 Hello and welcome to the Arlington School Committee regular meeting of Thursday, January 9th, 2020. We don't have any public participation tonight, okay? Room's empty. Great. So I think Jeff is joining us. I haven't heard from him, but otherwise. And our AEA rep is Juliana Keyes, and we do not have a high school rep yet. So our first item on the agenda is Vote FY21 Town Budget Allocation. Mr. Mason. This desk is basically a theater. We met with the ballroom planning committee and worked with the town to come to a budget amount for next year's school budget of $76,030,531. And if you have any additional questions, what we need to do is have you, I would like to recommend to move for the school committee to accept this number and we'll continue to start developing the budget based on this figure. And yes, I would just note that that amount represents an increase of about $4.6 million over FY 2020, which is a 6.44% increase. So it's quite substantial increase. Correct. Any other discussion? Do you have a motion? Move acceptance of the FY21 Town Appropriation for the school budget in the amount of $76,030,531. There's a second. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed or abstentions? Opposed. Mr. Hayner is opposed. And no abstentions. Mr. Hayner is opposed. Yeah, one. The other one's here. This is mine. This is yours. All right. Great. Thank you. All right. Next on the agenda is the our school committee FY21 budget priorities discussion. So we heard over the last two meetings, requests or presentations from the elementary principals, the middle school principals, the high school principal and from AEA. And this is now our turn to either provide additional requests or state within those requests what our priorities are. So I don't know if we want to go in order or anybody wants to volunteer to go first? Do you want to go first or should we go around? Okay. In my rush to exit my house, I left my notes behind. So I'm having to do this without reference to them. But I was reviewing the budget request. First, I want to applaud what the AEA did in terms of their format. I thought that was very nice. But big picture, the things that were resonating with me were the requests seen both in the principals request and in the AEA ones for item. People related to special education. I am, I continue to be concerned that our funding for special education is not adequate to service the needs of our populations to the extent that we would like to see them and it's potentially interfering with their achievement. And things such as first personnel as outlined. I can't speak to the chair to the request for additional chairs but I would be interested to know to have more detail about what the caseloads are and how additional personnel would change those and what that would mean. The additional training for the BSPs sounded like it would be very helpful. The additional BCBAs also. And then finally, the AEA had the request for an additional school psychologist and that too. I would like to have more information about what are some numbers that we can look at. Caseload, waiting time, inability to serve to help people. Are we at a point where we need that second psychologist? All of those things were the highest on my list as priorities. I am of course concerned about a regular education students and want to see them in appropriate classrooms of appropriate size but my first mark was the special education. And finally, the other thing that I just again like some more information about is for curriculum materials we had. We're hearing requests and what I realized is that it would be really helpful to have the request broken into whether they're an ongoing thing you are they for things that we're going to use every year. Like workbooks or things like that, whether it's a new major curriculum that will buy once and have for years and then subscriptions and stuff because when we get a line that says curriculum and there's a big number against it. It's hard to say sometimes we have other funding sources that we can use for one-off things but I can't tell how much of things are one-offs and so that would be something that I'd like to hear. Finally at budget this morning we heard about some work that the administration is undergoing to what they're calling true up budget to make the budget more accurately match what our needs have been for things such as utility costs and I would like to see that happen. I think we shouldn't be budgeting with by wish we should be budgeting by what we what we really expect. So I think I accumulated many of the things that Dr. Allison MP mentioned. I think that sped has been an area that has been not fully funded in previous in the past few years because we've just had so many kids. We just you know it's just we had so many demands and we continue to have so many demands on our on our system but I but especially looking at the AA's their request and comparing them to the principal's request. You see things like occupational therapy board certified behavioral analysts and sped are sort of things that they have in common. One of the things I was really struck by is like one very tiny thing is this question about the projectors on the walls which feels like that's a you know sort of a one time expense to make sure that we can get we can map projectors on every on the wall of the classrooms. So there's no tripping that we should be able to find the money someplace in maybe revolving funds or something because it feels like a you know that's not a that's not a yearly expense. Materials for the great body shop. This has been a persistent problem that we haven't had materials. I know that we've been retooling how it's being done. And I think it's important to do to you know it's important public health curriculum that we should support as a district. And if teachers are partly not doing this curriculum because they don't have materials for them. That's that's a shame I think the on the upper levels what we're going to see is a continual surge at the middle school level. And I think that the needs of the middle school needs to be prioritized right now. We're likely to not see as much of a jump at the high school level. Certainly we're not going to get 100% retention which is what the assumptions were in the budget request. Both because we haven't got that in the last few years and also because we're about to start construction. And so it's just you know we will get a huge surge to the high school after the building is done. So so we will have to adjust things then but but it feels like now to the extent that that we can we don't necessarily need to staff for enrollment increases if there have been deficits that we haven't addressed earlier. Since I definitely think the high school has been underfunded. We should definitely do that. Across the upper levels. There's been a discussion about the need for Spanish teachers. I think when you get into language classes that's particularly problematic to have very large classes. So I do think that would be nice to have as priority. And then one more which is in as a reflection of the district's initiatives. There was a request for reading teachers and since if this is our big push in the next few years is to focus on early elementary reading. I want to have the staff to support that. So I mean I don't I don't really have anything unique to add other than when I look at this when I look at all the presentations and I miss one of them but I read the information online. The or in the novice the thing that I always think about is there an area where we feel if we put more resources in in the past we can move the needle. So if let's just say for the sake of discussion that we felt that we were we wanted to we wanted to address special education needs and there was data to show that there are special education students were making the progress they were supposed to make. Would it be possible rather than just do all the piecemeal things we do? Would it be possible to make this the year we invest more resources in special education possibly at the expense of resources in another area? Or would it be the year we do something about reading or would it be the year we do something about something else? So rather than just kind of lots of things that keep us kind of moving along, would there be would this be a year where you could make you could move the needle on one of the areas where we're not doing as well as we would like? And I don't have enough information that's what came to mind as I read the materials and I don't have enough information to really say but that's how I would approach it myself. Okay, I felt really comfortable thought I was hearing this this year. It seemed to be a pragmatic and reasonable group of requests from both the AEA and from our leadership team. My concerns are of course enrollment growth, maintaining services for kids. We don't want things eroding. I think that you know we have not kept pace with staffing at the high school level. And being in a construction mode may require adjustments to the master schedule and in some sort of a dance that would require more staffing to compensate for the disruption of the school day as a result of being on a work site. I'm very sensitive to the need for BCBAs and social workers so I look favorably on those. I definitely feel the pain of folks who are having projector issues out there running schools with people wanting to do lessons with the tripping over and not being able to get the technology that they'd like to use. It's frustrating for teachers who are technologically able and I think we've asked them to be. The other thing is that in looking at the asks from the folks who came before us, I'd also like to see how the administration would prioritize that in their head so that I can look at it and either say yeah or no or sort it a little differently because I don't want to be debating something that's not near the cut point so to speak. If something that rationally falls below the cut point in the administration's proposal that I think should be higher up or something as high up that I don't think is as big a priority, that's sort of the discussion we'd have. I don't want to get into a situation where we're debating things that we universally agree are sort of at the top of the list or at the bottom of the list so I'd like to take another cut of this again after I see priorities. Thank you. I think for me the two pieces that haven't already been said, I am not super excited about funding more assistant principals for next year. I think we should do what we had said we were going to do for this year which we my understanding is we weren't able to fully hire them which is fine so I think whatever our commitment was that we were unable to meet for this year we should certainly take care of that but I'm not fired up about going much beyond that. I'm concerned about making sure that we were asking for a number of SLC teachers then that didn't come up in this. I really want to understand why we're not, why we didn't want the 3.0 FTEs for that that we thought we did when we did the five year plan. So I'm not clear on why that would be the case I understand we have to make difficult choices but I don't know that that's where I would like to see us making those choices. I'm not clear about where the elementary librarian situation went because we kind of had a plan for that that was going to be rolled out and then in the principals didn't I mean they kind of talked about it in their thing it was a little confusing. It was sort of down on page four or five and it wasn't in the sort of big piece so I'm confused and concerned about where we were going with that I thought we had an understanding of how that was going to roll out and I understand it was hard to hire two. So anyway I just I think that those things need just more further conversation. But I you know I thought it was really impressive I think that I like the way you know I like hearing about these needs and I don't think that there's any you know I don't think that our feedback at this point at least or I can only speak for myself I suppose is not. It's not necessarily judgmental it's just reacting to what you know reacting to what we're hearing so and we're early on in this process. Mr. Hanna did you want to go now or no if you don't mind I just first off I'd like to say thank the administration and the budget subcommittee for all the work that they've done and due diligence. It's made it's my annual philosophical difference with the committee and the approach to this. I have always believed that the school committee's job as a representative of the parents and the children is to prevent present a full educational budget. Let the town meeting accept it if they reject it then we do the cut. I've always felt that we do this party has done the cut ahead of time. That's the reason I voted against it. I do not want that negative vote to reflect on the work that has been done. I really appreciate all the work that's been done. Thank you. I just want to note one thing one other thing that didn't come to mind quickly because it's sort of in another frame. Student Opportunity Act is going to require us to come together with the administration and plan and approve a three-year plan that would address. Any underperforming group relative to the rest of the population and how we would use funding to address this. And obviously until the 22nd of January we don't know how much additional money we're going to get from the state or what sort of expectations they'd have upon us. At the accountability and assessment advisory committee meeting earlier this week the folks from the state basically said that for districts who are getting decent amount of money from the Opportunity Act increases are going to probably will have a long form document to fill out. And the ones that don't get a lot of money out of this and don't have high needs will get a short form document so I don't know what that's going to look like. But in terms of the budget priorities we're going to need to ensure that anything that we want to talk about in that plan is reflected within the budget priorities. And so that just is a point to mention that I think that we are looking at underserved populations and ELL students and other populations that we would direct funding to or if we're looking to reduce discrepancies and discipline among ethnic groups that we might want to go and target some funding to some support BCPA or social workers directly at that core component. So when we start to look at priorities coming back from the administration it's also my expectation that we also have that in context of what the state expects from us and what they're giving us under the provisions of the Student Opportunity Act. Thanks. My turn. I did write my down down my priorities and I'll send to Karen and copy you guys tomorrow. I did actually have an additional note that this all is in the context of developing the Student Opportunity Act plan. I agree with Mr. Schlickman that that plan does require a focus on the achievement gap and a lot of the requests just for additional classroom teachers for example may may not fit in with that. So we do have to take that into account as we proceed in parallel with those two items. So my first priority is though addressing enrollment growth we have to do that. Our formal projections though are significantly smaller than what some of the administrators were using as someone previously mentioned. So again we have 99 an increase projected of 99 students district wide not the 105 at the high school. So we were projecting 16 at the elementary schools 22 at Gibbs 36 at OMS and 31 at high school. So that allows me to support the following. You know I do think the reserve teachers is a good concept given the small increase at the elementary schools that we're projecting. Hopefully we won't need all of them but our kindergarten number is our most uncertain number so it's prudent to have those reserve teachers. And the distribution of sections across the schools may require us to use you know one or two of those perhaps all three but hopefully we can reallocate them in the spring to other pressing needs. I support the small additions at Gibbs given their increase I support the half learning community at Audison and the other partial positions given their increase. And at the high school you know using the formula of 1.7 FTE per 25 students that only results in an increase of 2.1 FTE at the high school. Given their prior enrollment growth that may not have been fully addressed. I can support a higher increase maybe for FTE with one of those FTE going to the special education COTA classes that was in the request. And then on top of that if we need to if we do need the construction security person then we should you know we have to fund that. My second priority overall is the math intervention program at the elementary schools. I think it's vital both as a matter of equity and to improve our and to improve on the achievement gap that we spread the math intervention program from our title one schools to all our schools. And I also support the additional reading teachers requested for similar reasons. My third priority is with along with some of my fellow committee members is supporting special education improvements again to address the achievement gaps and also address the issues identified in the lab inclusion review. This includes upgrading the SLC teaching assistant positions to BSPs providing enhanced training to all BSPs funding the additional elementary learning specialists the special education educator. And I'm actually hoping along with some of my other members for additional requests that we might hear as the budget is more fully developed. And then a final priority is that bridge program at OMS I think that would be a wonderful thing to get started there. So you'll understand that low on my list along with Ms. Morgan is the assistant principals at the elementary schools. I appreciate that you felt a full time one was needed to straighten in light of the large SLC program. And I understand it's difficult to hire for these part time positions. But there are other models you can look at there are other towns that split an assistant principal between school to schools and need them. Dr. McNeil I'm sure it's familiar with it the assistant principal is both a half time assistant principal and a special ed coordinator. So there are the things that we can try. I just I'm not ready to move to full time assistant principals at all elementary schools at this time. So anything else anybody want to add. All right. Great. So next we have the district data bank presentation Dr. McNeil. So good evening to everyone. Happy New Year. So I'm going to speak about our data bank which has come up in conversations in the past especially when we talk about MCAS and the way that we're collecting assessment results. And I just want to point out that the PowerPoint that in the slides that I'm going to use today were developed by Susan Bissen our digital learning director of digital learning. She cannot be here tonight but I just can't thank her enough for her role in helping to make this possible. So when I first arrived here in Arlington I had conversations with Dr. Bode and I also spoke to my predecessor about plans to have an online tool that would collect the various assessment results that from for students from the formal assessment periods that take place throughout the year. And we've gone through many different iterations. We've talked to different vendors and we landed upon a very excellent format that allows us to customize it for what we need. And it's the consultant that we work with his name is Paul Manuti and it's we call it the Arlington data bank. And it's based upon Excel spreadsheets and as you can see here some of the bullets the background is that we had and the reason for the data bank is prior to having the data bank teachers were taking their assessment results and they're putting it on various Google spreadsheets but there wasn't one source where you could see all the information at in one place. And so it was very difficult to compare the various assessments results for particular students and you couldn't disaggregated by race or ethnicity or based upon the fact that students are an IEP 504 plan gender. So the data bank has allowed us to do all of that and also it gives you like school school views and you can look at district results as well. So we wanted an online platform we had one that we were considering before I arrived but as I said before we went through many different vendors in order to decide whether or not they could meet our needs. And as I talked about before it's based upon Google Sheets and we decided also to use this particular platform because it's using Excel spreadsheets which is something that teacher for already familiar with. So the professional development that would have to take place was very minimal. We wanted to take that in consideration because we didn't want to bring something entirely new that would require teachers to learn a whole new system. So we searched for the new solution and then we landed upon the analytics platform and data studio. Right now over the past couple of years or since I've been here seems so long ago now but it's 2017 I think I arrived. We focused primarily on the K5 literacy assessment data that we collect throughout the year and in fact we're actually going through a formal assessment period right now. So teachers are working on giving the assessments they're giving the I ready assessment as well as we speak. Incorporated into the data bank are the district assessment scores that we collect the MCAS scores I ready scores. We also include demographic information and any other type of and we're considering also using it to collect behavior information. So we're taking it and we're trying to adapt it to also to the middle school and we've been talking about what that would look like. So as I talked before you can you can get assessment results you can get district views and school based views. So the rollout has been an iterative process last year. The model that we have right now is distinctly different from what we were using last year because of the feedback that we got from teachers. We've been talking to groups of teachers along the way in order to make sure that we customize it and it would fit their needs. You know some of the priorities that we thought about is is it easy to use and is it going to place a lot of extra responsibilities on the teachers in order to enter their score. So we wanted something that you know as quick as easy and that they can also access it. And so we have the different individuals or groups of staff that have access to the data bank which would be the reading coaches and teachers principals administrators the math coaches and general education teachers and special education staff. So here is and it was kind of hard to see but here is what it looks like. And I couldn't you know I couldn't bring in an actual view of it because we don't want to expose student names or their scores so student information. So in order to protect those that information we have blurred out the student names and this is actually the view of a kindergarten what it looks like for kindergarten. And as you can see I wish I had a walking mic because I wouldn't want to walk up and tell you but I think I have a pointer here right. So here as you can see the way that you use it is if you go up here and maybe you can see it better on your computers but you see here you have a dropdown screen. If you click this on this particular line right here you'll you'll get a list of grades and if you want to access those grades of particular grade you just click on that grade. And then it comes and the information that you're looking that you're looking for will appear right here is the name. As you can see the grade level that you're looking at right here is a scoring guide and help page. We included rubrics and also information on how to utilize the data bank. So there's instructions in there and there's also the various rubrics for the MCAS the I ready and also other assessments that we utilize so that teachers can interpret the scores. Right here is the way that you can disaggregate it you can filter the scores we have if students are ELL identified as ELL identified as or they're an IEP or if there's they're on a 504 plan. Looking at it we can disaggregate it by gender and we can disaggregate the scores by ethnicity. Right here is a key. What we wanted to do was we wanted to make sure that on all the assessments there was a common language as it relates to students meeting the benchmark not meeting the benchmark or partially meeting the benchmark in order to align it with our MCAS terminology. And as you go across here these are the different ways that you can manipulate the information. So right here if you if you're looking to see the percentage of students that are meeting partially meeting or not meeting it's reflecting the what you have searched for the information below. So this is going to reflect what's here you know showing up down here below. If you are looking to disaggregate it and look at how us and you want to compare how your class does in a particular assessment the percentages of students that are meeting partially meeting and not meeting. And you want to compare it to how the school does you can you can filter the scores right here and you can identify the assessment you would like to you know look at in particular and then you put in your school name. And then it will also have the district percentages right here. So a teacher is able to compare their class based upon you know whatever assessment they're looking at to how the school is doing and how the district is doing. Okay. And so we thought that that was you know very useful to teachers. Now down here you can also further disaggregate the scores. If you want to look up a particular student a particular school a particular teacher particular student you can right now if you if you were to scroll down you would see all the assessments right here the names of the assessments and then the score. And then whether the green means that the students are meeting the benchmark a yellow would mean they're partially meeting and a red would would mean that they're not meeting. And if you wanted to just hone in on a particular assessment and you wanted to just look at the MCAS scores right here is the way that you can do that. And then right here is the benchmark if you just want to look at all the kids in a particular subgroup that are not meeting the benchmark. You can disaggregate it that way as well. So although we blurred out the out the names here but we have you can look at the teacher names. The columns that are represented here is the teacher name the student name. This is the gender of the student the ethnicity of the student is a list of the assessments and this is the score. And then this is the category how this particular student scored on that particular assessment. I want to stop right now for any questions. Yes, just real quick. Who is this is already in place. Yes, who has access to all this information. So there's different access levels of access. Okay, you've answered all my questions right on that. Thank you. I have the same question. So so when you look at an individual student does the teacher and then the ministers have access to that student data. Do does the entire school have access to that students data. So what you know what what level of access right. So have to an individual student for example. So in order to and this is the complicated. So right now there's two levels of access. There's district access and their school access. Okay. The teachers in a particular school have access to the data within their school to everybody. Right. Okay. And then the principal naturally has access to the, you know information in their school. If you're a district administrator or reading coach, math coach, a director or curriculum leader, you have access to the entire district. And may. So do teachers have concerns that they are then going to be evaluated by their fellow professionals so that, you know, it's very clear if one teacher is excelling compared to another one because of the assessment data. Is that, is that a concern that teachers have expressed? Well, this is where the level of trust for me is very high. I do not have that concern because when I, when we sent out, we had a lot of conversation about confidentiality. And we asked teachers to only, if you're looking at, if you're looking using the data bank, only go into your classroom. And it's also useful for students, I mean for teachers who want to have like, we have the ace blocks now and they want to look at a grade level, the data for a grade level, it gives them that type of access. We're going to continue to work to see how we can pare down the access. But right at this particular point in time, just like I said, it was the iterative process right now. This is the level of access that we can work with. And we're, because this is something brand new. This whole data bank has actually been developed along the way. So this is something that's new. It's, we also, Paul Manuti, who is our consultant that we work with, he's very responsive. And we have other districts that have also using this platform. And so he has like, he has meetings throughout the year that he calls them knowledge shares. And so we meet and we talk about how they're using the data bank and different ways that, you know, I might see another district and say, hey, you're really using it for this. And for this particular assessment, and so it gives us ideas on how to continue to have it evolve so that we can make it more dynamic. So it sounds very exciting. It sounds especially for professionals who are working with many students within a school or the district to be able to have access to what's going on with that student. Sounds like a really valuable thing. My final concern is about making sure that this data is safe and protected. Right. So that's the beauty of this. This is that was another priority of ours is that we're not sending us out to a third party. All the data that we're using is collected on the Google sheets. So it's our data. And it's just represented here. So it doesn't go anywhere. It's in the cloud. It's in the cloud. Yeah. Right. So, but it doesn't go to like a third party vendor. Right. Right. Which if we were to use another platform. The Google is, somebody can tap into Google, they can get it, but that's, but not right. Right. But it doesn't, but there's not another third party vendor that's looking at our student data. And they don't, there's no one, a third party vendor that has access to it. Okay. Thanks. Morgan. I think this is outstanding and I, it looks really beautiful on these slides. But I suspect there was a really big lift behind getting this going that we can't even appreciate in the, the short conversation we have. I think, you know, for me, what I hope as a, as a parent of multiple elementary children, the place where I feel a little bit uncomfortable is that the, that this represents aggregated data about my children that I don't always have access to. Right. So I, I get their MCAS scores, but we don't always get their assessment data. And I understand, like, you know, it's certainly more complicated that I'm going to make it out to be in my short remarks. But, you know, I know that, that my kids take these I ready tests on the regular at school. I never get those results. Oh, well, I do because my kids tell me they take them and then I email their teacher and ask them to send them to me, which they do, which is great. But, but I do feel uncomfortable that, that this kind of data about my kids is being, is being aggregated and we're not yet at a place where we're able to, to figure out a reasonable and appropriate and productive way to share that with parents. And I think, you know, as this process evolves and as you become, you know, certainly we're not going to have parents logging into this necessarily, but as you, as this evolves and matures, I hope that at some point part of the conversation will be of this, you know, now that we have a way for our district to look at this assessment data, you know, which, what of this beyond what's already on our report cards is also appropriate to share with parents? It's all appropriate to share with parents. I guess my, my theme around sharing with parents is I don't want to make it about the assessment. I want to make it like a bigger holistic view of how your child is doing. This is one data point. To me, I mean, if a child is struggling, you can take this and triangulate it with, you know, authentic student work that they're, they're completing in the classroom, you can look at it in relationship to attendance. I mean, you can take these assessment points and it gives you a way of being curious about a particular student, you know, if they're excelling and if they're not excelling, then this can, you know, spark that curiosity. I wonder why, you know, Rod isn't doing as well as he's, you know, should be as his peers. And that's got a flashback moment there. But, you know, just looking at that data and then that, then teachers now at the elementary level have the ace blocks where now they can hone in and say, okay, let's get some work samples that Rod has produced in math or in reading and let's see what's going on here. And so this is, this is not the, you know, this is just one data point and I want to stress that to parents because I don't want them to now hone in on how they're doing on one particular assessment. It's a snapshot that can be utilized to develop a more holistic picture of any individual student as a learner. So they're more than welcome during a parent teacher conference or emailing the teachers say, hey, I know that you just, you know, my child came home. They said they just took these assessments. Can you just let me know how they did or is there a concern? And then, you know, the conversation can, you know, go from there. I just don't want the assessment. I don't want the conversation to be about the assessment because these are checkpoints along the year, right? These are like progress monitoring tools that we're seeing how students are doing throughout the year and allows us to make real-time adjustments in our instruction if we see that something is awry. It's not, it's not a summative assessment. These aren't summative assessments. They're formative assessments and they provide actually more value than the MCAS because once you get the MCAS data back, that cohort of students have moved on. So we really want to focus on being able to provide teachers with information that can inform their instruction in real-time. And so that's how this is being utilized. So right here is just a, you know, more close-up view of one of the top part of the data bank. And so as I spoke about this before, this is where the teacher could compare how the students in his or her classroom is performing on a particular assessment based, you know, and compare it to the school and to the district. And so this is more, I spoke about the filters that we can utilize to disaggregate the data. And this is the, you know, the, you know, the school view. The teachers can use it for their classroom. You can pull it up by individual student. You can look at an individual assessment. And you can pull up a couple of assessments and say how they've done on that particular assessment. And it also gives you information about the benchmark of where the students should be at that time of the year. This is a scoring guide and help page that is a link on the data bank that teachers can access. And then this is more information about how we've collected information from teachers. And we have a page that teachers can utilize to ask questions and or to ask for more information. And this also gives us feedback to see what we need to do as we continue to refine and make the data bank more dynamic. And, you know, as we talk about, you know, the question is always when we collect data, it's like what do we want to know about students? And that's another thing that makes the data bank so valuable is if we decide that we have found another assessment or we want to adjust our assessments like we've done in first grade, we can do that in real time on the data bank. We don't have to go to a third party vendor to do that. We can make it, we can customize it to collect and display any type of information that we want. And so the conversations that we, that are ongoing is like revolves around what type of information is valuable to teachers and inform their instruction. And so they have a big part in providing that feedback. Right now, as we speak, we're looking at adding the social studies common assessment and the science common assessment to the data bank. So we're having to, we're actually piloting those various common assessments with teachers and getting their feedback and then understanding and then talking with Paul how that's going to be represented in the data bank, along with math. And we're looking at like ways that we can use it at the secondary level as well. So that concludes my presentation. Any more questions or comments? Mr. Hanna, did you have one before? Just curious, who inputs the data to the individual teachers as they complete an assessment? Yes. So the teachers all receive a link to a spreadsheet and then that spreadsheet, in that spreadsheet, they input their data and then it goes into a master spreadsheet and then it's organized into the data bank. Just one more. Is this helpful making the reports for the state? There's a lot of state information looking for how many 504s, how many, the different testing and stuff like that. Are you able to take this information, just send it to the state or do you have to? So that's a very good question. So that type of information comes from power school. The Sims reports and those type of information, that comes from the power school and that's actually where we get the information for the data bank. So we can utilize the demographic information, gender, whether or not a student is on an IEP, has a 504. All that information is coming from power school. So the IREDI assessment, so those are online, right? Does it still require rekeying the data or is that somehow connected so that they don't have to actually re-input the data? So that's a great question. So the teachers don't have to do that for the IREDI. What happens is because the IREDI is an online assessment, I can take the CSV file, the Excel spreadsheet, send it to Paul and then tell him to input it into the data bank. Are we training someone in-house to be able to do that or are we going to rely on Paul for sort of that kind of support? We can. I mean, as we're talking about budget here, I would love to have a data person for the district, but that would be something down the line, I think. Right now, I think this is working, and I know that we have other priorities to tend to, but if my vision is maybe five years down the line, we do have an assessment and data analyst for the district that that's what they do. And right now, we do have somebody within the district. Paula O'Sullivan is a math coach, but she also works as a data coach as well. Great. So when you said you were adding additional assessments, Paula was sort of doing that setup, right? Right. So in fact, I just read an email today where Denny Conklin, our director of social studies is working with Paul to develop, because when you talk to Paul, we want to know, okay, we have this assessment and we have a rubric, but then if we put in a value, what does that mean? Right? Because we want the information that we put into the data bank to mean something to the teacher. So if they look at that score, what does that mean? And so what we can do is we can, the help page and the help page that I showed you, the guide and the help page that teachers can access, we can put the rubric on there. So if you see that value, you go to the rubric that's on the help page and you can be able to determine, you know, how that is broken down. And then you can break it down in different categories. So that could be another dashboard for the social studies and you can have different segments of that rubric and then you have a holistic score and you can have it broken down by the various areas that you're going to use to analyze that person, that student's assessment. That's a really short question. Do you have any historical data in here or is it just from like 1920? Like can you go in arrears at this point? Yes, we can go back one year because we started developing this last year. Right, and then it'll just carry forward. Correct. Cool. 1920? School year. Oh, 1920. So I would just echo Ms. Morgan's comment that some thought needs to continue to be given as to what information to share with parents. I mean, we should announce that we have this wonderful data bank because it's a good thing to let people know. But I think then people are going to be curious, well, is my student in there in the red? Well, I mean, my hope and I believe this wholeheartedly is that teachers have those conversations throughout the year. You know, I believe and I trust our teachers and they work very hard to make sure that they communicate with parents and because we have the parent-teacher conferences. So, you know, I know for a fact that teachers are having those conversations. Now, whether or not parents know that the data bank is there, again, that could be something that I definitely can work on in order to market it to parents and let them know that we are utilizing it and then, you know, so they know what questions to ask during the parent-teacher conference. So actually, I worry about sharing it or too much with parents because I would worry about a parent of a student who's in the light green, say. You know, getting over-worried about that, right? So not something that teachers really see as a major concern, but maybe just a little dip or something. Sometimes parents, you know, get very concerned about things that teachers aren't concerned about. So I just sort of worry about that, about looking at that data, parents will get the data without context and without discussion. Right, so that's what I'm saying. So I know that teachers are communicating with parents along the way throughout the year so they can share those scores with them. But, you know, it could be valuable if we let the parents know, like, during these particular times during the year, these are the formal assessment periods that we have throughout the year and this type of information helps us to understand your child as a learner. And we use it as a progress monitoring tool to your point so that we don't cause panic or if there's a dip. And because, again, we don't want to focus solely on the assessment. We want the, I want the information, I want parents to understand that these are progress monitoring tools just as they would give a quiz, right, in the class or a unit test. Or, you know, they have homework that they get back from students. They utilize all that information in order to understand how a student is progressing. So all that, our data points that go along with the assessment scores. Mr. Shikobin? Yeah, I mean, I concur with Dr. Seuss on her point in that this is data that teachers should be using to plan instruction and as an interpretive tool. In an ideal world, what we're doing is then having the teacher concatenate this and combine the statistical data that is in the package with the actual observations of the student in other work that the teacher sees being produced by the child to be interpreted in such a manner that the report card or other parent reports on a regular basis are accurately portraying the progress of the child. I mean, some parents are statistically savvy, probably the most statistically savvy parent in the district is sitting to my right. Yes, so the parents who understand the psychometrics underneath this and want to see it, that's certainly appropriate. But in terms of making meaning to parents, that interpretive focus through the report card and parent communications is really the most important way to go about it. And I agree with you. But I don't want to give the us, along with Ms. Morgan's point, I don't want parents to think that we're collecting data and we're keeping it from them, right? And I think there's a balance that we can strike so that parents understand that is exactly what you said. This is something that we're collecting throughout the year and hopefully this is part of substantive conversations that are ongoing throughout the year. So parents do have that context in order to take into consideration when they think about the progress of their students. I think just for me, the analogy is if I took my kid to the pediatrician and they had a temperature of 99.5, right? And the 99.5 is the number, right? But the important conversation is what happens afterwards. Oh, are we worried at 99? Can I send them to school? Yeah, you can, but just keep an eye on them. So I think, but I still, as a parent, want at some point in some context that's appropriate to, you know, I still have access to the 99.5, too, right? And I can say, okay, that, you know, kind of works in my system, but then to your point, the broader conversation about what that, you know, temperature or blood pressure, whatever, means in the broader context of what we're looking at is really the most important piece. I'm sure we can strike a balance between having the proper amount of communication with this. Great. All right, thank you. A lot of great progress. Any other comments? No, it was a great verb that Paul used, can cackinate. I love that word. I had to look it up. No. I dropped that word on the Literacy Coordinator in Lowell once and she had to look it up. And she's an incredibly brilliant woman who knew more words than anybody ever knew and the fact that she had to look that up, I thought was a moral victory for the House statistician to put one over on the Literacy Coordinator. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. All right. Next up we have the superintendent's report, Dr. Bode. Thank you. I have a few things and I'll start with the high school. We've already talked back before the holidays about the process we went through and the results of looking at value engineering. I will reiterate that this is actually a process that we're going to continue over the next four to five years as we move through this project. What has been going on since then is our architects preparing the documentation that needs to be sent to MSBA and I believe it's probably going to be submitted. This is the design number in the budget. If not tomorrow or early next week. But while even that's going on, a lot of work is continuing. There's been meetings about the parmeter in terms of things, both that are the timetable in terms of improvements that have to go on there in order for us to stick with our timeline. We had a couple hour meeting this afternoon on transition issues and there are a lot of transition issues that have to be dealt with a lot of detail in terms of moving forward not only with the preschool moving out but just even things, pathways are going to be lit. What's the timetable? How are you going to enter the building? What are going to be evacuation routes? The list goes on and on but this is something that is part of the process and we definitely need to move forward with all of this. One of the things that we will probably get fairly soon is just have a high level look at some of the more detailed transition issues that we need to take a look at. It gets down to the nitty-gritty of where we're going to store the preschool furniture for a month. That's the level that it has to be at in order for everything to move very smoothly. Those kinds of conversations continue and will continue all the time. I know that as we move forward and the building committee knows is that the parents in the community want to know progress reports essentially. Where are we? We have another community forum scheduled on Tuesday, February 4th. It's going to be here at the high school. I'm not sure yet if it's going to be the auditorium or old hall, but it's going to be here at the high school. It's scheduled at 7 o'clock to 8.30. It is an opportunity for, I think, probably more focus for parents of students at Audison, Gibbs, and the high school to hear about the timetables, some of the issues around transition. The principal presenters, clearly it would be the architect in terms of where we are with design, but it will also be our contractor, Consigli, talking about various things where we are in the process. So we go forward. It's very good. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad to hear we're doing a forum. I am impressed by the number of people who were engaged by the conversation over some of the value engineering and most frequently, not exclusively, but most frequently in terms of the geothermal. And this is not my area of expertise. I was not in on the conversation. So I was not able to do more than a cursory explanation of where we are. And a couple of people mentioned that they'd like to, we had all these community forums in the past. Can we have something over this issue because this seems important. So given the community interest in the geothermal and the sustainability of the building and the changes that we're making and the choices we're making, some sort of a forum or a way to more effectively communicate to the community exactly what choices were made and why we thought they were reasonable choices, I think would be a good thing to do. Well, I don't know if Dr. Vassman talked about that. So I could speak to that. So we actually have a blog in progress. It'll actually probably turn out to be two, one explaining decisions made, the other explaining sustainability in depth. One thing that is important to realize is that there was not a significant, there was a small but quite small difference in our ability to meet sustainability goals with the switch from all geothermal to partial geothermal. So it didn't, I think when people are concerned they're thinking that we're going from here to down here and when it was like here to like there. This will be more in-depth and we're working, it's been partially written, we're in the process of editing it now. The forum, first I want to say that it is open to community members too and also that one of the reasons we're holding a forum now is that what's called pre-work, so work in advance of the major construction project will begin very soon after, or is it during February break or after? During February break it starts. It's actually going to start mobilizing a little before that. So that's things like fences are going to be going up. Traffic patterns are going to be, I mean foot traffic patterns are going to be changing. All of these things are going to be discussed at the forum and I think we can, I don't have the list here in front of me of what all were being discussed but I think we can at least talk a little bit about sustainability. I think at the forum will be also an opportunity for us to hear as a committee some of the issues that have come up. In fact it was an email that was sent after that process that caused the communications subcommittee. Actually it was the person who has been chairing a sustainability subcommittee, Ryan Kotoski, to say I need to write a blog about this so people understand it. As Dr. Allison Ampey said, it was very informative to the committee to find out that the effect of reducing the geothermal wells was miniscule in terms of the sustainability goals but there was a strong commitment to maintain this. I think that it may have been communicated by the sheer number that we dropped that there was going to be a change in those goals and it's not the case. But the geothermal wells, that's something that's going to happen this spring for example and a fair number of them are going to be over on the old practice field and so all of that work has to occur before that practice field for example gets paved over. So that's going to be one of the principal parking areas for the high school during, well not only during the phasing but also beyond that too. There are things, it's really helpful to hear because today we were doing, I had just long, long lists of things that need to be attended to when people think of things because when they do it's helpful to us to make sure that that's something that we address. We have a large enough committee that there's enough ideas that are popping up but I'm sure there's, as we go along I say, oh I forgot about that and it's helpful, very helpful. I mean two things, we're not, this is going to be a highly energy efficient building. It's going to be a much different field than what we have right now. It's going to be consistent with best practices across the state and we're still going to have geothermal wells but this is a very complex site to put geothermal wells on. We need to realize that it's a very complex site and the more we learn about it the more complex it is. I think part of that is we don't have local reporters anymore so those discussions that you had with some of them at the building committee meeting that covered this, had we had a reporter there none of this got out so now we have to do it and once that gets out I think that'll answer a lot of the questions and if people have to have more questions they know the contact. We did craft the news release to try and address this but I think people just didn't pick up on that. The other thing I heard is about the ramp to the bike path and people don't realize that it was going to cost $600,000. When I tell them that they're like, oh, okay, that's why. There was a mistaken impression that some people had that somehow this building was not going to be handicap accessible because we removed the ramp and that's not true. If there was a reporter on the ground covering our discussion that would have been clear. You're doing the best you can. If you have questions come up you're addressing them. This is a very complicated topic and we have a lot of very smart people with a lot of expertise in the community and so it's very easy to start getting questions from people who are within their niche and domain that us generalists who don't have an expertise in modern building construction and sustainability aren't really able to answer. One of the things I say is that we have really impressive people on this building committee so that when the decisions are made I have a whole boatload of faith that the folks on this committee are doing the right thing and are doing this for a logical and justifiable reason. That I can't explain why is just because the answer is beyond the scope of what I can do at this point in terms of answering technical questions so the more we get out the better because I don't know construction. Well it's that time of year again where we're going to begin kindergarten registration and the letter that explains the process and what we're going to do about buffer zones will be posted on the website if not right now, it's being posted tomorrow. We don't have potential kindergarten parents' email address so it's something we can't necessarily send out but we're going to have copies in the elementary schools and I think it would be appropriate to send it to some elementary parents because we have siblings but the important I'm not going to repeat everything that's in this letter is four pages long but it is as comprehensive and as clear as we could possibly make it but registration begins January 22nd at 6 a.m. The thing that's important to understand this is the anxiety about registration is about after school programming and I'll talk about that in a second but also choices for buffer zones everyone that registers between the 22nd and the 28th of January will be in the same equivalency in terms of a date for buffer zones and when that January 28th comes and goes we will be working to make decisions about buffer zones and people that had registered in that window will receive their buffer zone assignment by February 5th we'll be busy first week of February but then after that as registrations continue to come in and they will and they will even to beyond the first day of school we'll try to do everything within a two week window anybody registers in February I want to get those assignments done by the end of February because all parents who put in their application for after school programs will be on equal footing with everybody if they have it in by 6 o'clock on the 2nd and that's in the letter and I want to thank Jennifer Seuss because really it was with her leadership this year we have an agreement among all of our after school programs about the process for timing that's been one of the sources of anxiety for parents that I have to put an application into two schools because I don't know which one I'm going to be in and so we've tried to just eliminate that anxiety and that issue and so I think that all the parents coming will be very appreciative of this agreement that we have I have to say the after school programs are very cooperative and very understanding and I appreciate their effort so that will be happening and actually the assignments for after school will not come until later in March we've also have our first date for kindergarten parents this is kindergarten parents guardians only we're having information session at all of our elementary on the same day which is May 8th at 8.30 so they will also get this information on an ongoing basis they register then we have their email address so anybody who's listening who's a kindergarten parent beginning January 22nd you can begin the process yes container have we made a determination or we postponing on doing demographic study we talked about it and we didn't get any response or for whatever reason is that on hold no not really interesting I don't know would you like to talk to that Mr. Mason as discussed earlier today in the budget subcommittee meeting we're currently working trying to figure out if UMass Donahue Institute can actually perform the demographic study I followed up actually today with the individual to try to start setting up time again but he's still waiting on a response from MSBA he was waiting for the MSBA but you know due to the holidays they were kind of out of office so he will get back to us do you want to explain why he has to ask oh yeah so the reason why he needs to ask MSBA sorry to provide this clarification was because that the MSBA since Arlington is an awarded town for a new school they're doing the work to provide enrollment projections to MSBA so they're concerned if there's a conflict of interest if they do provide the services thank you we have a backup vendor that we would go to but we feel that this is important to do alright so some really this is terrific this back this last September we were notified by the Council for International Educational Exchanges that Arlington would be allowed to participate in obtaining scholarships for students who wanted to do summer programs and that they would actually have perhaps as much as $25,000 that they could award in scholarships we have the interest was very strong and we have 15 students that in total have been awarded a little over $24,000 in scholarships and programs this summer overseas the vast majority of them are what they call language immersion programs I'm not sure what the breakdown is in which languages they will be going which countries or areas they'll be going to for these but the languages that they could apply for are Spanish, French Mandarin, German, Italian Japanese and Arabic so I'll find out which one of these students are going where we also found out in the notification letter the reason I'm saying this because people are listening is that this particular organization still has some scholarship money that is targeted for certain areas that you could still apply for and they are Buenos Aires, Argentina Yucatan, Mexico Alicante, Madrid Spain and Seville, Spain so anybody's listening there's still an opportunity up until February to apply for those funds so it's terrific that our kids are going to have this wonderful opportunity another issue is the census we are we have a representative to the town committee for planning for census outreach and we're even going to have opportunity for some of our seniors if they want to to have a part-time job this summer and we're working on notifying seniors about that but what I'm mentioning tonight is I think people have to understand how important it is to respond to the census the money that Arlington gets Arlington schools get the town of Arlington gets is really dependent on what those census numbers are I think I've received my own census letter but the response usually from that requires much more outreach and this committee in town is working together to figure out best outreach to the community can I clarify this is separate from the Arlington town census yes Arlington town well it's a federal census but Arlington we just you got that one yeah and that's what yes and they both say census on it they both say census on it both are important yes they are but for the federal there is a committee in town working on outreach to make sure that everyone understands the importance of filling that out and then the other question is just when you say seniors are able to apply for a part time job do you mean the current seniors or do you mean right okay if they're going to be 18 by a certain date so that all that information is going out to the seniors and the next day or so it pays well yes and the last thing is I just want to mention is you know we've talked about this before but I think that given the government in our country right now it's helpful to also to mention it now when we don't where things are fairly quiet and we don't have any incidents but the school department along with the human rights commission and the police department work together over the summer to to develop guidelines for communication documentation when there are a hate incidents in the schools we have been following that protocol all year it's been mentioned in messages when we've had incidents but I think that given really right now the tenor of the times it would be important to have this mentioned here tonight but also for parents to be aware of this MOA so I'm going to have a principal send it out in one of the newsletters so that they are aware of that and we've also been circulating among principals as well you know this information about lessons around tolerance that we so important in the environment which we're living today unfortunately so that concludes it all great thank you alright onto the consent agenda all items are considered routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant warrant number 20128 1223 2019 total amount 1364 853.22 approval of minutes regular school committee minutes 1219 2019 and no trips so moved any opposed or abstentions okay it's unanimous there's no policy to discuss so we move on to subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget Dr. Allison Ampe so budget met this morning we discussed the current budget the we're looking at additionally we're looking at the reporting mechanisms that we get from the administration and how frequent they are and we've solicited examples from other districts we're going to compare those and see if we see anything that we like better we did discuss the future enrollment estimation and then we're also looking at potential improvements for the budget book as you may remember a few years back we started working towards adopting the meritorious budget format with an intent to continue adding to what we did to start with was just to do the format and now we want to start adding more of the data that is expected and so we're going to figure out what specifically it is that we want to add this year and we also discussed the audit report that had been mentioned earlier and then some interest in reexamining fees hey thank you policies and procedures no report nothing curriculum instruction assessment no report community relations we need to have a meeting I will send out something soon we want to begin discussion of redistricting or continue options and we have a rainbow commission person to appoint facilities Mr. Hayner I will be addressing the Dow and PTO on January 28th with regard to the facilities of the high school building committee we covered calendar committee I don't think we have another meeting yet is that right? we're doing a doodle I don't know if it went out today or tomorrow but it will by the end of January early February okay I'll tell you that later I'm having some liaison reports with the arts and human rights committee to ask them for help okay election modernization committee next week I have a meeting superintendent search process we're working on an RFP for consultant we're meeting next Wednesday January 15th at 5.15pm right here nothing on negotiations any liaison reports or announcements nothing alright future agenda items good next meeting is pretty fall we're in receipt of a letter regarding idling signs now specifically over the Gibbs now the thing is as I read the law pertaining to this they define school grounds as the adjacent street but the streets are not ours they're the town so we received an email back from the superintendent I believe the administration talking about getting signs in place at our schools and conformance to the state law if we could just get a report back on that in a future meeting Rachel yeah okay anybody else alright we don't have the executive session so moved all those in favor this has been one of the quickest meetings ever