 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Allington school committee on Thursday, January 13th, 2022. I am Bill Hain of the chair, but make it me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. The affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Here, yes. Mr. Carden. Here, yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Dr. Holman. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Mason. Yes. Ms. Elmer. Yes. Is the A-E-A representative here at this time, Ms. Ferranti? Okay, we'll check in with her later. And the Allington school representative, Amy Shalu, sorry. Neither were on yet, Bill. Okay, thank you. Tonight's meeting now, the school committee is being conducted remotely consistent with the act signed into law on June 16th, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The governor's order, which is referenced with the gender materials in the town's website for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, the meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and whose persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's meeting website using Nova's agenda platform. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. No one has signed up for public comment, so I'm not gonna bother taking the time to read that. At this time, has the student rep come in yet? No. Not yet. She comes in, so I'm gonna go over that. At this time, I would ask Dr. Holman to update us on the COVID protocols, please. Okay, I for some reason cannot share my screen. Hold on a second. Let me try this. Liz, try again. That might've been my error. No, I don't think it is. I think it's, hang with me for just a second, folks. I think I know what you're doing. It was disabled for everyone, but now it's enabled. I may need to sign out and come back in in order for this to work. So can I come back out and in, or how do you wanna do this? Go with whatever way is comfortable for you. Let me try this. Okay. I saved that whole minute and a half to talk about public speaking, so we're gonna... Let me try it one more time. Here we go. Good. You should be seeing my screen with the APS Revised Protocol A. Yes? Yes. So I just wanted to share an update because we had some adjustments as everyone knows. 2022 has made quite a dramatic entrance and we needed to respond pretty quickly over the break and as we entered school to make sure that we were ready to open school safely and make sure we were able to keep everyone in person. We made the difficult decision to have two early release days at the start of the 2022 year, in part because we wanted to make sure that we had a handle on what our staffing situation was and a plan to address it. One of the hardest parts of our day to staff is lunch and recess because it requires us to have a lot more supervisory hands on deck and we wanted to make sure that we had the ability to supervise that safely, which was part of the reasoning behind the early releases. It allowed us to avoid lunch, better understand what our case rates were going to be because it was still pretty uncertain as we entered the year and make sure that we were able to get kids back in person and would be able to open in full effective the Wednesday that we returned. So that was successful and we are managing to make things work. I will not sugarcoat things and say that it has not been a challenging week and a half. We have had a lot of staff who have needed to be out both due to their own illness or illness of a family member or the need to take care of their children who may have tested positive or whose classrooms may have closed. So I wanted to go over revised protocol A and some of the reasoning behind its implementation as well. So according to the, so the state has multiple protocols. They have their protocol A and then they have protocol B and C and which protocol you are to follow depends on whether or not you're a close contact, whether or not you're vaccinated, whether or not you've tested positive. Protocol A is the only one from Desi's guidelines that we have added some additional requirements to and protocol A is the one that applies to any individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19. So our revised protocol is one that we talked at length with the health department, members of our administrative team about before making a decision about what our approach would be. We will allow students to return to school on day 11 if they want, if they are feeling not feeling well enough to return before that or on day six through 10, provided that that individual has tested negative on a rapid antigen test, has been without fever for 24 hours without fever reducing medications, has experienced an improvement in other symptoms and is able to mask for five additional days with exceptions where necessary were absolutely necessary for students who may not be able to wear a mask following Desi's protocol and FAQs. So we shared some additional information for families that only our rapid antigen tests would be used for return testing after an infection. We want to make sure that we know that a test was returned negative. We also are only allowing students to test to return one time between days six and 10. If we reach a point where we're able to expand that to multiple times in between days six and 10 because of resources, both human and physical, then we will entertain that. But right now we need to make sure that we maintain the resources that we have, both in terms of testing supplies and in terms of the actual human beings who are administering some of these tests and we are limited in those capacities. Students who test positive must continue to quarantine until day 11 and those who test negative may attend school the following day. We're right now doing tests to return a centralized location at Arlington High School from 3.30 to 4.30 PM Monday through Thursday. We cannot do it next week on Monday because it is a holiday. So we will start retesting on Tuesday. We are looking into options that we might have for allowing students back in on Tuesday. But again, we're in a position where our capacity, both human and supply is pretty limited. And so it may be that students need to wait until Tuesday afternoon, as soon as we have a plan for that, we will communicate it out to the community. I wanted to share a little bit of the reasoning behind this approach. It is one that the town instituted for staff and that we've collaborated, like I said, with the Department of Health on. And it's also aligned with CDC quarantine and isolation guidelines, which tell us that if an individual has access to a test and wants to test, the best approach is to use an antigen test towards the end of the five-day isolation period. You can collect the test sample only if you're fever-free for 24 hours, without fever-reducing medication. If your test result is positive, the CDC says you should continue to isolate until day 10. If it is negative, you can end isolation but continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home and in public until day 10. Also on this chart are our results. So so far, 34.4% of our students who have come in for test and return, which is hundreds, have tested positive and the remaining 65.6% have tested negative. And we understand that antigen tests can return different results, depending on where you are in the course of illness and can return differing results from day to day. And we've heard some concern about the use of antigen tests. We're following the CDC's guidelines around the use of tests at the end of the course of illness. And we're using our Binax tests because those have some level of reliability. They are pretty sensitive. They've worked well for us in identifying positive pools and we have been able to reliably find the vast majority of the positive pools that we have had. So we are using those tests so that everyone is using the same supplies in order to be able to test to return and so that we can verify those results. It is going well so far. We've been able to welcome a lot of students back into the classroom ahead of that 10 day guideline and we will continue to pilot this through the month of January and decide whether or not it's something we want to continue through February. So those are the updates with regards to COVID protocol adjustments and I will share a little bit more with regards to data and numbers and where we're at when I do my update later in the meeting. I'm happy to take any questions. Any other members have any questions for Dr. Holman regarding this issue? Ms. Ecksten. Thank you. Not a question. I just want to say thank you to Dr. Holman and the entire APS team for all of the incredible work that you are doing to keep our students and staff as safe as possible during this Omicron surge. This entire pandemic we've heard continually about a layered approach, masking, distancing, ventilation, testing and vaccinations. And I find that APS has consistently followed through on all of those aspects of the mitigation strategies to keep everyone safe. You encouraged families to acquire higher quality masks. You acquired them for students and staff who couldn't get them for themselves. Students have been in pods, desks have been separated the last two weeks. You changed lunch protocols, people from central office when covered lunch for classrooms. Consistently ensuring that air purifiers are running, ventilation and mechanical things are functioning. The pool testing has been going on since last year. And so now this last change that you've made raising the bar for positive cases to test or return to ensure that we're not accidentally reintroducing infectious cases into our school buildings is just another example of all the work and care and thought that you and your team and Arlington Health and Human Services have put into making sure that our students and staff are safe. And then vaccinations are another thing that people talk about. And the incredible clinics that have been run for five to 11 year olds and boosters and everything. I want the community to know how thoughtful and careful you all have been to ensure that all of our students are in school learning as much as possible. So thank you very much, Dr. Holman. And I hope that you'll pass along my appreciation to all of your staff. Just wanna say it has been an immense team effort and I feel lucky every single day to be surrounded by the team that I have in Arlington. It's really an incredible group that finds a way to say yes to just about anything we need to do to take care of kids. But it also takes a great leader as well. So thank you from all of us. Now, again, turn it over to Dr. Holman for the Arlington High School Program of Studies to introduce it. All right, I will say almost nothing. I will say welcome, Mr. McCarthy and Dr. Janger. And whichever one of you is going to talk about the AHS Program of Studies which is in the school committee's materials for tonight, take it away. Good evening everyone. I'm gonna hand it over to Bill. Good evening everyone. So I believe you would have received two packages from me. The first is the program of studies rather than sit here and read the entire program of studies, which I was asked to do. There's an update sheet, excuse me, an update sheet and a list of new courses. I figured I would do a quick review of that. I will pause occasionally for questions if there are any. The first up is the policy and general information updates. We have two in this section. One is the MCAS policy. This is just an adjustment based upon the state's changes from COVID from last year. What we did was just adjust the relevant scores for what is considered passing based upon desise changes at the state level. The second piece is the wellness education requirement which the COVID adjustment we made last year to offset the fact that we had one term where we were fully remote and those PE classes went from graded to pass fail. We have since removed that because the last class affected by that is graduating this year. So both those pieces have been removed or adjusted. Are there any questions or concerns? Okay, seeing none, we are offering some new courses. And as always, I love to run through the new courses because I love to see the exciting stuff our staff is putting out there. I'm gonna do a quick overview. I'm not gonna run in too much detail. But some of the new courses we're offering are introduction to architecture which will be coming through our makers space and for those of you that have had a chance to tour the new building that you see in the new makers space we're very excited to put this new course into effect. I did a tour yesterday as well. If you haven't come by recently, it looks amazing. Fourth and fifth floors are close to done. We will be extending painting to full year and that's actually at student request. We've been offering two half year courses. They wanna take it for a full year. Cooking and living on your own has been a very popular class. We are going to offer up a vegetarian option now of those students that want to try that. We are offering another super course for those of you that don't remember super. Super is a Syracuse program that we are tied to. Students who take this course also receive credit from Syracuse University at the conclusion of the year. Our staff are certified as Syracuse professors. Ian McKay has been at the forefront of this in our social studies department for the last couple of years and now we'll be extending that into the math department. I believe this course is being brought to us by Dan Sheldon in the math department, which will be wonderful. I do hope they don't test our services too much with the cybersecurity checking but really looking forward to that. We're expanding our film offerings to include global film comedies. AP Physics will also be expanding. We've had a very high demand on that recently. This will be in conjunction with AP Physics that we're already offering. So this will be the next tier in that course. And the science department has put forth several electives which they're very excited about as they try and make use of the new facility we're looking at. And so they've got science, training and research, entomology, teaching and lab assistant, linguistics, the science of language, geomorphology, and you may remember personal finance. We've offered it the last couple of years as a super course. We're now gonna offer a second tier. Ian McKay is gonna be teaching that. This will be taught at the general level so that any student can take it. They will not be required to complete the Syracuse University piece but they also won't receive the credit for that. We'll also continue to offer the super option of that as well. We are putting a few courses into dormancy so that you all remember, we rotate through some of the courses just to help with the demand. Those courses will be astronomy, JavaScript and artificial intelligence. They'll be back on the docket for next year. And we are removing two courses for next year. One is the power of protest. We have not had a very high demand for that course recently. The other is AM Recreational Sports which is a PE course we've been offering from 7.30 to 8.15 in the morning. AM Recreational Sports didn't fill as well as we expected but the wellness course which did fill. And so by removing the AM Recreational Sports we'll be expanding that wellness program in the morning to offer up some more sections and hopefully fill those in. The remainder of the update sheet is just course descriptions. So I will pause at this time if there's any questions. Any members have any questions at this time? I've just got one bill. Oh, go ahead, Jeff. We're not in this discussion of the program of studies. We're not touching on the whole conversation we had about heterogeneous classes. That's not entering today's, this book at all. Oh, Matt, you wanna talk to that or would you like me to? Go for it, Bill. We've talked about today. At this, we do offer heterogeneous courses and we're not changing that in the program of studies. The larger conversation we had last year and continuing this year around the core classes is going to continue, but that is not in this program of studies. Okay, thank you. The courses that are offered for Syracuse credit, those credits, will they be, are they additional credits for a student if they go to Syracuse or are they part of the undergraduate study? Most of them are transferable to most colleges. If Syracuse is recognized as a college, which in most cases it is, the colleges accept those credits. Thank you. Is there anybody else? Go right ahead, Bill. Was that it? That was it. Any other questions on this? Thank you. I did. I would just like 30 seconds if I can. Go right ahead. Actually, I'm gonna take a little bit longer on that, but one, I wanted to give a very large thanks to our nursing department. Our nurses at the high school have been working non-stop. As I left today at five o'clock, they were still there doing testing. And I think it just, I can't emphasize enough what an amazing job they're doing. Also, I know there's been a lot of conversation about the new building. Very excited. We're hoping to get some more information out shortly on that. So it is, it looks amazing that the teachers got their first tour yesterday and they are super excited. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Pass on to the staff. Our appreciation for all their work. An extra work that's going on, as well as you folks. Okay. Next slide. I think Dr. Jinger was raising his hand. I just have one thing, which is the other, a couple of other folks to say thank you to getting through the details of the program and studies as you can see from Mr. McCarthy's presentation is a real labor of love and detail. And also he gets a lot of help from his assistant, Joe Broden, who does a lot of the things. And in addition to the nurses, the deans have been getting their steps in the last two weeks, running around dragging, bringing people down for second tests, making sure everybody's safe and calm, running the cash registers in the cafeteria. It's been a real all out effort. So I wanted to give them some points as well. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Mr. Schlechman. Are we looking for a motion to either receive or approve? I would leave it to the body, but I think we should be in receipt of it. Okay, motion to receive. There's a second. Second, but don't we vote this? When do we vote this? We vote acceptance. Well, we'd vote to approve it. Do we want to view this as a first read or just to prove this right now? I'm ready to approve. Is there any concern about not it? No, it's pretty straightforward. So I'll withdraw the motion to receive and offer a motion to approve. There's a second. Second. Any further discussion? Roll call vote. Mr. Carden. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Axton. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I vote yes. The unanimous vote. Thank you very much, gentlemen and the staff. At this time, I'd like to go back to the student representative, Amy, welcome. Do you have anything you'd like to share with us tonight? No, sorry about being late. I'm very excited to try this new class event. Mr. McCarthy is talking about. Okay. Thank you. Okay. The next one is the school committee budget priorities. Mr. Carden. Thank you. So every year we have this opportunity as a school committee to, now that we've heard from different administrators and the AEA, this is our chance to give our thoughts as the administration continues to develop the budget. So go ahead, Mr. Hayner. I don't know what order you want to go in. You can start. All right. I'll start. So, I think everybody for the thoughtful presentations, particularly the school improvement plan, which is the first time we've been doing this. So it's great to see all that level of detail. As we'll discuss a little bit later, we are getting into a period of tighter budgeting, partly because we had our school enrollment growth, which contributed to more funding and we had some additional funding that we were able to negotiate with the town as part of the override. That's coming to it. Both of those are probably coming to an end as our enrollment seems to be leveling off and that deal from the override is, this is the last year. So I do think we need to be cautious as we add more staff. Because we just may not be able to carry that on in the future. So we had the original multi-year budget plan that included coaches, literacy coach and math coach for each elementary school. And I think we need to finish that. But as far as the other coaches that have been talked about, I think we need to think more strategically about how we handle these issues that are these needs that we're seeing, how we can do that in an affordable manner in a well-structured manner. So that might need a little bit more thinking before we pursue it and we may not be ready for all that next year. We do have negotiations coming up and we wanna make sure we're saving with money for that. And that's gonna be uncertain for a while. So it's a bit of a challenging time for planning, but I think we need to be flexible as we get into the spring and there's more uncertainty than normal with enrollment. So all those things, I think, going to a need for flexibility, maybe reserve positions, maybe putting sort of a list of things that we might wanna fund. If it turns out we don't need classroom teachers because of enrollment, things like that. So that's sort of my input. Thank you. Anyone wanna volunteer? Let me just go through it. Mr. Thielman, do you have anything? No, I don't. I'm good. Okay. Ms. Eckston. Thank you. So as a classroom teacher, staffing to enrollment and ensuring that we have student-facing staff is always gonna be a priority for me. So I think rounding out the eighth grade learning community at Audison, including the special education teacher is something that we should certainly make sure to have happen. I'm also thinking about the teaching positions at the high school as the enrollment there grows. And so we wanna be thinking about that piece as well. I know at the presentation at the last meeting there was a lot of conversation about getting more information about things. And so without specific caseloads for special education learning specialists, it's hard to know for sure. But again, as someone in an elementary school, that's something that I think a lot about if that's something that the special educators are feeling like they need. And that's something I think we need to think about. And then I think a lot about the impact that COVID has had on students' social and emotional well-being and their learning. And so just thinking about the way that social workers, the needs for social workers across the district from pre-K to 12 while we think about how we're continuing to respond to the impact of the pandemic. And then the last piece for me are the librarians. We've talked a lot. They've been in this five-year plan. We're coming to the end of that. We started to fill some of those positions. I get nervous about it because as we move into FY24 and beyond, it's gonna get really complicated. But I think that that's a position where we're asking paraprofessionals to do the job of an educator, a licensed school librarian. And so I think that we should be acknowledging them and compensating them for their work. And finally, we have negotiations coming up and teachers deserve a fair raise. So thank you. Mr. Schluckman. Thank you. I came up with a list of a few things that I think are priorities in my mind. First is to fund our collective bargaining agreements. We don't know what they're going to be, but we have an obligation to make sure that we come up with a fair and reasonable settlement of the contracts that are before us and have the money set aside for that so that we don't have to make retroactive cuts. Secondly, I wanna make sure that our low-paid jobs are more competitive than the current labor market. And, you know, paraprofessionals to teachers, I think that the stark reality is with low-skilled jobs getting up to $17, $18 an hour, we need to do better there. Third is to make staffing adjustments based on the enrollment changes and where we have increases or things level off. We need to look at where our enrollment's gonna be and make sure that our staffing is there, where the kids are. And the thing that I've heard often enough over the past few years is pertaining to social workers. You know, I don't think we have an adequate supply of social workers that are not committed to special needs population. I think that there's a lot of work out there that needs to be done, kids need help, particularly after the past couple of years of disruption. And so that beefing up our number of social workers in the district and beefing up that supply, I think is important. So that's what I've been thinking of in terms of priorities looking at the budget going forward. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. I think for me, the biggest piece is, you know, making sure that we can bargain a good contract for our staff because everybody is up this year and that's a big deal. And I think obviously we want to, you know, continue to add to the table where we can, obviously. And I think also understanding that the way bargaining works is when you're unable to bring enough money to the table, you give up flexibility, right? Like that's just how it works. You accept rigidity if you can't bring money to the table. And so, you know, what we can do within reason, obviously, and when we come, that's part of coming to an agreement. But I think that we want to be able to, you know, make the small changes within the contract that we maybe need or want to deliver in the way that we may wanna do. And that is, that costs money as it should. So that for me is a big one. The line 79 in Dr. Holman and Mr. Mason's chart around paraprofessional pay, obviously, you know, in the salary study, we're way off with that group. And I appreciate it's a large group and we're only gonna be able to make incremental changes because when you have a lot of people, it's a high multiplier, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and that we can, you know, continue to, you know, chip away at that as much as possible. So those for me are really a lot of what my focus has been on in looking at FY23 and FY24. We're gonna hear more about the FY23 budget here tonight. But I, you know, those are real, real priorities. So thank you. Thank you. I wanna thank fellow members for bringing the things up. I concur with regard to negotiations going forward. And thank you, Ms. X, and for mentoring the librarians. That's something very dear to my heart. Anyone else have anything to add at this time on this? Thank you. The next item, budget, it's listed as FY23 budget acceptance and as Mr. Mason down. Thank you. Dr. Holman, would you like to say anything before I start or I can go right into it? Thank you, Mr. Mason. Go for it. All right. Let me just share my screen. Can everybody see my screen or somebody confirm? Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I thank you for allowing me to, you know, present this information before you, the school committee decide if you're going to accept the FY23 town appropriation for the schools for next year. On this slide, it shows what's in the formula to fund all the public schools in the long range plan. So starting at the top, which doesn't necessarily influence the actual amounts in the budget, but it's part of funding the town, which is the state aid provided from chapter 70. On, in this chart, fiscal's 20 to 2022 report the actual amounts that the town of Arlington received. The chapter 70 is a formula that includes enrollment at the base of it as well as, you know, the community income levels and tax base. So also, which you'll see is fiscal 23, there's an amount that is projected, which is a conservative projection that the deputy of the town uses, which is a 1% increase over the prior year amount. That number does not include whether the factor in the enrollment growth in that particular figure. If you'll notice on that line in fiscal 22, the town of Arlington was held harmless based on the chapter 70 formula due to the enrollment decrease that was driven by COVID-19 in the shutdown. So the town saw $30 per pupil increase in fiscal 22, chapter 78. This projection does not include for fiscal 23, any changes that may come from the Student Opportunity Act and we'll probably get a better picture of this number once the governor releases the fiscal 23 governor's budget, which the governor's required every year, the fourth Wednesday of January to provide or submit that to the house. As we go down on the slide, you'll see that there's the year over year student growth, which that is also another factor of the funding formula for public schools in the long range plan. On the plan, adjust funds and arrears based on enrollment changes from the prior year. So for an example of this would be in fiscal 20, the budget is based off of the changes from enrollment from fiscal 18 to fiscal 19, which is the year over year growth right here, which will then get added down into the growth factor in the proposed school appropriation from the town. I will speak more about fiscal 23 as I go on and explain this. So as we go down, we'll notice that the formula will then also multiply using a desi per pupil spending with using the most up to date desi per pupil spending for this fiscal year and we're not moving to fiscal 20 due to the increase in the per pupil amount. And since we are seeing a decrease in the growth factor, it would have penalized the district or the school department more because the school saw the growth rate at a lower per pupil growth factor if we use the fiscal 20. So the current proposed budget for the town shows locking in on the fiscal 19 per pupil spending amount. As you go down, you'll see under proposed school appropriation from the town is the school committee ads from the override. So in fiscal 20, budget year was the start of a four-year override and part of the commitment was to address some of the needs of the schools by infusing about $2.8 million over four years. The original configuration of that was 600,000 for fiscal 20, 600,000 for fiscal 21, fiscal 22 and fiscal 23, which was the last years of the override was supposed to see $800,000 increases. However, due to once again COVID, there was an adjustment made downward of a $40,000 to $60,000 to fiscal 21, which then was later allocated evenly over fiscal 22 and fiscal 23, $800,000 amounts. The, these figures each year get added back into in the following year, the general education costs. So the general education costs is the school committee ad from the override plus the growth factor, plus the general education base and is applied with a 3.5% increase each year. And then the special education line is not necessarily aligned to how the budget, the school committee approves the budget, but it increases 7% year over year. And that's to account for the needs for special education or the assumption of special education costs going up at a higher rate. That analysis was done years ago and in some cases it still is occurring. At that rate. And then what's different this year is the bottom line, which is an added for this year and in knowledge with that the growth rate we're seeing the growth factor is decreasing by a hundred and $1,379,700 is an offset of a one-time infusion of funds of not $170,000 for COVID-19. The funds, not necessarily specific to use for COVID-19 related items, but is to help support the needs of students and acknowledging that due to this year, a correction of enrollment growth. So last year, the schools did not see a decrease in the budget on the growth factor when the budget, when the enrollment had decreased in fiscal 21, from fiscal 20 to fiscal 21. And therefore it is being proposed that it is corrected to reduce the budget to a net amount to match the enrollment and the heart or the intent of the long-range plan, which is by 189, down by 189 students by the per pupil growth factor of 7,300, which is the growth factor that you see here, which gives us in the town, it's the current draft of the town budget, a total Arlington Public Schools budget of, for the town appropriation side of 84,447,869 dollars. This is a change of $4.3 million, about $4.3 million and a 5.42% change from last year's budget. I will, can you answer any questions? Now we'll heat my time at this point. Any of the members have a question at this time for Mr. Mason? I've got a narrow screen. I don't see anybody as, okay. Thank you. Seeing none, Mr. Cardin. Okay, thanks. So in your past, we've used different wording I checked, but the wording that I've proposed in the motion is that we acknowledge this figure. I've always had issues with us accepting a budget figure when our budget hasn't been developed yet. In the past, we've sort of all agreed that the long-range plan number would be our number, but this year in particular, because of the adjustments that Michael just went over, I do think it is better to acknowledge this number rather than accept it, making it clear to the town administrator that we have a statutory obligation to develop a budget. And we still retain the authority to submit a different budget request, if that's what we so choose. So we acknowledge that amount. I think we've had a lot of discussions at long-range planning over the last few months about the upcoming fiscal cliff that the town is facing. There's a lot of concern over that. We also presented very clearly how the school department has a lot of needs. And so those two things are in conflict, and this is the compromise that's on the table for us to review and consider, and for now to acknowledge, because the town manager also has a statutory obligation under the town manager act to submit his budget on January 15th. So he has to have a number in there for the school department budget, and this is the number that he's chosen. With consultation with Dr. Homan, this is the number he's chosen to put in. But again, I think, we as a school committee need to have more discussion over that as we go forward and see what the budget is going to be, particularly with that 970, which we greatly appreciate that we've been given that 970,000 in additional funding. But as of now, it's only for one year. So that would be very problematic if it's just for one year. So we did discuss it at budget subcommittee today, and I think the consensus was, this is the number that's going to be in the town manager's budget, so we should acknowledge it. And if anybody has any questions or additional comments, that's great. But I'll move right now to acknowledge the town appropriation of, I don't have the number in front of me. There we go, just a minute. On your screen. There you go. Of, no, there's not there. I can't see it. 84. Do you want me to give it to you? All right, 84,447,869. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Mr. Schleckman. Yeah. I appreciate Mr. Cardin's caution in terms of acknowledging rather than accepting, given the discussion that came on the floor of town meeting last year, I hate to go forward without, with any number without a firm knowledge the whole town is behind it. And that, even if we were to accept it, that we'd have no problem with the finance committee going forward. The rhetoric in last year's town meeting was a little disturbing, I would say. So I think it's best right now to acknowledge the number work around that number and see where we come out as the budget is developed. So thank you, Mr. Cardin. Mr. Thelman. Yes, I just want to make sure that the change in intent here, so when we accepted the number in the past, we took all the votes in the past and said we accepted. What do we say, Len, what was the line? No, no, so for the past two years, we accepted. The prior year in 2019, we acknowledged. I didn't go back further than that. I mean, I've had this problem for a while, since I've been on the committee. And Jeff, I think it was in 2019 that you suggested using the word acknowledged instead of accepting. And so I don't know why we went back to accepting. I think over the last couple of years, it's been more agreement because we were in a multi-year plan. And here because of COVID and because of the enrollment change that's hitting us and requiring a give back of 1.3 million, it's just different than last year. I just was trying to, thank you, Len, I was trying to get my head around the past. Okay, I mean, either way, I think the committee has always had the legal right to go to town meeting if we want to do it and say we want more money, we've never done that in the past, but we've always understood that we have legal right to do that. We've never done that all my years on the committee. Okay, so all we're saying, we're acknowledging this, we're telling the town manager to build the budget for this set with this number. And then we'll see where the conversation goes. We've always had that right. So it's really no change in actual practice. It's just, we're going back to the terminology that we adopted in 2019. Okay, I just wanted some understanding. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Would you straight the motion? I'm sorry, Ms. Morgan. Sorry, thank you, Mr. Heiner. And I think also Mr. Dilman, the challenge here, the real sticking point is that the 970,000 and the fact that at this point, it's a one-year one-time offer, right? And budgetarily, one-year one-time offers are very challenging. They're not particularly useful for bargaining because they go away. And so it, you know, there needs to be some more clarity and understanding around the intent of that component. I think before at least some of us would be in a position where we would be willing to move towards acceptance of the number. But I can only speak for myself on that. So thank you, Mr. Heiner. Anyone else? Okay, the motion is to acknowledge the budget. Would you repeat the number one more time, please? Yeah, I'm sorry. Mr. Mason, can you repeat the number for us? Yes, 84,447,869 dollars. Thank you. Roll call vote. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Mason. Mr. Schlickman, school committee 2022-2023 meeting dates. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are voting the meeting dates for 2022-2023. As you're aware, the policy requires us to approve a calendar of 19 Thursdays in which we're going to meet during each school year as the school calendar is developed. The policy also states that we need to go in, the approved school committee calendar shall be distributed to all principals, administrators, and instructions that every effort shall be made to avoid scheduling evening events on school committee meeting nights. By voting these dates here and now, I think that we are providing more than sufficient notice to ensure that there are no conflicts that pull members away from school committee meetings. This pattern of meetings aligns to the one that we're in for this school year. So it's non-controversial and we always have the ability as a committee to either cancel a meeting or add special meetings. So this is our first notice as we're building this into the 2022-2023 school calendar. So I move approval of these dates. There were a second. Second. Any further discussion? Roll call, Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Policy BEDL land acknowledgement. Second read, Mr. Schlickman. I move approval. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Roll call, vote. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Policy KFD amendment. Second read, Mr. Schlickman. Move approval. Is there a second? I second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Roll call, vote. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. I do not see the next person on the agenda, Ms. Swan. So I'm gonna pass this and move down to approval of MOA for AEA Unit A Educated Evaluation for the 2021-2022 work year. Mr. Spiegel. You discussed this, we discussed this last time in the executive session and now this is sort of a revision of our current year evaluation agreement just for this year in recognition of the teachers and administrators workloads this year to alleviate some of that workload for both of them and still accomplish the goals of our evaluation system. And we would ask the SWOOK committee to approve it. Move approval. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Just a clarification. This is just for the rest of this year. Am I correct? That's correct. Thank you. Any further discussion? Roll call vote. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Ecksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. And still don't see anyone. So I will move down super tenants report. Dr. Holman. Okay. I'm going to share my screen once again. You should see on your screen the current distribution of cases both in Arlington public schools and today's update for the Arlington average daily case rate. It will surprise no one to learn that we have seen a significant uptick in cases in the schools and in the community. The schools continue to mirror case rates in the community with the exception of, I will say are slightly lower. Our positivity rates are slightly lower in the school than they are in the community. And we don't have as many cases at this point this week as we did at this point last week which is a positive trend of sorts. I will say this week has felt a lot like last week in terms of staffing challenges. We've had about the same number of staff out each day but it has not continued to increase in the way that it did last week. And the schools have put some contingency plans in place that seem to be working okay for the time being. We are continuing to see cases come in from across the community and a lot of spread that is happening primarily within households at this point, which gives us an indication along with some of the other data particularly from mass wastewater that we may begin to see a dip and decline in case rates over the next several days and weeks. So we're hanging on. We're committed to keeping kids in school. I really value, as we said earlier, the partnership we have had from our teachers, our nurses, our administrators and several of you who have covered lunches for us or substituted classes. And we really appreciate all of that help. We have had a number of college students who have been recruited by their parents to come and help us out and substitute some classes. And that's been wonderful to have as well. It's really been quite a testament to the Arlington staff and community just how all hands on deck the whole team has been and with a smile in their eyes. And I imagine on their mounts, but I can't see it through the N95, KN95 masks that they're wearing. So on other updates we have, as I mentioned, our APS revised protocol A, which will extend at least until February 1st with additional messaging on any adjustments to either where we're conducting the testing or any adjustments to the protocol itself before February 1st. We have received high quality KN95 masks for staff and some high quality KN95 masks for students which have been distributed to the school. We do not have enough for all staff and all students to have a daily swap of KN95 masks. And so what we've told parents is that this is merely a recommendation that any mask a student will wear that is well-fitting is the best mask for them. That really what's important is that they come to school masked and that they maintain the mask on over their nose for the day. And so we're reminding kids, keep the mask on, keep it over your nose. And so far things are going pretty well. We have not seen significant evidence of spread in schools. We continue to monitor for that. We keep a very close eye on things. And when we need to, we do additional follow-up testing. We are expecting, in addition to the masks we've already received, an additional 9,000 or so home tests, home tests that are easy to take at home, not our Binax tests, that we can distribute to staff and families as needed to help them monitor for the presence of COVID-19 at home. We're also expecting some additional Binax. Those will supplement our stock for tests to return. There are delays in a lot of shipments right now. And so we're not expecting a lot of these supplies to come in in short order, which is part of why we're maintaining the one time only on tester return programming. I just said it, but I had to put it in a bullet point and in writing that we're extremely grateful for the coverage of systems we've had from staff and all over the community. And then I have a couple of other updates that are not related to COVID-19. So these will be my favorite ones. We have an equity audit that we are working on and candidates have been interviewed by a committee of representatives from across the school system, including some students and some teachers. We interviewed several candidates as facilitators of our equity audit and we have narrowed it down to a few candidates who will be interviewing with myself. I believe Dr. McNeil and Margaret Thomas so that we can learn more about their candidacy for this important equity audit that we would like to do. For strategic planning, we are working right now on an RFP for a facilitator for our strategic planning this spring. And that will post in the next couple of weeks as soon as we can get that completed and posted for us to consider some facilitators for strategic planning. Whoever is chosen for this will be spending a significant amount of time with a group of about 50 to 60 stakeholders that will include students, families, community members and elected officials, teachers and administrators from the Arlington Public Schools. And then we are also, as you all know in the process of doing a lot of budget planning and this includes some steps that will be new to us this year. And I'm really grateful to Mr. Mason for all of the work he's done to organize this year's budget planning process. We will be implementing a staff roster review with the principles so that we can make sure we have a really clear handle on the staff that are at each school and start to think about what an appropriate model or staffing model for schools might look like. And we're also implementing some position control approaches to make sure that we have approval mechanisms in place when new positions are posted and that we can make sure that we have a handle on what positions may be rolling forward into future budgets and which ones may be one-time things or ads that are necessary for a particular project or initiative. And then the last thing on my update is one that I don't particularly love giving to the school committee, but I am in a position where because of some of the things that have come up over the last several weeks, I need to request that we delay my formative assessment submission for one more meeting. It was going to be given to you at the next meeting. And I think it's important that I prioritize the entry plan report over the formative assessment because I think that that can inform some of the formative assessment feedback that all of you give me. So I would like to submit the entry report at our next meeting at the end of January and then submit the formative assessment materials in the first meeting of February. And with that, I will stop sharing and take any questions from the committee. It's an awful lot. Sorry. No, no, no, it's great information. Very appreciative of it. I'd just like to respond to the last thing and then I'll turn it over to members of the committee. You have been doing Yeoman service as well as the rest of the committee, community in the system. And I personally see no problem in delaying it in the formative assessment. It's not that you've been sitting on your duff all this time and we are very appreciative not the greatest language, Jeff. Anyway, is there anyone else? I like it, I think it's good. Thank you. Paul. Yeah, I'm very appreciative of the fact that this has been an extraordinarily busy time with all the COVID activity that we've been doing as well as the day-to-day operation. So I'd like to move approval of the delay of the submissions by the superintendent. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion on that? We'll call. Well, Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. She's off for the moment. And I vote yes this time. So thank you. Is there any other questions or Ms. Keys? I just, this seems like the best time to say it. I want you all to know how incredibly proud I am to work in Arlington these past two weeks. I feel like we have been doing such a great job to keep our schools open and to keep everybody safe. And it has been all hands on deck. And I mean, that's teachers giving up prep periods that that's Paris jumping into grade levels they've never seen before. That's our central office staff going down to schools to cover. And particularly our nurses who are just my superheroes right now. It's so great to be part of a team where we're all working on this together. And I want to make sure that the community knows and that you all know that like we as staff really appreciate how things have been going. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Thank you to please pass on to the entire staff our appreciation. And Julie, please let the rest of the teachers know how appreciative we are. I know the parents are for nothing but positive things in the community about this Arlington. And from several teachers in other communities have indicated we've set a very high bar for them. So thank you again. Ms. Giggins, any sign of Ms. Swan? Not yet. Okay. Chairman? Yes. Yeah, this is a reappointment. Yeah, we can move this without. Okay, and I've been very active with the Transportation Advisory Committee over the past couple of years. And Ms. Swan has been an excellent member of the committee. I think that she's more than earned reappointment. So I move that we reappoint her for a four year term on the Transportation Advisory Committee beginning January 1st, 2022 expiring December 31st, 2025 contingent upon the open meeting law state ethics town anti-harassment and town anti-fraud laws and policies. Second. Any further discussion? Roll call vote. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Hexton. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. unanimous vote. Ms. Diggins, if she comes in tell her she's been reappointed. We'll do it. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 22137 in the amount of $819,215 and 30 cents. Warrant number 22148 in the amount of $720,316 and 87 cents. School committee regular meeting minutes, December 16th, 2021. So much. So moved. Second. Roll call vote. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Hexton. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget. Mr. Cardin, do you have anything to add from what's been said prior to the meeting? During the meeting? No, I don't think so. Just that Dr. Ozanieff requested everyone to forward their budget priorities to her as well. Thank you. Community relations. Ms. Hexton. Thank you. There will be a school committee chat on Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., which is different from our Saturday at 11 a.m. primarily for grades six through 12, but everybody is welcome in the Zoom. Blink is on the APS calendar on the APS website. Thank you. Well, as the hosts are, who is it? It's me and who I think it's you and Lynn, I believe. Okay, should be fun. All right, we'll draw a crowd line. We'll draw a crowd. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Accountability. Mr. Cardin. We have a meeting scheduled on January 25th. I think that's a couple of facilities, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy and procedure, Mr. Schleckman. No report. Allington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. Yeah, the project is moving forward on time. We've got good news today about supplies arriving per schedule and we should have the... I don't know, Liz, if I say this, am I gonna jinx it? It looks like we're on target to open as scheduled on the 28th of February. But everything, there's a lot of little things that have to happen, but it looks like we're on schedule. And so it's very exciting and a great moment for the town. Ms. Warren, welcome. We are so far ahead of schedule. You've already been reappointed. Murray, you're back in. So you got it. Mr. Schleckman, sung you praises from day one. Is there anything you'd like to add to it or anything? Not this moment, but thank you all. Thank you, I appreciate it. Are there any liaison reports at this time? Any announcements at this time? Any future agenda items? I want you all to know, I kiddingly said, the meeting would be over by 730. Haven't missed it by much. Well, great job. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. No move. Your second. It's not debatable. Mr. Thielman. Yes. His accident. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schleckman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Invited. John, the way to go.