 Welcome to this regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee on January 11th, 2024, our first meeting of the new year. We've started with a slight delay because of technical difficulties with our mics. If you're having problems, we've done our best to fix it, but you can send an email to Ms. Diggins to let us know. We do not have any public speakers today. We do have our AEA representative, Ms. Jenna Medeiros, sorry, I know her by her former name. And she's on Zoom with us, and we have our two of our AEA student reps, Matt Heganvook and Graeme Minick, so thank you. So we will start with your, any comments you folks have? All right, oh no, there's not much to say really. We're having a winter crafts fair coming up in two weeks, which is supposed to be like part of our Inclusion and Diversity Committee. Just getting local and like school and just in town vendors involved trying to like sell goods, just be a little festive and it'll be held here, I think on the 28th or 9th. I don't know if sports seasons are going, it's coming to like playoffs slash like end of the season time. I don't know, it's been a nice, calm end to the second quarter. Great, thank you. Question. How goes the demolition? It goes, it's honestly like, you can't really notice it when you're in school, so it's nice. I mean, for me, for track, I have to like go into the old building and there you kind of notice it, but other than that, it's not that bad. I know after school that I saw a bunch of students standing over on Shuler Court watching it, you know, it's kind of fun, yeah, okay. And next we have the discussion and vote for approval for the Gibbs overnight experience. So we are doing an overnight trip for our sixth grade students at the Gibbs. We have gotten indication for families of how many are intending to come. There are some materials in your packet for tonight that we received today just so that you had some backup material and understanding of what the cost would be. And right now where we are with this is that there's an estimated cost per student of about $512. That's the estimated cost per student. It's lower than the 525 because we're estimating cost based on the assumption that all students will attend, which is not at the moment the case, but regardless, there's cost of busing supplies for students who might need additional supplies and the cost of including the teachers in the cost breakdown. We have to pay for teachers beyond a certain number to go and we also need to stipend teachers particularly for staying later into the evening. So we factored that into the cost, but of course if we hit a point where we find that we can reimburse families for cost, we will certainly entertain that. There's some additional materials about the activities that will happen for the students who stay back. They will be doing some science related activities that are project based and interactive through what's it called engineering? It's an engineering curriculum that they'll be doing if they stay back. And then right now the numbers that we have is that we have 353 students interested in going 56 families who have indicated that they're not planning on attending and we're still waiting for responses from about 60 students. And we do have a number of students who are going to require full assistance with payment and some who are going to require some level of financial assistance. Engineering everywhere. Great. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Mr. Shulikman. Okay. I don't see the details in Novus as to where we're going and the dates and everything else. So we have that. We're going to nature's classroom. The dates, do you have the dates? Yeah. We were trying to get our hands on the actual agreement for tonight and we didn't have it, but we wanted to make sure that there was approval for this before we started asking families to commit and send in their financial documents. We've discussed this at CIAA several times. Where is nature's classroom located? Charles. Charles. Yeah. The reason for the school committee and the need for school committee approval was that it's an over the trip. Yeah. Yes. All right. The dates are May 1st through May 3rd, May 6th through May 8th. And May 8th through May 10th. They'll go as one LC for that first date and then two LCs will go for each of the two subsequent dates. We've had to change the dates a couple of times because we originally have an over holiday. So as this correspondence from Dr. Hoyo is new, I guess I'm reading the sentence at the end of the first paragraph given that the school committee was very invested in an overnight experience to happen in APS. I think it's important that they know this and could brainstorm how APS will help fund this venture. That's not really how we operate. But I guess my question would be to Dr. Homan. Do you, we don't brainstorm but we can provide direction. Like I was not under the, I did not, I wasn't expecting a request from the administration. This is not a request from the administration. Okay. That is correspondence I got earlier this afternoon that had a bit of detail in it. It is not a request for, it is not from me or us, a request for you to brainstorm funding opportunities. We have this covered right now. We have the ability to make this happen for students and to learn a lot from this initial year of doing the sit-gibs. And then we can use that information to figure out what we might want to adjust in future years, what partnerships we might want to develop with PTO or PTOs to help with any additional funding we might need. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else? Yeah. So let me just clarify because there's a little bit indirect. So for the students who are unable to pay, the district is covering the cost of those students. The amount that we have asked for from families is going to give us the ability to make sure that every student has the supplies that they need if we need to invest in additional supplies and that we will be able to pay the teachers. In the event that we do not have in this fund the dollars to cover the students who need additional financial assistance, we will cover additional financial assistance assuming we do not fundraise any additional dollars. We do have families who have indicated they may be willing to donate to the district. We're not advertising or asking that families invest in that. But it could be that we have some additional dollars in this fund that will make it more self-sustaining. We're aiming for self-sustaining. If we can, if we can't, we will pull from one of the revolving and make it work. Great. Thank you. Any further questions? Can I have a motion to approve? So moved. Anyone want to second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that passes unanimously. And I forgot to mention that Formus-Exton is unable to join us tonight. Okay. Next we have the school committee budget priorities. This is our chance to, as part of the budget process, to discuss what our thoughts are in terms of where APS should be focusing their monies for the next year. And I think I'll just go around in order from Ms. Gilzen. Sure. So I had, I just have some notes. My first priority, I think everybody probably shares, but it seems like it merits saying out loud is that salaries, we've got the override and we've reached the agreement with Unit D, but I'm excited to see what happens with Unit A. Within that, I think I would be staffing with particular attention to special education, making sure that we can meet all of the needs of all of our students. One smaller item that had stood out to me from the EEA requests was the technology requests that all paras have access to Chromebooks. And then I'm also supportive of the goal of full-time librarians across all of the elementary schools. And finally, just making sure we have sufficient support for the ELA rollout next year. Mr. Cardin? So I share all of those priorities, actually. So just to repeat, the competitive compensation, the librarians, the staffing for special education. And technology investments. I think as I've indicated in Budget Subcommittee, we do need to do a little bit more of our homework to find out exactly where the needs are for the technology investments, but we should set aside some funding for that. I'm not sure every paraprofessional needs their own Chromebook, but that might be a place. Again, we've heard a lot about the projectors in the rooms. Again, I'm not sure that's the highest priority either, but there are some funding needs clearly there. And then, you know, we've talked a long time about running a bus to OMS, and I understand that that's in the works, but if that needs additional funding to make it happen, I would like to see that put into the budget. And also, as we just discussed with the overnight experience, if that needs additional money, I would like to see that rolled into the budget as well. Thank you. So compensation, compensation, compensation. You today, you today, you today. Which I think there's unanimity around, which is great. And librarians feels very important staffing around special education. Whether there are things that we can do around special ed staffing within the contract as well, are there promises that we can make in the contract that we can then make good on around staffing and ratios. If that works out, that that feels very important. So, yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. So compensation, obviously, that's why we've lobbied hard for the override. I would say in addition to that, something that's been discussed in our meetings has been the need for more custodians in different schools, including the high school. And I think when I first came on the committee, I would never argue for more custodians, but the older I get, the more I realize that custodians actually make for a healthier school, a more enjoyable place for students to learn and so in a better place for a principal to manage. So I would be advocating for that. There was conversation at some point about the need for a late bus for Metco students who leave or want to stay after school for activities and stay later. And I think I'd like to see if we could make that a priority. Obviously, I support the three librarians who've been trying for a long time to get back to a librarian in every school or enough librarians in every school. So I would definitely want to support the three librarians. And I, you know, there's a number of different staffing needs in different departments that I don't have a good feel for. But I know we talk about needs in human resources and other departments. And I think one of those things that we don't see so much that can help the district run better are important to keep in mind. I share being on the facility subcommittee, I share Mr. Heelman's thoughts on the custodians in order to maintain this building in a manner that we'd like to see it and the other buildings around town that we are understaffed. And I think that it's important for us to take care of the resources that the voters have provided for us. Librarians, obviously, we're close to getting back to where we were in 2004. I think this is the year we should be able to do it. We need to keep the technology up to date because teachers are frustrated when things don't work because they're worn out or just obsolete. So we need to make, keep enough money in the budget to maintain the operability of our systems. Obviously compensation, we went to the town and said this is our big priority for the override. And I do want to see us paying a more competitive salary for the purposes of recruitment and retention. I just want to make sure that we also have sufficient people doing the work in special ed so that we're able to be compliant with all deadlines and the paperwork of running a district. And I will always say that we probably don't have enough social workers. It's a big system and kids have a unique set of problems and challenges which are considerably different now than they were three years ago before the pandemic. And we need to support them. Okay. Thank you. So mine, first, compensation. And I'm not going to go into great depth because everyone else has already done these things. My second one are both the preschool and the special education requests. I think it's important to be serving our most vulnerable students as best as possible. Third is staffing the new high school building appropriately. When we plan this high school, we assumed certain new staffing requirements including new additional custodians. And it's important to follow through with that or we're not going to be able to maintain this building in the shape that it is and that's doing a disservice for taxpayers and for our students. And then fourth, I lump a bunch of them together. The late bus for Metco, I think that's important for our, to help our Metco students feel a true sense of belonging so they can participate in things. The social workers at the various elementary schools, the librarians and the increased staffing at Audison to account for the increased population that they're going to be seeing next year. I do note that when I look through the requests that we were provided on in December, it feels like some of them are more appropriately one time and I would think that we could do them out of reserves and I'd like to see, for example, the communications budget updated a little because it sounded like it had both one time things and ongoing and so I want to see that broken out. And also I question whether the translation budget doesn't that fall into communications also and so I just want to have a sense of where those things are going. So any further comments from anyone? Okay. Great. Do you have any questions for us? I don't think so. Okay. I appreciate it. Okay. We are rejoining you after a brief technical difficulty. We had just done the super intent. We just begun reading the first read of our calendars for the next three years. So for a little bit of context, we've been trying to get to having three calendars for the committee to review at a time for quite some time. So I'm excited to bring you three years. I can anticipate that we're going to see some challenges with these calendars that we're going to need to address. I know already that we're going to need to put one more all district early release in because right now the current calendar only has all of the current calendars only have five. So we're going to need one additional one because we do six because we do the courses for educators on those all early release days. I do want to point out a couple of sort of differences between these than others. And then if there are any other questions myself and Ms. Diggins who does a lot of hard work on these are happy to answer any questions. The first one is that we've had this happen a couple of times now where there's voting. There's primaries on the first day of school. It's just a, you know, something that happens every once in a while, but it has now happened a couple of times in a row. And it is challenging to hold the first day of school without all of our available spaces for teaching students routines. We have significant portions of the school that are not available because of the timing of Memorial Day of Labor Day next year. We've drafted a calendar and we're open to feedback on this that places the two teacher days on the 28th and 29th of August and then waits until the Wednesday for everybody to have their first day of school. That is an early release day, but it avoids us being in school on a day that might have some pretty heavy voting given that it will be an election year. And that's a primary voting day. So there's that on the 24-25 calendar as well as the teacher PD day on the November Election Day and then on the 25-26 calendar. That is a year that for the teacher professional development day we would typically put it the day after Halloween on the 1st of November. But because the 1st of November is a Saturday, we looked at the Tuesday that is a voting day and had it on the 4th initially. But then we took a look at that and realized it would be two Tuesdays in a row that the students would be out of school and that the Monday followed by a Tuesday off followed by the rest of the week is sort of a disruptive week. So we put the teacher professional development day on the 10th that year and that creates a four-day weekend around the Veterans Day holiday. So that's there for the school committee to consider as well. And then the 26-27 calendar had an error on in May that Ms. Diggins corrected this this evening. I'm actually not sure what it was. I just told her to go with check of A and she fixed it. And we had to adjust then the last day of school I believe because of that adjustment as well. So happy to take questions, concerns, comments, any additional adjustments that we might need to make between now and another reading of these. So I think it's important to point out that the 26-27 calendar is our first calendar ever as far as I know in the district where we would start before Labor Day. So I think we need to have a separate discussion, possible dialogue with the community about that. We did have survey results which are probably now ten years old that indicated that people were open to that. But in this year it only buys us two days. The way we structured it in the contract it only buys us two days. It's not a day, it's not a year where we have both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There's only Yom Kippur or so. We still, even if we started our normal Tuesday we would still end June 21st. It's a Monday, which is not really quite late compared to the other years. So I would, I don't know if we want to handle that year differently than the other two or what we want to do but I just wanted to point that out because that would be a significant change for the community. I want to note that was an adjustment that came as a result of adjusted contract language that said that when the last, when the first day after Labor Day was sufficiently late that we could begin students before Labor Day. So that was contract language that we had agreed to in the last round of negotiations but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to start before Labor Day if it's going to be a challenge for families and for other members of the community. My gut instinct is a day in September is worth more than a day in late June so I would be very happy to open those two days in the 20, 26, 27 calendar. But I also note that if we go and adopt these things as calendars the subsequent years are tentative and if we find issues I'm sure we'll be working around the edges to fix things. Mr. Stain? Yeah I just wanted to clarify where we would be voting on the calendar for the 24, 25 school year and the other two would be drafts that we would be sharing with the community. We're not adopting those at this time or are we doing all three at once? My thinking was that we would do all three at once only if we needed to do adjustments to them down the road. We could always vote on the calendar but this would give families the ability to plan ahead. Okay so we're adapting all three and then the motion would be we adapt all three with the understanding we may modify years two and three based on new information. What we certainly would try not to do is modify years two and three's start and end dates and we would make maybe small adjustments but once we voted years two and three and the whole goal is to give families that much lead time in terms of their planning. Okay. Especially on start and end dates and breaks. Other comments? This is my first calendar season budget whatever. My gut reaction to the 26, 27 starting before Labor Day is that as the parent of young children and mostly knowing parents of young children most people I know would be happy to not be scrambling for childcare that last week of the summer when summer camps are all but non-existent and I mean this is only two days of school so it doesn't like really solve everybody's problem but it's always a real issue for families who need childcare that last week because so many other school districts do start before Labor Day so summer camp availability is less. So yes and people are pretty passionate about Labor Day so I guess I would like I'm just trying to think if there's some sort of feedback loop that we can do on this whereby if we're not like the data that we've gotten has been very mixed about this so it's always been hard to be like well that's clearly that way and we couldn't until you know we couldn't within our contract and now we're just at a we're at a place where we could do it it is a little bit tricky because of like it's not as compelling as I would have liked for it to be on the first time we make that stand before Labor Day but this is a first read I don't know if we want to like send something out and ask for feedback if we want to vote all three of these I don't know if we're back here in two weeks or three weeks but I think it would be helpful to hear from folks in case there are a lot of passions around this. Okay. That was my second time. The only thing I always agree with I agree with Mr. Schlickman that the academic days are better in September or prior to Labor Day and they are in June and so I and I've also the same thing that Ms. Skittleson said about childcare that last week is always a challenge because camps end and so I'm very comfortable with that with that third year with the starting before Labor Day and the third year this calendar sequence personally and I would vote for it in two weeks. That said if people want to get more information that's fine but I'm very comfortable with it. Okay. Ms. Medeiros. We can absolutely talk about that with Dr. Janger and I'm not sure that could have been a holdover from something we did this year but we'll take a look at it. We can adjust conferences pretty easily. Make sense. So my thoughts on the calendars first for the 2020 first I think it's absolutely amazing and fantastic that you're doing this. We've been looking for calendars in advance of just the next year for a long, long time so this is great. In terms of the 2026 starting before Labor Day I would be much more compelled if there was more than two days of school that week. The fact that it's only two days of school makes me a little makes me less happy about it because it just makes for more broken up weeks and stuff. And then just as a feedback I'm confused by the, under the early release there's a, the code, a solid letter A so it says 1 p.m. for all, 120 for AHS, OHS, RMS Gibbs, 130 for monotony. So I don't understand. It can't be one for all and 120 for. Yeah, the all should say elementary. Okay. That's the release time for elementary. 120 is the release time for A and then 130 for monotony. Okay. So then we just need to add these. Yeah, we can fix that. Great. And then at least on my copies the holidays and stuff didn't come out but that's, we can see. Okay. Is there any other comments? Do we want to, so I'm wondering if we could just, we could next time we could approve the first two calendars and figure out how we're going to seek feedback about the third calendar, especially since it's probably place a poll in my next Superintendents newsletter on that or send out a separate one separately. So I can think with who's here about that. Okay. Okay. I think that's it for this item. So next we have the superintendent schools first read. All right. So I have submitted a draft set of goals. I am more than happy to take feedback on the goals. A couple of highlights. Just to note the materials are in your, I'm not going to project them, but in your materials. The student learning goal is focused on closing opportunity and achievement gaps for students with some focuses on implementation of the new K-5 literacy curriculum with the remaining three quarters of our elementary classrooms. Establishing strategic plan working groups to make sure that we're moving forward on our priority one initiatives expansion of a continuation of instructional rounds with teachers and ILTs, which a lot of our ILTs are doing this year to keep developing that culture of learning amongst our adults and APS. Professional practice goal is focused on building our capacity to use frequent feedback from community staff members and students to inform how we respond to conflicts and contentious topics as well as ensure that we're being really inclusive in the design of all of our initiatives. There are a number of action steps that have been ongoing so far this year and that we hope to continue including opening the Family Welcome Center, implementing office hours, superintendent office hours with staff as well as other opportunities for me to connect directly with families, including our students and faculty in the design of our all district events including our opening day in November 1st PD Day, which we did this past year and continuing to work on our retention strategies, gathering of feedback, holding job fairs, some of the initiatives that we've done throughout this year. There are also two, I think, two district improvement goals. One is to expand and they're kind of linked to one another. This first district improvement goal and the professional practice goal, this is something that I think both the system needs to improve upon and that I'm working on improving upon also based on the feedback that I received in response to my evaluation this year, but district improvement goal one is to expand and improve our two-way engagement with families and opportunities for APS family learning and connection with one another. Again, the Family Welcome Center and Resource Hub and our new roles in that office have a lot to do with our ability to improve capacity in this area. We want to revise the family survey in response to feedback that we just got on it, make sure we're responding to trends in our family surveys with an emphasis on doing things like focus groups, empty interviews, more engagement opportunities directly with me and other members of our administration and staff, partnering with our CPAC to establish resources and implement family forums on topics of interest both for our students who have students who have both for our families who have students with IEPs as well as for all families across the district. We want to make sure we establish a multilingual learner parent advisory committee and we want to work on implementing some family workshops for family learning opportunities as well. And then district improvement goal number two is to make sure we're expanding our understanding of what deeper learning principles are and giving opportunities for deeper learning experiences both for our staff and for our students. So one of the goals of the strategic plan is to develop an instructional vision. We've been talking a lot about deeper learning and I think we need to define it for everybody so that they know what it means, what it looks like, what we're talking about when we talk about expanding opportunities for deeper learning, like when we're putting new classes in place that are more disciplinary at the high school for example or when we are taking our students in sixth grade for an immersive trip where they get to spend time with one another overnight. These are things that we see as a line to deeper learning. That's why we're doing them but we need a better definition so that our full community understands that and has opportunities to engage in that work with us. So those are the goals. I think I've tweaked over the last couple of days in response to feedback from all of you, the outcomes. And I'm happy to answer questions about some of those, some of them will become a little clearer when you get a report out on panorama results in a couple of weeks because they're specific to categories where we see results that we either concern us or that we want to see change or where we really want to close gaps based on what families, students and staff are reporting. So happy to take any notes on these. Okay. Anyone have any comments? Mr. Thielman. Yeah, thanks very much. I just want to clarify on some of the performance measures on goal, the professional practice goal, the established baselines for measuring retention of staff, including staff in BIPOC and LGBTQIA plus and focal groups. Are you, so year one has established the benchmarks. Yeah. And then year two is? Would be to develop a goal around what do we want to do with them because right now we don't really have retention measures that we would call reliable and that we sort of trust and track. So one of the things that Mr. Spiegel and I have been talking about working on is like how do we actually track that. And then once we track it and kind of have a baseline for how we're going to keep track of retention and like when somebody moves out why and how we want to make, like measure that data because right now we have it quite qualitatively. Yeah. And we do the exit and then we have the sort of qualitative report out on that but we'd like to make it more quantitative. So this would just establish like what does that data look like? What is it that we're measuring? And then in future years the hope would be that we could set some goals around like improve retention for this subgroup because we're seeing this trend. But we have retention data for all? Do we have to have retention data for all? Yes. We do. Yes. But dividing it out by focal groups is not so good. Do we have a rating kind of setting up an automated system? There are systems that can do that. Do we have them? I mean, excuse me, right now we do a Google form. Yeah. And I can do it that way. There are other systems we could look into. The organization I leave is no better. Our HR system could do it but it's not so good. We have talked about this to get a more, because the problem is with exit interviews and is that it can be very subjective. Yes. You know, your view of what the person said rather than what's said on a form because that gives you more information. That's more objective. And then, were you saying here, improve reported family experience on experience surveys? So there'll be a reference somewhere of what we experience involve 22. Yeah. So that one, we are currently in the process of revising family survey and all the surveys based on, we had such record response rates on this last administration that we also got a lot of feedback on the survey itself, how it's administered, on some of the questions we asked. So we're planning on revising it. So the way I phrase that is for those things that we decide to survey again, because it could be that we switch out some of the categories. Okay. Then what I would want to do is compare results from last fall through next spring to demonstrate improvement on those categories that we're surveying year over year. Okay. And then the last one where it's more opportunities expand that access, expand a participation, that's kind of, that is hard to measure. Yes. Some of these are hard to measure. Okay. So I don't know. You'd get qualitative evidence probably of that. Okay. It's not, it's more of an output than an outcome. But I was trying to mix Yeah, that's fine. Types of data you're getting. I wouldn't know how we'd get quantitative myself. So. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else have any other comments? Questions? Okay. I had sent in some feedback. Has been, it was just, I was just trying to get some clarification about some of the outcome measurements. So that we, when we go to evaluate the superintendent using these criteria, we actually have something that we can look at and go, okay. No, you didn't. Or you made partial, whatever. So. Yeah. Okay. Just one comment. So, I mean, I, I appreciate the goal to try to get more outcome type measures. But I also think it's okay to have goal, have measures where if you say, implement the new ELA curriculum, if you did that, that you, that you met your goal. I mean, I, I do think you could have some of those type of goals in there now, so I put a lot of that stuff in the description and action steps. I, I would like to have a couple examples like that that are, it's easy to say yes. But I'm also trying not to make it just to check that because that's an output and not an outcome. Yeah. I was trying to keep the outcomes as outcome me as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you for going for the measurable. I was trying to go for as measurable as possible. There are certainly things like for example, improved reported experience of educators in office hours. That's fully qualitative. That's based in notes that I take during office hours. So that, that won't have a number to it. And I value qualitative output and outcomes too. So there will be obviously artifacts that tied to the action steps included in my evidence that as well as some of these quantitative measures that are more outcome based. Okay. Any further comments, questions? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on. So I'm sorry. I was thinking, no, just so that I remember for the standards, Desi gives us a rubric. Right. Yes. Neat. Okay. Thank you. I love using other people's rubrics. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Back to you, Dr. Homan with the update. Okay. Hold on one second. Okay. So we are very pleased to report that we got to celebrate the opening of binotomy pre-school right below us over the last couple of weeks. And it is an absolutely beautiful space. I'm sure you have all gotten to see as you've driven up to the offices, the beautiful tree. It's really, it's really a work of art. And then the entrance to monotomy, that theme of sort of nature and trees runs through the entire space. It's a very playful space. It's a very bright space. Lots of natural light. And it's really just something, something special for their little list learners. So it's been really exciting to welcome them into the new school. They were so excited to enter on that first day. We welcomed families and had a little ceremony with a number of elected officials and some of you. And so it's a very wonderful space. It's a very wonderful space. It's a very wonderful space. It's a very, very beautiful space. And celebrated the opening of monotomy preschool. So hooray. It was a little bit of a delay. They're still waiting for their playground. But that's okay because they have a beautiful multipurpose room and we turned it into a lovely indoor recess space while we wait for the surface. They couldn't surface the playground because of the temperature because it's a rubber surface. So they have to wait until it warms up a little bit by about 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Thank you to those of you who volunteer to help us direct traffic. We will have a guide for those. You'll sort of have your own guide. It's a self-guided tour. But you'll have both a digital version and a paper version of a guide to sort of help you go through the spaces and know what it is that you're looking at and we'll have a number of volunteers there to help steer you in whatever direction you're headed so that you If we have enough volunteers, we'll open up some of the phase one spaces as well. I wanted to update the community that we're looking forward to launching an Audison Middle School bus where we'll be more information going to the Audison community about this very soon. This will be a bus from the East Arlington area to Audison to help alleviate some of the pressures that we know students and families have felt around getting to school on time given the morning rush and the service of the MBTA sometimes can't keep up with that. So we're looking forward to helping out with that. We know that's been a pressure for families and a point of frustration. So I will send more info about that soon. There will be fees associated with writing this bus and probably a lottery in the event that we have more interest than the bus itself can hold. We have some anticipated spring administrative hiring searches coming up. All of these roles are currently filled by interim leaders. Hardy principal will be up first. We'll need to identify a permanent leader for the Hardy School. Right now interim that we have an interim principal there. The mathematics director currently is interim. Mr. Coleman moved into the research data and accountability role and so we'll need to identify a permanent mathematics director. And we also have a role at Audison for assistant principal and Mac co director that are interim and we'll need to run searches for those as well. So we'll be keeping you posted as we head into hiring season on the status of those searches. And I wanted to give you an update on working groups. So we had new members join us. These are families students staff members join us on this past week. And those new members are joining working groups that they signed up for applied to join and that our facilitators worked with us to determine how to make sort of as diverse a group of roles and expertise as possible in the working groups. They're going to be completing information gathering and action cycles aligned with the strategic plan initiatives for the remainder of the twenty twenty three and twenty four school year emphasis on the fact that these working groups are working. They are intended to go out into the community and gather information. Come back from their very different roles. They have access to different kinds of people in the community so they can get a lot of different information from those people about what it is that the system needs. The the strategic plan while it maps out things that we know we need to do. It also leaves enough room for us to iterate and figure out how it what we might need to adjust about our plan in order to move the work forward in a way that involves the community. And so that's what these working groups are intended to do. So I want to thank again the Arlington Education Foundation for funding compensation through a district improvement grant for these working group members so that they could participate in this. It's a paid opportunity for the members who have recently joined us. And your enrollments are in your materials. Happy to take any questions. Any questions. Seeing none. Thank you. Next we have the consent agenda. So 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. Warrant number 24147 December 19th 2023 $1,100,393.65. Warrant number 24166 January 3rd 2024 in the amount of $700,401.42. Draft school committee minutes of December 14th 2023 and draft school committee special meeting minutes dated December 21st 2023. Mr. Schlickman. I would like to pull 24166 off the consent agenda due to conflict. Okay. So we will vote. Is there anyone else? Okay. So can I have a motion to approve the remaining items? So moved. Can I have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor. Yes. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that's unanimous. Now we're going to vote on warrant number 24166. And we are conflicted. Yeah. Both Mr. Schlickman and I are conflicted because it covers the ASC conference payments. I'm all approval. Second. Any further comments? Okay. All in favor? Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Abstain. Okay. So that's 402. But it passes. Okay. Next we have the subcommittee liaison reports budget. Mr. Cartman. So we met this week to get an update on the planning for the 25 budget that's coming to us in early February. We will meet again, don't have the date in front of me later in the month to get a little bit more detail before it comes to the full committee. We also reviewed the, there's two new fees that's in the schedule that's in Novus. The Mr. Mason, do you want to explain it? The two new items are the fee for the OMS bus. The OMS bus is only in the morning. So it's half the fee of a regular bus. And then we're adjusting or establishing new fees for the auditorium rental. Yes. So there are new fees. Give me a second. I was pulling up this exact item. So there are new fees for the auditorium. The auditorium rental, we did a analysis of the town manager 12 comparable communities to come up with an ideal rate considering that our auditorium is state of the art in one of the newer auditoriums. The rate is that we proposed is $750 for a three hour minimum rental with the mandatory theater supervisor fee that's like $25 an hour to add on to that. And then there's additional add-ons for lighting, rigging, sound, audio, and I hope I'm not missing it. Last but not least, it was videography that was added on for the various amounts and those will be optional add-ons that are not required of us. So yes, so the budget subcommittee moved that we recommended that the fees schedule be adopted by the full committee. Do you want to make a motion? I move that the revised fee schedule be adopted. Second. Any further questions or comments? Mr. Schluchman. Okay, there's a note three. Custodial rates are estimated rates, actual rates are in accordance with the contracts. So what we're saying is that because I don't see where this is referencing to. Oh, okay. So the custodial rate will be on top of anything else we're doing. Correct. So if you want the gym, you're going to pay $123 for three hours at the bracket plus $45 an hour for the custodium. Yes, that's the estimated amount. Okay. Yeah, I get it now. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Any other questions or comments? All in favor? Yes. All right. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so that passes unanimously. Okay. So we also had the, there was discussion of a possible new revolving fund for the R-110 high school cafe and we tucked it under budget because it had to do with money, but we didn't actually discuss it at budget. Mr. Mason, do you want to discuss this? Yes. So it would be appreciated if the committee could make a motion to approve a new fund. It'll be a new revolving fund for the student cafe at the high school. This was part of the building design. In the spine of the building, when you come into the main entrance, you see a nice big foyer and you'll see the cafe stands that are currently empty. We're getting ready to put some inventory in there and get a point of sale systems to collect for the different items that will be for sale there, including various items that will be prepared by the students. So in order to us first to collect funds, the comptroller of the town of Rollington would require the school committee to approve a new revolving fund. So just to be clear, this is separate from the cafeteria. This is a cafe. It's in a different location. Mr. Schluckman. Is this an internal fee within the school department or is this a revolving fund that would need town meeting to play with? I assume this is internal. This is internal, correct. Any other questions or comments? Can someone make the motion? Second. Okay. Any further comments? Okay. All in favor? Yes. Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that passes unanimously. Thank you. What next? Curriculum. Okay. So that was budget. Now we have community relations. Ms. Exton isn't here just before this meeting. I received notice that our representative to the rainbow commission has resigned. And so we'll need to appoint someone. And also I had, in late December, I had heard from Mr. Hainer, who had been a representative on the Arlington 250 committee. And he also requested, I mean, he resigned. So I'm going to pass those two names on to Ms. Exton to appoint our representatives to those commissions. Well, they'll make a recommendation to us. Well, they'll do all the work. Exactly. And then bring us somebody. They'll do the searching and bring in. Yes, that's what I mean. Okay. Curriculum instruction assessment and accountability. Yes. We met yesterday, talked about SSTs, and we have another meeting scheduled in the end of March. Okay. Facilities. No report. Policy and procedures. Thank you. We have a meeting scheduled for, and I just lost the date. Oh, Wednesday, January 24th at 3 p.m. at the beautiful Central Office 14 Millbrook Drive in Arlington. Arlington High School Building Committee. We're having an open house or tours rather on January 20th, and we need volunteers. If everyone can volunteer, that would be great. Student volunteers. I know Mr. McCarthy, I think it's recruiting folks, so if you'd like to help out on a Saturday morning, although I think you have a lot of commitments of those sports and activities, but if you can be there, great. We're looking for folks to volunteer, the more people, the merrier. Yeah. The Arlington Construction Project is going along, and as we discussed earlier, the, some of the buildings are coming down, and we're moving forward on Phase 3. Ways on reports. Can I just, because I was at the community chat on Saturday, I just wanted to, so it was Ms. Extin and I. The subject was budget and after-school. Dr. Homan was there. Mr. Mason was there. I can't remember if there were other admins there. It was very well attended, definitely the most, the largest number of people I've seen at a community chat in my short time, and people had, were very engaged, and I think Dr. Homan took lots of notes. So, any Arlington reports? Announcements? Feature agenda items? Okay. Well, at this point, we will go into executive session, and we do not plan on returning, correct? Right, okay. So, we're going into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel, or contract negotiations with union and or non-union, in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or mitigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted, and we will be discussing the Arlington Education Association, Unit A negotiations, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employee, AFL, CIO, State Council 93, 680, School Cafeteria Workers' Discussions. So, can I have a motion to go into executive session? So moved. Hello, folks. Second? Somebody? Yes. That's the wrong answer. That is. Have to pay attention. I'm going to start trying to raise that. Okay. Ms. Giddelson. Yes. Mr. Carter. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Slickman. Yes. And I vote yes also. So, we are now going into executive session.