 Welcome everyone! Today is Thursday, March 30th. This is the Arlington School Committee. This is my last meeting that I'll be chairing so it's bittersweet for me. Let me just talk a little bit about some of the artwork that's in the room and then I want to introduce a very exciting group of students that we have here today. So starting over here we have kindergarteners. So this is Thompson and Stratton schools and this is the kindergarteners. We're shown examples of landscape painting observed lines and line variations. Students then created their own landscape drawings using straight, bumpy, zigzag and other lines of their choice. These drawings were completed using oil pastels and students were encouraged to experiment with blending colors. Very cool. Moving over here, fourth grade, Notan. Fourth grade students explored the Japanese design concept of Notan in these glages. Notan is translated as light, dark and is used to refer to the balance and interaction of light and dark in a composition or design. To make these designs, students all started with a square of paper as they cut out shapes and place them outside the square and created larger symmetrical shapes for one side is white and the other side is black. Right over here, I think I love these colors here, is gadget prints. Second grade students were introduced to printmaking tools and then mixed tints and shades of the cool color family to create these experimental designs. They first mixed black with blue, green and violet to create shades of these colors. These colors were applied to the background using a brayer. Next students mixed white with these colors to create lighter tints. Students then completed their designs by printing using found objects. Moving over to here, we have fifth grade relief prints. Fifth grade students explored mark making and positive and negative space in these relief prints, which were inspired by nature. Students experimented with impressing a variety of marks in a thin styrofoam sheet in order to create visual texture. Since the final prints only use one color ink, students had to think about how to convey their ideas using only line and shape. And back here, very cool looking monsters, as you can see. First grade students read the book, Bye Bye, Big Bad, Bully Bug. I know it's adorable, by Ed Emberley. Ed Emberley is an award-winning writer and illustrator of over 100 children's books. This book was a perfect jumping off point for students to explore color, mixing, symmetry and collage as they created their own monsters. Very, very cool. Yes, and next we want to get to the exciting thing, exciting for us, I think. Right in our room today, we have the entire, I think, hockey team that spy ponders who just skated the way to victory. And I wasn't at the game. Actually, Paul is at the game, he's going to tell about it. But from everything I've heard, it was incredibly exciting and that you guys performed just admirably with great teammanship, really coming together as a team to support each other, really good sports. And I just heard so many positive things about you, not only as athletes, but as individuals and community members. And that's just a really great thing to hear. So I'm really excited. So Paul is going to talk about the game that he saw. I mean, how cool is this? I mean, the anxiety of going into overtime and then pulling it off with 15 seconds into overtime and turning anxiety into instant joy. I mean, we were down by that end of the rink, so we were able to see exactly what happened with that final goal. It was a thing of beauty. But it was pretty obvious that those guys from Central Catholic were big and they were hitting you really hard. And it didn't really matter because you just kept going at them and you kept getting up and you kept making smart plays and you kept working as a team. And you just maintain your momentum and did what it took to bring a victory back for you. And it goes, noticed that, first of all, this is only the third public school to win the super rate. It's incredibly difficult to beat teams that are able to recruit players and that we have a core group of seniors who stayed with Arlington High and played hockey at Arlington High. And that shows another real love for the town, love for your school and a real commitment to each other as a team. And it's that team commitment that obviously was the thing that made it happen. And I congratulate you and your coach for building that camaraderie and team. It was a lot of fun being down at the garden that Sunday night. And I hope this is something you'll have all your life is a tremendous achievement and something really fun and important that you did and know that you can keep on doing great things no matter what you choose to do. Thanks. So, uh, coach Missouri is going to come up and introduce players and we have a special Oh, say a few words, please. And we have a gift for you as well. Well, it was an exciting night. Um, you know, it was a great night for the community. Great night for our team. Great night for Arlington Athletics and Arlington High School. Um, one of the things that people probably don't realize is, you know, it's great being the coach, but you need such a support system around you. And we appreciate everything. The school committee's done for athletics over the years. Um, Dr. Bodie's been great. They think this is our third championship together back in Winchester when she was on school committee. We want a couple back then and I was the Winchester coach. Um, we had great support from our principal, our athletic director throughout. So, you know, one thing as a coach is you want to just be given the tools to be able to perform and do your job. And, you know, the support system is outstanding and we appreciate that very much so. So thank you very much. Um, I'm going to go ahead and introduce the team one at a time. They go up, get the hats. Can I beg your, uh, Dr. Bodie would want to say a couple words as well. I also want to say that, um, it requires great leadership and I want to thank you for the leadership and the mentoring that you've done for all of our students. It's been, you've done an excellent job and we're very proud of all of our students. I think one of the things I was really proud about at the game, besides the fact it was so exciting and you won. When, when, at the very beginning of the game, you stood as a team while they were calling out names and you went up together. I mean, that, that, that symbolic gesture said so much to me about, about how you feel about each other. So, you've learned a lot of lessons and these are all huge, great life lessons and you've had a great role model. Um, and I hope that, um, we continue to have such success and thank you for your, for your work with us. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, we'll introduce, um, I'll introduce, I'll mention a little bit how great our school system is by bragging about where the seniors are going to school when they introduce them. Oh, please do that. Um, Shane Helian, Shane, you go up and get your hat. He's going to Wentworth. Um, Sean Tomashevsky is going to St. Anselm's. Peter Schesherig is going to Phillips Exeter Academy. Michael Mazzie is in at Providence, is currently under contract negotiations with them. Um, Michael Karan has many options and just hasn't made a decision yet. Kevin Ouellette is going to Phillips and over. Johnny Piggett is, uh, going to Tilton Academy. Uh, and Jeffrey McDonald is going to Deerfield Academy. So, you can see that our school system along with our athletics was really very good with this class. Yeah, slow down. She's running, falling behind on the hats. That's great. You know what, they can just grab it. It's a Justin. Yeah. They'll figure it out. Um, then we had a junior Michael Callahan, junior John Massey, junior Indar Goley, Jack Pernod, junior Anthony Sanoswasso, sophomore Max Perkel, sophomore Mark Dacorsi, sophomore Joe Schesherig, sophomore Joel Hanley, sophomore Dara Kanely, sophomore Cameron Ryan, sophomore AJ Leosa, freshman Tyler Callahan, freshman Ryan Davies, freshman Brendan Piggett, freshman Brendan Jones, freshman Anthony Missouri, freshman Andrew Malatesta, um, assistant coach and graduate of the class of 83 and one of our all-time great players, Scott Jones. And then last but not least, um, I don't even know to call him our trainer or equipment manager, but Johnny Fredericks has been part of the Allington High Program since 1978. He has been here every year continually since 1978. So last but not least, Johnny Fredericks. So that was, that's our team, couple of guys are missing and we'll take those. Yes. We'll take the other hats with us. The hat for all of the volunteers that it helped you, helped your program. We'll grab them all. Good. So we still have some exciting events. Thank you. We still got to go to the state house for a day. Nice. Great. We got a float for the parade and the red socks just invited us to join them at home plate to be on it on May 2nd. All right. It's all good. Well, uh, wear your hats. Yeah. We'll wear our hats to the red socks. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Is there a picture? Yeah. All right. We're gonna get a picture, right? Of the everybody. Yeah, you can come. Yeah, you want to stand up? You want to stand up and then you want to stand up? All right. Stand up. Would you mind standing up for the picture? With the hats. Great. Awesome. Come on, coaches. Yeah. And the coach. Yes. They're better. Sit on the people in front. People in front could sit. iPhone. Yeah, that's it. Everybody else stand. Yeah. I know it works better. Smile. Pretend you're happy. They're happy. Yeah. They were happy or at the garden. They are happy. They're still they're still glowing. I'll see. See you all other faces. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. I think we're over. Paul, it's gotta get one more. All the time. That perfect. Paul, you just blew out the other one. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you're coming here tonight. Thank you. Thank you for taking the suit in the chair. Well, thank you. You've been a great leader. Thank you. Good luck with the uh yeah. It's going to be fun. All the other events. Thank you. We'll see all your white hats there. I know. It's supposed to be a surprise. What's happening? Good. Thanks, Peter. Congratulations. He's coming. He's here. Oh, sorry. Well, it'll be here shortly. Yeah. All right. Um, the next the next item is public participation. Do we? Yes. Okay. Great. First. They might have stolen some of your thunder. I don't know. Now I'm deciding. Yes, exactly. Speaking as a group. Uh well, yeah, actually individually. Individually. Okay. So you want three minutes each. You're saying. Hi, my name is Shelley Chabra. I am a resident of Arlington since 2010. I have a nine year old and a three year old currently in the system. Um I am speaking just as a first time participant. Um attended the vision 2020 education meeting and wanted to show um the effectiveness of that meeting for a first time participant because there's a lot to learn or a lot to I guess dig into to become a more aware and educated resident, especially with younger children in the public school system. So I want to be an effective um contributor. So as my first time, I thought that the layout and the format of the meeting was actually kind of brilliant. Um I've never been to a meeting like that where we enter and we get a list of sort of subject matters where we can choose the ones that resonate with us the most and then go to that table and speak directly to a teacher and kind of get the knowledge dump of what's on their mind and what they're innovating in the classroom. Um so just that mixture of sitting at a table with parents of all different age groups um and um kind of feeding off the energy of the teacher directly. It was just a really great first time experience for me. Um what was especially great was just the teacher for local government or government studies at the high school which was very excited to see what she was doing and actually wish that that happened at elementary and middle school level. So um so that was you know my reflection. I'm really interested in seeing more of this happen. Um that meeting could have been longer easily been longer. I would have stayed and learned more and um you know maybe even have a weekend event like that so that more parents could attend because I think there is an eagerness especially from younger parents to get um more visibility and more um sort of direct relatedness to the system. That's all I have to say. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Hi good evening. I'm Bill Fischalis and I am a uh a parent um of a fifth grader at Pierce and an eighth grader at the Audison and uh I'm also very pleased to be here tonight to talk about the innovations and curriculum night. Uh that first of all I'd like to give uh some credit to Dr. Cheson and the teachers who helped put it together that it really was uh a fantastic evening and I know a lot of effort went into that. Uh so thank you very much and uh I agree with everything that uh Shelly just said that uh of course uh there could have been more parents there uh but there was a fairly good showing uh I would love to see more things like that happening that it was a great opportunity to see some of the innovation that's happening in the district at all levels and that was also a wonderful thing about having um all levels there as well and not just focus on the high school or not just focus middle school or elementary school so I applaud that as well um and again I would love to see some more of those things happening uh and a lot more opportunity uh for uh for parents to see what's going on so thank you. Thanks Bill. So Scott Lever I have two kids at Bishop and uh I also wanted to say thank you to to Dr. Cheson in particular for organizing and to the curriculum leaders and the other teachers and administrators who participated. It was a great evening and as a sort of co-participant and co-organizer with Vision 2020 I think the feedback was very consistently strong and positive from the parents and we're hoping that we'll be able to do this event again um with you um so it it really represented the school and everything that you're doing very well um I had the chance to attend three sessions and each one of them was great I took specific things away from each of the three so I had a chance to sit with the computer science leader from the high school Dan uh in one session and I was um really impressed with how that program has grown in the last few years and the really innovative and interesting things that they've added to that curriculum so taking it far beyond a very basic computer science class um so that's very encouraging and it was also encouraging to hear the Dan's the demand for Dan's Dan's courses outstrips the capacity um so that was really fantastic to hear and he's a real treasure um I also had a chance to sit with the sixth grade social studies teacher uh from uh from from the autism and learn a little bit about the way that she's personalized the classroom and and that was fantastic absolutely fantastic and and absolutely consistent with the things that we've talked about in Vision 2020 I also had a chance to sit with the math curriculum leader and the thing I took away from that one was I'm going to have a lot of catch-up work to do because of the changes in the math curriculum since I went to school so and and that's a great challenge so I I have a book on order for that so overall it was a great night and we I think all wanted to say thank you for doing that and taking the time we know that the teachers took personal time and and put a lot of energy into it and it really showed a couple other quick points regarding Vision 2020 so there are a couple of follow-up items that are on our agenda and I think it would be helpful if we could maybe talk about a more fuller debriefing with you we have made some progress on on the principles and qualities of what it means to be educated in the community and we'd like to share that with both the school committee and the school administration and get your feedback and and your insight on that and we also would like to simultaneously reach out to the community and get more input and more support for those ideas as well so so to get a broader base of support for that the other thing which I want to mention is Dr. Cheson has been generous to to agree to do a session in June and we're still deciding a date June 6th or the 13th for a special focus on the the potential curriculum at Gibbs so we know that's a work in progress but it'll be a great chance to have an early conversation about the direction that's heading in so thank you great thank you very much so our next item on the agenda we'd like to introduce the candidate for the chief financial officer yeah please come to the table them so there's a microphone there and so just when you answer just speak into the mic so let me talk about the structure of what we should we're going to do I want Dr. Bodie and Dr. Allison Ampe to talk a little bit about the process of that the the committee that was making the selection what they went through and and then we're just going to go around and have each school committee member ask questions great so Dr. Bodie we we posted the position and soon after that we put together a search committee which I think is important to to mention the least the position titles of the people that were on that committee because it was a large committee and representing a lot of the people that the cfo would be interacting with on a regular basis in addition to myself a superintendent we had Dr. Allison Ampe as representing the school committee we had the controller for the town the deputy town manager the chair of the finance committee payroll manager our director of hr the director of special education the district's director of grants and title one consultant to the business office who is a former cfo herself the director of technology for town and schools and the director of facilities for town and school so it's a fairly a large group representing all of some of the key functions that make this both town and school work so well um we we received a number of applications and one of the things that I don't think that some people understand properly from the business world is that we are required to have a candidate is required to have certification through the department of education so basically it became two two groups of candidates those that did have certification and those that did not and we we're only went forward with those that were there was also some prereference checking and we were ready to interview four candidates right just about the time we were beginning the interviews one of the candidates notified us that he had accepted another position so we had three candidates all of which were very skilled terrific backgrounds I think presented very well to the committee and Dr. Allison Ampe can talk a little bit more about that too and and the process but you know we were very fortunate to have some very good candidates and tonight we're you know presenting Mr. Denizio as a as a as a recommendation for this position yeah so I don't want to say too much because I'm a little bit confused about what I can say and what I can't say to preserve confidentiality but it was it was a large group it was very congenial we had a list of questions that we went through for each candidate I thought they were going to be here but I don't see them we have we would go around robin style and each candidate was asked the same questions and I think the questions were good ones there were certain ones which made it really clear which directions that we wanted to go and I'm not sure what else I can say without just I guess a little bit about the process so when did you guys start the process and when let uh Mr. Speaker speak to that sorry this was posted a couple months ago on school spring and I can actually tell you the exact day in a minute so you know in a couple months time you know when Ms. Johnson had announced that she was leaving soon after that we we moved to to post it it was actually posted on school spring on January 20th so you know it's been a couple months since it was posted and taking time to get applications in and then figure out how you put the committee together and go through the candidates and decide who to bring in for interviews and schedule that so so actually just a question what's everybody able to meet with all the top candidates or is that because it's such a large group that's great yeah um and then there's a vote taken I assume right in addition to that um Dr. Alson ampy also went through all of the read all the applications as we did as well so she saw all of the candidates who had applied for the position yeah I read both stacks and actually found one that was in the not qualified and belonged in the qualified so pushed that one through and and stuff so okay thanks okay so I'm gonna actually just uh we're gonna go down the row and I'm gonna actually start with um Mr. Cardin yes okay so um one of the things that I'm interested in oh we did I'm sorry I I just realized that we actually we intended for you to make a statement first before we do questions that's okay I just I just for it's a now you have time to think so sorry um would you would you mind just telling us a little bit about your background what attracted you to Arlington um you know what you are excited about about the position stuff like that thank you thank you for having me um so currently I'm in I work in Winchester as the director of finance for the Winchester public schools similar role and and before that I was doing the same in Salem and that was my first job on this on the school side of municipal before that I had worked in Wooburn as the um uh deputy auditor a budget manager for the city of Wooburn and while I was doing that I worked on a bunch of projects with the school business manager or assistant assistant superintendent of finance in in Wooburn and short in short order I realized that that was the place to be if you were going to work in the municipal um you know that's where all the exciting stuff was happening so I then got certified and and went over and then started looking for a school business manager job so that's what attracted me to this field what attracted me to Arlington was when I saw the job posted I remember Tony March who's here now helping helping you guys out I had told me when this comes up you should look at it I think it'd be a good match and it's a it's a good spot so you know that piqued my interest I looked at it a little bit and I thought geez it's a you know it's a little bigger it's got more buildings it's you know more kids the bigger budget it's nice and close to home I just live a couple towns away so that's that's really what piqued my interest and as I dug a little deeper and and talked to some more people and did some more research I saw what an exciting time it is for the Arlington public schools with with everything going on in the the enrollment growth um the amazing enrollment growth you've had and and the ongoing planned and potential building projects that are coming up you know it has the budget complexities that that we every town seems to have but uh that's that's what's the exciting stuff and as I went through the that's what got me to go to to think about Arlington and as I went through the process you know it really it really was clear that Arlington was the place to be for me it matched my skill set I think perfectly with having worked on complex budgets and cash trapped places and and extensive work and building projects that that's really what solidified it for Arlington for me thanks okay now Mr. Cardin great all right so my background before I went back to law school I was a management budget analyst for the federal government so part of what I had to do and what I think is partly missing from what we've done in Arlington is is sort of analyze trends and data and we have lots of data about you know fortunately one of the strengths of our prior CFO was generating lots of of data about the budget in in more detail than in a lot of communities provide but what was missing was sort of an analysis of the data and and you know where we're spending and why and how we compare to other towns and things like that so that's something that I'm interested in doing more of and I was wondering if that's something you've done in the past or something you feel qualified to do or having your your staff do it's not necessarily something the CFO needs to be bogged down with but something that the CFO should direct so a little bit not not not a lot of of experience doing that but certainly the you know it's in the skill set I think the important thing when you do that and when we have done a little bit of that in the places I've been was more of the where we spend this much more on this category really why and you know maybe it's appropriate and maybe it isn't and sometimes when something catches your eye like that and why you know for instance where I am with busing you would think it's shouldn't be as expensive as it is small as it is but you know when you when you look at it and it catches your eye and then you dig down a little deeper and understand why that's the case you feel more comfortable that okay we're spending in these areas but it's I think it's important to compare to other places but to really compare to yourself do we really need to be doing this sometimes there is a good reason why we spend more than somebody else on something so not a ton of experience doing it but a little bit and feel comfortable that I wonder if you could tell people about your approach to budgeting for zero bait sure so I my approach is always well at well after you we find out what the approach of the committee and the superintendent is but um rough to me I like to start as close to zero base as possible especially especially someone coming new into a position it's very helpful for that person to to get to know the who's and why's of of each of the budget lines I think it's important for to go through the exercise for for everybody to to see really in detail what you're spending in the why just just like we just talked about oftentimes you you start with all intentions of doing that and you you stray a little bit which you know on the personnel side might be okay but on the expense side maybe you want to stay the stay the course a little bit so it's it's getting the from my approach is to stay the course as much as you can but be able to work with everybody to make sure the process is moving forward and where we're getting the information we need and that it's the information that the committee wants superintendent wants that that's best for everybody that's the shooter makers it's your sleeping it's good to meet you I know that what Winchester is just completing their high school project we're entering the feasibility study right now could you tell us what you think we have to look forward to in the process of rebuilding this building what your role in this would likely be vis-a-vis your experience in Winchester and maybe what a timeline to completion might be sure so what you have to look forward to is is you know the the the fun part of feasibility is which you will probably have the same problem we had is where do you put it where do you put the building and you'll probably do what we did and look at a lot of places and realize it's got to go where it is and how can we do that and that typically comes with a phased occupied renovation which sounds as complicated as it is and I think what I could bring in to the table for that is having been through it the lessons learned and what to think of ahead of time and just how to you know when we should be thinking of logistical things or you know swing space items I think I think I could help in that area timeline looking at the I think you have four separate buildings here and if you if it was phased occupied Renault with I'm sure in addition you I think you'd probably be looking at four phases to it or maybe five so that could be six years maybe thank you Mr Starks uh no questions Mr Hader could you tell us your background and uh plans for munis so I'm glad someone asked that question so I've got to talk about munis a lot in my a few hours I've spent here so I like that I have extensive background in munis since they used it in each of the three places I worked and for for me one of the benefits that I have is from working on both sides on you know the city side and on the school side to being able to be more involved in in setup and rights and privileges on the city side and you know building account structure and and things like that and then on the school side with reporting I do a lot of of professional development or training of our clerical staff and principals and directors on how to produce reports the reports that they need um you know some and they're all different some may have some may want a detailed report that has all the info in it some may want a snapshot some may just want account by account with a bottom line um and they're all pretty easy to do at when you know how you do how to do it so I think with munis we talked a little bit here about some of the possible changes to make here with uh encumbering payroll with it being such a large part of every school budget that that's I think necessary to make sure you're encumbering payroll that's a process I've been through twice uh from you know we we do it now but from start to finish I think I could really help with that may I follow up just real quick we're going to do another round okay fine okay mr. Thielman so thanks very much and welcome my my question is we had a our cfo our previous event cfo did a great job one issue she brought up was the number of meetings with town committees town bodies and that's sort of that I just want to see if you've given some thought to that that works within your schedule I appreciate the question and I think the superintendent I had a long conversation about that and was made very clear the expectations of this position and I'm well aware of that okay thank you um actually it's sort of related um so the cfo position is a unique position because you have to manage a lot of different relationships right so there's these cross relationships with town officials and um town staff um you're managing up with you know you're managing down so if you can just talk a little bit about your management style sure so I think um another unique opportunity I had and in all three places I went there was a strange relationship between at least one department uh in the department I went to work for so being able to to help establish rebuild or maintain relationships I think is a is a pretty good strength of mine working my for my management style I think it's you know can be summed up in one word collaborative I'm you know I always want to hear from as many people as possible I think that's the only way to make the right decisions and in in the end do what's right for kids which is what we all want to do uh I think I'm very easily and approachable um you know I think I'll uh you know if I keep going it'll sound like the buzz words that you just read off the card they have meaning but I know they get over used okay we're gonna do another round you don't have to ask another question but we're just gonna start Mr. Cardin sure I I guess um as far as career progression this this position while it's a different community a slightly larger community it's not a whole lot different from your your current position so I guess I'm wondering where you see yourself going do you do you envision you know trying to get more educational experience and becoming more of a general assistant superintendent or is your heart set on on staying the numbers guy what do what do you sort of drives this your your long-term plans I think the this position fits my skill set uh and this really what I like to do I think I think um coming here will allow to to maybe be more strategic in the approach and in a little bit uh less hands-on um to some degree just with it being a larger district you can't just have one person doing all that you know I see myself being in this position you know for the long term you know business manager CFO that sort of thing I don't have any aspirations for being a superintendent having worked at work for five of them I see how hard their job is thanks Dr. Allison I wonder if you could talk about your approach to budgeting for special education for special ed bless you here so I I think I talked about this in our interview about how special ed budgeting process never ends you know from from preparing presenting and then the hard part maintaining it's you know it's a it's a 18 month cycle we we talk about uh or 18 month marathon I think it's the most volatile obviously for for um of budget lines but I think our approach is to be as conservative as you can um when you're predicting expenses and staffing and especially with out of district placements and transportation um to be as conservative as you can but you still have to be realistic and know that there's not an endless supply of resources and I think it works well to we I spend a lot of time with the special ed director uh and her and her staff getting into staffing about caseloads and and and ta's and probably more than they'd like me to get involved and who's attached to an IEP and why and um but it's it's mostly just to make sure that we're we're um not missing anything and and we're going to have the the fewest amount of things prop crop up on us throughout the year thank you mentioned sleeping I noticed in your resume and application you were talking about your skill set in terms of managing the SIS you're a an Aspen guy right uh and you're talking about munis um and one of the issues that we have in town is sort of the integration of of of the finance operations in the town side and the school side and so there are all these natural barriers to information which tend to crop up um how do you envision sort of putting all this together at least on our side of the street in terms of having an integrated relationship between RSIS and munis and town side stuff and the other things we need to do so I I think that the the town side munis and school side munis um it's critical for them to be integrated for everybody to you know to have have confidence in their in their reports they're getting are accurate you know coming from one place and having the town side be able to have access and I have to ask and and be able to keep an eye you know see what's reporting that they need um as as far as SIS for for staffing uh with with munis I haven't had um integrated staffing from from SIS to munis uh in any of the districts I've been in I've mostly mostly been you know munis to excel excel to munis I think works well and we have had I've had a little bit of experience with time and attendance um integration and not not great experience but but some experience um so I I think more crucial munis to munis town and school and have experience with that not so much on the SIS to munis side but I think can be done I'm just not sure how crucial that is so which platform are you doing your state reporting in Winchester so we're so state reporting for on the sim stuff is is from Aspen. Mr. Arcst? Okay Mr. Hanna. How would you feel about teaching a school committee member about munis? Anytime. Thank you. I think all my questions have been answered. And I just want to emphasize um which I think Mr. Cardin um is that in the next few years it is going to be really important that we tell a story about our budget you know budgets really reflect our values they also reflect our constraints our limitations you know what we can and can't do um and I think we've done a better job in the last few years of getting that story across um but I think that's going to be even more crucial in the next few years sort of to tell that story so that's more of a statement I'm sorry um I agree good yeah uh Mr. Athone. So I move that we select John Denizio as our chief financial officer and that we enter into negotiations. Contract negotiations. Later after the and close the regular business tonight or? Well we enter negotiations negotiations. Actually the question is we are part of it. We authorize the superintendent to enter into negotiations. Very good yeah I'll second that motion. All right thank you for the line. Okay and I don't think we have to specify the time uh Mr. Schliffman. I'm very pleased to support this uh nomination um obviously when you have a candidate coming from a neighbor in community you get a lot of information about a candidate and everything that I've heard about Mr. Denizio is of a very highly competent administrator who develops good personal relationships with with other folks uh uh in town and within the school department um his answer to the night meeting question was it was uh music to our ears and indicates an understanding of the kind of community we are and uh and a willingness to play in a community that thrives on citizen involvement. I envision him having a long and successful career with us. Mr. Hinner. I support you and I really appreciate uh what you've done and what we're hoping you're going to do and looking forward to working with you but I would like to go on record that the negotiations is uh not just an approval part of the school committee it's an active part of the school committee so I think I would feel more comfortable in bifurcating this and going forward with the nomination and potentially for the discussion on the negotiations. So I offer that as an amendment. I'm actually I'm unclear about can you just spell out what you. What I'm asking is to separate this two parts of this motion one is to uh nominate for approval the second part is to enter into negotiations I'd ask the committee as an amendment to separate the two and two motions if you would. Okay so there's a motion on the table but we're going to consider that one as well. I can I can reword it we don't want to do that without being easier so fine you can withdraw and just reword it. But actually I'm I'm I'm I'm clear because what happened to approve it but not to go into negotiations would be weird. I I I want to discuss the process of negotiation I'm support the nomination I support the hiring I support the concept of negotiations but the process right now is just the superintendent. Oh that's my issue so I want to discuss that part of it that's all. Okay um so do you want to draw your motion? Do you want? redo it um that that's fine I mean we're probably do you want what do you know here's the question would you reread the motion please on that I have it moves that the school committee accepts the recommendation of john as a CFO and authorizes the superintendent to enter negotiations right okay yeah I I yeah I if I may I find that limiting that's all well okay okay I okay I think I understand why you're finding it limiting in that the agency is actually in charge of the negotiations because it's our position yes okay so we can write so there was actually some discussion I mean we can authorize someone on myself and we can say authorize I mean the thing is is that we're collegial but we do so I think just we just accept go for the nomination and then can and get the guy off the hook for that part of it and and then we can talk about I'm going to move that we when we throw the motion I'm going to move that we hire john denizio as our chief financial officer that we support successful negotiations we support the recommendation yes and I will say okay I will second that I'll write it later okay uh to approve the higher subject to successful negotiation yes prove the higher subject to successful negotiation and put his name in I'll second that okay okay so um so let's all in favor I I post okay so that's unanimous okay so now we have to need a second motion right no I think that we are we're subject to negotiations that we can discuss that okay I misunderstood I misunderstood okay exactly exactly okay I misunderstood the constraint okay great obviously we're going to negotiate we don't want to discuss I'd like to ask one more question any second thoughts after what you've just no no we're a good crew we just we like to talk we like to talk I mean you gotta be honest so thank you johnny good thank you very much thank you thank you cool guy okay we should have done that first before we ask so um okay so the next item uh we looking at the approval of the principal gives job description this is the one that came before us last time it's now been amended um and so we want to take a look at it and see if there's any other further concerns mr. hanner uh just a point at the uh dealing with the the transition part for the person I think it's important for us to realize that the stipend it needs a job description for that stipend that's all what would be expected of this person during this year and things of that nature before we as we and I would ask the job description and a recommended amount for us to to ponder um may I continue um under qualifications my question I guess is to uh the superintendent because the superintendent and our designees are going to be these qualifications are all these qualifications to be a candidate or a summit is do you see flexibility and if so could you identify those and I that may not be the answer is yes I mean there's preferences but it'll depend upon who applies um I we certainly want to see some teaching experience right the first one a master's degree or higher from a credit college I don't see that much flexibility in that as far as administration and things of that but you have to have a master's degree to be an administrator fine so that that wouldn't be um down number four previous administrative experience required is there a minimum do you have a minimum one year five years we did not put a minimum in there I know you didn't I'm asking I'm trying to understand to me that's very open ended do you have a minimum in your head but my assumption is that it would be a current administrator in the district uh applying so it would have administrative experience and my last issue is down under terms of employment uh I have no problem with the concept of 12 month position but five weeks vacation I know that's standard for right now but that to me belongs in the contract not in a job description necessarily vacation and holiday being specific of five weeks that's my opinion that I don't see that as a deal no it is part of contract negotiations right and I'm just saying in the job description 12 month position should be a job description specifics on on things like that I don't think should belong in a job that's my opinion that's in in fact I don't think that we've done that before is put benefits yeah I mean I usually would say on uh school spring posting you know competitive benefits or something that belongs in a job description not the specific okay so right thank you I agree that's good thank you anyone else questions concerns mr. Sliffin yeah where are we on the odyssey search well let's get through this no no no no no no no no no no no no the reason why is that I expressed at the previous meeting that I wasn't ready to move forward here without really being firm on the odyssey search uh so that's why I'm asking how I forgot how's the odyssey search we are continuing the search is a short answer to to that we do not have re candidates that we put forward that has been how we've done principal searches and there's good reasons for it even just seen with the cfo things can change and it just happened in past searches in the district where we've had people withdraw for personal reasons for taking another position and so we when we go forward into a finalist in in every principal job that we've uh we've advertised and done searches for we have three candidates we do not have three we are continuing to search it's open-ended we haven't we never put a closing date on um on school spring and I believe that there are another round of interviews coming up in the next week or so okay so I move approval of the gibbs principal job description second okay okay so um move I should say one second by mr. hainer um further discussion I know right by I I'll I'll abstain in that I don't think we're ready to go forward if we don't have the odyssey resolved got it okay um all in favor aye aye opposed saying okay so two abstentions mr. Mr. Schlickman uh everyone else um in favor and um I should take the opportunity to welcome jillian keys um our AA rep um sorry we didn't do that earlier um okay so so in the next item on the agenda the uh director of guide guidance job description all right so this is an updated um and new kind of job description we've had in the past directors of guidance and wellness and um the focus of this position would be obviously guidance services in the district um guidance counseling and all other types of counseling social emotional supervising social workers adjustment counselors um really leading district effort in conjunction with other professionals in conjunction with the superintendent assistant superintendent director of special ed would be heavily involved in working with this individual on the areas of social emotional learning which is a big focus of the district and our teachers and social workers guidance counselors psychologists people in the district who work on this and to really put together a cohesive curriculum on social emotional learning and continue what we've what we've already started some some good work in the district um this position would also be someone who would have sort of the leadership expertise to lead the department both the you know guidance department in the high school and middle school and um lead social work social workers in the district and really be able to to lead and guide professional development activities for these groups and to supervise them in um and evaluate them and which is really um something that we're looking for someone with that kind of expertise to do because we have in the past couple been very lean in this area we have um not had um you know to because of you know budget constraints and other reasons we've principles the system principles have taken up the the duty of um supervising evaluating guidance counselors in the district and um they've done a good job doing that but we really are looking to move move this uh this area forward and have someone with um the more subject matter expertise to evaluate these people and to lead the the initiatives can you give me a sense are other districts of our size do they have this position are we a leader in this are we behind in this Kathy and Laura might know more than I do about that but well first of all we had this position right right um what we've done is we've reframed it to include SEL uh I think that I know for example one of the leaders in this area of of SEL education is Reading and yes they do have a in that district they have somebody that's just simply SEL and not responsible for guidance I think that every district tries to do um a hybrid and which is exactly what we're doing this year we have people from um different schools a director of special ed another special education coordinator principal we have people that are coming together to do this work um and it but each of them have their own jobs which are in themselves fairly intense and time-consuming positions so what we need is someone that's going to coordinate that effort and we have not had a director of guidance um uh for a number of years now and um this is something that we believe that we need to to put in again our numbers are growing and the one thing you can see when you do an analysis of growth while our enrollment is growing our number of teachers are growing the number of administrators have not all right um questions comments mr carton uh yes so I have no doubt that of the need for the position but just a question on the the description so the social workers are primarily or a large portion of their time is IEP driven special education so don't see anything in here about the relationship with the director of special ed and and how the director of special ed will have some supervision over the social workers or how all that would would work well I'm not sure that this is all social workers in the district I think that your point is well taken um currently at the elementary level there's a hybrid uh the school social worker who also works with gen ed students as well special education students are supervised by the principal whereas program social workers are are supervised by a coordinator in special education and we have a sort of a similar kind of hybrid um situation at the secondary level I think the intent of this and there may be maybe some uh crossover but certainly the social workers who have have both responsibilities I think this is something that we will work out I um and in fact one of the things that happens when we set up our evaluations we frequently have two evaluators a primary and a secondary and I suspect that that kind of relationship will occur here because there's people in content areas we want to help um supervise and we also want the people working closely with them at at the elementary level the principal works every day with the social workers so perhaps that person is a the principal one and those are things that we'll we'll figure out I don't think we have it in black and white right now great Ms. Elmer has spoken to me about this she does want to be heavily involved with this position you know in terms of whether you know she would be what we have it in the job description that the assistant superintendent is the supervisor because the assistant superintendent you know really supervisors all all the curriculum leaders in the district and uh what the other districts have a model where they have a director of student support services where this might fall under that and if um you know if we had we don't have that model here where if we did then that director could supervise this but um that may be something to consider in the future but she would be and is interested in being heavily involved and and work with whoever takes this position to coordinate social workers and social emotional learning great thank you oh actually uh Ms. Keith I just oh yes of course I'm sorry to interrupt I do have a question a lot of our students who are on 504s are supervised by guidance counselors directly um and there is a lot of work so our coordinating particularly transitions for students who are in 504s would coordinating all of that be something that would fall under this leadership position as well uh do you want to yeah I'm 504 coordination for the district just comes out of my office and right now this is not one of the um job um on the job responsibilities for this individual even though I don't um supervise those folks if there's a problem with 504 the team and the parent disagrees for whatever reason then it can be appealed to my office so that's how it's handled right now again it's it's not so black and white the person here probably would be more on the hands as a as a consultant somebody that would support guidance counselors who are involved in that but at the same time then there is somebody who is the coordinator for the district we actually you know this is something that we debated as to whether this person would take this on and and it's very possible that this could grow to that um we had some concern that we'd not overload this job position right at the onset and we'll just see how uh as you know only too well we we're always re-evaluating and and adjusting as as circumstances dictate great Dr. Allison Ampe um two questions first who does the evaluations right now for the people that would now later be done by the director of guidance I'm wondering whose loads are being lightened so it's one of the deans at the high school is evaluating the guidance counselors at the high school one of the assistant principals at the middle school is evaluating the guidance counselors at the middle school and then the principals are evaluating the social workers in their building and then as Dr. Brody said the guidance the special ed coordinators are evaluating the special ed social workers um in their buildings or the buildings that they they have oversight for um so I don't know if I'm missing anybody who is evaluating so we would take those evaluation load that part of the evaluation loads off of the dean and the assistant principal and really that um this person would be um primary for the guidance counselors in both high school and middle school um and then we'd work figured out as you know shared uh evaluation responsibility for the social workers in the building based social workers right we also as I said we have this uh primary and secondary it's very well they may have the primary I think that we also want the system principals and principals to be part of the evaluation system for everybody in their building so they may take on an observation um and this is something that we've worked with the union laying this out so it's very clear at the beginning of the year exactly who is being supervised and who's the secondary it's it's quite it's quite systematic um then my other question was whether in their performance responsibilities I'm wondering if there's any point to having something mentioned made of applying for grants or or anything because that's this area I mean the social mission it seems to be right now where a lot of grants right are and just it seems like that would be something that this person would be in a really good position I mean with the knowledge base that you're asking for would be in a really good position to do that um so that was just the thought when we've gone for grants generally the first person they'll talk to is Julie Dunn who is our one her among her many titles that's her role and and when we've gone for a very big grants and we've been quite successful for example project success that would pretty much qualifies an SEL grant that was involved lots of people working on that grant um but then one person has to have primary responsibility and that's usually uh Julie other questions coming Miss Rainer no yes um I'll put the uh under the qualifications I'm concerned of the potential of a person coming on board that has a master's in education um and then going down further possesses a desi license as a supervisor and a director wouldn't have the basic qualifications those are two of the things that you have in other words I could come in with a master's in education not say not related to the issue here and be qualified under number one and number two have a license as a supervisor director without specifying in the year I'm just concerned about that I'm sharing that with you up above um and number one it says related field could that be somebody that had speech pathology master's in speech or something like that it's possible um I'm just nervous with such broad terms that's all I think when we put the qualifications we're looking at the totality of the qualifications and so you know if you took an ideal candidate and I don't know I mean we'd have you know a master's in education counseling or or social work and have worked as a social worker or guidance counselor in a school district for several years gotten administrator license I mean those kinds of that progression is what we're looking for I appreciate that I'm just looking I'm not asking you to write such a job description you don't have the purest person coming but some of the broader terms you're going to end up getting people that you have to take the time read it and say they don't make it well that's all I'm saying I under related fields that they wouldn't apply for no they would apply but in reality a degree in education a degree in supervision that doesn't suspect that always happens no matter what right but I'm just okay uh down under number seven demonstrated in-depth knowledge of social and emotional learning I had to get to number seven to get to the emotional part the social and emotional part the emphasis is mainly on guidance and things of that nature up to that point and then number ten is the next one social and emotional learning my biggest concern uh is asking this person to do all of this and including supervision of clerical people as well in a 205 day part well there's only two clerical people who would be involved there's one I just added that yeah even if you took those out this is uh not only an awful lot of work but to me the social and emotional part should be in my mind the driving factor going forward right now this is a major concern and dealing with our children at all grade levels and stuff and in 205 days I think this should be a year-round job especially with the part where we're talking about having this person provide program research and provide programs and provide PD and all sorts of things to build these programs and make them work I think this is asking an awful lot and I'd be very concerned if we go forward with the 205 day position I would ask us at this time next year to truly evaluate this and find out if we've made the progress and and the help with the kids that we were trying to deal with in this uh Mr. Schluppen second meeting in a row where we're making sausage at the table it would be my recommendation for any future job descriptions we run it through subcommittee first fine I just have there's just a a typo in here so uh it's where the districts focus on college and career readiness so this is in the job job goals between district focus and college yes so I mean I'm comfortable with this job description and I'm comfortable approving it tonight I think the district can take the comments that were made and improve it but I think it's I think it's for me it's it's approval ready I don't I don't really want to spend more time on this so I'm going to move we approve the job description uh for director of guidance social emotional learning second seconded by Dr. Alison Ampe um okay uh more discussion we're ready to vote okay all in favor hi hi opposed hi hi okay um so it's six to one okay six to one uh okay uh next item hey we're we're ahead of schedule don't say that is that going to jinx it yeah yeah it's like no one in January should say something like oh the snow renewable budget is doing well because every time someone makes that comment two weeks later we get snow tomorrow so no one should ever make that kind okay so uh the next item agenda um I just wanted to uh we want to have a more robust discussion it seemed like last time on the uh town warrant article uh to make this a sanctuary town or a trust fund town there's different languages used that I know not a trust fund trust act and I understand this distinction I don't know the distinction maybe someone else does um but but just seemed like there was a desire to have a more robust uh conversation so we put it on the agenda tonight um have that conversation because it was brought up as one of the articles for our discussion well just do we think we should vote on it there seemed to be there was a desire to talk about this so I wanted to put it on and we we decided wasn't on the agenda last time that we should put on it was also a I don't know whether consensus but discussion whether the school committee would actually come with I look at policies and other districts and stuff and devise a policy for our own so that's what brought in the discussion all right so actually there are two sort of issues here right so one issue is what is our reaction to um what's going on at town meeting and the town meeting is going to vote on right and then the second question is do we as a school committee want to take any action via resolution via policy change um to show our students that they are safe and supported so I think those are sort of two questions they're related but um but yeah let me get Dr. Alson and I had thought that this was going to go to policy I was confused it so so there's two things it was going to the policy policy hasn't met yet um and so what so so I thought and there was a desire to have a discussion last time which we said let's table it to this time so that's why we put it on the agenda but but you're absolutely right the policy was going to look at they haven't met yet so I thought maybe we can give guidance of policy if we want to yes mr. Hannah if you all got a copy the end of the and know us on the trust resolution at the bottom of the trust resolution there is a um a piece it ends be it further resolved that nothing in this resolution shall be construed to prohibit any town agency a department for providing another law or enforcement agency information required to be provided by a state of federal including us code uh eight us code section 1373 that code specifically says all the things that does not require my feeling is every time I've communicated with the police and I'll get to the education part of it the police department has stated that we they are already they do absolutely nothing beyond what this the resolution is going to provide the resolution has no enforcement capability the police do not give out free information on anybody including immigrants or any non-citizens the school side there are massive state regulations and laws prohibiting the dissemination of any records about any student or their family without a warrant now if somebody wants to and I'm not trying to be sarcastic and I apologize to anybody that takes offense to this it's not my intent this country has a history about uh not obeying laws uh at the beginning of our country because they felt that the civil disobedience this resolution does not suggest that if a somebody comes to the police department and asks for copies of existing records they don't have to give them without a warrant we don't give anything without a warrant so my concern is the possibility as far as it might be federal money being denied us because we've put a label on us that's my concern Mitch you're sleeping uh there's uh every possibility that uh federal money is going to evaporate no matter what we do um every time I turn around there's a new budget proposal to starve cities and towns and social programs uh this is a statement of what we do now this is a statement of what our police department is doing right now and the resolution that's coming before town meeting does talk about the police department now the latest statement out of the trump administration has been that they will go after certain public safety grants that may or may not exist anyway um the arguments that were made in public were that were about to build a new high school and we wouldn't want to lose federal money well there's no federal money there uh but the most important thing I think for us is our obligation to keep our students safe and not only is it an obligation to keep our students safe but it is an obligation for us to communicate to all members of our community that we are intent on keeping them safe the real issue before us which has been stated on the other side of the street is that the police department wants to maintain an environment in which people can talk to them without any fear ice went in today in Lawrence and arrested people who were coming for routine interviews in in the immigration office it's getting nutty out there we don't do business that way uh the biggest threat in terms of violence in any community such as this is usually a domestic incident or an incident involving somebody you know and somebody who is worried about immigration may not take the steps to protect themselves or their family this is a common sense public safety resolution that not only expresses what we're doing but it also tells each and every one of our neighbors that we're going to be standing with them as a town meeting member I intend to vote for this because the question of what happens to the schools if we adopt this resolution and the the Trump administration somehow comes after our money I think is really a non-issue for a couple of reasons first of all any federal money we get is being dispensed by the state we don't get the money directly from the federal government secondly if the if the national administration is going after communities they're going to be going after far bigger communities with a far bigger budget impact than us and there's going to be a lot of effort out there to defend the larger communities with a larger share of state and federal funding in case of a problem I think that because the question has been put before us what happens to the schools if this resolution is adopted I think that puts us in a position where we should be ready in town meeting to answer the question if it comes about now I've read the the proposed resolution by the select man this is not a radical resolution it's basically a statement of what we're already doing in a statement to our community that we are going to stand by you and we're going to protect you for that reason I'd like to move that the school committee endorse the select means recommended vote under this article second okay more comments mr. Cardin thank you so as a town meeting member I definitely will support this resolution but it doesn't address the schools at whatsoever and I don't think we should set the precedent of voting on matters that really have no direct relationship to the schools excuse me the second and last piece says be it further resolve the town meeting supports and encourage each town department and official from refusing to gather or disseminate information we are part of that that part of the resolution so it does affect us so so um so to to mr. Hardin's point I think one of the things that people in the community have seen it's a seen neighboring communities school departments school administration and school committees come out with very strong statements showing that they support children's showing that saying that children are safe in their communities and I think there's a little bit of ansiness and why why is Arlington not done that when all these other towns nearby have done a statement like that so um so this is why we thought at one point to send it to policy it's not clear I mean now that we're changing over I'm not sure when policy is meeting next so the question is whether we want to craft a statement as a school we have a motion on the floor yeah we've got to deal with that okay um okay mr schlitzman we have a notion on the floor we're actually to the chair's point uh that yes I mean the summerville resolution uh and the attached policy is something that requires more deliberation and that should go to a policy committee when we reconstitute ourselves but I think that in light of the fact that this resolution is before town meeting and we know what it is uh I think it's certainly within our domain to voice an opinion okay uh mr schlitzman so I I uh I take lens point the problem there's the the moderator is going to allow 10 minutes for each side to speak so it's going to be difficult for the school committee to get up and say much during the 10 minutes because I think you're going to prepare different speakers for both sides so there's a value in the school committee saying that we support the resolution and that that because many of us are town meeting members and that being stated prior to the meeting but that's no part of the meeting okay mr aner I would ask through the cheer how this resolution or any resolution would have prevented what happened in larnes today it wouldn't have well and and I'm just saying I think it's important for people to stand up for their beliefs I think it's very important and I applaud that my this a lot of people believe on one side that if we pass this this will open our doors to the town to every immigrant criminal I talked to some elderly at a building I'm serious they've taken it to one extreme another group honestly believes that if we don't pass this no immigrant would ever be allowed in the town this has no impact whatsoever and a lot of people are voting I think it's laudable that people want to support I want to tell every child in our community and every parent in our community we are not going to do anything different in the safety of their children and I mean that sincerely whether this resolution gets passed or doesn't get passed we're not making a decision on safety for our children we're making a statement and the statement is just what it is it's a group of words it has no impact one way or the other up or down thank you yes dr. Allison epi okay so part of the reason I was asking why it wasn't sent to policy first was that I feel there's some background that we haven't gotten here but since we were going to discuss it today I called up Joe Kira one of the select men to try and get some of the questions answered that I had so one question I had was just what's the goal of this you know why are why is it being proposed and what they're trying to suggest is to have town meeting support the police and policies that they're already doing but right now they're doing it because chief Ryan has decided to do it if you take chief Ryan out of the picture for whatever reason um they wanted to be sure that there's a directive from town of the sense of where we want to be going um and also to let people to let immigrants and other people around them understand what the expectation is of the police you know so that just to what mr. Schlickman said so that people are feeling comfortable going to the police not feeling like oh well the police are going to be the arm of the icing come and get you to speak to mr. Cardin's point whether or not this applies to the schools the schools have a role as a mandated reporter in terms of child abuse or teachers yes our mandated reports doesn't go to any government that's very private but doctor i'll say i'll be speaking my point is that this makes it clear to teachers or others that they needn't fear if they report a child who's they're not sure about for a proper opposite doctor i'll be on the floor doctor i'll be on the floor my point is if a teacher had a concern about a child who is an immigrant and their their they don't know but they're pretty sure it's not not you know illegal or whatever an accurate whatever undone um this i thought would make it more clear that even if the police are involved because of the abuse you know but as if it rolls down to that that the police are not then going to involve um ice and and stuff um i can see mr. hander's face so i'll wait i keep going um no but i'm saying that to me that is something that suggests that that we could do i think we may want to have our own separate whatever resolution okay um just a sec um thinking about the concerns the things that i've heard are mostly the funding i understand that you know it's funding is decreasing and stuff i think a lot of times people have been giving that concern short shrift i don't think that is fair to the people who are thinking that i think they're looking at five the right now there's five million dollars a year coming into the town and then if that goes away that blows a really big hole in the town's budget and that they're feeling like they can't handle the property tax you know the only way that we can increase the money is to get property tax and they're already feeling like they're short and they can't do it um i asked him how likely if they talked to town council and how likely it was felt that this would happen and it's basically if the administration follows the laws according to normal legal standards there's case law and stuff that would say no the problem is and the concern that people have is that this administration is not always following things the behavior is not always conforming to normal legal standards and so where do we go i don't know um i had i was concerned that some of this was being done so that we would sort of get the sanctuary town badge no i'm serious i i feel like that's some of the discussion is is like that and just you know let's just do this i found actually looking at the resolution and what it says much more compelling to me that it supports the point and that's why i asked us to get in it to know it's because i think that's really what we should be looking at for this right discussion um that it talks about what we're doing and what the expectations are of the police and and more about why we're doing it and um for those reasons i feel that it would be a reasonable thing for the school committee to support so i just want to add something i was at a um state hearing yesterday on um the statewide initiative to make a safe um state and um the funding issue came up um the consensus in that room was that it wouldn't pass constitutional muster that there was really really strong um case precedent specifically decided by roberts and scalia that basically said that the federal government doesn't have the power to claw back money um because the state refuses you know that there's a lot about separation of powers and the tenth amendment and um so i'm not saying that's not legitimate worry but there is a lot of discussion at the legal circles but whether that threat would pass any constitutional muster just the concerns that i'm hearing are that no it won't pass legal muster but in the meantime they're holding the check right right so yeah we still have two years or three years of five million dollar short right right and that's right i get it okay uh dr i mean dr body um had something to add um i what i want to add because the question is how does this affect the schools in terms of our role in a in a town that is a sanctuary uh city or town right now the schools do not ask for any documentation our only the only thing that we're really looking at our age and date of birth in terms of placement and if a student is coming from an out of state or another community really looking at grades and so it's and then residency um we do not in any way seek out that information and we certainly one we don't have the information and we are guided by very strong uh regulations by the federal government verbal laws that prevent us from releasing any information i think that you'd almost have to have a subpoena by a court in order to get any kind of information in fact i'm going to i'm in the process of writing a memo to all parents so that they are very clear about the role of schools in in this issue not sanctuary but in terms of immigration so and also providing some resources but um i i think it's more i don't want to really comment on the the the warrant article itself but in terms of the schools it it would not affect how we operate okay mr. Hainer dr. Boyd he covered most of it i would ask uh people that have concerns about records and reporting 603 uh code of massachusetts regulation 23.05 privacy and student records it is the most detailed way i mean what teachers administrators have to go through to to even consider releasing records to appropriate people as far as mandated reporting that is one of the most privacy-driven areas so that people are free to get to give that and anybody uh releasing those things uh those records to a non-qualified person the state gets all over it is massive punishing those people so i want to support our people i want our people everybody to feel safe and i agree with dr with uh with the chair said as far as the potential not being uh constitutional i just this particular resolution and i apologize i don't mean this to be insulting but it's a feel-good resolution it has no teeth it has no it gives no added protection to anybody if people want to do it fine i just want people to understand that it doesn't change the status of our students it doesn't change the status of our citizens okay dr ellison amy i just wanted to clarify i wasn't implying that anyone was releasing records to someone not qualified what i was saying was that it would if a if a teacher had concerns about a student who they suspected they didn't know but they suspected was um would fall into one of the categories that are at risk to me it would if they know that the directive from the town is not to involve ice and stuff to the police it would make it easier to start making referrals into that then if they felt like if you think about the opposite if our town has decided that it's going to join in and you know we're going to scoop everybody up um that teacher might feel torn about what's the best thing to do for the child because you know they can report the abuse but then the child might get picked up and that that's what i was trying to say i wasn't suggesting anything about release of records to appropriate i think we're ready to take a vote um so the motion on table by mr thielman second that mr schleckman sorry seconded by mr thielman that was it sorry yes um all in favor please say aye aye opposed no okay abstention abstentions okay one opposition one abstention okay um where are we at oh okay superintendent's report all right long report yes long report long report okay well first of all let's start with the update on school buildings projects um i think the most notable news this week is that steele is going up at thompson and um we've been waiting for this and we don't have yet a revised schedule but that is being requested to be available by next week but that is that's a good step forward today we had a meeting with the uh with a number of people in the district director dr chestin director of technology and um our architect and procurement people for stratton looking at the technology um that um we're going to purchase for that building as if you remember stratton as part of this renovation plan is going to be a one-to-one school and um what what was has been decided that wasn't decided today but what has been decided is that we're going to do ipads in k to two and then chromebooks three to five ipads k to two will be without keyboards chrome ipads with keyboards for grade three and then chromebooks for more and five okay they have new ipads apparently have a snap in keyboard so that's what we're gonna that's the plan and there were a lot of questions about projections but anyway that is well on its way as as well um gibbs is moving forward um we're probably i'm going to be setting out a notice to the advisory committee that we're gonna have another meeting soon um probably the sixth of april um getting confirmation from the architects i think they're ready to come back for the you know for more feedback on the the revisions they've made based on the previous feedback so that's moving forward as well uh both in terms of the building project as well as the this this aspect of it um hardy well we'll just we're sort of holding until we get to town meeting if we have the funds and we're going to move very quickly to secure the project teams the um the high school um we have the rfp for the opm the owners project manager ready to be submitted to msba in fact i think we're submitting it tomorrow so that's moving along quite well and we have a um a building meeting next this coming monday um and uh mr. stillman our chair has approved the agenda i approved the agenda actually it's not it's not monday it's tuesday it's tuesday i'm sorry it's right before the permanent town building committee i do i tell you tuesday there's another meeting monday i can't remember what it is but there's another one there's a meeting every night there's a meeting every night almost um yeah so that pretty much stratton i think we're on i think all is moving forward at the pace that needs to we just hope that thompson pays picks up may i just ask a question on the uh the chromebooks and and the ipads and stuff will their professional development being is that part of uh bringing these in for the teachers and stuff yeah i mean these are not new we've been having professional development on using utilizing this tool but but now i mean i'm just thinking if i've had some in the classroom versus a whole an entire classroom my approach to a lot of areas might change well a lot of what's really nice about stratton is they've had um one cart to every two teachers for like three or four years but we would certainly provide whatever professional development and support that this teachers feel like they need thank you as we move forward with this two we're considering what chromebooks as well there's different manufacturers of them and different options that that didn't even exist a year ago so that's part of the research over the next week okay uh we just have more questions comments dr asin just with the chromebooks do they have touchscreens well it's funny you should ask that because one of the things that i learned in that conference i went to is that hp has put out a new um touchscreen chromebook and pc all under three hundred dollars now we do we know that there's a memory it's a minimal memory at 64 gigabytes i don't go into all the details but we are researching that because to be able to combine the two would be great because a lot of the apps that we would want to use do do better in a touchscreen environment yeah that's why we're asking we actually have a um aser model of aser and asus asus both also have touchscreens and we have an aser model in house so we've had for about a couple weeks now to take a look at it so we can get um test models to make for the teachers to look at thank you mr carton yeah i wondering if you could update us on the gibbs costs um that's probably going to come before a town meeting yes um i think we're the the gibbs costs are right at the number the 25 million in the the debt override but they're the town manager has been identifying other sources of monies one one the background of one issue is that when the dor allows you to increase the amount of money in a debt exclusion based on an escalator depending on when the override was when you actually get the money and so that that ability to do that will provide some extra funds and um there's an another source that he has identified so the what the goal is is to have i think it's 27 million is the number do you want to give us a background of i'd rather come prepared with all pardon you want to give us a background of sort of why that number is different than what we thought a year ago well because costs change and um thank you one of the things that is true in the gibbs project we have very generous contingency funds in in the design and in construction and i think the people who have been um looking at this affirm that they're generous and because of the thoroughness in which um shahmet and and our architects have looked at the building yes in an old building there could be some surprises but anticipating a couple of them for example in looking at the exterior walls and the interior walls there is if you're going to run the kind of wiring that we're going to need data it it it is potentially when you open those up could be potentially leading to tremendous costs adjustments upward so the architects have proposed at a much lower cost to and this will actually be very energy efficient as well is to build a wall in front of a wall so that there would be a conduit space in between the two to run all the wire so we're not going to have to touch any of the exterior walls in the building it's things like that that are starting to minimize the surprises that you would expect to have in an older building one of the other things that when we were looking at the cost estimates last year there were things that weren't considering doing the biggest issue with windows and and then the the original cost estimates on the building thought well maybe we can keep these windows but the more thought was given to it is if you're going to want to have a building around for the next 50 years you you should replace the windows now not later because of just the cost and the disruption so that increased the cost and then there were increases in the exterior of the building as well doing much more extensive repair than was originally thought to do so those are the kinds of cost pressures so then that's what's going to require to go above the 25 but as I said the contingencies are quite generous and the people have been working on this field that it's it's important that you identify the monies that for the budget but at the same time do we think we'll come in lower yes is that what you're asking me yeah the point is more information is why yeah the point is that town meeting is going to be asked to vote for 27 million yes the voters only approve 25 million yes we need to have a very clear and concise explanation about why that increased and that was in there but I think we need to be a little bit more crisp on that yeah yeah yes I well you asked me out of the without really giving all the notes here in terms of why but yes I agree it has to be crisper than that and I don't think that we would go into the details of all the things that we're doing to cut the cost or and surprises of the project but the town manager will be presenting this to Tom yes that was not as crisp as it could be all right so one of the one of the things we wanted to do tonight was to do a review of progress on goals across the board you've you've heard much this year and sometimes one of the things I think we probably should do better than we have been is identify in an agenda what goal might be a presentation relating to and mr. shale and I've talked about that so I've done a summary of different presentations that relate to that but one of the particular updates we wanted to have tonight was an extension of talking about goal one point one which has to do with the learning standards and progressions in each discipline you've actually heard quite a bit this year and you will hear more this spring you've heard from the director of world language the lead teacher and family consumer science director of social studies history and director of English language arts who really I think express quite well the kind of work they're doing in their district to identify learning standards progression in the discipline how their how their assessments are changing and aligning with the their their goals and in fact that group has been working with Dr. Chesson in trying to define what is a learner so our school system yes so Dr. Chesson is going to she is going to present more about and I think at our retreat there was sort of a desire to get a better understanding of goal one point one hold on Dr. Mr. Harden yeah so I mean the the presentations I heard were sort of general curriculum updates which were wonderful but this goal speaks to what I thought was going to be a list of essential learning standards and progressions right is that being developed or is that something else okay so Dr. Chesson is going to great question that's a great question so in order to do that when you start with backwards design what you want to do is start with your vision your ultimate vision for the student as learner and this and in this case student as citizen because while we do have learning standards that have to do with the content area they don't very don't very often don't touch on those other skills or transferable skills that we would like students to have so the curriculum team started out by brainstorming what are the transferable skills what are the skills we want every student to have as both a learner and as a citizen and we worked on that draft for a probably about two months and you actually have a copy of the draft was uploaded to you today and you'll see that it says draft draft draft all over it so to really emphasize that we're trying to get the input of all the stakeholders in this process that's the place where you have to start so we'll we presented that to the entire administration team so that was all the special education coordinators all the principals the deans this past week and then got feedback from them and sort of took them through the process that we went through how we identified the transferable goals what we had looked at in terms of the research around transferable goals what we've looked at what other districts had put out there so that we're not just reinventing the wheel and then looking for and also looking for consensus the next step will be to simultaneously continue to get feedback and refine it but at the same time the curriculum people will now start talking about so if these are the skills if these are the transferable skills that we want students to have if these are the characteristics of our students as learners and as citizens what are the experiences that we currently have that are in support of that that the students are going through and what are the experiences that students have that are not helpful and to create create that once we do that we'll be developing an essential list of experiences that we want every student to have because we're talking about Gibbs right now that's sort of a microcosm or a pilot of this discussion so I know that smack dab in the middle but if we know where we want students to end up so by the time they get to sixth grade what would they have had to have happen and by the time they go from sixth grade to high school what needs to happen there so it's it's kind of fortuitous that we're looking at Gibbs and we're talking about what does that curriculum look like the curriculum directors have really come up with the idea that that sixth grade is a year of transition in so it's really a big about transition and then transformation from you know elementary school student to student who's prepared for secondary work and so that transformation what has to happen that and then the transition out so we will be presenting this to teacher groups as we go through professional development for the rest of this year we'll be present we're presenting it to you and we look forward to your feedback we'll be putting out for public comment for parents and it's based on a description of the graduate that was actually in the technology plan that was put out for has been put out for public public comment and that's what we started from three or four times over the last five years so we'll be continuing to do that to pick out those essential learning standards the frameworks for each of the subject areas is about an inch thick so I don't think you're going to see while an essential learning standard is in ELA is you know reading 1.1.3 I think what you're going to find are the things that you see in that draft and then what experiences are going students going to have as a focus so we did a tech space discussion on Monday on an article that's put out by two leading researchers in this area that talked about so if one of the things you want students to be able to do is have a discussion using argumentation and evidence what experiences do they have to have a ninth grade what experiences in 10th grade 11th and 12th grade across all subject areas in order to make that and then how you build on the complexity of that so in ninth grade they may be using evidence to support their their own argument but in 10th grade they're not only using evidence to support their argument but evidence that would help them to refute someone else's argument and then by the time you get into 11th grade you would get into a full almost a full blown debate our expertise so that's kind of where we're going with that so I'm not sure if that answers your question or it gives you an idea about where we're going yes thank you it it it was the way this was presented it was at the presentation we had which were very useful and helpful were tied into this goal and I don't really think they were I think you'd have to sort of read between the lines there were there were discussions in both presentations but what we didn't do and I would agree with you was that we didn't call to your attention so this is a transferable skill I think I did say that when the social studies teachers were presenting I said oh I'm hearing you're all talking about evidence and that makes me happy because that is one of the transferable skills so I think that as we have curriculum presentations we need to call to your attention this is something that matches our draft of the student as learner student as citizen these are transferable skills that we're going to be looking for students to have experience and build on for the K through 12 experience thank you Dr. Allison MP so that sounds very interesting I'm a little confused how do you translate the experiences into competencies because it to me it's the competencies that I want them to bring home so how do you build that skill within a student so you may say that too that when I say experiences I'm saying what just just students have to know and be able to do in order to demonstrate that they have that competency so if one of those okay okay so it's not just do it but not but they can't just happen magically they have to have some experience that helps them to acquire that knowledge and those skills does that help yeah I I think you're talking about how do they experiences that demonstrate the competency well both experiences that help them to gain them and experiences that allow them to demonstrate their mastery okay yes I understand this is a two-year timeline so what can you tell us a little bit about what next year looks like so next year we will actually be defining those experiences because again we'll be doing it if you start with a smaller bite so we're looking at Gibbs and we have three committees and one of those committees will be looking at what are the where do we want kids to get to by the end of the sixth grade year so what experiences do they need to have what skills do we need to develop what projects might we have to have what are the emphasis so one of the things that we've discussed is to talk about again evidence comes to mind a lot because that's what's a really high focus of the MCAS next generation exam so what does it look like that students would have to do in science what is in order to demonstrate that they are able to use evidence to support argumentation what would happen in English language arts in math and in social studies and then how would you because you really want them to not be siloed what kind of cross curricular projects might you have to have in order for students to see the connection between the use of that ability across so I would expect that by you know if not the summer by the end of the first trimester in the fall we'll have some concrete examples of what this will look like it gives are there questions coming okay so we have more stuff I know on native goals yes I would I would add just one small thing and that is it's not a linear progression either this is while we're also trying to do backward design on this people already leapfrogging into different in different disciplines into this work they're sort of not they're not waiting to to entirely well and now we've defined what the learner is and now we're going to do something else it's it's it has a more a synergy to it than might appear this way so we've talked a little bit about this what I've done here to sort of have you to give a summary was to actually take what the goals are and just give you a brief overview of what is been going on and talk about a couple of the goals that may not be progressing this year so the first one of the first one we've already talked about and unless somebody wants to talk some more about that and I think that as we go through the year we'll have more information than we can give you the next one is redefining the educational vision and programs of the high school and identifying integrating its core values and identified essential habits of mind there's some strong links between these two what's happened with this particular goal is is timelines have changed that is sort of that is determined by the MSBA process I think that we did not anticipate that the the part of the feasibility study which involves getting your project teams was was going to take the time it does because when we've done projects on our own in recent years stratton for example even the work we're doing with Gibbs that project that that that part of the process has gone more more quickly but there are processes with MSBA that you have to follow and I'm not saying that it's not a good process I think it's one way that they they exercise a lot of good oversight on on building projects but nonetheless it has changed what our anticipation of the timeline now this particular report that will be submitted to MSBA will probably not be compiled the next year however the discussions are still going on now and and teachers our administrators are visiting schools we did a little bit more extensive questionnaire for MSBA that's that's probably better a pretty good foundation for the work we're going to go with this but the part of this also involves community input your input parent input student teacher so we're going to go through a extensive outreach in the fall to finally write this write this vision and a document for MSBA just ask a question does this have any effect on the timeline to completion that's what she's saying well each one of these modules can take they they usually give a range of time for the high school or for the high school a whole high school project I thought I heard you say maybe I misunderstood that you're going to have to redo something and resubmit that the goal won't be finished by the end of this year it will not be done by the end of this year we have so does that affect the the feasibility study no okay okay no it's just the timeline feasibility study is is longer than we thought it was going to be okay thank you what you do have which is a you know the beginning document on this is what that you received this year from the educational questionnaire we submitted because the the administrators who filled it out expanded much more in that than probably was expected by MSBA the third goal this is the one that is going to take more time this was established a district wide committee to assess the student support team model the response to intervention process and special education support at all levels and recommend a better model to better meet the needs of students needing academic and social emotional support what I can say is happening is that individual schools are evaluating their own process but we have not um we have it is probably was just too ambitious a goal for this year I'd be honest about it given all the other projects that are going on right now but um the work is going on in individual schools we have not assembled a district wide committee at this point um and probably will not until next year if I may yeah well we we're receiving data at the end of next year or will that push it out a second year out well I would hope that next we would maybe get the committee going and um the the purpose of this goal is first of all to just like we're doing with SEL this year sort of assessing where we are the processes are different in different schools I didn't know if you needed to have the committee together for a fully get it together for a full year and then get the data it might be it might be and so when we revise this we might need to think about how to okay how to put a more reasonable timeline on it thank you and then uh the goal one four is establish a planning committee to assess the district strengths and challenges in creating safe and supportive school environments for all students and for providing students with social emotional and cultural proficiency skills needed for college and career readiness and to be a contributing members of a diverse democratic society a lot of work has gone on began began last summer you've heard miss elmer talk about an overview of the process this year and now we're into the stage where committees have been formed at each school and are tasked with doing an assessment of the school and writing action plans for the school in which we were going to come back as a whole district because there's a lot of coordination that still would need to take place but those action plans as you as you heard her talk about at the last meeting will be due in june and one comment on the the language of this goal I think that you know we all evolve and are thinking about language and how to express things I don't we were just at a a talk yesterday and one of the things that the person pointed out is that we're never going to be proficient in and we're never going to achieve cultural proficiency and she encouraged us all to be thinking about cultural awareness because it is a continuum is something that we grow with as we when we focus on you know learning more about other cultures and so I've in the rewriting of this goal we talked about the implementation plans I think that's language I wanted to revise so those were our four goals under goal one which is the goal that we look at student achievement and what we want for our students in school sorry to keep by you but on the last one there do you think we would be able to get a report by the end of the year with regard to the assessments and what what came out of that yes they're doing june early june so yeah I think that's important for us to that and go back to looking at that position that we created tonight as well right and and then we're going to be developing action plans for next year and and we'll have the support of AEF in that process all right so goal two is about staff excellence and professional development in the in the school district and our first goal to advance this vision of the Arlington public schools this year was to provide professional development for the implementation of the new science curriculum in grades four and five and the new math curriculum in grades k one and and that did happen one of the things that I've provided for you actually I should say Dr. Chestins provided for you are the the all of the schedules for professional development this year and also a look back on last summer because some a lot of the work we do also happens during the summer but that has happened and I think one thing that was also helpful this year though not it wouldn't appear in the schedule of PD is the fact that we have someone who is point four who is a high school teacher biology teacher who's been leading a lot of this professional development and also acting as a coach to help in the classrooms and the feedback has been very positive on that and hopefully that can continue next year so the what we the second goal was to provide administrators with cultural proficiency professional development during the 1617 school year and plan for professional development for teachers during the 1718 school year we began with workshops or learning learning times for us learning sessions on on cultural awareness we began last summer all the administrators in the district and I gave you the three dates that we have met on this but what we it was facilitated by two administrators who had had a considerable experience in outside of our district in leading this kind of work and what we came to just came to the conclusion is that I think we reached a point where it would be helpful to have an outside facilitator and we do have someone we have six days scheduled this summer two of which are required well everybody's going to have four days but you get to pick two two two of the units two days that are two days back to back and then there's a beginning and ending session so that is happening as far as planning for cultural awareness this is happening as part of actually the earlier goal as we look at the action plans for next year all right I have to I have to say I'm I'm glad that you're using I I was actually surprised that we hadn't gone to an outside person right away and I'm really heartened that about this development I think this is I've met this person he's fabulous he is fabulous and I think I think it's going to be a really interesting set of sessions I think so too and we and I have been working with Dr. Hoyt in laying out we're still not completely done but we have a good plan for these these six days actually it's four days everybody has four days all right so um actually I'm gonna if you don't mind I mean you can talk to this do you mind but anyway this is to provide ongoing or regular professional development and technology to support teachers and using technology to enhance teaching and learning and um you know we continued the tech university last summer but I think one of the things that um we learned and we that sometimes the most effective professional development is when you embed it and it's not just necessarily a class or demonstration and when people can come in and help coach or give you some pointers and I think that um that that's the work that you've been doing with our two um at at instructional specialists right um Susan Bisson at the elementary schools and Joanna Bradley at the middle school have go in and work with teachers in the classroom um you go to a class you learn something if you don't put it to work right away you forget it um so they go in and work with people in the classroom um and they are responsible for all of that training including um they've been heavily involved with the training for MCAS next generation for the teachers who are having kids take it for the first time online and doing infrastructure tests across the district so the teachers can feel comfortable that when they get in there the network is going to support them um and the other thing that I um had forgotten is that um Susan also runs uh one thirst every other every other Thursday during the month I take in practice groups so groups of teachers get together they trade um uh what's going well what's not going well and then Susan has a website where she posts all the information so teachers across the district can share in that information there are increasing number of videos too that we have been um and I probably add that in there the videos where it's a how-to's and sometimes those are easier for people to access of their home when they don't have the person around um so going on here um the the increase of diversity of the APS staff this year staffing levels to better reflect the diversity of our students I'm not sure that this goal ever go away it's uh something that we have been committing to do we've worked toward it and um you've had a report about the success or a lot of minimal success we've had this year um from last year but we remained committed to the work we have the the coffee by the way you're most invited to come it's April 26th where we will have um we invite personally invite applicants from diverse backgrounds and um to this coffee if they to meet with administrators and possible openings so Mr. Spiegel has been at a job fair this has already started and um will be has brought and we'll bring back more resumes that we will uh reach out to people I'm gonna make a comment so when community members come to me with the concern that we we don't have as much diversity as we would like one of the things I say to them is that one of the most effective things is personal connections you know that that people in the community who know other people with diverse backgrounds should be reaching out telling them what a fabulous place Arlington is you know and that that can often be that kind of personal connections can often be an incredibly effective way to get um people that we really want so as I encourage that it doesn't we don't have to put all the burden on you it's a team effort we should all be involved in this process and we have been trying to do more networking but I appreciate that comment because you know there's a lot of people in the community who have connections who know connections exactly we need to spread the word well we what we perhaps should do um we put our openings on school spring and most people who who might want to know if there's an opening would not look on school spring so we might want to be think we would put them on our website as well so maybe that's something that you know people are wondering they see that we're looking for a middle yeah a middle school English teacher perhaps they might know of someone and refer them to us so uh that that would be very helpful all right so that was goal two which is again is focusing on the um the program which is focusing on professional development and just our staff support so goal three the vision of the Arlington public schools is to create the resources infrastructure and educational environment that will offer cost effective education that maximizes the impact of taxpayer dollars and utilizes best practices academic research and rigorous self-evaluation to provide students and staff the resources materials and infrastructure required for optimum teaching and learning in a safe and healthy environment and certainly the safe and healthy environment one of the one of the things that we're doing is working on our buildings for sure and I think that this year you've heard updates on the building projects every single meeting um but it doesn't you know I don't think it's I think the community knows that we probably have more building projects going on than any of our neighbors in a wide area we have five building projects going on or hopefully it's going to be five but we'll we'll see after town meeting for hardy but we certainly have four active projects going on right now and um the intent in all of these is to create an environment for both students and staff that are great learning environments and a very safe safe environments so um the technology plan that's a little right up here we we there this is something that uh Dr. Cheson has been working on and the draft every year we revise it we've had a technology plan the technology plan is on the website but it's not a it is a dynamic plan and it changes and in order for it to change you have to reach out to all the different stakeholders that are involved and this is the process that the plan is in right now um we already mentioned what one of the reach out was was to the strat and educators as to what their device preference is going is and now it's been decided and now the same process is going to happen with the sixth grade teachers which helps shape the plan in terms of you know when we first started with this technology plan we were in a different place than we are now in terms of understanding what what would be the most effective tool in the classroom so that is it's just changing and um I don't know if you want to add anything else to that no just that the level of um expertise in the teaching community has really increased and so I feel much more um comfortable having people come to the table and you know they're dealing from a place of experience as opposed to a place of you know I'm fearful of this this is the only thing I know um and so we want to give people as much opportunity as possible to say you know it doesn't whether it's an iPad or a Chromebook it doesn't really I mean there's there's a cost difference but in terms of um what which device they feel as long as they can create an argument that um you know matches and makes reasonable we we want to support teachers and provide them with the kind of device that they feel that they would most best use in the classroom all right um so one of our goals was to complete all the documentation of module one that's been done I gave you the we keep a um all a list of all the documentation on the website I will tell you that the there is a there are two committees um subcommittees right now actually three um on the building committee for the high school and one is a communication subcommittee and it's meeting on Monday to look at our communication plan well I we have all this documentation there we need something that's going to be a little more engaging and we need a we need a communication plan out as to what's happening and that we'll be beginning the work on that and keep you informed but right now all the documents that were submitted in module one are have been released onto the website and anybody can read it and on the left hand side of our website there's and the quick links there's a building there's the facilities and if you go into that it immediately go to you know two four other areas in which you can then go to Gibbs and see all that's there or the high school see all that's there the so we're moving into um operations uh goal four which is about operations communication and stakeholder engagement in the in our schools so one of the the goals I think we all shared was to create a dashboard there's a lot of collaboration with the community relations subcommittee to create a uh a dashboard that was going to be able to provide a lot of quick information for people wanting to know more about the all into public schools it's it's not something that again is static it's going to change we're going to increase um some areas of it um we're going to certainly have to update things annually but I think it's a good way to begin in fact even in the the budget report we're going to give to town meeting we're putting in a lot of graphics in graphics for example about our comparison to the town uh the town manager 12 and I think that that information is very helpful to put where we are in perspective and I will say as a sneak preview that we do really well I mean for the money that we have per uh the per pupil we we the town should be very proud of the the school system they have in terms of its performance and a lot of that goes to the teachers and students in our district okay um so in another goal this year was to implement upgrades to the district's financial software will that and provide professional development for all users at this point it's really even all people financial the financial software of the school is the financial software of the town and uh the town undertook a major upgrade we went from 9.4 to 11.2 and that normally is something you would have done over many years and we've done it in a year and it's required a lot of meetings a lot of time my hats off to patty brennan for what leading this in the school department this affects the business office payroll and hr and all the people that are involved there have been involved in meetings and professional development at least once a month since this project began and it's still ongoing um continue to engage parents and stakeholders in the disc as the district addresses enrollment and facility needs um tonight you heard from vision 20 and the work we're doing it well it's not directly to enrollment and facilities it is an outrage to the community to have them understand what we're doing as a school system um but in terms of the the more narrow enrollment and facility needs we had a um we have a visioning of gibbs parent night in the fall which was similar to the one we did with the teachers at oddison and those the outcome of those meetings really did lead to the principles that have guided the archive that really guided the development of the gibbs plan and we're going to go through the same process with the high school because you have to have principles that you build upon as you make a lot of decisions and in fact I can tell you for a fact that when decisions have come up in a lot of gibbs planning meetings sometimes go back to those principles and say you know that was that was an important priority so we you know in in terms of the facility of the high school and the and I would say even probably more for the high school than gibbs but we we partnered with vision 2020 to show the the movie most likely to succeed in november and there was a follow-up discussion in the community in december um we had we had I had a coffee in the fall I'm hoping to have one in the spring and you know what comes up is questions about enrollment questions about facilities and question about social emotional it's a it's sort of a wide-ranging conversation and then in terms of advisory there's a gibbs advisory committee that consists of teachers and parents um and this committee has met with the architects to review the the interior visuals of the school and gave a lot of feedback and we're going to meet again very soon I don't know I take two meetings might take three we'll we'll see how many meetings will take to to deal with this but those are examples of the kind of outreach we've done this year so far mr. hannah just for my own clarification this was a summary of the district goals am I correct correct so do we have a date there but that's embedded in this what's embedded in this my my two goals so is this our meeting for the mid do you see this as the meeting for the midterm on your goals this is the okay thank you so any other questions comments yeah this is more to my fellow committee members um and just looking at goal two this is for thinking for the future looking at goal two so the way we've phrased the goals what we don't know is if what we did was it enough and we were told about what we did but we don't know was it enough did it work did it achieve the results that we were trying to get we're not and I just like to see us pushing towards getting that next level not just that we're doing things it's I'm not questioning that you're doing things and they're effective I'm saying I want to be able to tell people why we know that right do that's just to mention when we do professional development if you're talking about goal two professional development we solicit feedback after every but what you're wondering is for example was the professional development for the math rollout effective yes yes and how do you measure whether it's effective well one way you're going to know whether it's effective is how our students are going to continue to perform both for math and science so there's an external assessment that's going to go on there but I think there's other measures of it and certainly whether teachers feel that they understand the curriculum and feel comfortable teaching the curriculum and that's the kind of information we try to gather both through the PD feedback is also we try to get it through coaches as to what's happening because they're very close to the situation so there's multiple set of qualitative and quantitative ways that we will get to it as far as measuring the rollout right now I think that our feedback I know our feedback from all of our PD on this has been very positive specifically in the math and the rollout of the new math curriculum K1 we actually did a number of PD not only on Tuesday but also had release time during the school day for the K teachers and the one teachers in groups of two like two schools to get together and get additional PD and planning and that had the feedback from that has been so positive in terms of this is the first time when I've had a new curriculum I felt like totally prepared to go into the classroom I really feel like the feedback was so positive that even though the principals and elementary principals initially said no more PD during the day I can't cover those classes or I'm having trouble covering those classes you know how much trouble we have getting subs that when the math director went to them and said I'd really like to continue to do this for grades two and three they all said you know what it's one of the most effective PDs we've ever had let's put let's do it again next year so that's the kind of feedback but we can certainly write that up and present that yeah I'm just thinking it helps us when we're trying to allow for money or yes yeah absolutely all right that's a good that's a good point and when I give you a final wrap up of it try to include more of that of yeah of how what kind of feedback we have the success yeah I mean both both in the moment after it and then three months later oh you know I'm realizing now I never learned about this part or something you know so that we keep improving the one of the other things and I expect to do that again this year is that we a lot of times go around and do focus group interviews with different grades and so K and one will be my focus for this year I always actually meet with K steering committee once a month but also to go around to K and one teachers and ask them at the end of the school year what worked for you what didn't work for you in terms of professional development thank you so my memory last year is that we took this document and we sent it to CIA and they might do nothing with it but just to do the final review and sort of see if there's anything else that was what we did last year so I suggest that we send it to them this year but again they might just say done nothing needed but just to do a final review to see if there's anything else we'd like reported out in the next you know in this midterm cycle that's my suggestion um anything else are there any other comments questions okay um so uh next item is a consent agenda um all and we are not as early as before okay all items listed within asterisks are considered to be routine and will be enacted in one motion there'll be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the community serve requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant approval warrant number 17151 total warrant amount 647 547 dollars and 21 cents dated 3 16 2017 approval of minutes approval school committee regular minutes meeting Thursday March 16th 2017 approval of trip Arlington high school performance of arts trip to Italy and Switzerland February 2018 um I think there's one more uh vote to approve school committee organizational meeting Thursday April 13th 2017 at 6 15 okay second all in favor I opposed extensions okay that's all unanimous um subcommittee reports uh budget Dr. Alice Nappy we passed the budget last time report okay uh community relations miss darks um I want to start by apologizing to everybody for um the fact that I thought that my emails were all being forwarded and I have not gotten any official school committee emails for two months so I just found that out I think I fixed it but that's why I have not been showing up or responding to anybody because whatever I did didn't work so I apologize I think I fixed it um so sorry I didn't make it this evening I didn't make it to Monday's meeting I haven't responded to you I'm like sorry I did not know that I thought I'd set it up correctly I thought it was all forwarding and I wasn't getting that mail so that's why it's not like I've dropped off the earth um so this weekend Jennifer and Paul are going to be doing the school committee chat from 11 to 12 um other than that community relations has not had a meeting since February 27th and obviously we won't have another one until after the election but set one up as soon as we um I think if there's a need we can still have meetings you know before the next you know we need to we need to organize first before the next restructuring if there is a need I'm just saying it seems like there could still be I don't think there's anything on fire so yeah yeah I'm just saying we'll probably just wait till yeah after that but that's it okay uh district accountability curriculum instruction assessment we celebrate uh first of all as chair of the subcommittee I want to thank the uh school committee chair for her service this year and leading us through a good year for the school committee we are done for the year we are dissolving with everything else uh on April 1st and we look forward to reconstituting uh in in a new year all right all right um facilities mr. Thamon I'll second mr. Schlick was reporting thank you for your leadership I think it's a good time to do that because I think we're wrapping up the year so thank you very much for your service with all the mistakes there um I finally got it actually uh school enrollment test force thank you for skipping policy I do thank you I have to say by the end of the night my contacts are really like fuzzy fuzzy and that's why I'm doing I'm so sorry about policies and I was going to say you had a perfect night tonight but I won't say it no no I don't thank you I'd also like to thank the members of the policy committee Kirsten Paul for their work and their endurance for putting up with me for a whole year nothing else at this time okay legal service review nothing at this time Arlington high school building committee we meet on Tuesday right in here at 6 p.m. 6 p.m. yeah and and also the meeting on Monday is at 6 30 it's actually the communication subcommittee right so okay that's that's the meeting that communication of the high school building right great public meeting people can go yeah everything's public meetings okay gives committee has not met okay weren't the last time everyone got paid okay any leaves on reports mr. Hayner I've got a couple uh permanence on building committee we'll be meeting in this room next Tuesday right after the Arlington high school building committee committee meeting at 7 30 and that's a great place ducted voting answer the questions on money but the architects and everybody show up at that meeting and they'll tell you then that's in bolts of where the buildings are as well where the buildings are as far as progress yeah they may they'll also tell you where they're looking I'd also like to share there was a meeting last Wednesday in Boston at on March 22nd bridging two communities a metco initiative a planning group was established and was well attended by the people that signed up from that meeting we had earlier and we're beginning thank you announcements yes mr. Hayner metco on the hill was rescheduled after that last snowstorm the people will gather at the african-american museum at 9 a.m. meeting house at the meeting house thank you on joy street on April 4th there's something going on at the state house preventing the normal part the second part is two part watertown savings bank has a banner out in front congratulating our hockey team this is so I want to share that and watertown savings banks have provided a $500 grant supporting the bridging two communities so I want to thank them publicly for supporting this group I want to make an announcement that the play Arlington high school is putting on play this Friday Saturday and Sunday at 7 30 on Friday and Saturday and three o'clock on Sunday they are performing um crazy crazy for you crazy for gershwin's crazy for you is I think gershwin's last play still yeah crazy for you and and there's an art and oh there's an art exhibit right yes what's and that is that timing um it'll be going for another week or so but it's down in the teachers okay so it's calf okay great any other announcements oh yeah one other thing we had a good time participating in the oh trivia be a last sunday and yes crazy for you was one of the trivia answers we did not we didn't get that one I mean oh yes did we win uh we we won best team name best team name which was mr clever mr slickman's uh genius and you dig it and you dig it we were in Jennifer's wonderful castings of construction yellow are that under construction that's awesome yeah the the best costume went to uh basically Joe currow uh and the school committee alumni team yeah they just like snoopy I mean they really pulled it out with their makeup on I mean oh yeah makeup they're alive yeah we weren't doing makeup but it was a great time and uh they had the kids playing the first round yeah and the stratton team which won got every down oh down rather down team that won that side of the town yeah yeah that was the kid team no no the gallon fifth grade oh no no the stratton team for the adults yes oh yes the stratton team for the adults got every question right which is unbelievably amazing yep um it moves it moves around and their their team was also a building-based thing they were wearing little hats of the stratton building. The modules. The modules. Oh, the modules. Yeah, the modules, yes. And they were modules. Yes. It's a great event. And I thank my two colleagues for playing with me and we'll play again next year. So another announcement. This Saturday there is an election, a town election happening. The major races are not contested, however, 12 of the 21 precincts have contested races and some of them are incredibly contested. So I encourage everyone to vote no matter what, but especially find out who the 10 meeting members running in your precinct are and talk to your neighbors and talk to the people running and make a decision. Yeah, Mr. Maynard. We have the wonderful opportunity now. All the votes in the past two years have been recorded. So you can go to a town website and see how people have voted and become more informed. And also, whether that particular 10 meeting member has been going to the meetings. Yes. Because we do have some people who don't show up as often. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good to know that. Other announcements? Future agenda items. Mr. Haynor. I would like the committee to decide a definite procedure of what items we will accept or delay that is submitted to us late. I'm not talking about emergency items. I want that clear. They always get a priority. Example tonight and for whatever reason, we receive two items as late as an hour prior to the meeting. And I'm old. I may be the only one, but I need some time to digest and give each item its due. I think we were doing well before, but I think we did slip. We keep slip. We've done it and we slip. It was slip today. For sure. Thank you. Yeah. Other future agenda items? I might throw out a couple. It sounds like we need, we're going to see the technology plan coming up pretty soon. Right. The new technology plan is going to be a future agenda item for a school committee. Yeah. Great. Thank you. You're looking at the next meeting. I have two meetings and then it depends on whether the meeting with the sixth grade for Gibbs comes to a conclusion or we have to come back to the table again. So until that's resolved, we really can't put together the plan. The technology plan. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought it was April, no matter what. No, April. I'm going to sit down with them. Got it. Okay. Because Gibbs is a year out. Yeah. They don't have to. I don't want to make them decide like that. Got it. Got it. I understand. And the other thing with Justin Vos, Dr. Chesson is some update about how the new MCAS are going and what has changed. We can certainly tell you that in great clarity the next meeting because we start testing on Monday. Great. Yes. That would be helpful for the committee, I think. Anything else? Okay. So executive session, we're going to move to executive session, to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiation with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion in which held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted to discuss open meeting law complaint negotiations update approval of tax traffic supervisors memorandum of agreement vote to approve the following executive session minutes March 16th, 2017. Okay. We're going to do a roll call to go into the session. Right. Are we going to come out? We're not coming out. That's why I said. Yeah. We are going to come out but we're not going to come out and vote. We don't need to come out and vote. We are leaving executive session. We need to adjourn in executive session. We're going to adjourn in executive session. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. We are in executive session. Mic it. Hi. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. We are in executive session. Mic it.