 Hello and welcome to the regular school committee meeting on Thursday, March 12th, 2020, at 6.30 p.m. Let me open tonight with, should we do the art first? Is that okay or? Yeah. All right. We'll go around. We have a round of art this time from the Pierce Elementary School. So on board A, back over there, we have emotion paintings by the kindergarten after talking with what emotion means and what kinds of emotions we experienced, kindergarten artists learned how many colors can portray emotion in artwork. Students looked at famous works of art and discussed how certain colors, lines and shapes made them feel in the art. Students then used colors, lines and shapes to express one more or more emotions using paint, oil, pastels and cut out shapes. Finally, students gave their artwork a title. In board B, those are Mood Monsters by the second grade. Students painted and collaged mood monsters after learning how color can portray different emotions. We looked at the artwork by a variety of artists including Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko. Students reflected how certain colors made each of them feel and how we each attach different feelings to different colors. After talking about different emotions, students chose one in mixed colors to match that mood and then created different tints of that color in their backgrounds. Students created collage monsters by cutting out shapes from color paper that matched the chosen mood and gluing the monsters in the background. Finally, students wrote biographies about their monsters. Board C, planning and process. Connecting to this, up at the bottom of the line, vision and understanding our own. Students learned how artists plan out their ideas before starting a creative project. Students are encouraged to brainstorm, plan and sketch out a few ideas before beginning a final project. This gives them the opportunity to think about potential obstacles that they may come across. Some students end up sticking to the original idea while others come up with new ones as they work. Fifth graders created surreal shadow boxes with sound objects inspired by artists Joseph Cornell that depict a dream or a nightmare. Second graders assembled their very own dream spaces with paper plates and painted card stock paper. They filled up their dream spaces with pop-up style drawings of things they love. Third graders learned about designs and how they educate the public about the artist's interests or passions. Students created multi-page mini pamphlets, signs where they are experts on or what they like to do. Board D, those are mandellas by the fourth grade. Fourth grade artists learned about radial symmetry and pattern by creating mandellas. Students learn about the importance of symbolism of mandellas in different cultures and how creating mandellas can be used as a tool for meditation and increasing self-awareness. Students were shown a video of the Tibetan Buddhist ritual of creating sand mandellas in which intricate mandellas are made with sand and then destroyed after they observed their purpose. The underlying message of this ceremony is that nothing is permanent. Students then drew their own mandellas by using repeated patterns. They were encouraged to take symbols that hold unique meaning in their lives as well as experiment with different patterns and lines. And back on board E, those are self-portraits. Grades K through five learned about self-portraits and how different artists use self-portraits to express their identity. Students were shown portraits by multiple artists, classic and contemporary. Kindergarten and first grade artists learned about Frida Kahlo and made self-portraits inspired by the book Frida and her anima in Amalitos. Students learned about Frida's love of nature and animals and how she included both in her self-portraits. Second and third graders were asked the question, what is your superpower and created superhero self-portraits that depicted what they would look like as a superhero. Students drew their self-portraits in the style of comic book covers considering what they would wear as a superhero and what their superhero name would be. Fourth and fifth grade artists were shown the artwork of portrait artists and discussed how artists use elements such as symbolism in color to represent who they are. Students then painted self-portraits that express their identities through symbolism, color and backgrounds. Congratulations to all the pierced artists. All right, and then public comment. We have Lynn Klosterman on the list for come on up. I'll be very brief. Thank you, and thank you for entertaining me for a few more minutes. Sure. I was selected to be the representative today. Lucky me. While my husband's trying to pull together a quick online for his evening, two Thursday night evening classes at Northeastern, so he's trying to pull that together tonight. So, you know, instead of going over the same stuff you've been hearing, I just thought I'd share a quick little story about what started us here at Arlington High with the ski team. Back in 2011, my 22 year old was a freshman and he was a very gifted skier, so we thought it would be great to start a team back then. It just never happened. Mr. DeLoretto was the interim athletic director at the time because Mr. DeVirs was on leave and he said, go put together a budget and go see the school committee and that was his advice way back in 2011 and it just never happened. It just, we could not get traction back then. So, when my third child finally made it to the high school, we said we'd like to try this again and that's why we're here. I grew up in a skiing family. I grew up in Southern New Hampshire but I actually went over the line to school in Ainsbury, Mass. That was a ski town. My dad would have been 100 years old if he was still here. He taught all eight kids in my family to ski so it's just one of those things. We just wanted to pass it on and we hope from across that we can get some traction here in Arlington and possibly make that a new thing to look forward to in the history books here too. So, I appreciate your time and thank you. Great and thank you. I would note that I did reach out to Steve and a couple of the other people suggesting that in light of the current circumstances it was definitely not necessary or desirable to have a large crowd at our meeting. There were a series of emails that were submitted. Am I the only one with a copy? No, I'm the only one that everybody has. And in lieu of everybody showing up at our meeting. So, thank you. Yeah, thank you. So, let's move on to that item now. The vote to add Alpine Skiing as a varsity support. So move. Second. Is there any further discussion, Mr. Schiffman? Yeah, I'm very happy this is happening now. Unfortunately, I grew up on Long Island. We don't exactly have mountains and it's an hour's drive just to get off the island and then you're in the Bronx. So, it's not in my culture growing up per se but I know that a lot of people in town love this and as soon as we started to have kids who were qualifying for tournaments, the right thing to do was to move forward and I'm glad we're able to do it. Dr. Alpine Skiing. I'm at a disadvantage because I had to miss our last meeting and also our budget subcommittee meeting. If I cough, I'm not contagious. I saw my doctor yesterday. I'm okay to go into public. Anyway, I had thought based on previous discussion that we were going to do a temporary approval for like a year and we're going to be reviewing how we make decisions about athletic teams but I'm not hearing that in the motion so I'm confused. There wasn't any discussion of that at the last meeting. That wasn't my interpretation of the budget subcommittee meeting. My interpretation was that we were going to look into a policy that would be applicable to all sports as to whether a sport should continue or not. So, this would be applicable to Alpine Skiing. That policy would be applicable to Alpine Skiing equally as to all other sports. So, okay, I guess it's a different way of looking at it. The net effect is that it's temporary more than in the same light than all of our sports are temporary. Right, I understood the second thing. It was just, I think it was more, my understanding was that we were doing it more to highlight that we're in the process of thinking about it rather than it's, I'm just concerned that just doing a flat approval sends the message that it's in. Anyway, so we will be taking this under advisement. I'll vote for this because I think it is important that we expand our offerings, just trying to get some clarification. Mrs. So, just to follow up on what Dr. House-Nampi said, I remember similar to you, I also think the discussion actually just sort of evolved in that process of the many meetings that we've had that we started out not sure that we wanted to move forward and I think we're sort of persuaded by a bunch of things that this was the right thing to do at this time while still also saying that we had to look at the big picture. So I sort of think, so I think you're absolutely right, but I think that there was my understanding that there was sort of an evolution of thought as we were listening to people and talking and hearing different perspectives. I missed some of that. You missed some of those, right, exactly, yeah. Any further discussion? All right, closing favor? Aye. Yep. Any abstention to our opposition? All right, unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's all downhill from here. Oh. As well as this with mine. I got it, Paul. Great, thank you. Thanks. All right, so Mr. Mistler is not here. Do you still want to? Yeah. With the appointment, though, or? We haven't actually heard back from him when I've reached out in the last, so I think we need to figure out what's going on with him. Okay. Yeah, I meant to make a phone call. I've only sent emails. Okay, no problem. All right, so before we move into our other items in light of the developments today, I thought we would take part of the superintendent's report out of order. Can I get a motion to do that? So move. Second. All those in favor? All right. All right, so I think Dr. Bodey would like to talk a little bit about the events of today and... Any questions? Go ahead and see if we have any questions. That's right. This has been quite a week, actually, as we are all in a very fluid and rapidly changing situation, both in our communities and across the nation. I think our knowledge of the coronavirus and how it's spread and its effect on different people is still growing. But clearly there has been a lot more changes and even in the last 24 hours, what we have learned from the Department of Public Health is the expectation of growth that is there. And I think that that wasn't as clear a couple of days ago, but there was this morning a panel, epidemiologist from DPH who talked with 22 communities, Tom Managers, Board of Health about the nature of the virus and their concern for the exponential growth that is probably likely. So we've had a lot of conversations that have gone on with the different superintendents as well as Tom Managers. In fact, we all had a group call earlier today. And the consensus was that if we were going to be helpful in this regard in slowing down the viral infections throughout this area, and this area in here is probably the more of an epicenter report in a sense because of all of the people that have been at the Biogen Conference and living at Biogen and living in this area. So we've seen more of this than there has been in other parts of the state. So that too is starting to change and will probably rapidly change. So we discussed that we probably did need to not have continuous exposure both for students in the school as well as teachers. What can be an issue, which was something that was not clear on Sunday, it's just been a little bit murky as we've gone through the week, is whether people who are not symptomatic could actually be able to transfer the virus to someone else. And I still think the science is not complete on that, but there's still a possibility. The most common way the virus is passed is through coughing and sneezing. Maybe even talking, we don't know exactly how long on a surface it can remain. That's, I've heard, I shouldn't even say what I've heard because it's not factual yet in terms of the research. But, and that's the other part of it. Because it's not factual, it's sort of hard to be planful. So our, when I say our, the six districts that have been particularly impacted have met and talked about this and felt that a two weeks just closing schools would at least help minimize. I'm not, we're not guaranteeing in any way that there's not gonna be spread of the virus, but it's certainly be helpful in minimizing impact. And the number of people who are sick. And then the issue became, well once we came to this decision, should you wait till Monday, you announce you're gonna have a two week break and then you have school tomorrow. And then the more we talked it through, it seemed to be the most reasonable thing to do. So I believe that there's probably other districts that are in this middle sex area that are also considering it. And you may hear some announcements to that effect very soon. So there are, I have to tell you, it was a very difficult decision because, I wouldn't say it's even similar to snow days, it's really not. When I think about calling off school or even a delayed opening or a school closure, I do think of all of the people who this is gonna be a huge burden for. Some people can't get childcare. They have to be in work there either because this, because their job cannot give them a leave. They don't have the days to do it. Or there may even be someone who has to have a healthcare worker needs to be in and working. So this is not taken lightly, I assure you. It was on the four, thinking of all, we were thinking about this quite a bit. And also thinking about the suddenness of this. That people were gonna be a little unprepared for it and we realized that. But when you measured balanced off, I should say, all of those other issues versus the impact that this could potentially have for these communities, we had to go down on the side of doing that. Does this, I assume, includes all our students, including those that are in day programs outside the district? That's a great question. Right now, unless the school that the day program is in, and I'm gonna make a qualification here, some of our out-of-district placements are located in districts. In fact, if you noticed the five of the six districts that are part of this are the five lab districts and then Winchester. I guess my concern is we all know, parents here in Allington know, as long as those parents are notified, I assume within the lab part they probably are, but anyone that's outside the lab. Well, if they're in a private school that's not part of a school system. That's totally separate and they will be going to school unless that school closes. It would be the responsibility of that school that they go to in the middle of the month. Yes, exactly. And we, our drivers are prepared to continue with transportation so that will continue unless that particular school closes. Thank you. So that was one issue. Another issue we realized is there's a lot of families that rely on the school breakfast and lunch, particularly lunch, and how are we going to manage that over a sustained amount of time? So our director of food services has been in communication with Allington Eats and the town department of health services is also involved in this, and we will be getting out some information about how extra meals could be available. So we are very much aware of that and are working on a plan right now. Another issue is that this was announcement was made after school got out, though the intent was to try to get it done before school was out, but there were just a number of complications with that kind of timeline. So both students and staff left not knowing and they may have some personal items in the school or materials they wanna get. So what we're going to do is the schools will be open tomorrow from nine to 12 for people to stop by and pick up materials or personal belongings they want to get. Principals will be in and custodians as well. So it will only be between nine and 12, the schools will be open. After that, in the two weeks going forward, they will not be open. Another issue is what about continuous learning over these two weeks? We are not going to set up a remote online system for continuing classes as they currently are. And one of the main reasons for that is equity. We still have students that do not have internet at home, do not have computers at home. There's students that require extra support to do assignments. So what we will do, and we're going to be working on that in fact, Dr. Manil and the curriculum leaders have already begun this work, actually a couple of days ago, thinking that down the road this may be an issue to provide enrichment activities, resources that parents can have available. And again, we realize that some students may not be able to access online. And so we're thinking that through tomorrow. I don't have an answer for you tonight. How we'll address that because that's part of the plan when we get together tomorrow. So we hope that everyone during this time period can remain healthy and that this turns out to be a very helpful thing for the community. In the town itself, there's a lot of changes as well. And that press release went out in which the library and a lot of the public buildings will be closed. They'll be skeleton crews in because there are essential services that must be maintained in a community. And so planning is going on to make sure that that continues. And as there are any updates, we'll keep everybody informed as we go forward. But anyway, I apologize that it had to happen so quickly. And I was such a surprise to everyone, but unbalanced, I think it was the right decision to do. Is there any questions? Good decision. Very good decision. I just want to make sure our hourly employees are paid through this. We're going to continue to pay everyone during this time period. Just one clarification. So is the idea that we're gonna bump out our four snow days too, right? Or you're not sure yet? Because we are not sure yet. I think that the Department of Education is looking at this as more districts do it. I had a conversation with the commissioner today. There's just a lot of uncertainty. In fact, we have all the superintendents have a conference call in the morning. I think DPH is going to be on that call. But I think as this is evolving and a day ago, that's how we were gonna operate snow days. I don't know how that's gonna go forward. I also don't know what's gonna happen with MCAS as we go forward either. Mr. Heiner? Just to go back, the only precedent related to that is the blizzard of 78 when the state got involved in the days to make up and not make up. Thank you for what you've done. I think it's been helpful. From what little bit I've heard has been a positive response. Even though they begin off, we got the kids at home, but it's been positive. So thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe? I wanna commend you on how the closure was handled. I think doing it as a group announcement with the six different districts really made it much more clear and answered a lot of questions just in and of itself. I wanted also to point out that I'd like us to be sure that we're doing our additional efforts to help flatten the curve. The CDC recommends that if schools are dismissed, that, and I know that you said some of this in your email, but I think maybe we wanna reiterate it because I feel like when I'm reading on social media, people aren't getting these aspects of it that you want to cancel or postpone like after school activities or supporting basically other extracurricular activities. And you want to especially discourage gatherings at places like a friend's house, a restaurant, or the shopping mall. So really what we're trying to do here is keep everybody by themselves. Yes, I said that in my second email today to parents that please try to avoid large crowds. One of the things we're shaking in my head is Monday, there were some people who kept their children home from school, some high school students went to the mall. And so the exposure there is challenging. Now, of course, one of the issues with all of this is that how is this going to impact our community businesses too when people shy away from them? So I think that we have to be mindful of that, but it's going to be an evolving story. And the same thing with the mall or any kind of shopping. I think it's best if people avoid being around other people and certainly avoid being out in public if you're coughing or sneezing or whatever because you're gonna transmit that. As far as events go, you're absolutely correct. We are canceling all school related events, including tryouts, including the SAT on Saturday. Even though we had a plan yesterday for how we were gonna spread everybody out social distance, that quickly went. I think one thing, the hockey players are gonna be very sad about is the hockey game has been canceled. And for those who don't know this, our Arlington High School boys team was rated number one in the Super 8 seed and would be in the finals at the Garden on Sunday. So I'm sure that this is a huge disappointment. It's not to say that this won't happen yet, but it's also, they're gonna have to keep their game on, so to speak, for whatever the postponement will be. I think it'll be postponement. It could also be that the teams will play without an audience or fans there. It's not quite the same thing, to not have your friends there cheering you on. But I do think that they're gonna want to have a conclusion to the year. I just don't know when it's gonna be. Can I just, I just think it'd be good to have some of the information, and it may not be just from you, it may need to be in conjunction with the Board of Health and other people. I mean, really, Desi should be giving us some information too. But we need something that we can refer people back to to understand what the purpose is of social isolation, what the parameters are, and just all of the ramifications of that. Mm-hmm. So I'm really happy that we did this in conjunction with other districts. And one of the things I said to parents individually is the social isolation doesn't really work if just Arlington does it, right? So the people are sort of willing to do that. There was one question about play rehearsals, are those still happening? There was, at some point, you said, okay, that's good. I do think it's really important that we be very clear about what the science does and doesn't say. The information that parents are getting from places like The New York Times and NPR and stuff like that is that there could be up to a five-day incubation period, so, and up to three days on surfaces. Now, that might not be, that's an outside, probably, parameter, but that it's very likely that people are contagious before they're coughing. So I think that's the kind of information people are hearing from reputable scientific sources. I think it's really clear that we sort of give messaging that is consistent with that information, so. So, I'll do this. Yeah, we certainly will. As we get in more information, I'll keep people updated. I will say one thing that the parents probably would want to know is that we won't do it this week, but the following week before we come back, assuming we do, and I will say that. There may be over the next two weeks directives, recommendations for a longer timeout. At the moment, we're doing two weeks, but we will have the schools that had not been electrostatically cleaned, cleaned before people return. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, I want to echo my colleagues and look forward to your decision and the process you went through. My question is, are you having some staff that are going to come and work during this two-week period, some administrative staff, or is it, are any staff allowed to come in and work if it's on my curiosity? The answer is, yes. For example, all the principals will be in tomorrow. The whole central office will be in. Some people up here. There will be people around during this time. Got a skeletal crew of people there. It's a stealth crew, yes. Okay, I just wanted to ask. Skeleton crew, that's stealth. Skeleton. So, and you're going to continue, obviously, to communicate with principals and principals will also message out. I think a piece of what was a little tricky this week is that, I saw a lot of different emails from a number of different principals all trying to deliver the same information and, but there were some pieces that were occasionally inconsistent as happens in these situations. When there's a lot of information being disseminated in a short amount of time and I think the advantage of being in a two week period is that I'm hoping that everybody can kind of breathe for a minute and then we can, that your team under your guidance can circle, make sure that they're talking to the extent possible to their communities with one voice. And I don't think that any of it was poorly intended but especially messaging around what teachers will and will not provide for children over this period of time, what the expectations are and what parents' expectations of the school and the, you know, of the school overall and their teachers will be. So, I think that it's so great that, I mean, it's hard to say that it's so great to get an email that your kids are gonna be out of school for two weeks during a pandemic but it was the messaging on the closure was so tight and so clear. And so I think we're just in a really explicit place right now moving forward and I think the directions are really, you know, I feel like I know what my charge is and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Thank you. So yes, I'm glad that we did it as a group that was much more helpful. I wanna express my frustration though with the State Department of Public Health, also Desi, the governor, because this is a decision that they should be leading. If they wanna do a regional closure of schools, they should be leading that and to leave each individual superintendent to make the decision is ridiculous. So hopefully we'll see some more leadership step forward in this crisis and also for the long term. So if we do have to be out for more than two weeks, you know, we as a district, in other states, the districts are huge counties where they've got, you know, a hundred people on Central Office staff that've got contingency plans, they've got remote learning capabilities, but in Massachusetts, the districts are mostly so small, we don't have that capability. So if we have to move to distance learning, we have to figure out a way to do that that's compliant with special education rules and all of that, we need help to do that. We cannot do that ourselves. So I do call on Desi and our state legislators to start looking into that so we can start working on that over the next two weeks. Well, you're absolutely correct that we have to have some guidance along that issue. That's the issue about equity when you do online distance learning. One of the things that we would be prepared to do if we were able to craft it in a way that we were compliant would be for students that do not have a computer at home, we would loan a computer out, we would do that. Today I was having IT look to see how many hotspots we had. We don't even have close to the number we would need but those are the kinds of things we can have time to look at. One of the things that we had done this week for the students that had been asked to self quarantine, we were already geared up to do online learning and we were actually ready to go and I was happening. The parents that kept their children home that were not part of that group and that was a different situation that we were exploring how we were going to handle that. But we could do it. It's just that it would take some preparation time for sure and I think the most important issue is how do we do it where it's equitable and the kids that need the support, special education support would have it in those situations. So I think the best thing we can do for the time being is parents, please read to your children. You're gonna have plenty of time to do that and have them read. And Mr. Coleman here is from the math department. He would say, practice your math. We want all third graders to have multiplication tables, totally known, right? By 12. Okay, the objective is to have fun with these. Yes. Oh, well framed. Nope, nope, nope, nope. All right. Let's move on to our math update then. We do have some. Oh, does it work? Okay. We do have some, it's a little bit odd to be moving on to regular items. But we, on Tuesday, when we finalized the agenda, we were in a different place. And so these presentations have been prepared and... Oh, we're not doing this. And then I was like, great. We'll go ahead with them. Thank you, Mr. Coleman, for being here. And thank you for acknowledging that it is a little weird. I hope some of this is good information to talk about now. So thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. Just to talk about one thing up front. I grew up in Long Island as well. And Bald Hill, it was opened from 1965 to 1980 in Farmingdale. It was a little, yeah, it was the greatest kind of ski place in the world. All right, so thank you for having me again. I'll be quick. I'd ask though to keep questions at the end. I'm more than happy to take all of it. The way I kind of constructed the presentation was just to start big and then to start to go down into more fine details and then to talk about how these details will translate until next year and what we're thinking about for the future. So hopefully it will make sense. So this is the, I guess the middle of my eighth year here. And honestly, the one guiding kind of concept that's always helped us, it's kind of helped me focus what we're doing is really supporting all students. Throughout all the years, it really has been creating more opportunities, trying to create more equitable opportunities for the kids, make it so that they actually have the ability to access some of the great things that we have to offer by the time they're in high school. For this year, there were a few other district goals, the formalized district goals that were agreed upon at the end of last year, but there were two that were pretty core in driving what we were doing. This one has been something that we've been really working on for the past couple of years, which is bridging that gap and creating a six through 12 CS program. So this was a goal for us this year working on that seventh grade unique program and an eighth grade unique program. And I'll give an update about this. And another one was essentially, now that we've pretty much revised and gone through our curriculum updates. We implemented something K through five. We have some middle school work that's been done. We've been working at the high school. What we really wanted to do is to be able to, and I should say also, we have the revised revision of the student as a learner and global citizen from a couple of years ago. We wanted to ensure that our assessment structure, our assessment system, with things that we were collecting and things that we were actually testing, reflected what we valued. So a part of the work that we've been doing this year has been essentially thinking about what we value the most, both in content and process, and then trying to understand how we'd actually go about assessing that with a little sub-goal of what it is that, what do we actually wanna collect? And that's different at different levels, but that's essentially it. I will say this in the current climate that we're in right now, these goals are in a little bit of flux. So we'll see how it goes. These goals kind of translated into a bunch of different action steps, little things that we were trying to actually accomplish. So at elementary school, we had completed our implementation of the K through five program. We have our coaching team. We're trying to get back to doing more robust coaching cycles. We are trying to think about all of that data that we're actually going to collect. Dr. Meal had been working on the, and still is working on the data bank. So what we've trying to figure out is of those common unit assessments, are there certain ones that we wanna collect? Of the, like in K through two, do we wanna have a specific emphasis on fluency? And what is the most valuable parts to collect so we could actually follow a student vertically through those years? And one little, little part is, how do we actually connect that to the student interventionist that we have at four of the seven elementary schools in terms of monitoring fluency, thinking about push-in versus pull-out? So that's been the manifestation of the elementary. Middle school, a lot of the work has been at the CS program. I feel like I always have to kind of talk about this. I owe such a great, did a gratitude to AEF for giving us the funds to be able to buy so many great toys. That's really helped us refine, build, create a good program for both six, or all throughout now, six, seven, and eight, which has been nice. And then the last bullet for OMS was the essential standards and the assessment. What do we value and do our assessments actually reflect that? At AHS, there's been a continuation over the past couple of years of closing down our curriculum B classes due to equity concerns and thinking about creating different types of supported environments in our standard level class. That's been a work in progress. A couple of years ago, as algebra one, this past year where we've closed geometry B, that's been in conjunction also with a continual revision in both of those curriculums, trying to figure out how we would go about meeting the needs of those students. The other part in terms of meeting all the needs of the students at the high school has been since we have that bypassing program, I'm always trying to plan ahead and make sure that there's that infrastructure in there. The students at the beginning of the program at fifth to sixth grade a bunch of years ago, this year was the first year there were seniors. So if they had pretty much tapped out and concluded the program of BC Calc, let's say by their junior year, we wanted to make sure that we had some classes in programs at the high school to be able to support them. So this year is our first year offering a linear algebra half year course, as well as a number theory half year course. And the goal is to continue those. So that way for all of our students, we legitimately have courses that they can actually take. And one of the greatest things for me, and I talked about the stat last year, I think last year we had 95, 96% of all students in a math class, this past year it's 98%. So I know that's at the high school level, but it's one of those things that I think is really great because our kids are in math classes. And that's still with just the three year requirement that we have as a high school, they're still taking these classes. And we have courses for all students to take. I think I've already kind of gone through this one. Sorry for going a little bit quick. Ask questions at the end, I'm more than happy to ask them. See if there's anything, I think I've already, oh actually let me touch on one aspect. I know last year there was the increase in staffing to improve that common planning time for elementary teachers. The coaches have been finding that time really, really valuable just to be able to meet with teachers on a more consistent and regular basis that's really helped with that coaching support at the elementary level. So we appreciate that support and planning for that. Currently right here, I think I already briefly mentioned the math intervention program. It's at four of the seven elementary schools. Currently right now on the budget ask is to complete the other three schools. So we're really optimistic and hopeful that can happen because the goal would be that we could have a one-to-one correspondence with both coaches and interventionists so we could really start to take advantage of that team approach and figure out and be able to support students in the classroom, small group instruction, and if needed be like a tier three pull out more individualized instruction. So that's all kind of a work in progress but we're hopeful and optimistic that we'll be able to round out that staff this year. Just some stats on the CS program. It's increased, one stat from last year was that out of the 800 and close to 900 students last year I think we had a third of the students enrolled in CS classes, that elective CS class for seventh and eighth grade. This year we have 40% which I think is awesome. We're trying to offer it in different scheduling options so we can meet the needs of all the students but 40% of students out of the 900 it's pretty great to be able to get just on an elective basis which we've been talked about. One new addition this year has been and again AEF has been great for this. We were able to purchase eight Oculus Go's so we have students that are doing some 3D programming and exploring their own little universes that they create which is kind of neat. It's really fun to see. Highly recommend going to like check out the school and check out the classes and see what these kids are doing. It's pretty fantastic. I think I already mentioned this as well. Yeah, it's been nice little shift to the program. Next year, really what we're looking for is a continuation of that time and that work inside those common planning times where the coaches can really get in there and work with teams of teachers as well as individual teachers on their instruction. We still really want to kind of keep going with the assessment part of it. What do we value the most and are we actually administering assessments that get to that? And then what's the burden and the impact for collecting that data and then when can we actually look at it? You don't want the goal just to be to collect the data. You want the data to be used in a nice informative, instructive way. So there are a lot of these pieces that are really falling into place, so we just want a continuation of that. For the interventionists, again, just rounding out those three schools and working with principals, working with whomever would schedule to ensure that we can do both pull out and push out services. OMS, one aspect, one thing that always stuck with me at the start of my time here, I read this great little article about how essentially curriculum, if you adopt curriculum, it usually lasts for about seven years. The first couple of years you're implementing, years three and four, you essentially are tailoring it to what you need, but then years five, six, seven, you're essentially moving so far off of what you originally dedicated yourself to. It might be time to actually rethink and rededicate yourself to something new. So we're at that point for the middle school. So for us next year, one of the goals is going to be is reflect upon the curriculum source that we're using as our backbone and make any decisions from there. So that's going to be a goal we'll look at. AHS, in the same vein of that continuation of closing down the curriculum B classes for algebra and geometry, the next step, the next phase, is considering what we'll do for our algebra to B class and our quantitative reasoning class. So we have this nice little pathway that's happening between those two courses. So we're just going to reflect upon whether or not we could do something a little bit different, more robust, more connected than we're offering right now. And that assessment component's going to link into next year as well. The assessment part in all honesty is probably going to be a two to three year goal that we're going to work on, just because we want to be able to kind of go back to that and revise it and making sure that we're always going back to what we value. Sorry, I went so fast. Questions? All right, are there questions? Got a question, great job. Thank you for all the work and everything you've put into this. It's really good. Thank you. I mean, we get a lot of support, which I'm very appreciative of. Mrs. Seuss. Yeah, I actually just have a comment. You've come before us several times and I'm impressed by how remarkably consistent, I think, you know, with changes, your vision has been and sort of how we keep making progress towards that vision. And I'm very impressed by that. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. I love math. Yeah. I'm with you. It's all, like in my fact, because we got it, we just need to move forward and we got lots of other stuff to do, but I love this presentation. It's one of my favorite ones. Sam, I'm really psyched about yours too because I also like science, but I really love math. So thank you for everything. I know when you came here, I just wanted to close the loop. Last year, we talked a lot about the fifth to sixth grade transition and it just, you know, from what I heard from parents and from families, it was so clear about how the support for their kids was changing from the elementary model to the middle school model. And they felt, you know, communicated with and supported and they knew about it well in advance and they understood that, you know, they understood why this was happening. And so I think that that was just so impressively iterated from the first year to the second year. And so I really thank you so much for doing that. Unfortunately, the presentation is scheduled for next Thursday. Yeah, well, I don't feel good about that. Yeah, yeah, so I've already started to work on contingencies for it. I had a feeling on Monday this past week that what would happen. So I'll probably send out an email over the next couple of days, just giving an update as to what parents could expect. I'll try to deliver all the information in the best way I can. I'm working on videos. That would be very cool. But there's not a whole lot, there aren't like major changes. No, not major changes, but I think it's an event I actually like a lot because it's good interaction, it's Q and A. I don't, I do it as a presentation intentionally because I think you get that good human interaction. So I'm a little bummed. No, you get a lot of good press after that presentation. Yeah, it's a fun time. With the videos, I got to work on adding in like photoshopping a little more hair to myself. I got a little self-conscious about that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mr. Schumann. I also want to say you're doing really great work as a licensed math teacher. I taught high school math. I love the movement forward in terms of high quality mathematics in the district and it's impressive. I want to ask you two questions. One, do you know the elevation of Bald Hill? It's not that high. It's a hill. Yeah. It's a hill. It's like 480 something. No, 331 feet above sea level. For a beginner, it's a very, very tough hill. My next question is, do you know the elevation of the water tower at Park Circle? I don't even know where Park Circle is. How about the Braille? Oh, okay, got it, got it. Probably like 500 and something? 377. So the water tower by bracket is higher than the ball. I didn't say it was a good place. I just wanted to. I mean ski culture, come on. That's your ski slope. I mean, no, we're beach town. Yeah, I grew up by the way. It was a voting in beach place. Great job. Great job. Mr. Heiner. Great math person. We're not worried about your ski skills. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you again for the time. My question. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. So just on the budget for next year, there's only 0.7 interventionists, right? So how is that going to get spread across the three additional schools? Good question. I want to say that, so for some of the interventionists, two out of the four, they're not full salary teachers because of licensure. So it's not as though you need, and for the three that are remaining, we wouldn't need, we're not hiring them as full licensed teachers. We will train them. We'll get them up to speed. So the money that's there with some other shifting of some internal money would cover the three staff members. Okay, great. Thank you. There has been a count in four. Yeah. So I'd like to also thank Mr. Coleman for coming in on this night, and we're very lucky to have him because his passion for math definitely is transferred to the teachers, which eventually is transferred to the students. So having that type of perspective will definitely help us and lead us into the right direction. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good rest of the night. All right, thank you. All right, so next is on to science. Good evening. How are you? Good. Thank you. Very good. I'm going to give you the proper introduction. So this is Sam Hoyle, our new director of science, K-12 science. So I just want to make sure that everyone knew who you are. How could you not know this face? So I inherited the district goals for science. And I think we have done a really good job thus far trying to achieve these goals. Our two goals relate to student achievement and professional development around those goals. In kindergarten, the goal was to introduce tools of the mind science focused. And we had a PD earlier in the school year to make sure teachers had all of those materials, had everything that they needed. We've done virtual check-ins periodically to see how things are going. And we are offering PD upcoming for kindergarten just to see what else can we do. Thus far from teachers, what we're hearing is we want more science. We want more activities. These are great, but they don't start really until December in terms of their tools of the mind calendar because it's very regimented. But they said, you know, we would really like supplemental activities to place where we can throughout the beginning of the school year. So in conjunction with teachers, we're gonna work on that hopefully over the summer and then into next year, pilot them, see how they're going, and then make adjustments based off of that. Just, I believe you all have copies of this, is that correct? So if you were to click on the evidence link, it will link you to either what the tools of the mind book that we gave out to teachers so that you can see all of the activities or as we move further along, the evidence will be student work, samples of data analysis by teachers based on the common assessments and so on and so forth. So all of that information is there for you to see and take a look at at your own leisure and then you can ask questions whenever you feel like it. So in grades one through five, our primary goal was to create common assessments. The way that we're rolling out the common assessments is that we are giving them to teachers, teachers are piloting them, and then in our PD sessions we're going through them and saying these are questions that are working well, these are not working well, we need to revamp this and kind of having teacher input along the entire way. One of the things that it says in the goal is to input all of this data into the data bank. We are not doing that this year, we decided because it's a pilot year we wanna really get the test to where we need it to be to make sure that it's really assessing students on what we want them to know, it's addressing the standards provided by the state and to make sure that it is a fair and equitable test. So we don't want to jump ahead before we really truly understand what the assessment is. And again a lot of the professional development has really been around getting teachers together and being able to talk about how the assessment is working in their classroom and then being able to discuss with each other and be able to say this is what needs to happen in order for my student to understand does this work for you? And really having that camaraderie and the communication between teachers across all seven schools, elementary schools. In grades six through eight and really six through eight we're implementing the new curriculum that was purchased and in conjunction with implementing the new curriculum what we're really trying to do is to do more PBLs. So project-based learning where students take ownership over their learning, they have more agency, more voice and really look at a topic through a lens which is of interest to them to increase student engagement, to increase research skills, make it more again student centered versus teacher centered. We wanna change it from the teacher being the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, right? So Mr. Larry Weathers has been doing a lot of work with grades six and seven around PBL and he's given us the opportunity to go to several conferences regarding PBL and so I think teachers are really starting to get on board with what this is. It's a very scary thing because we're moving from I'm the content expert to we're gonna let students be the content experts and let them present to each other, let them present to themselves, let them create these amazing pieces of evidence that I placed here for you to kind of see and it can be a range of different topics all with an overarching question, overarching ideology behind it. So if you were to look inside of this folder we have natural resources is one of them, climate change was another, earthquakes was a third so all of those fit within the standards for the seventh grade and so students were then able to kind of pick depending on what teacher that had what PBL in sixth grade they did an amazing project where they were looking at Mars and what it would take to colonize Mars and really kind of see having each group be a different entity of a community and having them figure out what that entity would have to do on Mars to survive. At the high school we're also trying to pilot PBL and teachers have done a really nice job of trying to incorporate PBL into their learning, into their teaching. We have some different projects at different levels from AP down to BioA and BioHonors. So we're not focusing right now on PBL in grade nine because that's our MCAS course so we're a little concerned we want to make sure that we can do PBL and we can teach all of the content simultaneously but there are some ideas out there as to how we could do that, we're just a little hesitant because it's such an important year for us because again science is content based, we are not skills based so it really does matter how much content we deliver to students. So we want to make sure that all of that is done and then we can really focus on the PBL. Do you have any questions, concerns? Anything that I can? You just mentioned about PBL at the secondary level and first the issue with the MCAS and stuff. Project based learning in my experience as an elementary teacher, first off let me say I wish I had you as a director when I was a teacher and having this kind of support. I think it's exciting and fascinating and project based learning at the basic levels I think at all levels makes it real and much easier to learn. So MCAS is it interfering I guess basically what I was saying for the project based learning? I don't think MCAS is interfering. I think that it's a very big culture shift. It's a culture shift for teachers to kind of step back a little bit and say I'm gonna let go of all of this control and power. Exactly. It's scary. It is. It's very, very scary. But the end result I think is well worth it. I agree but I think it's gonna take time for teachers to get on board with that and I think that teachers feel like if my students do not perform well on MCAS that's gonna look bad on me, it's gonna look bad on the district, it's gonna look bad on the department. So my focus has to be MCAS. That's why I'm saying the conflict. So yeah, so there is definitely a conflict there. I think as teachers become more confident and more well versed in what PBL is and what it can do, I think that we can maybe alleviate some of that tension. And as you met Mr. Petrazino a couple of weeks ago and I think he is the type of teacher that's going to really be the one that pushes the ship forward. I think he's really interested. We were talking the other day about PBL of sending kids out to see on the street to see if they could clock and figure out a way of figuring out how fast cars are going on, I don't know the name of the street. Mass Ave. Mass Ave, thank you, on Mass Ave. And then being able to talk with police officers and say this is what we're clocking them at. How reliable is our data? Really kind of looking to see if we can find a fender bender that's happened in town and try to calculate how much impact did the cars suffer when they hit? How fast were they going? So work backwards. Now that you know what damage was done, can you figure out how fast that car was actually going? So really doing real life things that are within the confines of the curriculum that they're supposed to be teaching. But that takes time and really kind of working together and figuring out how do I get this done while still doing all of these other things. Thank you. Mrs. So very exciting stuff. I'm very excited by the project-based learning. I know that some students respond really well to it and some don't. And so it's great to have just a lot of tools in your toolbox. And that's what I really appreciate about the Toronto Public Schools. I think we teachers do and departments do generally use a lot of tools. And so they get it learning different ways. Some of the things that when I was clicking at it are different than what I would have thought of project-based learning. So I just wanted to just curious about that. Also very important, but some of it looked like someone had done sort of independent research and then made a presentation maybe in a slightly different way with a video or a PowerPoint. And that feels different than project-based. It also can be that kind of self-directed work can be very valuable. But it feels sort of different than project-based, which I think of more as problem-solving or investigations or something. Yeah, so I think it all depends on whose definition of project-based learning you're using. For us, it's giving students a voice and giving them an ability to direct their own learning within a specific project or idea. So it could be, I think one of them, like I said, the Mars, how do you survive on Mars? And being able to then have students split up into groups, work collaboratively, which is a huge part of problem-based learning, be able to do the research and say, these are the things that a town needs to have. We need to have a school committee. We need to have. Good move. I'm not thinking of that. Need that. I'm not thinking of not, okay. So really being able to see what does it mean or what does it take to make a town run? And then how do we make that happen on Mars? So in the AP Environmental Science class, students had to create their own research project. They had to then create a research project, come up with a hypothesis, do some research, look at their hypothesis and say, based on the research that I've done, I don't think this will work, let me revise it. Then they had to actually design the experiment, go out, collect data, come back in, say what worked, what didn't work, and then present that to the class. And the second piece of that will be in a few weeks to then say, now that you know a little bit more, I want you to take what you've learned with air pollution and combine it with water pollution, and now how do you make something work for both of these things? So really kind of building on each other. So I think it also depends on what level you're at. Yeah. Yeah. You're telling me. I want to go back to what Bill was saying, just so I understand it. Are you fine? I mean, there's a lot going on, there's a lot you guys have done. And so drafting common, using new common assessments, using project-based learning, do you find that teachers are a little overwhelmed or are feeling they can't get the kids to reach all the standards and be prepared for the next level of science? Are you finding that it's working the way you want it to work? That's a broad question, I realize. And you have many teachers that you support, and so it's a general question. And by the way, I applaud what you're doing. I'm very much a fan of it. So I don't want to think that you're mad, I'm just admiring how much goes into changing a practice, a teacher's practice to meet all of these objectives and how challenging it can be for you and for the teachers, but how beneficial it can be for students in the long run. And I'm just kind of wondering what the short-term impact is. You get that question? Yes, I think. So it definitely is a lot, I think it is especially at the elementary level where a teacher is a master of all and I applaud everything that they do, it's amazing. There's only a finite amount of time that we have allocated to science, and so sometimes it is a little tricky to get everything into the time that we have. But we're hoping to use the common assessment as a way to drive instruction, as a way to look at our curriculum, assess it, and determine how can we move this curriculum forward. And so the other piece to the common assessment for us at the elementary level is to really have teachers work together, to use it as a collaborative tool to kind of say, you know what, I can't get my kids to do particle diagrams. Like this question number four on the fifth grade common assessment, I just, it's not working for me, my students aren't doing it well. But your students, it looks like you're doing it really well. How are you doing it? How are you teaching that? Can you help me? And really to have those collaborative relationships within science, in addition to having the relationship with both the science coach and myself. Got it. So there may be, it may be, we may see our science scores not where we want them to be on MCAS for a period of time, and this may be the reason because we're learning how to do this. I mean, I think our science MCAS scores are pretty good. Yeah. Right? I don't anticipate them dropping. Okay. All I can imagine that they do is, they may remain level for a little bit, but then I imagine that they will go up. That's our goal. And our goal is also to create equity amongst all seven schools, to really try to make sure that we're a united team, not an elementary school A, elementary school B, elementary school C, at least at the elementary level. So really kind of making it a cohesive team. That clarifies good work. Thank you for doing it, yeah. Mr. Stuckman. I want to compliment you on the direction you're going. First of all, one of the realities is anytime you do institute a new curriculum, new program, new teaching style, the associated test scores are going to wobble a little. However, the difference between a proficient and advanced or meets and exceeds, those extra points come from having that conceptual knowledge and being able to express it in constructive response, open response type of questions. So that a teaching methodology that is project based where we're asking students to demonstrate their knowledge and explain it is going to be in far better shape coming into the MCAS than a student who has learned this by rote. And that we can tease out the scores on the multiple choice versus the constructive response kind of questions and see the growth patterns over there as a way to celebrate the work that's happening. So don't worry about the test. If you teach your children well, the test results will follow. And I'm really pleased to hear what you're doing. Thank you. And I do think that our tests are changing. The science MCAS is gonna change. This year is the first time it'll change for the high school in grade eight. And I think that as we learn more about it, what we're really going to see, and this is what I've seen on the practice test and what's been given out by the state is that we're moving away from rote memorization of content knowledge and it's going to be more the application of skills, the application of big ideas. And I think this is where PBL will really come into play. And I think once teachers see that and they're not as focused on what if they don't know all of the biomes to more, how does this animal adapt? How does it engage or relate to its environment and how will it continue to survive? So I think once teachers become more familiar with how the test is going to move forward, I think that will also help. Yeah, and we've never been more to micromanage on MCAS scores. I mean, I used to do this for a living, looking at MCAS scores and I spend about 15 minutes with the Arlington scores, taking a quick look to see if there's anything that's problematic or something worth probing, but we're generally doing well. I'm more concerned with how well the kids are expressing their knowledge and what they're doing with it. And it's clear that that's the impetus here. I'm just really glad you're here. Thank you for picking Arlington. It's a big deal. And we're really lucky to have you. And science is super important, especially right now. Great. Yes. Thank you. It might just save us all. That's not actually hyperbolic. Yes, and I want to also thank you. Welcome you. I think it was a great first presentation. Thank you. But you presented it before, in regular presentation. We do, every year we do ask the curriculum leaders to come in during the year and update us on this goals specifically for the purpose of tracking. And you're on track. So great. Excellent, thank you. And I know you inherited the goals. I do think some of them, particularly, you know, doing the data bank eventually, once you get the comment assessment, would be a great one to continue. Absolutely. So hopefully you'll continue with that. Yeah, and our goals moving forward would be to do that, to take these goals and continue moving them forward, whatever we did not accomplish to really push that and roll that out into the following years. Great. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I would like to applaud Sam on her work that she's done this year. It really has been a seamless transition. She's come in, she's built relationships, and she's been able to, there's been no pause in the goals that we have slated for this year. And so she has hit the ground running and we're on track to do some really great things. I'm very lucky. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, Dr. McNeil, you're up next. Okay, so my presentation is actually a follow-up to our MCAS report that we give, that I give along with Paula O'Sullivan, our district data coach in the fall. I know that some of you had questions as I talked about the way that we disaggregate the MCAS data and what are the various reports that we use from Edwin Analytics, which is the way that the state reports out the MCAS results. So this presentation, this will focus on some of those charts that we use, that the coaches use, teachers, administrators in order to look at the data specifically and be able to gauge how students are performing in certain areas. So today we'll look at those charts. And two of the main ones we're gonna look at is the item analysis and standard analysis. And we also talk about how the released items every year after the spring MCAS and each content area, the state releases, various items, questions that teachers and staff can use for review. And then we're gonna, I'm gonna just give you a peek at how this year's spring test, the test design, and ELA and math and what that is going to look like. And then I will take any type of questions or comments, but you can interrupt throughout the presentation if you have a specific question about something. Are there any questions at this point? No, okay, great, cool. So when I usually traditionally do the report, Paul and I, this is a common graph that we show, which lets you know how each subgroup performs on the particular content area. And then we report it out by the various subgroups and so that you can see how the students in those subgroups are either meeting or exceeding the expectations for that particular content area. And then we also report it out by gray level. So if we were to, many of the staff members when we first start out, and I also wanna add that we use various protocols as we look at the data as well, and the protocols will allow observers to identify certain things that pop out at them from the various charts, and then also we can use it to begin questions and lead us in a direction that will ultimately impact our instruction based upon what those questions are and what those observations are as it relates to the data. So usually we, this is the usual standard way that we report the results. You'll do the colorful graph, but then what staff then can go to, and this is a report that's offered, and that can be found in Edwin Analytics, is this is a standards analysis. So in this particular content area, this will show you how our third grade students performed on the ELA. And this is looking at reading and how they also have constructed responses and essays that they have to write on the MCAS. So as you look across the top, you'll see the different categories. The first category shows the possible points that students can achieve, and then you look at how the district performed, the percentage of points that the district acquired, and then how the state. And so the last column shows the comparison between how the district performed versus the state. Yes. Oh, I said, go ahead. Just to interrupt, because you said I shouldn't ask questions as I go. Sure. What are constructed responses and selected responses? Are selected responses multiple choice and constructed short answer? Is that? Right, those are the question types. Right, so is that what that it means? Exactly. What's constructed is sort of short answer and then selected is multiple choice. Right, and they give guidelines as to what those constructed responses will look like the short answer and then the essay will also be, and typically it's like one written page for the essay that the students have to, and they'll give you a character amount that is expected from the student answering those questions. And then you'll have the selected responses, which is generally multiple choice. Okay. So yes, and that will lead me to segue into talking about the column on the left-hand side where you'll see the content area, which is English language arts, and then you'll see the question type, and then they break it down than the possible points that kids can achieve for those particular question types. And then as you look down below that, you'll see the domain and cluster, and then you'll see the various subgroups in those domains. So it breaks it down standards-wise, like what you're looking at and how students are performing on those different areas. And so what we try to do is we look at how we perform against the state. And so if we see that we're performing below the state average, that will alert us to say, this is something that we really need to focus on and see why our students are performing at this level. Right, and then we can, this is also available by each subgroup. And so today I'm just giving you examples of this because I couldn't give you a report for every subgroup in every grade level. The presentation would be hundreds of slides. So I'm just giving you examples of what's available that teachers and coaches look at in order to generate discussion about how they can utilize the data to impact their instruction. Yes. Is all the data available to the public if they wanted to drill down to it? Or is that something from the state or on one of our websites? I mean, that's a very good question. I really haven't checked. Oh, Mr. Paul. The answer is yes. You can go item by item by school by school. On the state, on the state website. Okay. School district profiles assessments. Thank you. And we can also drill down down to like to individual students. So there's ways that we can. That wouldn't be public. No, probably not. Okay, great. That's what I was gonna begin to say is like, I don't know at what point the public is, what the data is. Does it stop at the school level? The building level? You can go into subgroups, but you're not gonna be, obviously what you don't wanna give out to the public are individual student data. But if you have a large enough subgroup, it'll report out. Thank you. And you can do this for any school in the state. Thank you. So yeah, so what we, as the staff of Arlington Public Schools, we can drill down to individual students. And so you can disaggregate this by teacher, if a principal wanted to look within the school to see how teachers can, each classroom compared to each other. So there's many different ways that you can look at this data. But this, I'm just giving you a general overview of what's available. So that's a standard view. And then I'm gonna also show, I did pull up some charts that looks at each of the different subgroups. So as an example, so this is how our Black African-American students performed in the third grade ELA. And as you can see on the far right hand side, that that's where you'll see the achievement gap start to creep into our conversations because you'll see our Black African-American students in third grade across the district. And many of the areas have performed below the state. Yes. I thought the achievement gap was between our student performance as a group and then the achievement of the subgroup. So shouldn't we be comparing it to our, like our average district performance? I mean, I think it's good to compare it to the state too, but isn't the gap between our district performance? So yes. So your question is, so when I say this, yes, we're comparing it. So let me just back up a second. Like when we pull, if you were to pull up the standards and you and I were having a data discussion, I might say to you, what do you notice? And one of the things you might say is that, oh, in many of these areas, our Black African-American students are performing below the state. Then we would look at, okay, now we can go and look at how our Black African-American students are performing against other subgroups like our white students, all students. So I'm saying like the initial conversation might begin here, but then we would have multiple conversations after that and then multiple comparisons. But yes, you are correct. We do have an achievement gap for how our students perform, a Black African-American students perform in some of the subgroups compared to all students or white students. But I'm just saying like, this is a conversation. So there's many conversations. So if I give an example of a conversation that takes place, yes, they can continue to have that. And hopefully, and we are having those conversations about looking at comparing our subgroups against the subgroups within our district. But this can also give you information as to how they performed against the subgroup in the state, other Black African-American students in the state. Yes. So I just got, I confused myself. This slide is comparing our district Black African-American students to state Black African-American students or all students in the state. I didn't look to, no, it must be because they're not the same numbers as the slide prior. Got it. I'm good. Thank you. Good job. I'm not trying to confuse anybody. Good to ask questions if you don't understand. Okay. So, and then this is another view of how our Hispanic Latino students. So what I'm just trying to do is I'm trying to give you an example of how we can disaggregate the data using this particular report. And so the conversations are not limited to just one comparison. I'm just saying like, we're having multiple conversations, but it gives us an opportunity to look at where they, how our students are performing. And this is our ELO students. So again, it's just multiple views of the same report. Yes. Could you just give us an example about a conversation that you would, it doesn't need to be a lot of detail, but so you look at the Hispanic Latino students, right? And you look and you're like, hey, like things are going pretty great. If you start from the bottom, you got a two and a negative two and a one, and you're like, yeah, we're good. And then you hit this negative 15 on constructed response, right? And you're like, whoa. Correct. What would be some kind of conversation that would happen about that? Well then, and if you could just hold on to that question because I'm gonna show you some other reports that we can pull up, just look at specific items. So then you can take the standards that you can narrow that conversation to say, okay, now we wanna look at our ELO students and we wanna look at the various item analysis. So the item analysis breaks it down even more so, so you can start to look at individual questions to see how students perform on individual questions. And so they'll break it down and say, this percentage of our subgroup of our EL population or our Hispanic Latino population, this is how many, this is the percentage of students that got this question correct, and this is the percentage that did not get it correct. And so then that's how you can say, well, why is that happening in this specific subgroup? How are we teaching those students? And what are the different things that we need to do in order to support instruction for those students? Okay, I don't know if I answered that question, but just hold on to that question and I'll show you some other reports, yes. It may be, I may need to defer later, but does it ever get to a point when you're doing your analysis, you realize the possibility that there might be a cultural bias in the question? That too, that's a very good question. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you look at the language and you look at the percentage of students to actually get the question right and then you look at that. But I think you're getting at something there, but we can look at different aspects of the question. Okay, I can. I'm fine. So then this is just another example. We're looking at our seventh grade math. Again, we desegregate it. This is the traditional graph that I'll show you and we're breaking it down by subgroups. And then this is an item analysis and I'm sorry, it's so small, but I tried to give a screenshot of what it looks like. And so if you look at this item analysis, Ms. Morgan, if you go back to the question that you just asked, right? So you can look on the item and if you look from the left to the right, if you look at the item number, okay, those are live links. So if you look at number one, you'll see it's blue and it has a line under it. So as we're having our conversations about these items, we can actually click on that item to see what the question is if it's a released item. Okay, and then as you look across, you'll see the question type. Then you'll see the reporting category, which identifies the way that it's, you know, a description of how it shows up in the standards. So if you wanted to go and see what that particular standard is, and then you'll see an item description, you'll look at the possible points for that question, you'll see how the school did, the district, the state, and then the school state differential. So this is from a district standpoint, right? But again, we can disaggregate this and look at the report, we can go by subgroup and you can narrow it down to individual students. You can narrow this report down to an individual class. So you can look at the class and if Jason, you can sure chime in if you would like to do that, but they can, a teacher can go in and say, how did my class do on all the items on this particular content area? And so you can click on that and they'll show you the percentage of students in your class that are exceeding, meeting, you know, partially meeting or not exceeding, okay? So this is the type of information that will drive us to further our discussion, to start linking it to our instruction. And then this allows us to have those discussions and say, okay, what are we doing within the classroom and how is this connected and how can we adjust our instruction in order to identify something that we can do to support students in this particular area? So this is linking it to the frameworks and the standards. Then after you click on that question, this will show up. And if you look at the top, you can look by subject, grade, you know, all items. And then you'll see again, the item identifier. So if you click on that blue item identifier, it'll give you the actual question. And then you'll look to see what item number it is. And then it has the item description and then it has the reporting category. So where does this show up in the frameworks and how can we go in and look what this question is supposed to be asking? And then where are we teaching this in our curriculum and how are we teaching it? And maybe some of the things that we're doing on our common assessments or the quizzes that we have in the class. Are we matching those questions up? Are we having students think about it in the way that the question is asking on the MCAS? So where do we can make that adjustment in our instruction to make sure that we're preparing our students to be able to answer that question? Okay. So the next slide is the actual item. So after you go from here, then you can go here. So this is the actual question. So this is a released item, right? Not all items are released and I wanna make sure that I emphasize that. Only certain items are released because they reuse them. So if you look at the bottom there, this is something you can go back and you can even use this as a practice question in your class and it could be like a morning warm-up into the lesson. So you can have kids go back, look at this question, you can look at the language, you can look at how the question is framed and then you can go down there and you can have students actually take this as a practice and then you can see the correct response and the score response. So this is how we can narrow it down to individual questions and this gives us a lot of information. And then again, I'm just giving you more examples of this is eighth grade, what an item analysis looks like for our particular subgroup of black African-American students. And then this is our 10th grade. Again, this is a traditional chart that I utilize in my MCAS presentation and this would be a 10th grade item analysis for students with disabilities. Again, more, this is science by standards, all students. And then this is the way that the ELA test design for 2020 and this is the breakdown of how this is what we're gonna expect that the test will look like for 2020 and they released this to teachers so you can begin to get an idea about how, you know, what to prepare for and what to expect in the upcoming assessment. And then they give the grade levels, the question type and then you'll see right here Ms. Seuss right here where you see the selected response, the constructed response and then the essays and then to tell you what grades you can expect to see that, right? So, and then they break it down for the distribution of points. So they tell you in this section expect to get this many points, what the breakdown is and then it gives you the total and other points that will be available that the students can achieve on that particular section. And that ends my presentation. I don't know, did I answer your question about that? Okay, great. Any questions or comments? So my question is, as you've been working through this, have there been any big aha moment? So this is something where we definitely need to strengthen our instruction for this target population or have we really reached any conclusions yet as you're digging through? Well, I think if you look through, you'll see a theme of especially what our subgroup population of looking at the construction response and short answer responses. That to me, it needs to be a big area as it relates to all the, like a common theme that goes through all the content areas. But again, it's gonna, and this also allows principle because not every school is gonna be, it's gonna have to focus on the same thing. So, you know, as a building administrator, I'm gonna focus on how my school performed on these particular areas and then that's where we're gonna focus our attention. But again, it's that short response, the constructed response and the essays, I think that we need to focus our attention. Great, thank you. Mr. Heiner? I'd like to begin by saying I have a bias against this kind of testing for students on the time it takes, but do you ever get to a point where you realize a specific question across the board, we're not doing well on it and say to yourselves, well, we're doing so well and everything else, the value of this, putting more time in it, isn't worth it? Well, that's an excellent question because that's why I think by looking, to have that state view, because if the state only has like 30% of the population that gets this question correct, going to your point, it's just gonna be a hard, challenging question. So we'll do the best we can, but we know that maybe we're gonna focus somewhere else because the state's not doing very well on that question and hopefully the state will look at that and say, well, maybe this isn't a great question My concern is sometimes that we're spending too much time in achieving a grade and not focusing on the child and the education and the end result and you've answered it well for me, thank you. And to be honest with you, I don't want us to be so, you know, I don't want, this is, you know, as you brought it up in the prior presentation with Sam, I don't want this to be our focus. Our focus is to provide a well-balanced curriculum in each content area and look at the various skills that students are gonna have to achieve. We want them to do well on the MCAS, but I don't want this to be the primary focus of why we're, you know, educating our students, right? This is something that will help us to assess where we are, but it's not gonna be the focal point. Like, we're not designing our instruction around the MCAS. Good, right. Great. All right, Mrs. So I think Arlington does a really good job of using MCAS as an assessment tool and not using it as the drive instruction. So I think we do do a good job of that. Thank you for that. I just wanna make a general comment, which is that I get less worried when I see a gap on racial or other things in third grade and I get more worried when I see it on an eighth grade level, right? So, because you figure, okay, you know, we haven't really maybe done that much yet with the third grade, especially test-taking skills, which can be tricky, but I do think we have to watch very closely what happens as students progress and to see if that gap is widening. Are we making any progress? Where is the problem? Yeah, so. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. I would not look like just that third grade. I'm looking back at like kindergarten. I'm looking at this as a continuum and be equally concerned at any grade level if there's gonna be some type of achievement gap. So I think that we have to look at what are we doing at the earlier grades to build a foundation of knowledge and then why aren't some of our students, and are we, through our instruction, implicit bias? And that's why we focus so hard on cultural proficiency because we wanna make sure that our expectations is the same for all students and so maybe that's a symptom of like how the language that we use or the implicit bias that we may have that may come out in our instruction unintentionally and why is that happening? So that's also looking at the material. Are we representing all cultures in our material in a positive way? Are we sending the message that all kids can achieve? And so these are all the data and the things that we focus on in order to make sure that kids at all levels are gonna be equally successful. Anything else? All right, great. Thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you. All right, so next on our agenda is approval, approval of the transportation fees. Mr. Mason, do you wanna present? Yeah. So after reviewing the fees and the expenses and past revenue and looking at the needs to continue to run a transportation program for more specifically the Bishop and the Gibbs schools, not to completely close the gap of what we anticipate. It would be, do this in a phase manner to raise the fees by 22% approximately, which would increase the single rate for an individual student from $270 to $330. And to also raise the family rate from $370 to $450. With this, we looked at how this would look over five years and the different plans had different results but this particular plan would leave a shortfall of about $4,000 versus where we're currently looking at a $11,000 shortfall. But we can still operate with these fees. And I would recommend that the school committee would move to approve these fees tonight. So just a little more background, do you wanna give the background or do you wanna? The budget committee looked at this, so go ahead. Yeah, so the budgets of committee is making this recommendation. We've discussed it over a couple of meetings. Mr. Mason did present us with proposals that would make the fees, make the buses cost-free to the district. And we didn't feel, given the history of the reason that there are buses in Arlington, we didn't feel that that was necessary or appropriate. So after some discussion, the numbers that he's presenting here with a $60 per student and $80 per family increase, we felt that that seemed like a reasonable thing. The other thing that we did ask that the administration do is in their communications to families that they should be highlighting the fact that these fees have not increased in over 10 years. So this is really a necessary correction because we haven't been reviewing these fees. And in the light, 22% or whatever, sounds like a fairly hefty jump, but it's because we haven't been doing it at 2%, so. I'll make the motion if we're... Mr. Heiner? I'll second it for the purpose of discussion. Sure, I'm in. Saying, and I will support the motion based on the fact that it's been 11 years since we've increased it and it's necessary, is there a possibility of this being now reviewed on an annual basis and going up every year? Yeah, so we did discuss that. I mean, it is in our policies that we're supposed to be reviewing fees every year and hopefully with a stable CFO, we will do that. I think the intent is probably every two years to a justice fee, not that we should be looking at it every year if there's a gas price increase or something. I just wanted to make that clear to people that we're not gonna wait another 11 years before we get this incorrect, thank you. That is the idea. Any other comment? All right, all those in favor? Aye. Any abstentions or opposition? None, great, thank you. All right, next is the superintendent's budget. Just wanna quickly go over the minor adjustments that you've made. Yeah. So once again, this budget has been adjusted for some requests that were made at the first presentation. Those adjustments includes calling out the resources that are being provided to support libraries, more specifically purchasing library books. Also with the ski team, we are also calling that out in this particular budget book, which, I mean, this budget presentation, which would also adjust the total budget. So initially the number, the amount for total that was slightly in the, around in the lower 82 millions is now 82,997,634 dollars, which is reflected on multiple pages without going into the details on those pages. So now we have an overall budget increase of 6.5% from FY fiscal year 20. This, there's also slight changes if for those that may notice on the proposed ads page, which is page 16 in the presentation, where it does call out the library books and supplies. But it also, this number used to tie the bottom line number on page 17, used to tie to just the town appropriation. And we adjusted this to actually reflect the total changes of all funds, which is the net increase for the budget was 5,057,861 dollars. And this will give you a more holistic view of what's really happening in this budget to support the district. Trying to think of what else there. We also then spelled the language in terms of how these different items support in the latter pages. We also then made adjustments to the enrollment page, which is on page 24, which there's a five year look at the enrollment, similar to how we kind of look back at enrollment and do our continuity rate for enrollment projections. But this is just from the October one numbers and it separates it by school, but as well as calls out the out of district enrollment as well. Those are all the main changes that are probably worth speaking about. There are other minor changes in terms of different school committee members identifying spelling errors and whatnot. Can I have a motion to approve the budget? Motion to approve? Second. All right, is there any discussion? All right, all those in favor? Yes. The opposed or absent. Budget is approved. Okay, any additional superintendent's report? Actually the only thing is really just to get you up to date on what's happening with the building committee. Essentially since the last time we met, mainly it's committee work that's going on, we did have a meeting on March 3rd and the primary focus of that meeting was a discussion about geo wells. At that time when we met, I wasn't really able to bring the issue up, but what is going on is we're still just, we don't know quite yet whether we will actually be able to do geo thermal wells when we did the first trial well over on the practice field, which is over by DPW. When they went down 30 feet into bedrock, so they were down between 90 and 100 feet, they found some material, some, we don't quite know what it was, but it's probably coal tar from years and years ago, which was that area over by DPW. And so that has given some pause. We're gonna have to do some more testing and the implications of that is not gonna affect timeline of the project, as much as it can affect what we're gonna do about parking. So we may have to do a change in temporary parking. And we were gonna have, basically there's be three areas where people parked. One was over at the practice field, one on the basketball, and then one, of course, on Millbrook Drive. We may have to enlarge the basketball area. So for the time being, this is gonna be temporary. All of these things are temporary as we decide what will need to happen. So that's about all we really know right now. At this point, we know that there's an issue and we're gonna have to do another test well. We may do a test well over on the current softball field to see if that would be a likely spot for it. One of the issues though, and where the location of geothermal wells are, has to do with the phase of the project. So the idea of the ones over in the practice field was that that could be linked up to phase one. Whereas if we did any wells somewhere else, they'd be linked up to the second phase. So this is just an evolving issue and we may still have some. I don't know if we'll have the same number. But one thing that we do know is that the building is still gonna be all electric. We're still gonna be getting electricity on the grid through the photovoltaic cells. Eventually that parking lot over there will have a canopy of photovoltaic and then there will be photovoltaic on top of the high school too. So it's evolving and that's about where we are. We would, of course, of like, we're not saying we're not having them yet, but we just have to do more testing and see how many, and if, how many, what's the cost, you know, the benefit of doing it too. I don't know if, Chris, you and... We're, we're meeting on the 24th, we haven't, we're still scheduled to meet or... Oh, yeah. We'll have to talk about that. We'll have to talk about that. So we are scheduled to meet on the 24th of March, we'll see you whether we still meet and at that time the idea was we would have much more information from subcommittees and the contractors on this issue and possibly make decisions. Otherwise, everything else is going along. Next week the design team will be submitting the 60% drawings, they have spent a lot of time looking at the specifications in the interior and they're continuing to work on exterior. We had a meeting actually yesterday and actually these kind of meetings will continue even though we're closed because these are essential meetings, these are not, they must go forward so that we'll be happening over the next few weeks. That's the report on the high school and that's it. Great. Thank you. Consent agenda, all items listed below are considered routine, it will be enacted with one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant warrant number 20219, 2020. Dated March 3rd, 2020. Approval total warrant amount 1351212.41. Approval of minutes, school committee minutes on the public hearing on the FY21 school budget and regular meeting dated February 27th, 2020. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? All right. So this item carrying on officers, is that the item on, is this just to remind them to give you notice? Okay. So this is the time of year if you are eligible for an office next year and not retiring, please give Karen your notice that you're willing to serve. Bill, you had wanted to reestablish the legal services subcommittee, so I put that on here. Yes. And you can discuss it. I think that would probably be best left to the next chair, but why don't we just have the discussion? I, in going through the warrant, I noticed that the expenses seem to have gone up and we've already halfway through the year, it was a six month report on the warrant that I looked at and the retainer had already been gone through. So I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong, but I think it would be beneficial if that group cut together, I'd be willing to serve again. Again, if I bring elected on that committee and basically it's a monthly review of the things coming in from the two major firms that we have and occasionally there's another firm that may be providing legal expenses. And what I had done in the past, Jeff and I looked at it and things seem to be well within it. I'm just concerned for expenses and stuff and that's why I'm suggesting. And I have no problem waiting until the new chair comes in for a confirmation. That's why I just want to share it with everybody. All right, so we'll defer that to the new chair. Policy, I'm sorry, the new policy, subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget? I wasn't there. I can report on our last meeting actually. So we did meet to talk again about athletic fees. There's more work being done on a couple of proposals. So that will continue. We also met with two members of the finance committee. So the finance committee has a subcommittee assigned to the schools. There's actually three people on it, Dean Karman, John Ellis and Jay Poichris, who are all great people. Dean and John were able to come, had some questions about the budget. We're very supportive of any needs we might have, excuse me, any needs we might have as a district related to this coronavirus stuff that is still the town reserve fund. Mr. Mason said we're okay for now, but who knows what can happen. And they were very supportive of the budget request and had some minor comments and questions. So it went really well, right, Ms. Seuss? Oh, I just wanted to add that they were interested in getting updates on the high school project, which we were less confident to discuss and suggest to keep that in mind for the FNCOM presentation. And I guess we're scheduled to go next week, right? I don't know if it's... No, so when I spoke to Adam today, so the town put out an announcement today that said all meetings were canceled. Wait, what about my meeting today? And he said, oh, it's supposed to stay starting tomorrow. All meetings are canceled. But still, I, you know, statutorily, we're an independent entity, I'm not sure you can quite do that, we'll cooperate. So I think our next meeting will be canceled, our next school meeting meeting will be canceled. Go ahead. There's only one glitch in that. The Student Opportunity Act. Right, the Student Opportunity Act. I don't know if we're gonna still have the same date, April 1st. I don't think that's gonna change. So we might have to have a meeting on a single issue, which you would get ahead of time to review. And I know we had a curriculum instruction, but that meeting was canceled too. We'll have to figure that. We can talk offline and see how we're gonna proceed. We do it all in one meeting. So we have fewer, I mean, I don't know. We could, that's very possible, very possible. We've been sort of sidelined anyway this week. So we're gonna be able to work on that over the next week. It's certainly worth asking the commissioner on the call if you get a chance, whether that's really a realistic deadline for April 1st. It's so ridiculous that we're focusing on that when there's so much else going on. Yeah, absolutely. So as of now, we'll see, we may have a one item meeting. But basically I view it as the town manager requesting us to cancel as many meetings as we can. And so as we proceed, if there's essential business, that should still continue. But otherwise, meetings are intended to be canceled. So there's nothing else on budget update. Policies and procedures? No report. CIAA went. We reported just. Community relations. No report. Facilities. Met with the Bishop PTO. It was a good meeting. Scheduling tentatively right now with Thompson is planned for April 8th and strengthened for May 6th. Maybe Skyped, I don't know. High school building committee, recovered calendar committee. Or. I suspect it's on hold. Calendar committee. And our meeting on the 16th, Janice, is. Yeah. Yeah. It is not happening. I have an election minimization committee coming up on meeting next week. And I also suspect that will be canceled. But I don't know for sure. Superintendent, search process. We were scheduled to look at folks tomorrow, but that's canceled. Okay. Negotiations, not really anything to report. Any liaison report or announcements? I have one by me. The Thompson Marktown meeting was scheduled for March 20th. It will be canceled. And it has to be rescheduled because those children have got their radicals ready, but we're gonna get it done sometime. So, and there's an upcoming one coming from Dallin. There's won't be until probably the middle of April. And what I'm really excited about and didn't realize what I was getting into. Two, 200 student classes from the middle school may be doing it. So those will be two, if we get it off, they will be two actual town meetings. That would be really fantastic. And I will communicate with Karen and the rest of the committee to invite you to come. Great. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, so my announcement is in regard to our departing member. We usually do this at our last meeting, but since that's currently in doubt, we moved it up. Jennifer, on behalf of the committee, I wanna thank you so much for your years of service. Jennifer has brought an unrelenting focus to community engagement. Join her time on the committee, helping to strengthen the school liaison program, to launch the committee coffees, and to make sure there was appropriate community outreach and engagement on all our major decisions. Jennifer also co-chaired the first Build Arlington Future campaign, has been a steadfast advocate for enhanced funding for our schools and our school buildings. She has helped build bridges all around town to help make the Gibbs, the Arlington High School project, and the operating overrides happen. She's been a huge asset to the Arlington Public School, don't be greatly missed. Thank you. Thank you. I just say something, which is that this has been a tremendous group of colleagues, and I think that each of you bring different strengths, unique strengths, and I've learned so much from serving here and from each of you guys, yeah. Thank you. You only missed. Yeah, back around this. I didn't bring the big car, I ain't never really... I think that here's a lot for the quarantine. We will have it delivered to you. You don't walk up down the elevator. Yeah, because I brought the really tiny car. Careful on the delivery, there are no envelopes attached to it. When I left in 2007, there was a nasty note. It was actually a death threat that I had to forward to the police department. So somebody else had to... Let's not bring up those memories. So just check the box. I hope I'm not hit by too many people, but... No, we don't have a need for executive session, correct? No. All right, motion to adjourn. So move. Other than a favor. Yes. Animes. No.