 Good evening. I'm calling the order to order the meeting of the Allicton School Committee on Thursday, March 3rd, 2022. I am Bill Hain of the chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda present and can hear me when I call your name. Please respond in the affirmative. This accident. Yes. Mr. Schlickman in the affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Rampy. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Dr. Holman. Sorry. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Mason. Yes. Ms. Elmer. Yes. Is Ms. Ferranti the AEA representative here? Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you. Student representative. Ms. Carmody. Yes. And is Ms. Shallow here yet? Not quite. Okay. Tonight's meeting of the Allicton 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 was suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website. This meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before I begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom and is being recorded and is also 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 then if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record for the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening to listening who do not provide comment. And those 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 website using the Novus Agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. At this time, I will invite public, excuse me, public, start the public hearing on the budget and invite any members of the committee to offer any comment. Is there any member of the committee that would like to comment on the budget at this time? Is there anyone from the administration that wishes to make a comment on the budget? Is there anyone else in the public, in our group here that wishes to make a comment? Seeing no one at this time, I will end the public hearing on the budget. Yes. You have to invite the members of the public to come in. Thank you, Paul. Everybody raise your hand, no restrictions in terms of who can speak. So, Ms. Diggins, you're going to have to be aware of anyone that wishes to speak on the budget. Okay. I'm checking the attendees now. Okay. Do not see any hands raised right now. Mr. Cardin, you just joined us. Do you have any comments at this time on the budget? No, thank you. Okay. Hearing and seeing no one wishing to make a comment on the budget, I will end the public hearing on the budget. At this time, I will ask Dr. Holman. She has an announcement to share with us. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. I am going to quickly turn this over to a guest that we have on the call. Ms. Kathy Hasse is the scholarship chair for the Massachusetts School Nursing Organization. And she has some very exciting news to share with the community and the committee tonight. Kathy, it's all yours. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Yes, my name is Kathy Hasse. I'm actually director of the Northeastern University School Health Academy, but also on the MSNO board. And I am the chair of scholarships and awards. And I am so excited. We had a lot of submissions this year. And your school nurse in high school, Sarah Lee actually has been named the Massachusetts School Nurse Organization School Nurse of the Year for the school year 2021-2022. And I was so excited. I have to say reading the submissions, I had to recuse myself as Doreen had to recuse herself because I've had Sarah as a student in her graduate program. But the submission from Dr. Holman and from Doreen just was absolutely excellent. And Dr. Holman talked about how Sarah organized countless vaccination clinics in collaboration with the town, developed systems for tracking and tracing COVID-19, and was the driving force behind Arlington being the number one town in the state for pediatric COVID vaccinations in November and December of 2021. And she's overseen pool testing. She's done just an amazing job. And she said our students are healthier and safer and happier. Thanks to her incredible work. And from her nurse leader, Sarah serves as a role model training new nurses, precept student nurses and serves as the advisor to the Future Nurses Club, which we need a lot of those Sarah so keep going. She also serves as an advisor to the Arlington Youth Health and Safety Coalition and created the school emergency response team protocol and updates it annually. She's also a CPR instructor. She is a nationally certified school nurse, and the nominee is an outstanding school nurse that exemplifies leadership and is well known to the community. And I will say she's a great graduate student as well. If I can say that. I also would like to say since I have the school committee here, you have one of the best nurse leaders in the state in Arlington. Very proud to call her a friend and a colleague. And I didn't know Doreen, did you want to add anything to that? Yeah, I do. Thank you, Kathy. I really appreciate that. And we're very proud of Sarah. And I am wearing two hats tonight. Because as the director of nursing for Arlington, you know, I want to congratulate Sarah. She does outstanding work. I've never met anybody like her. You know, in addition to her, her regular full time job, she's the COVID leave for the district and she's done an amazing job. And then on behalf of MSNO, I am the president of MSNO. We are extremely pleased that Sarah was selected this year. As she mentioned, the you know, the nominations were very competitive. And according to the nomination committee, Sarah's nominations stood out above and beyond the rest of them. So congratulations, Sarah, we're very proud of you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am. It's hard to not get emotional. So I won't. But I will say this, that I am a very proud school nurse. And I think that Arlington has shown our commitment to the health and safety of our students every day. And I'm honored to accept this, not for myself so much, but for our entire district, and our Arlington School Nurse team, like I'm only one person, and this team is amazing. And I'm, I'm very proud. Thank you very, very much. Dr. Oma, you know, I wanted to ask if Dr. Danger had anything to add, and then I'll close it up. Well, I mean, I just want to say I've been I've worked with Sarah now for nine years. She is an important part of the Arlington High School family. This last year and a half, we've shared her with the rest of the district as the COVID lead. And she's really taken off everyone else has seen in her what we've seen in her for a long time. Even before COVID came along, she was a leader in vaccination in the high school, she on her own would set up a vaccination clinics extra above the Board of Health for staff above the Board of Health for students when necessary. She has made our clinic be an inclusive and really welcoming environment. She partnered with ponder, with Arlington eats to make sure we have food resources. She's set up what we call ponder threads, which is all sort of clothing closet for students to really have a beautiful service program. I could go on and on. She's really an amazing member of the team. And she's, as the senior nurse really mentored in a new group, and we have a wonderful clinic with really amazing professionals. And so I I couldn't be happier like no one deserves it more. And she really reflects the best of what we are. So thank you, Sarah. I've only been here for about eight months now, I've lost count. But I can't, I can't possibly count the number of times Sarah and I have landed on the phone with one another talking through a scenario or talking through a new protocol or trying to figure things out, along with Doreen. And it has made the transition into a new role. And I'm sure Doreen feels the same way as she's new to Arlington this year, too. Much easier to know what an incredibly competent and capable and exceptional and just wonderful general generally person I have leading the COVID work in the district. And it's she's always been something to rely on. She's always offered sound advice. And I'm so thrilled that she's being honored with this. We're very lucky to have you, Sarah. Arlington is very lucky to have you. And this is very well deserved. I just want to make one quick comment that every time I've seen Sarah as hardworking as she is, she always has a smile. She always has something positive to say. How are you doing? Great. How's it going? Fantastic. She has been we as truly, truly lucky to have you in honor. Does anyone else wish to say anything before I move on? Ms. Morgan. I think just to add to what Mr. Heiner said, it's one thing to be like that with adults all the time. But she's also like that with all of our students. And she's taken what can be a stressful situation being pulled out of class to be in a disaggregated pool. And you're sitting there like, do I have COVID? What happened? And she's just done so with our students with so much grace and empathy. And, you know, she treats them with such respect. And it's just it's, it's so wonderful to see. So thank you, Sarah. So excited for you. This is wonderful. Thank you all. Thank you, Sarah, very much. Thank you. Thank you. One more round of applause, everyone. Thank you again. Moving on to Eileenton High School student representatives. Miss Carmody, Amy, Megan, do you have something to share with us tonight? Yes. So, although it was announced earlier in earlier meetings, what did have to be canceled, but we're very excited that again, we're going to be hosting Battle of the Bands and it will be on March 18th at 7pm at the Regent Theater. All our welcome and tickets will be going on sale soon. So look up for that. Great. Anything, Amy? How did the opening of the new school go? It was great. We talked to students and all of them loved the school. Everyone was saying how it just didn't feel like Eileenton was so fancy, but everyone loves it. Great. We all said thank you. At this time, I'm going to put public comment. Members of the public who wish to address the committee, there will be a 30 minute minutes of public comment, depending on the number of people sign up. Time allotments may be reduced, but will not exceed three minutes each. If the number of people who sign up exceeds that can be done in 30 minutes, the number of speakers will be capped and will be invited to speak based on the timestamp of their email to Miss Diggins. The school committee respectfully requests participants of the public to utilize their camera, if possible, before speaking and to adhere to the public comment policy, BEDH, that requires participants to give us their name and address. Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations and programs that concern them. But in public session, the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel nor against any member of the school community, except for the school committee or the superintendent in the capacity as operational leader of the Eileenton public schools. Now will the committee hear anything that might identify or infringe upon the student's privacy by name? If you'd like to sign up to speak, please email Ediggins at Eileenton.k12.ma.us by 12 noon of the date of the meeting. We have three people that have signed up. Gina, Kame, I apologize if I mispronounce your name. Gina, Miss Diggins, if she's not here, just let me know. I did see her name pop up. Let me just double check. I did see Gina's name. I don't know if she's calling in from a telephone. You got it. She's on. Gina, can you hear us? Your microphone is off, Gina. Oh, hi. Sorry, I needed to be let in. Sorry. Okay, there you go. You're on. Okay, great. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to speak. I won't take a lot of time because I want to give my time to other participants who wish to speak. My only comments I did write in a written comment. My comment for this evening would be please lift the mask mandate for all of the children in Arlington public school system, including the preschoolers. Let them and their families decide if they would if they want to wear a mask. And that would be my comment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chairman. Can we get name and address of the previous speaker? Sure. My name is Gina Carme and I live at 55 Claremont Ave in Arlington. Thank you. Thank you. Michelle Afanos would be the next speaker. Michelle, when you come on, would you please give us your full name and your address? Sure. My name is Michelle Afanos, 19 Moccasin Path, Arlington. Before my time spot starts, I just wanted to ask so only three people allowed to speak because I know there's a lot of people that are attending this meeting that wanted to have an opportunity to speak and they may not have been able to email in a timely fashion. In order to get our program together, we needed people to announce that they're going to be on prior to 12 noon of the day of the meeting. That's part of our school committee policy. They're welcome to speak at the next meeting if they didn't get it in tonight. Will it be the same thing you have to email prior to? Prior to noon on the day of the school committee meeting. Yes. They could do it tomorrow morning and be listed for the next meeting. Yes. I think that's unfortunate. I think that there's a missed opportunity to hear from people that are on this meeting and there's only three because I think that's a missed opportunity. Perhaps that should be thought through a little bit more for the next time. So thank you for your time and attention. The email that I sent to the superintendent and the school committee included the very wise saying that if we do not learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. Indeed, I feel that mistakes were made and harm has been done. This need not happen again. This is an an education and an educational opportunity. I have worked in healthcare for a very long time. I understand and agree with the overall concept of the precautionary principle. It was a novel coronavirus. It was a new pandemic. Measures were put in place to protect the public. But once these measures have been deemed ineffective and indeed harmful, they should be immediately repealed and replaced. And I understand the uncertainty and confusion we've all had faced in the last two years. I too held the CDC, the NIH, and all these three letter agencies in very high esteem no longer. For all the science is not a slogan to me. As a nurse, I demonstrate and advocate for the use of evidence-based practice. And I can tell you with all certainty that there has been an abject failure of public health and these leading institutions to be honest and transparent. I will not bore you with my personal journey of discovery, but I will say it started with curiosity. Sadly, some of the sadder victims of this pandemic have been critical thinking skills common sense and courage. I ask you to look at those three things going forward. The ability to look at any given situation and determine that it doesn't make sense. Have the curiosity to think of the other side. Have the courage to speak out when you know it doesn't make sense and it's wrong. There's a great book by Stephen Covney, the seven habits of highly effective people. The key principle is first seek to understand, then seek to be understood. Why are all these parents so upset with the school committee, the teachers unions and the school boards about masking? Why are they so upset about the children not being in school? Have the curiosity to look into these? Why are they looking into going into charity bonds, personal liability insurance? These parents have been pushed to their limits. And then when I read the exemption form, but two to five year olds, it's no longer anecdotal. The evidence is that masking is very harmful to children. We have been hit with a tsunami of anxiety, fear and depression on these children from the masking. It needs to end. There should not be an exemption form for parents that have been pushed to the limit and feel exceedingly disregarded as it is. Speak to the parents of children with special needs and listen to the heartbreaking stories of what these masks have caused these children. I don't understand why we're continuing these metrics that don't make sense. Children are not at risk for COVID. We know that, but we do know that that masks are harming the children. When as a society have we ever risked the health and well-being of the children to protect the adults? This is wrong. This should not happen. It shouldn't happen again. I implore you to be curious and please seek what's in the best interest of the children. Thank you. Thank you. Is Dolores McGee here? McGee. Yes, Dolores is here. Dolores would you please give us your name and your address? Hello. Hello. We can hear you. Sorry, I wasn't sure if I was unmuted yet. Hi there. I'm uncomfortable giving my address and I'm wondering if I can still participate in the meeting. You may. Go ahead. Thank you. I would like to just use my time to also request that the mask mandates for Arlington school children be dropped immediately and that measures are put in place to ensure that such mandates are never again considered in the future. Research is coming out that is making it clear that a lot of these COVID protocols were largely not only ineffective but they also came with a host of other negative consequences. Obviously mask wearing in order for it to be effective has to be done very, very particularly which in small children in particular it's not. A doctor will tell you that those surgical masks are used to prevent droplets from coming out of their mouths not to prevent things from coming in and that the only really effective masks are the N95s and the doctors they have to take courses on how to put them on properly. So we know that they're not really doing anything for the children except for creating a lot of social anxiety, depression, there's a lot of divisiveness, bullying, mask shaming, etc. And all of this is contributing to little by little a diminished human experience and you cannot put a price on that. These children will not get this time back in their lives. Being behind masks at these developmentally critical times in their lives when they're learning all sorts of things academically, socially, emotionally has been extremely detrimental to their health and to their experience as humans and just to their overall sense of community. So I would just like to request that the mask mandate be dropped immediately and that we never consider this again. We have to learn from our mistakes. My understanding also is that it's actually not even legal because it's masks are a medical device and you can't mandate that. So I just I'd like to have that on the record and I would also like to bring up a point about the Arlington Community Ed being requiring a vaccine verification to participate in any of the classes. My understanding is that that is that they have to follow the guidelines by the school committee and the superintendent and it just seems very, very contradictory to me that something with the word community in its name is discriminating against people who either are not vaccinated or just choose not to participate in a world that mandates a vaccine. So I would just like to have the record show that I'm requesting that that be reconsidered and dropped as well. So thank you very much and I would also I guess if I have just a few seconds left like to say I'd really like to see us getting together in person. This seems very informal if you see I'm sorry very too formal very restrictive and again it does not feel like a community you know where people cannot respond organically. There's all these rules around how we have to participate. I know that everybody on this call has been to Costco, has been to the gym, has been to dinners out. I see no reason why we can't sit as a community together and have conversations about what's happening in this community because it's changing very, very fast with these measures that are not dropping away. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is update on COVID-19 mass recommendations. Dr. Holman. Thank you. Give me a moment to share my screen. You should be seeing a slide that says massing recommendation background. Yes. Fantastic. All right. So I want to get started with my recommendation to the school committee tonight around how to move forward with our masking protocols in Arlington Public Schools with a little bit of background to get us going. So beginning on Wednesday, February 16th, 2022 of this year, the Arlington Board of Health has lifted the town of Arlington mask requirement for public spaces. So that happened just before our February break. Effective Monday, February 28th, the statewide requirement that this was a date that had actually been set by the commissioner earlier in the year when the January 15th date passed when we were right in the middle of the Omicron Surgeon. So at that time, the commissioner set Monday, February 28th as the date at which he would consider whether or not to extend the mask mandate by the state. And so that date came up on February 28th and the commissioner decided not to extend the mask mandate, which made masking requirements in schools a local decision. On Friday, February 25th, over the course of our winter break, the CDC no longer recommended universal masking in schools or on school transportation, but still required universal masking on public transportation. And that was in response to adjustments to their school-based recommendations that they decided to also lift it on school transportation. And then on Friday, February 25th, CDC also issued some new community level tools to help guide decision making about necessity of restrictions based on some new metrics. Not just cases, cases are part of the equation that they're using to determine a community's level of risk, but also on hospital beds that are being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new cases in an area. Again, still part of the calculation, but with a heavier emphasis on the state of hospitals in a particular area. And the CDC recommended that case rates are no longer as heavily weighted in that formula. So per that new risk calculation tool, Middlesex County is considered to have low levels of COVID-19 and is therefore in the green, at which point the CDC says that maintaining some of these restrictions is no longer necessary. So I want to give a little bit of data that is backing up the recommendation that I have for the committee to consider tonight. APS vaccination rates for our eligible students range from 85% some schools all the way up into the mid 90% at other schools. The APS staff vaccination rate is 97.9% very high, thanks to the requirements that we have had for staff to either get vaccinated, fully vaccinated or give us a religious or medical exemption request. Approximately 70% of all APS students and staff are participating in our weekly PCR pool testing that happens once a week. We typically try to get that in in the first couple of days of the week so that we don't have students who might be carrying the virus present in our schools and we can isolate quickly. The number of positive pools and cases in the schools in our town, in the county and in the state have dramatically decreased after the Omicron surge which has been just wonderful to watch. Those cases cruise down and you can see the case rates at the table on the right. We haven't seen and this is significant because after every break period that we have had throughout the entire pandemic we have seen a significant spike in cases following the break. We do have an increase in cases this week but it's not a spike in the same way that we've seen increases in cases after previous break periods. 80% of students and staff are participating in our at-home testing program. They take a test home every week. We ask them to screen on Thursdays or to use those tests for symptomatic testing or to use those tests to test to return in the event that they actually have a COVID-19 infection and COVID-19 levels in our area have reached their lowest levels since July of 2021 and that's according to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority who's been tracking COVID levels in wastewater. So as a result of all of that information and some of the shifting landscape of recommendations both from the CDC and from our state entities my recommendation for the school committee to consider and discuss this evening and choose to support if they wish is that effective March 7th that's next Monday of 2022 we would make masks optional for all students and staff in the Arlington public schools except in a few unique situations where masks would continue to be required unless an exemption was offered. So all staff at Monotomy Preschool and in our APS daycares except when instructionally appropriate and beneficial for staff to remove masks based on their professional judgment would still be asked to wear a mask in school. Students at Monotomy Preschool and in APS daycares serve between the ages of two and five and are able to wear masks are also asked to continue wearing masks for now. Families are invited to apply and qualify for a special mask exemption for their student at Monotomy Preschool and APS daycares. The masking requirements at Monotomy Preschool and in our daycares would be revisited at least monthly and I want to say a few words about this particular requirement before I move on to the other requirements or exemptions to this particular adjustment to our protocols. The goal of this requirement in our Monotomy Preschool and APS daycares is not to maintain mandatory masking and perpetuity or even necessarily for the rest of this school year it's to move slowly into the next phase with the ability to be flexible and assess success as we go in those environments where parents have a choice about vaccinating their students. These exemptions have been discussed at the department by the with the Department of Health with staff and with families at Monotomy Preschool and a range of opinions exist on these topics. I've spent significant time over the last several weeks meeting with in person and speaking on the phone with families who are impacted by this change. At Monotomy Preschool we have two really significant factors that influence this decision. One is that a large proportion of students at Monotomy Preschool have medical conditions that could compromise them or make them more likely to contract a very serious case of COVID-19. Some of those students are not able to make the choice to mask and so it is incumbent upon us we believe and the Department of Health believes and the staff at Monotomy believe to make sure that we are doing what we can to protect them while we learn more about what this particular change in protocol is going to mean for our schools. The other thing that's unique about Monotomy is that parents do not have the choice about vaccinating their students because we do not have a vaccine for ages three to five. Certainly some of our students at Monotomy are able to be vaccinated and have been and we may expect to see some exemption requests from them. We may even see exemption requests from families of students who have IEPs and have medical conditions that may make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 whose parents still want them to be able to get their speech language lessons without a mask on or have some of their lessons without a mask on because it's instructionally beneficial. We're all weighing risks and so we invite any families who think their student would benefit from a mask exemption to please apply for one and it is our intention to make sure that those are granted when it's going to be really beneficial to those students and that if there are families who students can wear a mask to school they continue to send their child with a mask for now and we will reevaluate this at the beginning of April. Other places where this exception exists is on all school buses and transportation vans through at least the month of March. Again, this is an opportunity for us to assess how things go and if we are in a position where things are going well then at the beginning of April I would look to the guidelines that would allow us to remove masks on school buses and transportation vans. Again, we have a lot of students who might be more vulnerable to COVID-19 who ride our transportation vans in particular and so while I recognize that the CDC has lifted this particular requirement they are still requiring masks on public transportation and we would like the latitude to keep masks on on our transportation for now while we make masks optional in all of our schools K-12. They would also be required masks in all school health offices and medical waiting rooms and for COVID-19 positive individuals who return to school as part of our test to return program during days six through 10 except when they are eating, drinking or are outdoors. So in addition to this recommendation which you all will have a chance to discuss in a moment we are going to continue many of our mitigation measures which have been working very well for us. So this is one mitigation measure that will become optional but we have a number of them that we will continue. Those include weekly pool testing our at home symptomatic testing and in school symptomatic testing our test to return program that has been very successful and now submitted for academic journals to consider publishing on which we're very proud of our APS at home testing program. We are continuing to replace our MIRV-13 air filters on all our filtration systems in our schools. They were last replaced in January of 2022 and they'll be replaced again in April of 22 according to our three times a year protocol for making sure that those filters get replaced on our handling units and the use of our standalone HEPA air filters in all instructional spaces which we will ask staff to make sure are turned on. All students and staff should continue to report positive results on our reporting form and we will continue to keep track of those and report them out on our COVID dashboard. And the last bit that I would like to speak to is what our continued mitigation strategies will be with respect to maintaining some ability to keep masking in our toolbox for COVID-19 and then I'll also talk about how we're going to support students and staff from this. So APS has used a lot of strategies when outbreaks have occurred in our schools. Every time we have a situation where we have multiple cases in a single classroom or school or we have some level of evidence that there may be person-to-person transmission we take tools out of our toolbox and we respond to each situation because it's a unique situation potentially in a different way. We always collaborate with the Department of Health and Human Services and on occasion we collaborate with State, with the DESI to determine what our next steps should be. It's our intention always to avoid imposing any additional restrictions and to avoid any actions that result in loss of time in school. However, when it is necessary we need to keep tools in our COVID-19 outbreak response toolbox because it allows for students to stay in school. A masking could be one of those tools. So we would like the ability to flexibly reimpose a masking restriction when the alternative may be a missed days of school for students in a classroom or school where an outbreak occurs. We've had three instances this year where we have had to close a classroom for a couple of days. We've had to send students home because we have an outbreak in that space because we have a concern about ventilation and in those instances it would be more desirable for us to be able to say everyone in this class is going to wear their masks for the rest of this week and we're going to keep an eye on things. We also reimpose here and there we've had to do this this year physical distancing and cohorting restrictions in individual classrooms. We had actually relaxed a lot of those restrictions right as we reached December and then with the Omicron search we've re-implemented a lot of them. We would like the ability to repeat tests consented students in classrooms where outbreaks occur. We do this now. If we have a situation where we have multiple cases in a classroom sometimes we'll re-pool that class and we will continue to do that. And then as a last resort we would like to retain the right to close a classroom or school when ventilation is compromised or when outbreaks occur as we have been doing. What the masking protocol allows for is for us to avoid any situations where students might be missing school which we believe is more detrimental than being asked to wear a mask for a few days while we allow an outbreak to fizzle out. And finally I'd like to speak to what we're going to do to make sure that we're supporting students and staff as we make this important transition into the next phase of the virus. We would like we have shared talking points and suggestions with administrators. We shared those on Tuesday. Administrators have begun sharing those out with their staff. They have created new resources from those including slide decks that teachers can use with staff that staff can use with students. We have had building and department administrators working with our social work guidance and nursing teams at their schools to adapt and provide resources to teachers and answer any questions that teachers have at staff meetings this week. And we've shared several topic talking points with teachers. They are listed there. But primarily they revolve around making sure that students understand particularly well really all of our students that people may choose to wear their masks sometimes remove them at other times. There could be lots of different reasons why somebody chooses to wear a mask or not. Some people are comfortable with this option. Others are not. And that we really need to make sure we're not judging an individual's choice or pressuring someone to choose in a certain way. We're also working to make sure we emphasize that the science and several professional organizations have told us that it's safe for those who choose to remove their masks and that if you're ever unsure about anything you are more than welcome to meet with our teachers nurses social workers who will talk with our students if they have any questions about this. So that concludes my presentation on this renewed recommendation and I've brought I appreciate the school committee giving me the authority to make a decision around this given the public discourse on this particular topic and the fact that I think it's important that we are one voice and moving forward on this next phase of our of our work mitigating COVID-19. I wanted to bring the recommendation to the school committee for conversation and your supportive vote if you so choose this evening. So with that I will conclude answer any questions. Thank you Dr. Holman. I I want to begin this by saying you have my full support on what you have done. I think you've done a you and your staff have done a phenomenal job to the state and I would like to continue you having my support going forward. I will now entertain any other comments from committee members. Dr. Ampe. Thank you Dr. Holman. Thank you very much for your detail and clear policy and the rationale behind it. I also am in support of it. I think one thing that hasn't been voiced specifically is that all of this stuff is a risk benefit ratio and what we're feeling at this point is that the risk for the elementary school students who have been vaccinated is less than the benefits that are derived if they choose to be unmasked. The numbers are different for the preschoolers because they can't be vaccinated at this point. But I do realize that they also have probably more risk I mean more yeah more risk more more harm done and I noted that although the CDC has changed their guidelines they're still in the process of updating their pages for early childhood education and I would like us to follow and see what their recommendations are. It wasn't clear from the tiny bit that they wrote about updating whether it will be totally consistent with the elementary school or if there's going to be some differences and so I'd like us to follow that and if they recommend that we can start having kids go unmasked that we do that even at the preschool level. So thank you. So any other member? Ms. Hexton. Thank you. I agree with Mr. Heiner and Dr. Allison Ampe in terms of supporting you in this recommendation. I think that you've shared a lot of clear data about why you're making this decision. I think you've been incredibly thoughtful about it. The added piece about staff and teachers talking to students. I think that's a layer that not every district is considering when they're making this kind of decision and so I really appreciate the way that you and your team have taken not only the health and safety but the emotional piece of this change. This is a huge change. People have been masking in schools for a year and a half and so it's you've thought a lot about what that's going to look like and feel like for students. My one question for you is what is lunch going to look like in the sense that there are going to be students and families who are going to continue to choose to mask? And at lunch they're not going to have that choice. They're going to need to unmask also and so I'm just wondering if the protocols at lunch are going to continue with the distancing. I know the ventilation has always been there but just thinking about that for families who are who are concerned and whose students will continue to mask by choice. So right now our protocols have dropped some of the cohorting work that we had done during the school year where students we had some pretty strict seating charts so that we could do contact tracing but since we dropped the contact tracing requirements earlier this year we don't necessarily need to keep to as strict of seating charts. And so students are not necessarily sitting next to all the same people that they sit next to during the regular day but the lunch sizes the size of the number of students in in any given cafeteria haven't changed and so lunch will look largely the same as it does right now and as it has for the last month and a half. We're not going to be having fewer lunches so there are more students in the cafeteria certainly we're going to continue to keep the windows open the air purifiers on but as I noted if we start to notice anything if we start to have any concerns we could return to potting we could return in a particular classroom or say sit with your table mates when you go to lunch today without even needing to necessarily reduce strict seating charts so that we can mitigate any spread that we think might be happening. And we're also looking forward to some warmer weather and I think one thing that will be a holdover from the pandemic is that the kids enjoy eating outside when they have the opportunity to do so and so as we look forward to spring we'll also look forward to doing some more eating outside again regardless of what our protocols are. Okay, thank you. Thanks Mr. Hiner. Mr. Schluckman did you have your hand up? Yes I did. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My question really comes in terms of transportation which I I'm really interested in making sure that we're consistent and that whatever we're asking to be done makes some logical sense. Now at this point MBTA and all other transit is required to mask on buses. So there is a consistency as students would be getting on our bus versus the 77 or any other transit instrument. I would if the federal and state mask requirement for transportation is lifted I would urge the superintendent to think about that as a trigger to remove masking on the buses. Other than that I'm really impressed by the hard work that's gone into this and the thoughtful outcomes that we have. I think I feel very comfortable with this proposal going forward. I think it is time to remove the mask mandate. I think we should start acting a little more like Japan when people feel the need to mask they mask either because they're anxious about catching something or because they feel like they're coming down with something and would like to protect others. I think that's where we're going is a society. I think that we will come out of this pandemic a better society and a more considerate one as a result of this. And I think that this is a tremendous opportunity to educate our children in terms of their own personal health safety and respect for others. So I fully support the superintendent's proposal and I look forward to its implementation on Monday. Thank you. Ms. Bogan did you have a hand up? Yes. I just need some clarification about what's going to happen. I understand the proposal for the preschool sort of moving forward. But I'm not clear on how that gets changed to a mask optional and how quickly that can be done. I hope that it can be done quickly. So I just I don't I don't want to have to come back here and have anything hold that up. So I guess I just need more explanation on what that looks like. Yes. I mean we're kind of like I mean we're sort of writing this as we go. Right. So what does that look like to you? I guess Dr. Homan. So I anticipate that we will receive a number of exemptions from families who are looking for their child to be able to come to monotony without a mask. And I anticipate we will be granting those exemptions. And so that's going to give us an opportunity to see how it goes with students who would really instructionally benefit. And we have a number of them at monotony who would instructionally benefit from not having a mask on us being able to see their faces. Teachers being able to make the decision about when to pull their masks down. Especially like when they're teaching phonics or if a student's receiving speech instruction or in similar situations like that or even when we're working with a student who's having an emotional challenge it sometimes helps to be able to see their full faces. We're going to assess this all throughout this month. If we're in a position where this feels really successful we're going to consult with the Board of Health. We're going to talk to Joyce Schlinger at Monotomy see how things are going. We're going to keep an eye on case rates at Monotomy and do so in an environment that we feel will be slightly more protected because staff are wearing their masks more consistently and then maybe in our other settings and more students are coming to school with their masks on. And we're also going to watch what happens in our other schools and how this goes in our other schools where we do have vaccinated students. And if we feel like we're in a place when we hit April where we can make masks optional for all of our monotomy students then I'd like the ability to make that decision. And if we're not and we feel like we need another month to keep an eye on things and see how things go and then we would like to be able to do that as well. Does that answer your question, Ms. Morgan? Yeah, it does. And I mean, I suppose if this committee felt like it was not on board with waiting another month then we will have you know, we'll have another meeting and could certainly I mean, we're sort of so me personally what I said two weeks ago I still believe I don't think this is a political decision. I don't think it's something that we need to vote on. And I think that it's something that I was very comfortable giving you the authority to determine operationally obviously the Board of Health said that, you know, whenever it was like Thursday a couple, you know, two weeks ago actually, right? They lifted their mask mandate. We could have done it on Monday. I was very comfortable with the operational recommendation to wait out this week. I think was very sensible. And I think, you know, meant that there was, you know, more trust from the community. So super support that. I think where it's tricky for me is that we're now going to vote on this. So it makes me feel like, like I get confused about the preschool because of that because we're sort of setting precedent here, right? Because we're coming here and voting on it. So I guess we, you know, we can see how things go. We meet again in two weeks. And if it, you know, if it feels like we need to talk about it, then I presume you'll be able to give us an update about this at that time, but that would happen anyway. So I just wanted to understand because we're sort of, you know, bifurcating preschool a little bit here, right? How, how, how we see that that's going to work. And if other people feel differently, obviously, that's fine too. So, okay, thank you. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, I was just going to move adoption of the superintendent's proposal. Well, before you do that, I want to give Mr. Gardner a chance if he wants to talk. If he doesn't, I'll come back to you. Mr. Gardner. Sure. My question actually is not on this particular motion, but Community Ed wasn't aware of that policy. That's not directly in the presentation or in our remit. But I do wonder if we're going to reconsider that, given that it's kind of an outlier at this point. So if you recall, the policy that we have around vaccinations for, particularly our extracurricular activities was that if it was a rostered extracurricular activity and one that was not part of our regular educational programming, one that we deemed a rostered extracurricular activity, that we could implement a requirement for vaccination, notably and very importantly, that requirement that they put out also has the ability to request a religious or medical exemption to it just like any of our other requirements would. When I was asked by Ms. Rothenberg whether or not they could implement a vaccine requirement and whether they could be considered a rostered extracurricular activity, I had a conversation with her about that and said that I thought that that was possible. And I suppose she's moved forward with that. And so if that's something that we need to have more conversation about whether or not that constitutes a rostered extracurricular activity, I think it makes sense for it to. However, if that's not in the spirit of the policy from the school committee, I would welcome that feedback. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't discussed, so I deferred to the policies of comedians to whether that's something we want to discuss or just let continue for the rest of the year and then readdress the policy for next year. But I think it only applies to the 2021 school year actually 2022 school year. All right, that's it for me. Thanks. Mr. Thielman. I'm very supportive of this and I was just going to make a motion to accept the superintendent's proposal. Is there a second? Second. Second. Any further discussion before we call the vote? Roll call vote. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Did you say me? Yes. Yes. And I vote yes, unanimous vote. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Thank you. Next slide on the agenda is Literacy Report from Dr. McNeil. Thank you. So I'm going to share my screen. So can everybody see my screen? Yes. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to present tonight. I wanted to present a literacy report, program report, and that's based upon the recent feedback we've received from the community and questions about our current curriculum resources. And I thought it was a good time to share the recent updates and future plans for our K5 literacy program. As a result, my objective for giving the presentation is to review current updates to the K5 literacy instruction. And these updates have taken place over the past year. Look at our foundation for identifying the standards which influenced the lessons and the activities that we incorporate into our instruction, talk about what's new, again, those things that we've incorporated over the past year, and look at on the horizon. What are our next steps for addressing concerns about the units of study? And then I'll open it up for comments and questions. Before I dive into the content of the presentation, I just want to present this quote from Dr. Goldie Muhammad, who is the author of Cultivating Genius. Literacy is not just about reading words on the page. It also carries some sort of action. In other words, reading and writing and our transformative acts that improve self and society. And it represents why teaching literacy is so important. So when students develop their ability to access different kinds of texts, they're exposed to a world in which they can learn more about who they are, learn about other cultures, and understand where they fit into the large world. As a result, if we work to personalize their educational experiences, they will become more engaged and invested in their own learning and progress. And I also want to point out this quote was inspired by a speech given by James Fortin to the American Moral Reform Society in August 17, 1937. James Fortin was a wealthy African-American abolitionist who used his influence and resources to fight for the civil rights for African-Americans. He helped to fund the newspaper The Liberator. His speech centered on the importance of becoming literate. During this time, Black people had to form their own literary societies to teach each other how to read and write. They understood the power of becoming literate. They also utilized their literacy skills to advocate for their equal rights and the abolishment of slavery. So this is an example of us using multicultural education in order to connect to students and give them a reason for becoming literate. And so these examples can maybe help them to understand the power of literacy. So and then next next slide. I'm going to point out the sources or the foundation that we utilize in order to select the standards. A lot of times I mentioned this during our meetings so and the first two resources are available on our website. And the, you know, the Massachusetts English Language Arts Literacy Framework is organized to include guiding principles, a definition for what students should be able to do when they to become college and career ready and ready for civic participation and provide and they also provide anchor standards and grade level specific standards. And we also have on our website the curriculum family guides which provide a summary of what students should be able to know and be able to do at the end of each grade for each content area. So those resources are available for families. And then lastly, you'll see there's if you click on that link, you'll see what our 2021-2022 K-5 ELA curriculum map and standards. So these are the key understandings that we want students to know as they matriculate up to the next grade. The literacy coaches have reviewed the state standards which are available in the first resource you see as the Massachusetts the framework and have identified those essential standards that need to be taught for each grade based upon what was covered last year. So they've utilized also the literacy assessments to also identify those standards. And so they completed this work during the summertime when they met with teacher teams in order to identify what those standards are for this year. So this is a timeline and this slide represents action steps that we took last year. I'm not going to read each one of the the text below but you can see that this work started actually it started two years ago is building off a work that we start for grades one and two. But I wanted to highlight these milestones that took place last year during the pandemic and so they include PD and it started off with PD from Dr. Melissa Orkin where she met with K-2 teachers to talk about the science of reading. And so it's based upon the research and the pandemic we thought it would be proven to expedite our plans to ensure that we shifted to a structural literacy program in grades K-3. So the work that we started in grades one and two we had a plan for that but then we expedited that plan based upon the circumstances of the pandemic and what we thought that students would need in order to recover from the different formats of instruction that we had to implement last year. And I also want to emphasize that we're still providing professional development to support the implementation of most of the recent resources we have purchased. And the last thing I wanted to emphasize is right here winter of 2022 a few weeks ago elementary principals and literacy coaches received training on the Amplify platform which houses our DIBLS data. And so we want to also make sure that we're understanding how to not only administer those subtests that we added to our battery of literacy assessments but we also want to be able to interpret that data and be able to use it use it along with other sources of data like student work and teacher observation in order to inform our instruction. And again I'm going to talk about when that when those conversations take place is during those ace block meetings that we've integrated into the elementary schedules. So those ace block meetings have proved to be invaluable for coaches to meet with building administrators and classroom teachers in order to talk about instruction and to review data. Make sure that's fine. Moving on to the next slide. So this slide is a graphic representation of the research that identifies the skills that students need to develop in order to become skilled and strategic readers. Our goal for instruction is to develop our students language comprehension and work recognition skills so that they become again skilled and strategic readers. The reading rope is a visual visual representation that exhibits how the rope becomes more tightly intertwined as students master all of the skills. And I took this slide from an actual PD presentation that the literacy coaches put together for our kindergarten teachers when they were giving them an overview of what was new for this year. And there's a link that's embedded within the slide which contains a short video that explains how the skills presented in the reading rope provide students with the ability to become strategic and develop the automaticity needed to comprehend text. As it becomes skilled for readers students can develop a criticality for interpreting text. And this is important as we want students to go just beyond accepting everything that they read and develop a way to like you know like I said critically evaluate the information and be able to also question and challenge it as well. And so that that is this is a representation of summary of the science of reading of different types of foundational skills that we want students to be able to develop within our early literacy instruction. So this slide represents you know I talked about the different things that we did in the timeline you know the PD the type of resources that we purchased and in order to target certain grade levels. So this is like the adjustments in action and as you see at the top circle you'll see that's the early literacy research that's the science of reading provides a why provides a foundation for why we've made some of these changes in our approach to early literacy. And then as you move over to the to the circle to the right you'll see the curriculum which we've made sure that we're focusing on those foundational reading skills. We wanted to add shifts to our instruction so that we're explicitly instructing providing this instruction in kindergarten third grade like I said the shifts for first and second grade were already in place. The shifts were made to focus on the foundational reading skills that students need to become skilled and strategic reader reader readers. And that again that research a summary of that research was in the previous slide. And for our instructional practice students are taught to utilize what they know about the relationship between letters and sounds to break apart words into smaller phone names to decode unfamiliar words. And this is a shift from the three queuing system which teaches students to use context and picture clues to decode two cold words. So as we look at our instructional practice we also purchase the resources you see there in order to facilitate that instruction. And as you see next to it like in found foundations which is finance instruction we added that to our kindergarten third grade instructional literacy blocks and the geodes are the decodable text and it wasn't just geodes we purchased other decodable text as well and that's in kindergarten through second grade and the Hegerty are the phonemic awareness lessons that we added to that resource we added to kindergarten through second grade literacy instruction. So again there's ongoing professional development during our early release time and during our ace box that we're providing to teachers so they can understand how to utilize these new resources. And then you look over there to the left hand side you see the circle for assessment. The dibbles subtests have been added to our formal battery of literacy assessment so that teachers can progress monitor how students are developing their foundational reading skills. The dibbles are also used as a dyslexia screening tool to identify students who may be struggling to develop those foundational reading skills and we understand that from research to early detection and early intervention is a way to combat that as well as making sure that we have a strong core literacy instruction that's providing structured literacy program. And then on the horizon this slide is talking about is showing what we have planned is again this is tentative it may change as we as we go along but you'll see that we have various milestones listed here and their dates proposed dates where we like to complete those milestones and this is again looking at the core literacy resource that we use for our literacy instruction for grades one through five we're also going to look at tools of the nine for our kindergarten instruction. And I want to talk about this for a second. We have definitely understood that the research has come out and about that has been very critical of the units of study and that research is around the way that the units of study address phonics, fluency, text complexity and language development building knowledge and vocabulary and the way that does not actually taking consideration are English learners and those students who may not who need who may need support with mastering those foundational reading skills. So some of the more specific around phonics and fluency is there wasn't enough there's not enough guidance within the units of study for teachers in order to understand that enough time for practice for the phonics instruction and a phonemic awareness and that the units of study emphasize the three queuing system which teaches students to use context and picture clues to decode unfamiliar words instead of using the foundational reading strategies that we would like to make sure that are explicit in our literacy instruction and there's insufficient direction for teachers on how to use the assessment results to inform their instruction and then for the text complexity and the language development the philosophy behind independent reading does not challenge students to read more challenging texts. So that's and then around building knowledge and vocabulary elects guidance for teachers and how to use mentor text to build student vocabularies and for our English learners supports there's not a lot of research based ELL supports that are present within the direction that's provided to teachers in the units of study. So those are some of the things some of the overview what that what that research has shown for our units of study so we want to make sure that we address that as we look for a replacement reading program. So I just want to just highlight our K through five literacy team has done an amazing job with not only providing the PD but bringing in providing the PD but PD for our K through two and K through three and a three through five teachers but they've also done a great job of identifying resources to support the instruction and again it's still ongoing so they've done an amazing job and I just wanted to highlight them as well as all of our teachers who have done an amazing job to accept this like it hasn't been a sudden change but it's been this implementation around our early literacy instruction has been done in in a quite a short period of time it usually takes longer for that and they did it they started this during a pandemic so we were dealing with that but we were also trying to think of what we're going to do in order to combat any type of impact that the pandemic has had on our literacy instruction so I just wanted to highlight them and these are some resources again Cultivating Genius is a book by Dr. Goldie Muhammad equity by design which is talks about the equity and associated with using UDL we have our mass literacy link there that goes on it guided from the state on how to set up a structured literacy program UDL guidelines progress reports which we have updated this year to include some of the new standards and then we have our 2021-2022 literacy assessment calendar there that you can access and then the units of study review that's a report that I've really found to be very helpful to understand you know the research behind some of the and what I've shared with you was was taken from that report about the critique of the units of study so with that I will end and open it up for questions I'll stop sharing my screen Thank you Dr. McNeil I just want to make a note to the public that all these references and the complete slide presentation are on Novus and they're available to the public if they want to go into it any members Dr. Holman I just want to follow up on Dr. McNeil's presentation say we just to follow up on what he said about our literacy team that these changes and shifts that we've made the foundational literacy instruction in the last few years are very impressive to me they've had a significant positive impact on third grade achievement scores in the most recent year you can see the impact of the changes they've made through a pandemic on the achievement of our third graders just in this year's performance compared to previous years and this is also a team in the work that I've done with them so far that moves quickly they're reflective they're willing to think about the work that they've done and how to improve it and they're willing to make changes and adjustments and to think about how best to do that in a way that's inclusive and involves everybody who needs to be involved and who will be impacted by the change so thank you Dr. McNeil for the comprehensive presentation and I want to echo his thank you to the literacy team and to all of our teachers who have done incredible work in this area over the past few years any members of the committee have any questions or comments that they'd like to Ms. Eckstin thank you thank you Dr. McNeil for this presentation and the timeline this is something that I am very immersed in myself from on a day-to-day basis so I'll apologize Dr. to Mr. Hayner if I get in the weeds you can stop me so I will echo what you both have already said about the adjustments that have been made in Arlington and really quickly and it's challenging to make those those changes and so I it's it's noticeable to me as a parent of a third grader and a kindergartner just what my now third grader did in kindergarten and what my now kindergartener is doing I can see the changes that have already been been implemented so I have a I have a few questions and as I said Mr. Hayner you can stop me my first my first question is so much of the conversation is about the science of reading but I'm wondering where writing falls into into this process that you're you have started and are moving through that's a very good question I mean this is something again we have to do this and as you know as a teacher you have to be very careful not to overwhelm teachers with like too many changes at one time and I think it's very Putin for us to start where we felt like this is where we the most to prioritize how those shifts are going to take place and so as we move forward and again that's part of like as we move forward to like look at other core literacy resources or reading program we're definitely going to take in consideration the writing piece of that so we're going to be the literacy programs that we review we're going to look at how they assess you know again their reading instruction and writing so all that will be roped in as we move forward and so hopefully we can find a comprehensive literacy reading and writing program that compliment each other that's one thing that we also liked about the units to study the reading and the writing complimented each other and so we will as we move forward we'll just take take that in consideration but we want to be very careful about how we roll different programs out because at like I said before you know teachers are learning how to utilize the resources that we put in place this year and we don't want to overwhelm them so we want to make sure that we're doing this in a very thoughtful manner and so that we can keep them and we don't get pushed back in there say hey this is way too much so we again we're going to move forward and as we move forward and as we review different literacy programs writing will definitely be taken in consideration thank you that's helpful and that's that's sort of a piece of that for me is learning so much new curriculum and implementing it all at the same time and so well well I very much support the the process and the and the move to something different I also am really really cognizant of the work and the professional development that teachers have already experienced for many years with what's happening now and making incremental changes to to support that so I appreciate that my other question is about what how you're thinking about the tier two instruction so my understanding is right now these level literacy instruction which is has also been critiqued so I'm wondering if that's something you're also thinking about is that something that will be a part of the curriculums that you look at because that's maybe it's too soon again stop me if I'm no no that's a very good question you have the LLI kits you know again that's the you know a part of what we're going to as we look at the you know for me our focus on tier one instruction and so as we my assumption as we provide this the foundational reading skills and we have a structured learning I mean literacy program in place I'm also going to look at how the programs that we review moving forward deal with intervention and I think that's going to be something that again we're going to have to consider as we move forward again we don't want to make shift too too quickly we want to make sure that teachers are able to master and give in time to really understand how to integrate it into their instruction and understand how to intervene at the tier one level and that's where my focus is right now because tier two and tier three we've done that we've done that in the past and we've focused on that intervention we talked about reading specialists and how they take on students who may need tier two and tier three intervention and I think we also have to look at how we're going to restructure our reading specialists and their caseloads and them dealing having to also take into consideration the who they have to service and so I think that's going to have to have that conversation and Dr. Homan and I have already started to have those initial conversations about looking at restructuring that Thank you and my last question for now is you know this this is very much focused on K to three and that's a lot of where the science of reading conversation has been focused so my last question just is how are you thinking about grades four and five so can you be a little bit more specific because like I said before as we look at our core instructional resource which are the unit to study which go from one through five so again we want to focus on the early literacy right off the back because we thought that that was something that was a high priority especially coming out of the pan pandemic we want to take that perspective but again we're going to as we think about the next resource that we provide that we that we purchase it will definitely taking consideration grace to do five and then again like I said before looking at phonics instruction looking at word you know text complexity looking at how students are acquiring language their vocabulary how to develop in those vocabulary I think that that's very important for grades three through five that we have some type of spelling programs some type of you know vocabulary program in place that looks at the morphology words and so I think that that's very important that will be a important aspect as we review you know programs to replace the unit to study okay yeah that's no that that answered my question I there were just some slides that were very focused on K to three and so I just wanted to acknowledge that it was a K to five approach so that's it thank you very much I like it totally is I just was emphasizing the work that we've done within the last nine months I mean actually a year this is now a year and it's really has focused on early literacy instruction as that was our priority thank you great thank you thank you Mr. Schlegmann thank you Mr. Chairman this this has been an enlightening presentation and I'm particularly interested in going back in looking at your reading rope because that's an interesting way to to spin it so to speak my question is and I know we haven't been talking about writing but I'm looking about the two structures under language comprehension that are dealing specifically with language structures and verbal reasoning and my thinking is that as students master that they improve their writing skills and writing ability so I'm wondering if you've noticed any substantive change or noticeable change in students' abilities to write as a result of this level of instruction it's really too early to tell right now to be honest with you you know so the answer to your question is I have not noticed but you know again we have just completed our winter literacy assessments and that will be a you know we're still interpreting that data and I can take a look at it we can come back and talk about the data and what is showing us since we've implemented the you know made this shift with our early literacy instruction so I'd be very happy to come back and talk about the data that we see and the impact that it has had not only the reading but also the writing yeah I'm really interested in that because that's really where the higher order thinking skills of all this comes in and if we're really successful with this model which I think is a good one you're going to see noticeable benefits in the way students are able to process language both as a reader and as a writer right but that's also like you know just as an ancillary tip that is something also that has been a critique of the the unicestory for writing for Louisie Calkins that they don't spend a lot of time teaching the writing conventions like grammar and things of that nature and so again looking at that balanced literacy work approach which is like let's just immerse students in like you know text and hope that they are able to learn what we want them to learn and that's why we want to be very strategic and that's something that we're going to look in our next resource that we purchase is that there's explicit instruction about writing conventions and the use of language and writing excellent thank you Mr. Chairman is there any other members Mrs. Thielman yeah thank you very much Dr. McNeil it's a great presentation I just had one question the assessment tools that were the the assessments that we're going to be using to evaluate this are going to be our own common assessments plus MCAS or what is what is our what are we going to be using okay so like to match to align with the foundational reading skills and explicit instruction around phonics and phonemic awareness we've added the Dibble subtest no civil Dibble subtest specifically assess those skills so you know that's where the alignment comes in we want to make sure that as we adjusted our literacy instruction we also identified assessments that would align with that and give us the information that we're looking for so that's why we now have put in place all the Dibble subtest from kindergarten through third grade thank you Mr. Carden thank you so I'm going to be the procedural guy and point out our policy on adoption of curriculum and so one of the ways we do that is by getting reports like this from the administration and accepting the report so I think this is all great work I think I'm thrilled with the work we've been doing so I move acceptance of this report thank you very much for that procedural and I should I should go back to say like the recommendation to school committee will be made from the committee that we put together so thank you for that I will correct that no that's great and my other my other question was whether you were going to do that because there's always a fine line between instructional resources which we don't have jurisdiction over in curriculum which we do and units of study is sort of one of those things that obviously it's materials but it's also a curriculum so so it's great to hear that you do plan to come back with us with more details at some point I don't think we need to be a roadblock but just as a as you share as you can develop more information and share it that's all that we need to do thank you before I entertain the the motion I'm going to go to Ms. Morgan and then Dr. Kersi Ms. Morgan thank you Mr. Heiner Dr. McNeil I think just my one piece of feedback and this is just from my experience that as you look at the writing piece I hope that you'll engage not only obviously with our elementary teachers but my experience has been in Arlington specifically that our ELA teachers in grades 6, 7 and 8 have been able to put a very fine point on what their students are missing or what they feel that they need by the time they get into grades 6, 7 and 8 and they are doing a fair amount of sort of you know they're filling in the gaps on their own with whatever limited time they can carve out and create through the magic of of the things that they do but my conversations with them have been really illuminating for me and I have been incredibly impressed at how much they how well they are able to articulate what their students need to be able to do that they haven't been able to do over you know the last number of years that students have come through our middle grade so I hope that they are engaged with as part of this process obviously you know they're not necessarily going to be implementing but they are the recipients of whatever we end up coming up with and so I hope that their input is is considered thank you oh absolutely thank you for that suggestion we we definitely will make sure we put that in place Dr. Ampe thank you thank you Dr. McNeil for this and for giving it to us ahead of time first I second lens motion but let me ask my questions too first for clarification so when you say units of study that's what we've called in the distant past Lucy Collins yes that is correct okay just making sure I've got and I just want to point out that I remember when we adopted Lucy Collins for writing that part of what was seen as the plus was it was to give it was make kids less scared of writing you know it was to get them writing without worrying about conventions and stuff just to get them actually communicating with writing and to me that seems like a good thing so I understand that you're looking for curriculum you know that has more explicit instruction in writing conventions and I can see that those are important to learn and that they need to learn it but I hope that somehow we can also I guess we never really heard from the teachers whether Lucy Collins worked the way it was supposed to but I in other school districts I had seen some stuff that suggested that it would and I would hope that we don't lose that plus in getting stuff that is trying to be more explicit instruction wise then the other quick comments one I wonder if you might be able to write down in an email or something just some of the things that you mentioned about the rationale you know why why you folks are looking for new curriculum I heard them and I understood them but I couldn't write down fast enough so and then the final thing is just to note that the links in your recent reference section aren't live at least not in the copy that we have so if maybe we could have a new copy sent out that's probably it's probably because the copy you have is a PDF okay I'm gonna imagine that so I can I can get with Liz Diggins and we will make sure that you have the one where the links are live and I do want to address that so in the resources is the report that I've read that has a critique of Lucy Caucus but I will summarize it and put those you know talking points that I added to the presentation today in a summary and send that to you and to all the school committee members so I will make sure that I do that but I just wanted to also provide you a report so if in case you had some free time in all of your lives you could read it yourself but I would definitely summarize it great thank you very much I really appreciate that and I just I also want to I also want to emphasize I agree with you and that's why I included that quote from Dr. Godi Muhammad because we have to understand the power of literacy and how it unlocks a whole world to our students so we definitely want to make sure that we they understand that it's not just learning the skills that we want them to learn but we want to learn want them to be able to say this is what you can use it for you can use it to advocate you can use it to explore something that you're passionate about you can you know find out more about yourself so I think that that's very important so I definitely whole-heartedly agree with your comment okay great thank you very much a bit of housekeeping first Ms. Diggins when you send that out to the committee please make sure those links become live on Novus as well for the public second just to be a little formal Mr. Cardin would you make a motion again sure I move acceptance of the report on the ELA Dr. Ampe second any further discussion seeing none roll call vote Mr. Thielman Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Ampe yes Ms. Morgan yes Ms. Exton yes Mr. Schlickman yes and I vote yes thank you very much Dr. McNeill and please can and Dr. Holman please convey our appreciation to all the staff and everyone that's worked on this thank you very much next item is superintendent's formative evaluation I would like to thank the committee for getting their better work done and getting them in on time they're there this is an opportunity for any member that wishes to make any comment at this time on this I will recognize you if not I will then Dr. Holman do you have anything you'd like to say only thank you to the committee for your thorough and thoughtful reflections on the work that's happened thus far and for your feedback and things for me to continue thinking about and reflecting on I like to model being a reflective practitioner I really appreciate it when all of you provide your insights your ideas and ways that we can continue to improve as a school system and I can improve as a superintendent it's been a wonderful first eight months and I look forward to continuing to get your feedback in future evaluations and that's all thank you very much school calendar Dr. Holman second read sorry I couldn't find my mute button we sent along and I apologize for the tardiness of it final draft of the calendar we had incorporated several of the comments that you had left us after our last meeting I won't go into depth on each one that we made but we did adjust a few of the dates for some of the early releases based on feedback that we got from teachers some of them had been right up against vacation week and so we tried to move early release dates for all teachers when we wanted to some district professional development to the week before a school vacation week so it wasn't falling in that week we adjusted a couple of the conference dates based on conversations with our leaders and we also adjusted the key at the bottom and some of the times associated with the early releases and just this afternoon made sure that we made the adjustment so that the elementary early release is happening at one o'clock every day that there is an early release whether it's an all or an elementary notably the early release at the middle and high school level will be at 120 that allows for transportation so some of the adjustments we made between the last draft and this draft was to make sure that our transportation department was going to be able to run with this adjusted schedule we separated out some of the kindergarten and preschool notes suggested by the committee to make sure that those are easy for families to follow and I believe that captures most of the adjustments that we made so I'm happy to take any questions on this or for the school committee to consider this and vote it of course if we have adjustments we can bring them back to the committee but we don't anticipate any major ones between now and the start of the school year any members of the committee have any questions oh I have one other thing to note I know there have been committees in the past that have looked at things like religious holidays in the school calendars that have there's been lengthy conversation on this particular topic and that there was a committee that Dr. Bode worked with alongside a teacher and I am looking to reconvene some of those conversations next year I did not this year we just kind of had a lot going on and so we've maintained a lot of the former practices existing practices in the school calendar with the exception of moving the early release date but I just wanted to signal for you all in the community that I realize those efforts have been undertaken it is my intention to revisit them and if you have any feedback for that you're welcome to reach out for me to me I will entertain a motion to approve the calendar this time I'll move is there a second second thank you and no further discussion as I can see roll call vote Ms. Morgan yes Mr. Thielman yes Ms. Exton yes Dr. Ampe yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Carden yes and I vote yes okay job description for approval Dr. Holman yes as you noted and as I spoke about when we presented the budget to you a couple of weeks ago we did include in the proposed budget and assistant superintendent for student services position and tonight I'm bringing you a draft of that job description for your consideration for any feedback that you might have on that draft in anticipation of the ability to potentially post for this role or to have further discussions about the the role in future meetings and so I know that we'll be voting potentially on the budget at the next meeting and wanted to be ready with this job description approved for next steps in filling it and this role really is a restructuring of central office it's a it gives us the ability to move some advice supervisory roles around and have some folks report to an assistant superintendent who currently report to the assistant superintendent and who are specifically there to provide additional services to students it's also a slight restructuring of the special education department we will have more full-time coordinators in roles next year to do some of the administrative work of the special education department and we're adding team chairs in order to facilitate that so that we can have more coordinators working in a full-time capacity and more team chair support beneath those coordinators so that they can do that and so that this individual can operate as another deputy superintendent which is common in districts that are this size and that have six thousand or more students as a partner to our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction and it can take some of the supervisory role particularly for the department of nursing as well as for the department of social emotional learning and counseling and build some strategic approaches to tiered intervention and to student service delivery in those departments sort of in tandem with one another and collaboratively with one another and so we have the job description there I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about the roles and responsibilities of this particular position and if you want to vote to approve it tonight that's fine if you want us to come back with some revisions at the next meeting we can certainly do that as well members of the committee is there anyone that has any questions or comments on the is the committee ready to vote on for approval on this I will entertain a motion Mr. Thielman made a motion is is there a second second thank you Mr. Schlickman roll call vote Mr. Thielman oh excuse me I'm sorry Dr. Ampe sorry I've been trying to think I'm just commenting to Dr. Homan's mentioned that this is a typical role and I've been trying to remember what it was but for something for school committee in the past few years I had to call a bunch of different school districts and I did note that almost all of them had an assistant superintendent for school student services and felt that it seemed to give a better organization to some of the things that school that school districts needed to do in terms of planning and structure so I'm in support of this any other discussion Mr. Schlickman can't hear you Mr. Schlickman thank you I agree with Dr. Allison Ampe I mean one of the things is is that our administration administrative structure was basically set up 30 years ago when we had 3700 kids and we're now almost certainly almost double that so as the district has gotten more complex our needs for leadership have become more complex and there's a reason why we need to do this and I'm thankful for the superintendent for bringing this forward anyone else okay roll call vote Mr. Thielman yes Ms. Exton yes you did that my whole screen just changed Ms. Morgan yes Dr. Ampe yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Cardin yes and I vote yes thank you Dr. Owen the next item is interests of members in holding office our policy BDA requires it says any person that wishes to hold an office the chair vice chair and secretary is to notify the school committee secretary and the chair I've had one notification at this date it's supposed to be I'm supposed to make the statement one month prior to the organizational meeting I am so doing so if you have an interest to hold a position please notify me and Ms. Diggins thank you are there any questions are there I hope there aren't any because I don't think I can answer them interests of members excuse me returning in person I brought this forward that I think the we are in a position to for the school committee and the administration to go back into the school committee room is my recommendation to the body that we start on March 17th next meeting we need to make a decision tonight if we're going to do this to give the opportunity it will be in a hybrid form because the members should as long as majority well up until the current dispensation on the open meeting law changes once that changes the majority can meet as long as four members meet in the room the other three can be remote so if any questions any comments I'm open for discussion Mr. Carden thanks just a point of clarification you had mentioned at one point that we would not allow the public into the meeting but I'm not sure that's allowed I should not have used the word not allow it would be very difficult public of any time to come in because they were going to have to come in on the base floor down on the back and if we will have to make some accommodation for that and in signs and things of that nature Dr. Holman I have spoken actually just today with Dr. Janker about how we could arrange for access from the front of the building and how we could make sure that that staff so that we could let people members of the public in and make sure that we're maintaining a safe and secure building so we do have some ideas we do still need to have some further conversations about what the cost of that would be but we have spoken about it and the ability to allow staff to or not staff members of the public to join in person I think that's important because when we were just about ready to do it when we were forced out of the room we need to have an idea of how to set this up because the members are going to have to be looking at a video screen unlike we did in the past for the that part that is still remote it will be a hybrid form no matter what and thank you Mr. Godfrey bring that up I misspoke in saying not allowed that's we don't have that authority I agree anyone else can I assume that I have a consensus from the the committee that to go forward to this Dr. Ampe I'm just requesting that we're definitely going to have the hybrid form because so it will enable me to better match my school committee duties in my parental duties absolutely and Mr. Thielman when he traveling won't have any excuse not to attend in the future he'll have to be remote no matter where he is in the country Mr. Cardin, Eddie Hanna I'll travel that much any more yeah I was I was going to say that I mean it's important to make this commitment but if the administrative team and the tech team decides next week that it can't be done in time for the 17th then let's wait till the 31st I agree I needed us to say yes first and then it goes off to Dr. Holman and the rest of them to work it out so thank you everybody you want to vote though is that what you're asking for are you you want to did we take a vote to not do it no so anyway I'm just trying to so so the 17th we should plan on being in person but it may change if Dr. Holman writes the term and I would ask you do you all have that passkey okay because it's easy to come in the back and like that vote tell everybody the secret bill they don't have the passkey and by the way the thing doesn't always work anyway but if yes if if we're having a public meeting we can't require I mean people have to be able to get into it yes that's what Dr. Dr. Holman is talking about them coming in through the front the way they they did originally and access the elevator on the third level okay let's see monthly financial reminder just quickly like like we're going to be like super duper sure this is all because like I've been in meetings that have not been accessible and like they don't happen right like we don't it becomes like a big deal right at the last second so I just like we'll we'll know like that like we'll know before that day I I think it's fear to say that we'll know by a week from Friday Dr. Holman I think there are several things that we need to make sure we can figure out before the end of next week and one is that we have the set up with ACMI Mr. Keene was talking about that as we came on and I'm not quite clear on what he was telling us besides that there's not a connection established yet for the select board to be doing this and so we want to make sure that we have that figured out in the event that's the case two that we have our technical team on board and that Ms. Diggins knows how to run the hybrid meeting and that our technology in the school committee room is ready to go and three that we have the front door appropriately staffed to maintain the security of the building we have somebody in the position and able to staff that and that we've accounted for what it's going to cost to make sure that we can staff that so that we can unlock the doors and make sure that it's easily accessible building and we're not scrambling at the last minute so as long as those three conditions are met we will be in a position to do this on the 17th in the event that they're not met we'd have to wait until the 31st and we will notify everyone the entire committee prior to that one way one way or the other it's on or it's off Dr. Ampe I just want to suggest that assuming we're in person people are going to have to come in the front door I think it'd be good to include that in I mean if the public has to come in the front door it'd be good to include that in the agenda or something so that it's clear because now we kind of have two doors I mean two entrances if we're only using one of them we need to make it very clear which one I do a follow-up meeting the chair does a follow-up meeting with Dr. Holman after every school committee meeting this will be a discussion we'll have setting how to communicate all of this and what needs to be done in priority we all said thank you monthly financial report Mr. Mason oh Dr. Holman sorry the adjustment we've made to the agenda is that that is not on this week's agenda because it was on the last one I apologize thank you Mr. Hayner puts his agenda together two days before and he doesn't check it at the last minute these are things Ms. Exxon is learning how to do better than Mr. Hayner superintendent's report Dr. Holman all right so I'm going to share my screen one of these graphs you already saw in my earlier report but as I have been doing these are the statistics regards to COVID-19 both in Arlington public schools and in Arlington in all of Arlington we continue to see case rates decline in Arlington overall and I do anticipate that we had a slight undercounting probably both the week before break and the week of break only because the week before break sometimes cases come through and we don't find out because it's the week of break by the time the family knows or cases don't come through the week of break because they're not absent from school and so we're not necessarily following up on absences but those are the case rates as they stand now as I discussed in my earlier presentation a few other minor updates of course everyone knows the new Arlington high school steam wing opened up for classes this week's Monday we had a wonderful ceremony we got to hear our chorus and orchestra students as well as some of our jazz band students playing in the lobby which has some really remarkably spectacular acoustics we it is just absolutely gorgeous on the interior of the building and on the exterior if you're driving by on Mass Ave it was really fun to watch the kids walk in the front doors on Monday and to see their eyes light up and to watch them try to navigate to their first class we did get to answer a lot of questions about how to get there and we're just really pleased and excited that we get to enjoy this beautiful new first wing opening of Arlington High School on time and on schedule and really something we're celebrating I did want to update the committee that we put out an RFP for strategic planning and we did not quite get the responses that we were hoping for so we're going out for another round we are going to be looking into seeing if we can obtain a facilitator without needing to do a full RFP that's all about how much it costs obviously reaches a certain level of cost then we need to have an RFP associated with it so we're in the process of still trying to find a facilitator we've been slightly delayed on some of this work but our intention is still to have at least a vision and mission as well as some strategic priorities that have been drafted by the end of this spring for a new district wide strategic plan so that we can do the actual drafting next fall in preparation for some level of implementation in January that said I will say that while we want to do some inclusive strategic planning and make sure we're involving many members of the community as you saw from Dr. McNeill's presentation tonight we're moving forward on things that people have talked about with me and my entry plan and with us over the last several years and it's not the lack of having this in place and being able to move forward on it as fast as we wanted to we also got delayed by Omicron isn't stopping us for making sure that we're moving in the directions that we need to move and taking actions based on what we've learned over the last several years I also wanted to share that we did leadership instructional rounds in February and March we just did the second set of that with our assistant principals and some of our administrators yesterday and we had a lot of fun focusing on the tasks that students are asked to do in their classrooms we tried to get as granular as we could about what students are actually doing in class what's the work that students are being asked to do what's grinding their gears what's making them think what's making them curious what's making them inquisitive and we do that through visiting multiple classrooms coming back really structured conversations about what we see in classrooms and what we hope to see and offering feedback to the principals whose buildings were visiting I was really very pleased with the work that we did at Hardy just this week principal Peretz was very reflective about the work that she wants to do at Hardy and things that she thinks about on a regular basis and we ended up focusing a lot on rigor sort of the complexity of the task we ask students to do you have your enrollment reports there is a new report included in the reports that you got this week you have the typical one which reflects 2021-22 enrollments as well as a new report that shows the 378 kindergarteners that we have enrollment registrations from as of the 28th of February I have I am in the process of working through the first round of buffer zone assignments I haven't completed them yet my hope is to complete more of them by the end of this week and that we can message them out early next week to families who submitted their registrations within the window that was articulated in the K registration letter so far we have been able to grant all sibling requests we did that first until we've gone through and made sure that all siblings in buffer zones or students in buffer zones who have siblings who are currently at that school are able to go to the same school as their sibling and now we're going to go through some of the other ones and take into account what our numbers are looking like and what our what our assignments are looking like what I will note is that in the spreadsheet that you have it is inclusive of the selected buffer zone for the family that doesn't mean it's the assigned buffer zone because like I just said I haven't quite gone through and done all of the assignments of buffer zones but I wanted to give you an idea of if we were to grant buffer zone requests as they came in and as people's first choices came in this is what it would look like right now and we are going to need to do some shuffling to make sure we maintain room in the sections that we have over the next couple of weeks but I wanted you to have an idea of where they fall as they've come in so far and like I've put here my goal is to have the first round of buffer zone assignments done tomorrow in order to message them out we have given ourselves until the 15th as a drop in the deadline to make sure that we have everything out to families we do anticipate we will be able to do that sooner than that but that is a little bit dependent on how things how things go tomorrow and over the weekend so that's my report and I will stop sharing and take any questions any questions miss Morgan so with the the buffer zones they're so tricky and it once you go with that first once you start doing it you're committed right you got to kind of like you got to just push ahead to what your your plan and your goal is so I appreciate just you know really looking at this super carefully and so I think the piece that I'm trying to understand is and again is what commitments we made with respect to after school because when I when we did this a few years ago that I sat in a lot of meetings that are now have been like they've left my brain but you know we we we created we sort of entered this sort of compact with our after school programs around like dates and and deadlines and and how are we and I know we missed them last year during COVID we didn't get our buffer zones out in time like we didn't get them out before they needed to do what they needed to do and what what have we committed to and how are we doing on meeting those commitments these dates were set the dates in our K registration letter were set in a meeting with all of the leaders of our after school programs in Arlington we all got together we figured out what our dates would be so that they would be able to do the planning that they needed to do and we would have the information out to families that they needed to have in order to sign up now it's my understanding though that some of the dates that families need to make some decisions by is the seventh and so my goal is to get messaging out to families in buffer zones ahead of that date but with the understanding that our after school programs set these dates with us and have articulated that they'll be able to accommodate families who put in requests up until the date that we put in the K registration letter so we've coordinated on this is is most of what I'm saying and my goal is to make sure that we hit the dates that we've committed to in collaboration with our after school programs okay so we committed to some dates and then they put some earlier dates it I mean like I don't I guess I just don't like this has been such a like contentious thing for so long and I mean it just it feels like we all gotta like we gotta all agree to the dates right and then because like we can't agree to a date and then have even one program make a date that's before then because then if you're in that buffer zone and you don't know like it's just it's it's frustrated it's just frustrating because everybody's it all has to kind of go together and my understanding has been that generally the district has been meeting what we've said we're going to do this exit so I went to all of the the websites for all of the in building schools and read their information and to the best of not my knowledge they held to the March 7th you need to apply by 6pm on Monday March 7th to be included in the lottery and everyone will be notified by March 14th and that's what's publicly written on their websites so if they are doing something different they are not following what they have publicly posted Oh I think what's challenging is that our letter said that we would notify families by March 15th and that's not March 7th and so families are trying to decide where to put their applications in and so I want to go back and make sure that my office didn't mess something up in our interpretation of the conversations that we had with our after school folks but regardless we're going to send something out to the buffers on families before March 7th because that's the date that's there and I'll follow up on any miscommunication of the poor overlap of dates there and apologize for any confusion it's class families Awesome, thank you Yeah I think the trick is just if you don't get your buffers on applicants like if if yeah it people end up putting in for two different programs and then it takes them a long time to sort out who's actually showing up and stuff so this is yeah okay great thank you so much Anyone else Dr. Ampe Thank you Okay, Dr. Holman I appreciate the new enrollment chart one thing I wonder is because it's not showing all of the students yet because the kindergartners haven't all I wonder if there could be larger prints somewhere on it saying you know this is a enrollment in progress or I'm just worried someone can look because I looked at it initially and thought oh my god we're having fewer students that many fewer students next year why and went down a whole thing and I just think it'd be good in large prints somewhere so that people don't have to have the same problem that I did where I'm like and then I look at it oh it says this and it says that oh down here it says this and I figured it out but yeah that's all thank you good tip I'll add that all set thank you Dr. Ohlin a 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 22183 922,184 dollars and 41 cents school committee meeting minutes February 10th 2020 22 sorry I'll entertain a motion to approve a move is there a second again thank you roll call vote this accident yes Mr. Thielman yes Dr. Rampey yes this Morgan yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Cardin yes and I vote yes subcommittee and liaison reports budget committee Dr. Ampey nothing to report I think we'll be plenty of meeting in the next two weeks thank you community relations Ms. Axton thank you the so Dr. Alison Ampey and Mr. Schlickman hosted a chat on February 11th for with a community focus for LGBTQ plus families there were 14 participants and I'm highlighting this because I got some requests for information about it which we don't typically do so I just wanted to to share so heterogeneous classes at the high school were discussed by a number of participants tracking or the elimination of tracking in seventh grade math came up and then a number of people shared about LGBTQ experiences there were members of the rainbow commission there other families were also present as allies some of the conversations were around bathrooms and changing rooms in the new high school being LGBTQ friendly questions about designated safe spaces counselors or people in schools and then there were commendations for Dr. McNeil and his role as the LGBTQ plus liaison and then the other one I'll highlight is a desire for more active programming to support parents and families in being allies and then there were some conversations about masking and there were conversations about the challenges with availability of afterschool care our next chat is not until April so I will mention that in more detail at our next meeting and if Dr. Allison Ampe or Mr. Slickman want to add anything about their meeting thanks thank you curriculum Dr. Ampe we were very popular it was it was a busy meeting we had to we could listen to people but we couldn't talk a lot because there were so many people we had to keep going you know okay we've heard about this topic now we have to move on to this other topic so we tried to listen as best we could but it was a busy meeting thank you curriculum is instruction assessment accountability Mr. Cardin yes we have a meeting scheduled for March 29th at four o'clock to review as of now tentative agenda items is to review a position description for director of wellness and to get an update on the HGI initiative as well and there may be additional things added in the next few weeks it's a while away thanks thank you facilities Mr. Thielman can I report I will be just to clarify Mr. Mason I talked to the day about a scheduling meeting to get an update on the playgrounds so I'm going to work with Mr. Mason on the date policy and procedure Mr. Schlickman thank you Mr. Chairman we will be needing a meeting in the near future for several reasons one is a couple of them just pure housekeeping we need to tweak policy BDA and BEDB which are agenda driven policies to include the cross reference to the land acknowledgement policy policy BID is school committee member compensation and Mr. Cardin brought this to my attention that we need to make an adjustment in that policy before the stipends voted by town meeting take effect in July as the current policy states that we serve without compensation also you probably got a new email from MASC today that MASC worked with the attorney general civil rights division to go over the policy AC non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation and we need to go and make adjustments to broaden discrimination to include harassment and retaliation so that we're going to be looking at file AC file AC-R file ACAB and adding a file JICK pertaining to harassment of students also we have the EBC supplemental which we adopted at the beginning of the pandemic we're really going to need to clear that policy so that we're back to more normal operation for the 22-23 school year so we've got a little bit of work to do and we'll be looking to set up a date for the meeting thank you Mr. Chairman thank you I like an high school building committee Mr. Thielman I was Dr. Holman said the building's open and many of you were there at the opening ceremony it's very very exciting the kids the kids in staff are thrilled we the building committee met the other night they're kind of two items for consideration by the school committee Dr. Holman's going to forward to Mr. Schlickman and the policies and procedures subcommittee a draft suggested policy that Dr. Holman and Dr. Janger worked on about a protocol for naming inside the high school so the school committee has exclusive jurisdiction to name any building and name any a piece of property within the school district there's a whole process we have to follow we have to get that Tom Memorial's committee to have to consult with them so Dr. Holman is going to give this to Dr. Mr. Schlickman and the policies and procedures subcommittee is going to talk about it at the same time the building committee passed a motion asking the school committee to consider naming to placing a dedication plaque somewhere in the performing earth wing and on our Brian reary and to consider that request simultaneously with Mr. Schlickman's committee discerning and thinking about the naming policy thank you are there any liaison reports at this time any announcements I'd like to announce that the chair survived the polar dunk the wind temperature was 20 degrees the water temperature was 42 degrees yes I am crazy any future agenda items okay it is my understanding that we will not be having an executive session so I'll at this time entertain a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second is there a second second by Mr. Thielman roll call vote Dr. Rampe yes Ms. Eckston yes Mr. Carden yes Mr. Thielman yes Ms. Morgan yes Mr. Schlickman yes and I vote yes everyone be safe