to be there How many teachers are going to be there Just to make that piece Until that's in place I don't think you can go forward with this The support about it But I also think Concentrating on the Educational portion of it And not taking away Days of schooling For this I don't think you're going to have This high Involvement if this happens During a February vacation week Or an April vacation week You'll get pushed back from those parents Saying Why did you pick it that week We're going away on vacation This just seems that It could possibly Just be nothing more than continuous Our responsibility Is to the entire student body Until we can get The entire student body actively involved It can't be a school program It's a catch 22 Yes, and that's exactly I hear what you're saying And I would support it as a parent But at the same time We have a responsibility on that end The other end, sorry I think we're diving a little bit too Into the weeds here This is more of a subcommittee type discussion But I think some good ideas are being presented I support the Continued exploration With support by the administration With a willing parents group There is a willing parents group I've been contacted by parents So I know they're out there That are interested in seeing some sort of experience Like this in Arlington Where it's worth investing Administrative resources Parental resources and seeing what we can do I've got to ask Can we let People share Their first turns Yeah, okay I thought that Ms. Morgan And the administration Let a really wonderful meeting In the CIA subcommittee Where the conversation was really Really terrific What we did was we took apart The two components of the issue That appear to be before us Science And camp And one of the things we were discussing was Could we somehow Bring the science aspect To us so that we'd have Sort of a science campy Experiential out in the field thing At some great level In that area 456 For our students And I don't want to lose sight of that I think that the camp Side appears to be very Very complicated as we try to Go and Meet the needs Of as many students as possible Not excluding students And As Folks have said That the really Way to do this would be sort of Your activity maybe run through The community education The one model I'm thinking of Off the top of my head is when we do The last blast is that That's a rotating group of kids That come through And there's enough Of a group of parents Who are aware of this Moving forward So they know that as they approach Being a junior because You don't want senior parents in the last They're going to be They know to be available for that Overnight period So that if we can communicate With the parents right now That we're thinking about this As sort of an extracurricular And maybe we can't pull it off For this year but maybe we can For next year so we'd be notifying The elementary parents and Gather some sort of a Committee or group of A steering group of folks Who would be able to step in And do that part Of it that makes it More of a community Activity rather than a School department activity But I'm really grateful for This discussion I know there's a lot of Thought going into a lot of research Because we've got brilliant Parents in this community Who are active And thoughtful and have Lots of contacts and resources You know if we go out there And share the questions That we have right now We could end up with even more answers And more possibilities in a way to serve As many kids as possible Yes I just want to understand The next steps The next steps are you're going to talk To the Gibbs parents Yes Gibbs, Audison PTO because we're two PTOs or one PTO for two schools We're meeting on Tuesday I'm going to explain this I'm going to show the slides Say These are the pros and cons We need to start Some kind of discussion With the Gibbs parents On their facebook page To find out who's Willing to Entertain this idea Once we have that information Then the curriculum committee meets Or that's it I think we're making up the plan This is the plan The discussion now Is to make a plan for what are our next steps When do we want to meet again Is it going to go to the IAA What information are we looking for I don't know if we need to motion anything I don't know if this group is the right place To make the operational plan I think You talk to the parents We see what the feedback is Jane's committee meets Ms. Morgan's committee meets soon Takes this information And then with the administration's guidance We see what's possible Sounds like a plan Ms. Morgan I think that That crowd is the right one Can we realistically We're not going to pull this off For this year's group of sixth graders A lot of these venues Are probably booked at this point That is worth a question to them What is available in the spring Because that could really narrow If the desire is to pull something off By this year That can really narrow these options Down to very few I think that it's a good crowd To try to balloon it to But if their kids aren't Like if their kids Aren't going to be able to go Right because it's October 13th Right Then if I were a Gibbs parent And I was like I'm not going to be like I totally am in for this Like I want to do this But my children aren't going to be able to go I guess that's my concern Right is that we're floating it Next week to a group of people Who it may not even impact And so that feels like Kind of mixed messaging To me personally I think somebody needs to Get information about available dates For these four venues Prior to the conversation Yeah somebody can get me Info on like You know two of them before You can just point at me and say ride It's this guy over here Who's never lived on a farm He just volunteered Or if Cheryl can call Absolutely we can follow up And see what dates are available That shouldn't be that difficult Someone needs to get Is how many students at a time These places can host So That was clear That you know I think The maximum at one of the venues I can't remember which one was 120 So I'm looking at learning Like each LC learning community Would have to go Like separately And that's the way we did it You know when we had the science camp Before the pandemic Every school Had to go at a different time So you have to stagger it So we're talking about 500 plus kids I don't think any of the venues Were able to handle that many At one point in time But I think it's even important to know How many sets is it going to So we have five learning communities We have five learning communities At Gibbs so we'll be Five Different So I mean that's when you think about The impact on the number of school days That that impacts The entire school You know for Band or chorus or whatever Like whole school I think it's important to under For the committee and the community To understand the The bigger picture impact Of Some of this Is an impact At an elementary school Because the fifth grade could go From that elementary school And it didn't have such an impact So I had just more thoughts To put out there All the same thoughts that I had After our discussion I was like Lots of different things When you're dealing with sixth grade Or if this was something that was Happening at Audison versus You know at fifth grade So you find out what you find out Ms. Morgan's committee meets At the same time It may mean that You know we can't do anything this year Which means that the conversation Then has to go to the fifth grade parents In their PTOs to see what their Interest would be and We'd go from there. Great. My fifth grader will be excited Morgan do you know Because I know you've got a meeting schedule We meet on the 24th And then we meet again on the 14th Of November So the 24th Feels Probably tight But the 14th The 14th of November I mean I don't know We have our meeting dates and either of those We could potentially At least do an update and have another But time on the 24th I might Security It's the CIA I don't know what I'm doing But all right I'll just email you whatever Said because I'll be at Strutton Sorry Dr. Allison Ampe Sorry Thanks I just wanted to Okay so I'm sorry I missed that CIA meeting But I Wanted to I'm confused because I thought I understood Dr. Holman to say It should be during school But it sounds like you're talking During school So I'm confused by that Second I am Confused about how That I understand The first time is probably a trial And stuff but part of What I thought we're trying to do Is reinstate a tradition So it'd be going on each year Right and so We need more Input than just this year Gibbs parents And I'm not hearing that sort of input So I don't Anyway those are Just a couple also I think if we are going to just talk to Gibbs parents Maybe There can be some email communication Outside of the meeting because Crowley lots of people Aren't always at the PTO meetings So that you can reach as many Parents as possible and Get Opinions from more than just The people who didn't show up for the meeting But I'm just I'm still Kind of confused by this whole thing So I like Some of the camps sound I mean I think all the camps have Things and oh and the other Thing I was going to say was in terms of It relating back to the curriculum If we're talking about that To me this is something That is It's giving them knowledge It's giving them something to write about In their journals or Whatever writing free writing they have To do It's giving them an appreciation For when they hear about Other science things They say oh I saw this Or I did this I think So I don't think It has to always Be locked stuff with The exact things on our Curriculum for it to be Of Value And So I I don't think we should dismiss it But they don't come with Specific curriculum Things I think you figure out What activities are and then You build your You tweak what you're already planning To do For those but That's just my opinion so Thank you. Hi I think before you do anything You need to talk to the Gibbs teachers Because they've never heard anything About this and now there's a public document Floating out there that's talking about them Chaperoning overnight trips I can't wait to see my inbox tomorrow It's going to be great So if you're talking about Doing this out of school time that's fine But if there's possibilities here That this is going to be during the school Year during the school day especially If you're talking about requiring Chaperoning I think this needs to Start with the Gibbs staff And then once you figure out What their interest is and what their ability To participate is Then you can start to make some decisions after that Thank you for that And I want to say that the Initial focus was to partner with the PTO and have it Be during like I Express an idea to Miss Duffy That it would take place during Like a mid winter break I was not thinking that the teachers Were going to be heavily involved That's why I put that as a con Because it would be Volunteer So if it's during Some of the trips we do at the secondary level So I was thinking like using that model So if they want to volunteer And they want to supervise Great And that's why we're looking at the idea That's not taking place during Like The week And I shared that idea With Miss Duffy during our conversation And so Looking at instructional time Looking at supervision And Making that a focal point when we did call Each one of the vendors like what does that look like Without us having Teachers provide the supervision Because that was a challenge at the fifth grade level And I would imagine it would be the same Challenge and I Wanted to make sure that any teacher who's listening That was my initial thought That it was not going to take place During the week And we would not rely upon teacher supervision Because that would Fluctuate from year to year Depending on what's going on people's lives So I wanted to make it more of a Voluntarily Where they would do it Hey I want to go on that midwinter I would like to go on that And so it wouldn't take place during the week So That was my initial thought process And partnering with the PTO We discussed And I think my comment with regard to it Happening during What would be vacation weeks In February and in April I was thinking at it Not with the teaching brain But with the lawyer brain that I have That I'm going to get pushback from parents Because I was looking at the bigger picture Why Why are you doing this during February vacation I'm going away with my kids And they really want to go That's the pushback That I'm anticipating happening Whether it's at the PTO meeting Or when I put a blast Email out asking for parental You're also not going to get Five chunks during vacation weeks Yeah Okay So can I just So this has been I'm actually more confused than I was Like 25 minutes ago So God bless I know less now Than I feel like I knew 25 minutes ago I Don't even know Like we talked about them Going by LC But if it's Over April vacation You're not going to find time To send that many kids Not every kid is going to go So I guess what's hard is I guess I had hoped That some of this Would have happened by the time we came here That some of this Sort of assessment of viability Was part of What was done before it came here Because like Mr. Thielman I'm not interested in operationalizing This necessarily Within this body We're like great people We're not the I don't think we're the people that operationalize this Frankly, so I'm not really sure I'm not really clear On where What the next piece is I do think that if there aren't Next steps within this committee I don't think anything will happen Like I don't think it'll go anywhere So I think we have to come up With some sort of Next piece But I'm not even really sure What should be Can I just So this was an exploration So this is by I was not under the impression That we had to have a fully Planned out This was an exploration to see what's available And looking at the different vendors And looking at what's When we started talking about it happening During like that conversation happened today When we started talking about The possibility and when you asked a question If it did take place it would But I mean I don't even know what's possible If we did explore it On like looking at different options Maybe they would go to different sites I don't know but in order to make this Available I don't know to your point I don't think that every child During a mid-winter break just like We have our trips at the secondary level Not every child participates And so I mean This is an exploration to see what's Possible and so That was my initial thought but again I'm open to feedback And working with the parents to see What's possible Well it just it feels like there's a lot Of questions and There is a CIA meeting Next week If I'm doing nope two weeks But I'm just I'm wondering It as Mr. Gardens said earlier Like that that setting Might make more sense for some of this Is starting to get Very detailed and We've now been on this topic for 35 minutes And we're an hour off of our agenda So I'd like to suggest That this topic get taken To the October 24th CIA meeting After Ms. Duffy's Had a chance to talk to her board And then Mr. Carden Just to frame the ask of you though Right now we're exploring We're just exploring So we're talking about different possibilities I will use that word Abundantly in a meeting to parents We're not asking for a yes or no Correct. Are people interested in exploring this If they're not even interested in exploring it Fine. If there are people That are interested in exploring it Get their names for us. Perfect. Thank you. Is this really important? Yes. Mr. Heiner. Just clarify One of the things you're bringing to your people Is asking how much Who might be Just interested but who might be Willing to participate. Correct. Thank you. You could do a pilot. We're going to move on to the next agenda item And You can continue to talk about this on October 24th Text me. Okay We're now an hour and five minutes Off of our schedule Buffer zone report Dr. Hellman Can I thank Ms. Duffy for taking time out of her Very busy schedule. Thank you for your perspective. Thank you for working with me on this. Thank you. You're so welcome. I will be brief with the buffer zone And open enrollment report for 2022 I'm going to talk a little bit about What exactly this report is For any community members who are watching at home Go over the buffer zone assignments And comparisons for this year A grade level breakdown and some trends And then I would also like to talk about Open enrollment as a component Of the presentation just to give everybody A sense of what some of the open enrollment Trends are as well. So as you all know Buffer zones are established Have been established by Arlington by the school committee In order to Create boundaries amongst elementary School districts where an elementary School student in that boundary area In that buffer zone may be assigned To either one of the immediate elementary school districts In an effort to Manage and balance case sizes And as a component of that policy I report to all of you Once a year on the implementation of it And its effectiveness with a focus on class size Equity and The impact of the policy on working towards it So as an overview Of the buffer zone assignments and comparisons For this year We had 188 total Students who were in buffer zones And we had 58 fewer of them this year That's in line with some of the Sort of stabilizing of enrollment trends Across the elementary levels and the fact That we had a very large fifth grade cohort Head off to sixth grade this school year Our 116 of our families got their first Choice of school and 14 families Received their second choice A lot of the students who Or a lot of the families who received a second choice It was because in the particular grade level They were going into at that school Those Classes might either were projected To be particularly large Or were at that time particularly large Depending on whether we were talking about this Happening in April or in July or August There's a great level Breakdown available for you I won't go through all of these numbers We had, we did have A significant number of kindergarteners In the bishop elementary In all of the buffer zone areas But in the, I mean bracket elementary School district in particular We had A smaller number in Hardy Than we necessarily expected And then we had a smattering of students Across other areas. I will also note That K1 and 2 numbers were up slightly This year. This was an enrollment trend As well as a buffer zone trend And I think reflects in first and second grade In particular both a trend That is real for the district That families might have their students In a separate school and then bring them Over in first or second grade In particular indication of families Coming back after pandemic A couple years of pandemic learning So a couple of trends Just to note we had stable Kindergarten enrollments compared to last school year It was actually If you look at some of the projection models That we had for last year we had more Kindergarteners than expected only by a few But it was actually pretty spot on With a lot of our projections We had fewer new students entering the system This year who lived in buffer zones Actually that's because last year we had such High mobility in town That we had just more students in buffer zones Because we had more students moving in Most schools Therefore had fewer buffer zone assignments This year like I said Bracket had an increase of six assigned Students this year Down and remain the same as last school year And Thompson has a slight increase of four We did, I did make efforts early In the enrollment process To swing away from the Stratton district Because we were anticipating Some space constraints at Stratton And really wanted to open the art room back up Which we have done even though we are Section neutral at Stratton We did find a way to shuffle some classrooms around And open up the art room again This is reflected in Significantly fewer students Who were assigned to Stratton And some smaller kindergarten sections At Stratton now because we actually didn't have The enrollment at Stratton and Kindergarten That we expected to have Only slightly fewer assigned to Pierce And study enrollment at Dallin There were fewer students assigned To Bishop due to high initial enrollment In K2 classes, so Bishop's enrollments went way up And then over the last Several months Of enrollment process we sort of Swept away from Bishop because the Sections were getting high There was an increase in enrollment in grades one and two Compared to the last two years like I said This could be some return of students to public schools After participation in other schools During the pandemic. I'm providing you With a class size overview and comparison And I think Some of the, so this is the average Class size that you receive on the Enrollment report that you receive Every couple of weeks And it's a comparison from October Of 2021 to when I pulled the latest enrollment report In 2022 and it's Just a class size average comparison What you can see is what I Had articulated is that in Kindergarten Second grade we had slightly higher Enrollments than we were anticipating That we were doing our best To be as efficient as possible With our, in using The buffer zones and making sure that we did Have as few hotspots in terms Of section size and that we were as Balanced as we could be with the resources That we had. We did Have fewer elementary sections This year and have maintained only Having a couple of hotspots In the district And you can sort of see Where some of those are. We have Some larger class Well they were slightly larger down earlier In the year but we have some larger class sizes In Kindergarten than we expected Because the projections were a little lower Than what actually happened We have a hotspot In fifth grade at Thompson Which we knew was there We added a section In grade five at Stratton which has brought those class sizes Down a little bit but we ended up having A lot of students enroll in second grade At Stratton this year so second grade Is feeling a little bit of pressure That's something we can take a look at As we look at sections for next year But I think overall What you'll notice is that we've Managed to stay pretty balanced Even though we have fewer overall Elementary sections this year And that the buffer zones worked well For achieving that. When it comes to open enrollment There's a lot of requests that were approved From fall of 2021 to present So this is not So we may have more open enrolled students In our schools than this is reflecting In so far as if they are A fifth grade student who open enrolled When they were in kindergarten We don't necessarily have that data Tracked in the way that I would like to So as we move forward from here I'll be able to show you With more accuracy exactly how many Open enrolled students we have Because we weren't keeping this data In a particular way would require a lot Of address analysis And it would be very manual So we've decided not to expend human Resources on that but we're just Going to from here forward start keeping That so that we can report this to you We have more open enrolled students At bracket than at any of our other Schools and then across The other schools it's you know Somewhere between one and four Over the last few years Almost all open enrollment requests Are coming from schools that share A buffer zone with a requested school So for example All but one of bracket's open enrollments Came from families with children Who are attending a neighboring school Down in our bishop that has a buffer zone With bracket so they would often request They would not be in the buffer zone But would request open enrollment At a school that was a buffer zone Sharing school with that school So they're usually nearby The vast majority of our Open enrollment requests are coming from families Who have some personal circumstances Range that are changing at some point During the elementary experience And most of them are families who moved After their student had established relationships And been at that school for a while To another part of town or Something happened in the family And there's shared custody But open enrollment requests are largely Coming from something changed for me And so I want to maintain continuity For my students and stability for my students Some requests were made That reflect a different kind Of understanding of the open enrollment policy We have gotten a few of these who They might understand the open enrollment Policy as a school choice mechanism Those requests sometimes get framed As motivated by preference For school demographics, class size Other factors generally When we receive requests like this We'll emphasize that we have a neighborhood school model And we'll have a conversation with the family About what some of their concerns might be And what some of their desires might be And talk about what the different schools offer And how they're different And how they're really very similar in most cases And so that's sort of how We handle some of those requests We certainly see the open enrollment Because we have a neighborhood school model We see the open enrollment policy As a way of maintaining stability for families And making sure that the connections That are really important to students' development Are not broken Are buffer zone and open enrollment trends For this year, I'm happy to take any questions That folks have. Ms. Morgan. Do you, because I've And asked this by people Do you only Approve open enrollment requests Once an address change Is finalized? So like I have had people who have said to me I'm looking, my kids Go to school at Thompson We are looking at a house That would zone us in Hardy We're not going to put an offer on this house If my kids can't stay At Thompson, right? And I've sort of been like, I don't know. Okay, so. But like I guess how does that Can you, like the 30 second version of What are the, how does that work? So the process that prompts us To send an open enrollment form To a family is when they change Their address officially in the portal In power school. This is a new sort of process. So, yes. I'm not, we wouldn't like Sign off on an open enrollment request Until the moment that you've actually moved And you change your address in our system And then we say, okay, you've changed Your address, you would be zoned for this school now Here's the open enrollment process If you want to fill this out. During that time the student is still at their School that they were originally at. However, I do have families reach out To me and basically say, would it be possible For a student to remain at their school? And actually Might have been a Thompson Hardy Example recently and I'll go look At the data at that school And give them an answer like, yeah Your students going to be able to stay If your circumstances were to change in that manner We wouldn't approve the request Mostly because they have to put the final address On there, like we're not going to go Through the operational piece of that But we'll answer the question for sure. Great, thank you. Thank you for that assessment. Yeah, I mean, two questions basically We'll adjourn this to A policy meeting. One is you were talking about Requesting a change in the policy Where people would Just verify that they want to maintain Open enrollment. Is this something you're still Thinking of? I would be interested in that For exactly the reason I stated Related to how good our Information is with regards to Where our open enrolled students are In the system. We got slightly Better information this year because We did ask families to let us know If they plan to stay open enrolled From the data that we had from last year It would be So that we can make sure we're tracking That. I don't feel strongly About pursuing it if it's something That the committee is concerned about Upsetting or worrying families That they would need to sort of reassert Interest in staying open. And is there anything within The data as you've been looking At it that made you say Maybe the buffer zones Should be aligned a little differently And you don't have to answer that now Not at the moment. There aren't I can't think of instances Where I would Propose an adjustment to the buffer zones But I also haven't done an analysis Of the students outside of buffer Zones to compare Where there might be enrollment hot Spots that would be alleviated If those students were in a buffer zone So you'd have to look at it The students who aren't in buffer zones Because I was here in 2012 When we established the buffer zones And There was a lot of thought Within individual blocks And certain things that were driving us For example we were worried About students who needed to cross Park Avenue between And Stratton Stratton Bracket And the buffer zone For between Stratton And Pierce almost came to the Pierce front door so that there were A couple of things that We were kind of queasy about at that Point and it'd be interesting to see How it settled and whether we made The right decisions then So if something in the data That you pick up Would Result in us needing to think about Maybe expanding the buffer zones a little I will reflect on that Only to say that the Thompson Hardy buffer zone and the Bracket Downland buffer zone are two of the most Challenging to assign to because I can completely understand When families don't want to send Their children walking to school Across park or across Massive So it makes it a lot harder to Assign not the preferred School and by and large the preferred School is the one on the side of Those two streets because of The walking. Thanks we'll talk more in Subcommittee. Just a quick point. Go ahead. Thank you. The background of this policy Was Controversing some discomfort Having a buffer zone policy most towns Do not have one I know Newton does But most don't. It's not all There's some negatives to it. The two main negatives are Uncertainty for the families that are Involved until you give them their Decision and you have these Blocks that get split Right and one of the I think there's a second page in the Policy that says you're supposed to try to Not do that but over the years There are some negatives and You know we you still you said you Found it to be an effective policy But that sort of the framework that We're looking at is do the negatives You know do the positives that way the Negatives should they be smaller Can we still get away with it if They're smaller. Maybe there are some you know if You look at the map there is some Blocks that are always going to Bracket now nobody's going to down Anymore maybe those should be Involved to sort of take a look at both The policy and the actual districts I'll say I understood this much better This year trying to put this report together Then I felt like I did last year So in with another iteration I think it would be Easier to do some of that analysis And take a look at Whether sort of tightening them Would be possible I will say though Because this district has So many elementary schools And therefore those like Section tip points Are really tight That I can't imagine not having them Under those circumstances the bigger The school like if we had Five elementary schools They were much bigger you have More room To sort of maneuver with Stricted boundaries And I can't I definitely see why We moved in this direction Dr. Allison Ampe did you want to Thanks I just wanted to point out that When these boundaries were drawn We had The resources of a GIS Person on the town side Who doesn't well he exists But he's not in that role now He's not in the town And they haven't replaced They haven't replaced that role And the last I Checked like six or 12 months ago they didn't have Any Any intention to replace it So we're missing A resource in terms of doing this Efficiently and easily So I understand The requests for Dr. Holman to Look at the data and stuff But I want to also point out that We're asking her to do something that Wasn't A superintendent High task before In fact it was done by a trained Professional And that we should be careful That we're not asking too much So thank you My only question You Wrote the enrollment requests that were Open enrollment requests that were approved Were there ones that were denied There were Not very many Um There was a reason I didn't include Those and it's because there were not very many And some of those Situations are challenging ones And I didn't want to make it Too obvious No that's fine I just was curious If they existed Yeah there are a few Anybody else before I go on Superintendent's report Superintendents update Alright The planning updates the initiatives Are starting to take some shape In the strategic planning team A lot of them have titles and some Outcomes they might not be Extremely specific outcomes yet But they are beginning To sort of take some form And we're starting to know okay we know we want to work on This and start to outline what this could Look like so that we can get some drafts Out to the community before they take too much shape So community forums will start on November 2nd we had originally On Monday of next week I'm actually grateful That we had a conflict come up That's going to delay us to November 2nd Because I think the initiatives need a little bit more time To take some shape They're a little too nebulous at the moment But by November 2nd I'm confident That we'll have some ideas to shop out To the community and to gather some feedback On that will be immensely helpful To the teams that are building these initiatives Seats are limited to 50 participants per form And we have folks signing up just today They'll be formatted as interactive workshops They're designed to do three things One is share the new vision and mission Of the district with the community Two is to share the equity audit recommendations And give people some time to internalize Those and ask questions about them And three is to gather input on initiatives That will go straight back to the strategic planning Teams to work on revisions And to incorporate that feedback So we really want people to Take part in this because We have designed the entire strategic planning process To be as participatory as possible And for this plan to be built by our Community and we can't do that Without feedback from folks So please spread the word I know that it can be really challenging To set aside an evening Particularly in the 6 o'clock hour We did add a forum that's virtual From 7 to 8 30 It's a little bit later, it's online That one's in December Hopefully that adds a little bit more And we really hope to have some good participation Families only need to attend Or if you want to attend, it's families, staff Students are welcome to You only need to attend one because they're the same agenda For all four Don't feel like you need to come to all four An additional forum for staff Is being planned This says November 9th, I'm actually Considering a different date And we're working on exactly when that's going to get nailed down And I'll share it with staff As soon as we have the date A few playground updates I know that this is something that's been on the minds Of families at several of our schools The rubber servicing for Stratton Is scheduled for This week, what is the date today? Yes, next week, early next week Once the rubber is down They'll schedule inspection And the opening is still slated For the end of October There's also aiming for end of October For Pierce, but Want to be realistic And not over promise The equipment arrived late Which is part of the delay at Pierce Due to supply chain challenges But the equipment is on site They're installing mulch this fall And then that's going to get taken out And rubber will be installed next summer That's to get everybody onto the playground As fast as possible And then we'll resurface in the summer Anticipated opening for that Families can expect mid-November And then the Bishop playground opened So that's great. Delays, just to be clear with the community It can be hard to sort of look at a playground And see that there's equipment there And not see anybody working on it And feel like what's going on It has not been the result of contractor inaction But just supply chain and shipping And they have to build the playgrounds In a particular order So if one thing hasn't arrived But other things have They still can't necessarily work on it Because they need foundational pieces So the contractor's been very responsive Wonderful to work with giving us regular updates And then the Department of Rec has been giving us Regular updates, so happy to update The committee and community as needed A few additional updates We did have over 500 students try out For fall athletics, one of our students said It's been a wonderful start to the season And they're right, our boys' soccer team Is undefeated in first place Our girls' soccer team is tied for first place With a record of 9-2 And have qualified for the state tournament Girls' swimming is also in first place In the middle sex league Both the boys and girls cross country teams Are having excellent seasons And the girls are in the first place In the middle sex league, golf is qualified For the state tournament and we have a combined 70% win percentage Hooray, fall sports are going very, very well We have a new $9 rate For the before school program Pilot, we did that by wrapping The pilot program into the breakfast Program that we established last year Last year we decided To offer breakfast at all of our schools We had previously only done it at some of our schools But with breakfast fully subsidized By combination of state and federal funding We didn't see why we wouldn't offer it To all of the kids So the before care program We've sort of wrapped 730 into That breakfast program Along with all of the supervision that goes with it And we're using some of What we have available from the Breakfast and lunch program by state and federal Funds to offset the cost Of the supervision from 730 to 8 Which allows us to drop the cost for families From 7 to 730 Please tell your friends because we would really like To have more students in the before school Care program if this is going to be financially Sustainable and able to be Opened up to any of our other schools We will be Members of the senior leadership team Will be attending the deeper learning dozen Conference, we will be going to three The first one is in Lexington, Kentucky And we'll be working with the Lexington Kentucky State Department of Education Which the State Department of Kentucky Is actually a member of the deeper learning dozen So we'll be learning at the state level About deeper learning work that's happening As a result of that at the next meeting Mr. Spiegel is in charge And we'll be the only one here physically Myself and Mr. Mason will be on Virtually for that meeting So I just wanted to let everybody know The side of the table will be a little A little bit of time you meet We did have an amazing set of Events for our fine arts students At Arlington High School Maestro Alberto Profeta came And he held classes For students, that's a picture On the screen of one of the forums That he held for students to teach them About body posture and singing And he also did a performance that Over 400 people attended here At Arlington High School last week And it received rave reviews So thank you to our fine arts department For making that possible Update on the CFO search I anticipate That we will have A final candidate To bring forward to the committee very soon We're working on final steps We held finalist, confidential finalist interviews With two candidates last week These candidates had an opportunity To meet with central administration Building and department leaders Members of the six floor staff Members of the AEA executive team Members of the cabinet team They talked a lot for many hours And then we let them leave We did feed them lunch though And they got a break in the middle And they also had an opportunity To meet with me one on one They also performed a performance task That required them to do A monthly report, a projection An overview of town finances In Arlington and To respond to a specific situation Gave us a really great picture Of who these candidates were And I'm looking forward to bringing a finalist to you soon And you have your enrollment reports And your materials. I'll take any questions Mr. Schlickman Are we making any progress On the yellow bus For autism? Yes Do you mean the electric buses? Right now we are down a bus Due to repairs Mr. Mason is not still here That would be helpful But I know we're down a bus right now We were doing an analysis to see Where we might be able to put stops But at the moment wouldn't be able to implement it Because we're down a bus We don't have, we had a bus At one point we don't at the moment If we do then we might be able To continue pursuing it I've heard from several families about the strain On transportation to autism So it is something We are continuing to look into and pursue And now we don't have the infrastructure for it Thank you Thank you Dr. Hellman So We need to elect an MASC Delegate to send To the MASC Delegate Assembly In November Mr. Hayner I move that Mr. Schlickman Represent the Allington School Committee At the MASC Delegate Assembly this year Second Mr. Hayner Second by Mr. Thielman Any discussion? Mr. Morgan Mr. Cardin Mr. Schlickman Dr. Allison Nampy And I vote yes That's unanimous Thank you All items Listed with an asterisk Are considered to be routine And will be enacted by one motion There will be no separate discussion of these items Unless a member of the committee so requests In which event the item will be considered In its normal sequence There was the food services Administrative assistant job Description has been removed because it wasn't Ready Warrant number 23066 Dated October 4th, 2022 In the amount of $730,670 And seven cents Approval of regular school committee meeting Minutes September 8th, 2022 Approval of regular school committee Meeting minutes September 22nd, 2022 Move to approve As presented Second Motion by Mr. Hayner Seconded by Mr. Schlickman Call vote Mr. Hayner Mr. Morgan Mr. Cardin Mr. Thielman Dr. Allison Nampy Yes, that's unanimous Subcommittee liaison Reports and announcements Budget, Dr. Allison Nampy We met And we will meet again We discussed a I'm sorry I didn't think about this It's been a while We discussed the budget calendar And have a tentative Set up But need to Figure out a few details So I can think of right now I'm sorry But that's all thanks Community relations Mr. Hayner There will be a school committee chat This Saturday October 15th From 11am to 12pm The focus will be the METCO program All parents are invited to participate The committee understands That this time is not always Convenient for everyone So there are two additional times During the year Tuesday January 10th At 9am and Tuesday April 4th At 9am School committee chat Dates and times are listed In the school committee calendar And the APS website There will be a community relations Subcommittee meeting As soon as I get responses back From all of the subcommittee members And we're waiting on one Thank you Thank you We are meeting October Hey We're meeting on October 24th At 8.30am We are talking about The literacy work The strategic plan And the overnight experience So I'm looking forward to that And yep We met Last week and talked about What was then known as science camp Now known as overnight experience And we also talked about strategic planning Thank you Facilities Mr. Thielman Policy and procedures Mr. Schlickman I would hope at some point We will hold a meeting as half as good As the one Ms. Morgan held On the science camp That was probably the best subcommittee Meeting I've been to in a long time That said we're It was really good I mean you know That said we're accumulating items For policies And We're looking at possibly adding A EV charging policy To the mix And I've asked town council To comment on a draft And once we get that clear with the Townside We'll bring it over to a Subcommittee meeting to see if we want to play with that Thank you High school building committee Mr. Thielman I met on Tuesday night And voted to Extend the project as the school committee Requested It was a good discussion Thank you Okay Superintendent evaluation Mr. Cardin We did meet also We are recommending that The committee keep the Schedule Of the fall evaluation Midyear Evaluation that we did That we're doing this year Although we'll complete the cycle And see again how it goes As far as this upcoming evaluation And next month I am tasked with Devising a more user friendly Evaluation form That hopefully will be Modeled somewhat on your form That you came up with That will hopefully be more Pallatable to the committee To use Thank you Ms. Morgan Dr. Allison Ampey and I attended the Long-range planning meeting We're looking forward to the next time When Mr. Cardin will join us We hadn't met in quite a while So there was a lot Of membership change But I think given Where we're at right now I think that's a meeting that's going to happen Monthly starting soon So we'll try and remember To bring that up In the liaison reports Moving forward. Thank you Anybody else? Announcements? Mr. Heiner? I want to commend Dr. McNeil For the outstanding work he has done Developing comprehensive set of Professional development courses for the staff I wish they were that quality When I was a teacher. Thank you Dr. McNeil Yeah, I would just echo that I was reading the offerings And it looks like There's something for everyone And I appreciate the Continuity across the school year So we look forward to hearing more About how that goes A lot of work already Future agenda items I had an announcement Sorry, I'm sorry Yeah, go ahead I just wanted to I wasn't sure everyone was aware Former Met co-executive director Gene McGuire, who is now 91 years old Was Attacked while walking her dog In Franklin Park On the evening of November Of October 11 She's stable, she's recovering At the hospital And The The current president and CEO Of met co-milly Thomas Giving this update But also mentioned that She If anyone wants to Let Ms. McGuire know What she meant to them And to wish her well The cards can be sent to Metco I've got the address here I'll read it now But I'm sure If anyone in our audience Wanted to reach out They can call our secretary And I'll make sure she has the address Or Our met co-lays On here I'm sorry, I'm forgetting right now Anyway, I just wanted to make sure That everyone was aware of that And that we hope that Ms. McGuire recovers quickly And especially Thank you, Dr. Allison Ampey Thank you. I just wanted to note That I have a message going out to Staff with Thomas and Ms. Smith Tomorrow morning, making sure that Everybody's aware that this occurred In case any students have any questions Or find out about it And sending our solidarity with the Metco community And wishing her a very speedy recovery Dr. Allison Ampey Thank you. We need to have Move into a brief executive session For An approval of executive session Meeting minutes September 8th, 2022 An approval of executive session Meeting minutes September 22nd, 2022 We will adjourn From this into executive session And we will not be Returning to open session So moved Second Mr. Schlickman second by Yes Mr. Carden Yes Dr. Allison Ampey Yes And I vote Yes And I vote Yes