 Wow, I bring this organizational meeting the Ehrlichton school committee to order First order of business would be the nomination election to the office of chair. Mr. Thielman. I nominate Paul Schlickman I second that any other nominations hearing and nominations are closed all in favor. I opposed It's a unanimous vote with Ms. Allison ampy absent I nominate Jennifer Seuss for vice chair nominations for vice chair Second Jennifer has been nominated and seconded any other nominations hearing none nominations are closed All in favor of electing Jennifer Seuss I share the Arlington school committee say aye. Aye opposed That's unanimous Next nomination and election for the office of secretary. I nominate Allison ampy. She's out of the room. Yeah I nominate Jeff Thielman for secretary second Any other nominations? Hearing none nominations are closed all in favor of electing Jeff Thielman is secretary of the committee say aye. Aye opposed Hearing none is unanimous vote Next is the vote to approve committee and liaison assignments for 2015-16 Noting that in the previously distributed version for the warrant committee dr. Allison ampy is removed from that Duty On and do I hear a motion? So there was a change to the one that we last saw yeah I don't know if the new one came out after if you're looking at a new version or not But the previous one to send out is dr. Allison ampy's name removed just the clarification by this vote We were proving that committee. Yes, okay. Yeah, we're approving the whole the whole matrix Well, I mean since this was a new committee, I didn't know if we're gonna have it Yeah, we were we'll approve with this if we want to have a discussion my intent is to try this out I understand so if it works Wonderful if it doesn't we don't do it. I'll move approval and they can have a discussion about it. Okay, I Move approval of the proposed committee assignments for 2015-16 second, okay Motioned by mr. Thielman second by mr. Pierce Cindy Starks So there will only be two people on the warrant committee for now Yes, we get we will have the opportunity to point a third person if somebody would like to volunteer at some point But I'm hoping that we would just be able to go and take a look at certain things with a little more depth Shouldn't be a big time commitment Any further discussion on the proposed assignments? Yeah, so I Love the idea of the warrant committee. I'm not clear yet about the work involved Essentially, it's my hope that I mean we do spend some time within the the course of the meeting going through individual line items and the In the monthly financial reports And I think that there is an appetite to look at them And I think we could do it a little more efficiently and a little more carefully By having a couple of members meet with Miss Johnson before the meeting and reporting out with her so that's that's sort of the experiment The other thing is is that you guys are close to town and during the day and can come in and sign the warrant if We have an issue particularly in the summertime mr. Hainer Not on this, but you had the assignment the edco board Is that the round table for school committee members because there's no there's no school committee board. It's the superintendent Superintendents on represents us on the board. Am I correct? In September you take that vote right gonna be the primary representative I just my understanding when I served on it two years ago It was go to the school committee round tables and report back current issues going on it didn't go like that at that So if that's the intent of that assignment, I'm fine with it. If it's something else, I'm still fine with that I just want to get clarification where I'm going well Well, mr. Hainer you were chair last year and you appointed somebody to that so I would assume that the talk of that Will be thank you parallel Any other discussion? I just say that I'm And I'll accept the nomination to serve on the Negotiation subcommittees, but there's there's a scheduled meetings already and there may be some conflicts in my part So I'm judging maybe going to some of these things alone fine We all do what we can mr. Starks. I do believe that the current AEA and triple a negotiating team will continue as is until these negotiations are concluded Okay, that you will basically take over for the next set July one. Yes So I believe that you guys are off the hook unless you're already on the committee. No, so is that true? Otherwise, I have just a really free calendar for the next two weeks Okay, I assume that Okay, so it's clear that Cindy and Judd are going to continue until July until the negotiations are over Here she's on triple Then I join in July. Yes. Okay. Any other discussion? One more question about the warrant committee. Yeah, just I just wanted to ask Dr. Alice Nampy. Did you not want to be on it for philosophical reasons or just Efforts directed elsewhere. I Personally think that there is benefit to having the warrant discussed on camera And I don't like tucking things away into subcommittees off camera And I don't I haven't seen it as time sink for everyone involved and also it just seemed I'm already on budget and policy and adding in something else. It's meeting on a regular basis I would rather not Okay, we're ready for a vote all in favor say aye. I opposed hearing none unanimous vote Next is the Vote of to authorization to sign the payroll warrant. I'd like to have a motion so moved Well, let me say the motion Direct the chair. No, I'd like to move to direct the chair of the warrant committee Mr. Heiner to sign the payroll warrant I'm willing to continue doing Move by mr. Pierce second by dr. Seuss all in favor say aye Yeah Can There's no legal any member can do that Any member can be designated by the committee because the timeliness the need to pay our professional staff Right, okay All in favor aye opposed unanimous vote last is Bdae our school committee norms and standards and It's become our tradition now to read the policy and to Sign the policy and there I have a copy here and we'll pass it down So I'm going to read it aloud so everybody understands what the policy is and our commitment to each other for the next year We the Arlington school committee acknowledge that a school committee meeting is a meeting of the school committee members That is held in public and not a public meeting and that we will make every effort to ensure that meetings are effective and efficient To that end we acknowledge the importance of subcommittees and we in the superintendent agree to utilize them to focus on Specific topics in depth and to prepare for presentations deliberation and possible action by the school committee We the Arlington school committee set forth these standards and norms that we will all commit to abide by as Individuals as a committee one represent the needs and interests of all students in the district to exercise leadership and vision planning policy making Evaluation and advocacy on behalf of the students in district not in managing the day-to-day operations of the district Three conduct our business through a set agenda Emerging items will be addressed in subsequent meetings through agenda items for provide full disclosure Each member will provide input encouragement express concerns and positions rather than withhold information from other members When a committee member feels that there has not been full disclosure an objective process for revisiting the issue will be used Five maintain an open environment where each member is empowered to freely express opinions concerns and ideas Committee members will work together to clarify and restate discussions in order to strive for full understanding Six keep an open mind and accept that they can change their opinions by recognizing that they are not locked into their initial stated positions Seven make decisions on information and not on personalities Committee members will act with the best information available at the time Considering data the superintendent's recommendations proposals and suggestions the committee members will strive to make the best decision at the time Eight debate the issues not one another the committee will engage in critical thinking expecting all committee members to freely offer Differing points of view as part of the discussion prior to making a board decision nine not take unilateral action the committee members authority is derived only through a majority decision of the committee acting as a Hull during an open public meeting ten attend meetings well prepared to discuss issues on the agenda and Will be prepared to make decisions driving for efficient decision making 11th strive to have no surprises for the committee or super intended all members will receive the same information on all topics in a timely manner 12th strive to reach decisions by consensus discuss with respect disagree without acrimony When consensus is not possible all members will publicly abide by the majority decision 13 Understand and respect the China of command as it concerns roles and responsibilities and direct others to do the same 14 review and revise our standards and norms as needed as part of the committee's self-evaluation That is the norms and standards is established by policy bdae, and I'm going to invite everybody to Join me in signing them for the 2015-16 school year With that we have concluded our agenda have a motion to adjourn some will move by mr Theelman second by mr. Hainor we all in favor Opposed we are now adjourned. We will resume in about five minutes ago Or is this So we don't have artwork to do okay, yes, it's the same okay same artwork. We don't have to do that so We have to do this Ready to go. I hereby declare the meeting of the Arlington school committee Thursday April 9th in order our first thought first I'd like to Have a moment silence for Julia A. Morrison who is a lifelong resident of Arlington She's a beloved wife of the late Thomas E. Morrison loving mother of Maureen Amaral and the late husband Richard Charlene Ronan and her husband Richard of Arlington and Gail Keane and her husband Robert of Wakefield She was a longtime traffic supervisor at the Brackett school Much beloved her funeral was Earlier this week and a moment of silence for her okay Do we have the a list of people who have signed up for public participation? There is a list to the right. I Would like to remind people that under public policy under Arlington school department policy public participation is Limited to 20 minutes overall three minutes per speaker and the committee Generally does not Discuss items brought before us if we feel the need we will include them in an agenda item at a later meeting Mr. Spiegel when you come up, we'd like to ask you to State your name and address for the record first Lee Pat and tear from Stratton school Come forward sit at the microphone Thank you. That's Lee Panatteri. I live at six Pawnee Drive And I'll be as quick as I can I know I have if you add the negative five to my three minutes I only have negative two minutes so obviously I'm the mother of a second grader at the Stratton elementary school and Behind me are the parents. I think 20 or so parents of second graders at the Stratton elementary school They'll be fourth graders during the rebuild of Stratton and so we are here to urge you the school committee to Change what I believe is the proposed Stratton building plan So at the fourth graders that year will be placed in elementary school instead of at the oddison middle school We've written a letter to you explaining our reasons which dr. Bodie was good enough to bring in to you tonight and In the three days has been drafted this letter has been signed by 70 parents collectively representing 52 of the second graders that's 73 percent of the class We want to start by saying that we don't mean to question the hard work that's been put in by the building committee We have full confidence in the teachers and the administration of the middle school And of course we certainly fully support our principal Michael Hanna and the teachers at Stratton who we know will do their best to make This a positive experience for our kids But the middle school is not the place for fourth graders. We feel very strongly about that What we propose instead is that you increase the number of modular classrooms at the Bishop elementary school and Accommodate the fourth grade there the members of our committee have reviewed the plans and we believe this can work by adding Two modular classrooms to Bishop and then using their computer lab space for a third classroom There may be other class there may be other elementary schools in Arlington that would work for this too We don't know but what we do know is that we don't want to see them at the middle school and here's why Four main points I want to make number one our kids deserve parity with other students who have been moved for rebuilds No other Arlington schools been asked to use modular classrooms No other elementary school students have been asked to go to a middle school campus But Stratton has several times been asked to house other elementary students Point number two the kids need these kids need an opportunity for sufficient outdoor physical activity Including a play structure that's appropriate for kids their age The middle school has no playground because middle school students don't go out for recess We understand that they're gonna take our kids out for recess if they can but it's not gonna be the kind of recess That they would get in an elementary school Where they would have a playground that's designed for fourth grade kids and the kind of play they do I'm sure I'm sure you parents know What I what I mean active recess is vital to kids education Number three the kids need access to facilities that are age-appropriate like a gym that's age-appropriate a library the art music Social worker a nurse who specialized in their age group and number four The kids need the benefits of an of a school outside the modular classroom if they're at the odyssey and modulars They're gonna spend the vast majority of their time inside that modular classroom Including special classes lunchtime and whenever they have indoor recess if the kids get to the gym at all It's gonna be very hard the middle school students are gonna get scheduling priority for For the gym and there won't be enough time to rotate all the kids through the gym So this means that the fourth and fifth grade students are not gonna get the same time kind of physical exercise that they would get if they Were in an elementary school I'm sure I don't have to tell you what it would look like to have 25 fourth graders stuck in a modular classroom all day It would also be in the best interest of the oddison middle school students to do this Based on enrollment projections the oddison will already have without any strat in schools because Scratin students being added they're already gonna have a 15% increase in their enrollment you add the strat in kids And it's gonna be a total 27% increase in enrollment at the oddison that year We recognize I'm sure you I'm sure you know that we recognize that there's a financial component to this to any proposal of this size But we've looked at the records we estimate that adding the two modulars at Bishop would represent around $40,000 and that's about point four percent of the total we build budget of ten point three million dollars We think that's a small price to pay to make sure that the education of our of our kids is Adequate and that they get they get the parity they deserve with other kids in the system So I thank you so much for your time If you have any questions all of our phone numbers are on the letter We've given you and we look forward to working with you on the project. Thank you very much My again Good evening. Thank you so much for having me I really just wanted to make an announcement about an event that I'm planning or that we are planning my shrinking group It's a townwide Arlington cleanup event as I'm sure we've all noticed this winter has left the town pretty dirty with litter and dirty snow and There's no townwide plan in place to pick up the litter So this is the third year in a row that we've had a townwide event where people come to the Russell parking lot they pick up a bag gloves they get an assignment and Go off and clean up parts of the town that they might have a particular interest in it's been very successful We've had over a hundred people each year, but it's only been through coming to meetings like this making announcements Contacting friends going to the school. So I just wanted to bring it to this group as leaders in the community It's also a wonderful opportunity for high school kids to do some volunteer work We have had a few high school kids in the past come and participate So I'm excited about the event. It's May 9th 9 a.m. to 12 come anytime and I will have snacks and Coffee there So I hope that maybe some of you can join us or at least pass the word along and I'm gonna leave some Flyers up at the table and for the benefit of people who are watching this at home. Where would they meet up with you? Yes, so it you meet at the it's the municipal parking lot where the farmers market is At 9 o'clock in the morning. We will give you everything you need And then you just return your bag of garbage to the same lot. We will have a dumpster there waiting for you and we have Collected an amazing amount of garbage the past couple of years So the more people we can get out the better and it's really a great opportunity for kids as well Who's you know for a volunteer activity for for little kids too? So Judd has participated two years in a row Yeah, and you yes, so so thank you so much. I appreciate your time and have a wonderful evening So that was that's Saturday May 9th Saturday May 9th Saturday May 9th 9 o'clock in the morning and that's just that also coincides with the DPW and the recycling group is having a big bring anything and everything to the DPW lot same time, so Well, it's a common theme. Yeah common theme clean up the town We'll have a beautiful clean town with flowers and no snow banks Thank you next item on the agenda is a presentation of PDP literacy lab Sure Could you please explain why we have the wonderful banners? Oh, okay. Yeah, we'll do that We got we started a little late tonight, so I didn't thank the committee for electing me chair and The one thing that's chair supposed to do is lead the committee to the decision it wants to make And that's going to be my primary intent. I missed the last meeting and I was in Japan at the time We visited our Rieko, and I visited our sister city in Nagaoka Kya. We met the new mayor we met the Principal of Nishio Tokuni High School who's very excited about furthering our relationship together and We brought some banners home for everybody's kitchen. These are all food items. These things traditionally hang In front of restaurants advertising some delicious things like noodles and I know that Dr. Allison Ampey has a squid in front of her so We brought these home for everyone Just for the joy of having a souvenir from Japan. Thank you. Thank you and Ms. Hansen are you ready? Excellent Both Linda Hansen is one of our two literacy specialists and about a year and a half ago Maybe Linda and Evelyn DeRosa who is the other literacy specialist Participated in a training at Teachers College for Lucy Calkins and they came back Totally inspired from the model of professional development that they had seen In which the people actually Went into a school in New York City and worked with students in that school under the direction of the Lucy Calkins staff and they would get immediate feedback on what they saw and They came back and said, you know, we have to do something that's like that So we've had a program that started this year and Linda's gonna go over The details of that program and then I'll just summarize. I think we're gonna go from here at the end great Thank you. Good evening everybody. I'm really excited to be here this evening to tell you about this what we're calling It's a it's really truly a teacher led professional development opportunity unlike any opportunity that I've been involved in before And it's very very exciting and the teachers that have been involved so far have given us really great feedback so We'll watch a short I'll go through a short PowerPoint and then I have a short video also to show you some of what's going on in the classroom actually So as dr. Chesson said it started out about a year and a half ago when Evelyn and I went to New York City and within about two hours of arriving there we were put in a classroom in Brooklyn and We were given a short little introduction about what we were supposed to do And we had to create a lesson and start teaching kids right then and there and as we taught another one of our Colleagues observed us teach and then after about ten minutes. We pulled outside the classroom We debriefed on what happened kind of tweaked the lesson made it better changed roles went back in grabs more kids and Did it again? so just this idea of real-time practice of the art of teaching in front of real kids with You know real-time feedback from your colleagues really struck us as a great way for teachers To do a lot more of the professional development that we need to do now with the common core Which is really not just changing the content, but also changing our instructional practices. So that's what this is really trying to get at So it's it's really utilizing our teacher leaders as instructional leaders in a peer coaching situation So teachers with instructional expertise in a particular content area host weekly visits for their colleagues during an entire unit of study So we've really focused on writing right now So during one of the Lucy Calkins units of study let's say information writing the mentor teacher will Host up to five teachers at a time to come into her class to observe her teacher students as she would Teach any other part of the day. So her day is really not interrupted. She's just doing her thing So the target audience is teachers in their third year of teaching or more and the reason being teachers in their first and second Year are involved in a very in-depth teacher meant new teacher mentoring program So they already have enough kind of on their plate. So this is meant for teachers in their third year or more of experience teachers who want Hands-on experience of observing an expert teacher guide students through a new unit of study or one that they don't feel as Confident about as other things that they teach and then also just teachers who want to collaborate with their colleagues around instructional practices in a particular unit of study and The idea that we got from our visit to New York was that it's it's interacting. It's not just observing You're not just there with your notepad sitting at the back of the room taking notes You're sitting tucked up right close to where the kids are so you're listening to the mentor teacher But when the kids turn and talk or get into small group Experiences you're right there interacting with the kids listening to them posing questions and practicing your teaching moves right along with the experienced teachers and Then again kind of the the higher level goal that we're partly there But not fully there yet is this idea of having teachers then Setting up the experience. So for instance with writing conferences, we would watch the mentor teacher Conduct a couple writing conferences We would go out in the hallway debrief then we would have pre-selected a student's writing sample and go in and Conduct a writing conference with one or two peers watching us pull out debrief go back in pick another kid. So practicing so One of the great benefits that we've seen too is that as teachers are getting into each other's rooms during the school day They're just really enjoying the experience of talking about instruction with other colleagues during the school day So much so that at the end of one of the sessions one of the participating teachers in a fifth grade Session said to myself and the mentor teacher I'd really love it if you guys would come to my classroom and see me teach a writing lesson because you know I just like that would be fun. So that's what we did at the end of the lesson. So it's kind of fostering this Environment where people are comfortable inviting each other into each other's classrooms to watch each other teach So the format of the lab site is that a teacher leader So teacher leaders meet with participating teachers at other schools three times one after school Once before the six to eight week session starts just to kind of set the whole thing up Once midway after school and then once at the very end to debrief about the whole experience Then they are released The participating teachers are released For 90 minutes a week and the principal typically arranges coverage with a TA with a student teacher Somehow the principal works out coverage teachers have 15 minutes of travel time 40 minute lesson observation five minute debrief 15 minutes to travel back to their home school and then 15 minutes to write up their their Observations and noticing and questions for the mentor teacher on Google plus. That's the format that we're using and Again, most of the coverage is managed through in-house resources in the school So the teacher leaders are paid a stipend for the additional preparation time that they have for leading the three after school sessions and for the time necessary to manage the administrative details of the program and We are working with a budget this year, but we're still tweaking it The teacher observers are paid just our $25 an hour after school summer rate time for the three after school sessions And otherwise it's all in you know embedded during their school day So we have had eight sessions successfully Run so far at all five grade levels two in each of the three Grade one through three classes one each at fourth and fifth grade And we've had about 25 teachers participate to date in one of these experiences and five teacher leaders one in every grades one through five who has been Nominated and and chose to serve as this district writing writing mentor at their grade level So these are at the end like I said so midway and at the end we have these debrief sessions with the teachers And so I've just kind of collected here a few of the comments that teachers have made during these debrief times And they're paraphrased. I'll read a few of them just for the people at home. They might not be able to see the screen So things that we're hearing often are things like before this experience. I was very anxious about teaching this particular unit I'm a person who learns visually if I see someone doing it. It's more helpful Watching Amy teach the lessons made them seem so doable and manageable And and again just people commenting on the experience of just getting into a classroom Watching their colleagues teach and talking about teaching You hear about how isolating classroom teaching can be spending a day with 25 kids all day long is is great But getting to talk with other adults about teaching is really exciting too So teacher leaders interestingly enough are also finding this a very useful experience they feel like The ability to reflect on their lessons to really they find themselves thinking through them two and three times Because they know they're going to be a model for other teachers and just reflecting and talking with other teachers about their lessons Is something that they're finding very powerful as well And then we also have interviewed some principals whose teachers have participated and they're also very positive about this experience And they hear how excited their teachers are coming back Things like this framework of teachers observing other teachers and reflecting on those observations is shown to be the most effective professional development So I was glad for the opportunity for stratton faculty to participate Based on the experience of a teacher has completed a full cycle I've seen that her openness to reflecting on her practice has deepened significantly Additionally her grade is leading the school and participating with the math coach to receive instructional coaching I'm sure her availability for this comes from her experience in the lab site program So those kind of comments are what we're hearing back from principals as well So we wanted this experience to be kind of to put a bubble around it and let it be just for teachers Working with other teachers initially let them have a chance to go in observe each other talk to each other Just have it be a very much a peer mentoring situation, but we definitely Had principals kind of knocking at the door saying hey, you know, we'd like to tag along as well So what we implemented on the second round of sessions was that? If a teacher from a school was going to attend a lab site session The principal would be invited to tag along to one of the sessions so that they could watch this experience together And then be able to discuss what they saw after they had participated So that's what we've started doing now So I have a short video that I'm going to show you just four minutes long of a third grade Writing mentor teacher at the Dalin her name is Amy Walter fabulous teacher. She she's in her seventh year of teaching The participating teachers that you're going to hear during the debrief at the end are Siobhan Foley Who's in her sixteenth year? Crystal power in her fourth year and Michelle Crowley in her fifth year and one thing that people sometimes say about teachers Stepping out and becoming mentor teachers is that more experienced senior teachers don't always want to learn from their less Experienced colleagues. I just have to say we haven't found that at all And in fact in many cases all of the participating teachers have more experience than the mentor teacher It's it can just be a factor of how you were trained What conferences you've been to what you feel like your particular skillset strength is so that's also been a really nice thing Of people just feeling like hey whoever I can learn from that's that's where I want to go So the video that you're going to see is in two parts The first part you're just going to see some very quick Glimpses of a third-grade classroom at Dalin just to see kind of get your head into the the writing experience what it looks like and You can take a look at what the teachers are doing what the mentor teacher is doing in this clip what the participating observing teachers are doing what the students are doing and Also, just maybe notice how many different configurations the students find themselves in during this remember It's a writing lesson. You're not it's not maybe what you picture in your head when you think about a writing lesson The second part of the video is a debrief with the teachers after they've completed one full cycle Just talking a little bit about what this experience has meant to them kind of how they felt Why they signed up for this in the first place and then what they feel like they've gotten out of it You know I Learned It really helped me to my confidence, which in turn helps me, you know, spread that to the kids and makes them more confident as writers. And little things like that used to walk me down because there was a long time for her lessons. And it would be the charts. How many charts do I have to write? And you know, sometimes just like I'll just write it on the board. And then looking at just how much they go back and how much it's going to be done like this, you know, the way I have on my making the chart. You kind of talk about it and there's little things that don't really help go back and forth, but I didn't really get why it was me before. And you just got an entire expectation of my students too, like seeing what your students have produced. Like, you know, you didn't get all of the strongest writers in the grade and down. And so I can raise my expectations for students. And it's not even just with writing, but it's just your relationship in general. And then I just put a lot of effort in it and bringing my expectations for, you know, what students look like, seeing how many of your students are capable of showing the students. I think that's probably one of the most powerful statements at the end, where she talks about how she can raise the expectation for her class. I actually watched Amy's class. I snuck in and watched Amy's class with these teachers. And when we went out in the hallway, all I kept thinking was, yes, they were learning about writing, but she is such an extraordinary teacher and her students were, like, amazing. And yet it wasn't like they were handpicked. I mean, she had high expectations. They responded to her expectations. The amount of work that they produced while we were there was just amazing, the seriousness of which they interacted with one another. And those teachers were learning those things as well. And I have to say that this is a key part for us of part of our program that's called SPI, Strategic Planning for Improving Instruction. We see this kind of program and this teacher-led professional development as the future of where we're going. And I'm pleased to announce that Arlington Educational Foundation has given us a grant to expand the website program for next year. And from the district portion, we're going to be establishing a committee of administrators and teachers to really look at what it would be to formalize the teacher leadership program within Arlington. And we have a big team that's going on April 30th to a one-day conference on activating teacher leadership. And we will never have enough resources within the district to provide the level of support that our teachers and particularly at the elementary level where the demands are so high with the Common Core and all the subjects they need to teach and all the behavior techniques and skills that they need to work with with students. We will never have enough staff within the district at the staff supporting level. We need to activate our teacher leadership. And I can't say enough about what Linda and Evelyn did because I basically said, you thought it was that great? Have at it. And they did and it's just been phenomenal. Questions, Mr. Heiner. You just mentioned about the funding that we're going to get. Is that for a one-year? It's a one-year. We've put in a one-year grant and it would be considered, Mr. Heiner, for they have expansion grants that they usually give us on a three-year basis. So we have to get some more data before we would go back for that. Right. I guess I see the value in it and I assume each year there's going to be evaluation of it. I think it's going to be positive. I think this is something we ought to consider as a part of the budget. I am very insecure in being overly dependent, especially on a program like this in the future on grants. Actually Ms. Hanson and I discussed that this afternoon about how we think we have a way of including it in the budget. I just want to make it... We're right in agreement with you. Thank you. Dr. Seuss. I think this is really exciting and I think Arlington parents should be very excited about the interaction of this. I know what it is to feel isolated in a classroom and to need that sort of one-on-one communication with one-on-three or whatever with your fellow educators. I think this is really effective. I do have a question about finance stuff. I know this is not settled yet, but if we move to the model of a shorter day on Tuesday, we're basically doubling the amount of time that teachers have to get together with each one another. I'm wondering if that would be a sufficient time to accommodate this kind of... So that they wouldn't need necessarily to have the extra three hours that could be accommodated within the time that they have. That's not something we thought about. We haven't thought about it, but we... In the proposed elementary schedule, I don't... In the current model, I would say that no, it would probably not fit in very well just because unless it was part of a PLC for a group of people that go across schools, that might be a possibility. But most of the PLC work, which is really common planning time with your colleagues at your grade level, will occur within a building. I think that we've already have sort of the same... Well, it's a very similar model for our pre-professional teachers for math and for reading. And we've been able to include a lot of the stipends that go along with that in our Title II way. Whether that will be a possible source will be something that we'll have to look at because we also have... It depends on how many teachers we have at each grade level and we go into next year. So that's another resource possibly for this. I actually have another question about funding. So I know that we've eliminated the building-wide subs because potentially in the budget, do we have sufficient coverage to relieve the three positions that we have? Oh, yes. So we have less coverage than previous than last year. I think that this... That served the purpose this year to allow the opportunity to do the kind of data review that we wanted to have happen at schools. But as we move into... Hopefully move into this new elementary model, that is built in time in the early release time of the data. So no, we are not. In fact, that's actually... Having that money available is also one of the parts that's able to sort of fund some of the programs going forward. Mr. Thielman. A great presentation. This is very helpful and informative and a lot of good work is taking place. I was struck by a comment by one of the teachers. Ms. Foley saying that one of the teachers said, this is the first time I've observed you teach. And I'm wondering, you know, it's all... I'm really only familiar with the schedule at a high school. So what... Are we making an effort in the elementary schools, I guess it's a question for all of you, to allow teachers to observe their colleagues teach on a regular basis? Is that something we're able to do? Are we doing that? So I do want to pick up on that comment just because the teacher that made that comment is the next door neighbor to the mentor teacher there. So the fact that she says, you know, I've always really wanted to get into your classroom and I've never had the chance to see you teach before. You know, just... It underlines what you're saying. And I think as teachers are coming out of this experience, they're saying, not only do I want to repeat it again in maybe a different content area, but I also want to see fourth grade now. These are third grade teachers. I want to see second grade. I want to see what comes before and what goes after. And I do know that principals have made time for teachers to do that this year with the rotating subs that have been going around. But I think what I see is principals seeing how excited teachers are about this experience and also knowing professionally what great experience it is, that they're finding ways to allow teachers to get the coverage they need to start to get into each other's classrooms. And maybe give each other feedback too, I would hope. It just happens naturally as a matter of course. And the feedback usually goes both ways. Yeah, right. It is an integral part of the teacher evaluation system at this point that when people feel like there's in their professional development growth goals, if they feel like they need to see someone, principals are making the time for them to go in and see a colleague. Sometimes in their same school, sometimes in a different school, we've even had principals that will go with that teacher so that they can have a joint conversation about what they see. So we're really trying to get that into the fabric of our teacher evaluation system. Yeah, so I mean, we're getting a little bit off topic of what Linda's presentation was about, but I'm just wondering if there's a way to institutionalize that so it sort of becomes or systematize it so it happens on a more frequent basis. Well, one thing I think I would say also is that Dr. Bode and you all with your budget process have given principals a little bit more support, mostly for the new evaluation system, I think, was how it was construed in the terms of TA support at their building to kind of use as they see fit. And this is one of the things that principals are doing with that additional support. And it does support the evaluation system, but it also supports professional development. So there is some of that built-in ability right now. Thank you. But I think it's helping get an appetite for it, though, too, and get teachers interested in actually saying, I want to do that. And other teachers being comfortable saying, yeah, sure, come in and visit. That's usually the best PD, it's peer-to-peer. Teachers are saying it's so much more powerful than all of the sit-and-get presentations, which we don't do any of those here, I just want to say. But it's so different hearing about something than seeing it in action in a classroom right next door or right across the district. Teachers read these professional manuals, these curriculum books, and they're like, I've never met this kid who says this and does this. There's a lot of suspicion about where these fictional kids actually come from. Early. Well, now there's no argument. I loved the woman Michelle's comment about, I know you didn't get all the best writers of the third-grade writers that Ellen has. Yeah, yeah, I was good. There were some in hiding in her house. I have to conclude that it's your high expectations. It's the way you run this program that you're getting these results. So I'm feeling like I can up my game too. Another thing that's happening that I don't think is clear from the video is that we're actually videotaping these lessons and we're putting them on the district website so that other teachers can see them. And in the debrief, one teacher said, I go back and I watch the lesson that you did before I have to do it so I can remind myself of what I did. That's very effective. So we're trying to build a video library over time where we have. So now we have six or seven lessons from each unit of study. And they're in the closed Google Drive of the Arlington Public Schools Network. So that's where they live. And we are working, getting video sign-offs for the parents. I just want you to know that we're taking care of that too. But right now it's used exclusively for teacher professional development purposes within our closed system. But teachers have found it to be a great resource. And also teachers who can't get away or can't join that session in a way to kind of get a look at what's going on with those lessons as well. Any other comments or questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is the Arlington Nursing Department Update. Dr. Bode. Let me invite Sufranke who is our Director of Nursing for the district and to join us. Thank you for being here. You're welcome. Sufranke has many hats. So this is a little new to me. I'm assuming I clicked to the right to move forward. There's aft, but it's hard. I should say it's Dr. Franke. She completed her doctoral studies a few years ago. Thank you. So it's funny, I did have a class with 120 students and I'm not nervous in front of them but I am here and I don't know, that makes no sense at all. I think I'm used to that, I'm not used to this. So this is basically just to meet you so that you know who I am, I know some of you are already. And to let you know what's going on in our department I'm not going to go through the minutiae of everything nurses do. It's not the same that we used to do. It's much more detailed work these days. And some of the concerns I have with our growing population and with our growing medical acuity of students with serious, serious healthcare needs that we did not see two years ago and before. So I just thought this would be a good opportunity for me to let you know what's going on. And when I sent this out, you probably have my notes on it too. I apologize in advance for that. But this is a breakdown of our numbers for our nursing coverage. We have one full-time nurse in every school and then we have a couple of one-to-one nurses for students that have serious medical issues. One of those nurses is funded through the town and one of those nurses is funded through we hire an agency because the student is not in school very many hours a week anywhere from six to eight hours a week on average. So it behooves us to use an agency nurse for a particular child. I have two grants from the Department of Public Health. The larger grant, the ESHS grant, covers two full-time or almost full-time per diem nurses. I say with variability because sometimes we have one nurse that's a permanent per diem nurse five days a week and he is with us about three to four days a week on average. So these are averages. And then we have a new, I'll get into it a little bit. We have a new ICC grant that's innovative care coordinator grant from DPH we just got last spring. And that funds a care coordinator almost like a case manager to help oversee and manage the care of some of these students with complex medical needs. And when I say medical needs, I also am referring to kids with school adjustment issues, kids with mental health issues, we're going to talk about that. Actually that's the focus of a lot of my talk this evening. And we're just seeing enormous rises in children with anxiety in our schools and we need to address it with some help. So I wanted to show you these ratios. The Mass Department of Public Health has guidelines. These are not mandated guidelines, they're just simply guidelines that there should be one nurse to every 450 students. And this is not reflective of the acuity of somebody's health issues. National Association of School Nurses, their estimate is one nurse to every 750 students. Bear in mind that that demographic is across the country. We have communities in more rural states that have schools that are 20 miles away from each other and one nurse might travel from one school to another in one day. So that number is, it's not a realistic number, we could never look at those numbers in our town. And in terms of what the town funds for our nurses, in the high school we have one nurse to, I just got these stats the other day from Karen Tassoni, one nurse to 1,277 students and at the Odyssey one nurse to 1,105. And then I used the ESHS grant to fund the per diem nurses for extra coverage. So that's how we get the extra nurses in those schools as a general rule. And that doesn't include me, because I've been in the Odyssey for the last three days covering because we've been, had a lot of nurses out sick. There's a stomach bug going around just for the record. They're thinking about condemning the peers because there's so many kids that are out sick right now throwing up. Probably a gastroenteritis going around. But those numbers do not reflect my position or the care coordinator position. And I wanted you to be aware of the rising number of office visits. I don't need to tell you that these numbers are going up for the students coming into the school system. You know that better than I do. But we have a very specific, a very excellent electronic medical record system that we can capture data. You know, one has to remember too, garbage in, garbage out. We've been working in the last two years to really make sure the nurses are being very specific about their student encounters. So when a student comes in, we try to capture what time they came in, what time they leave, and why they're there. And that's broken down into many different categories. But overall, these are our numbers of student encounters in the district over the last three years. And as you can see in 2013, 26,700-ish. In 2015, it's gone up quite a bit over 10,000 in two years for encounters. But our nursing staff has not necessarily reflected being able to take care of that. This is just the same information on a graph. And just, I thought you might want to know information about concussions. These are our documented cases of concussions. Just for this year, it's 47. Now, one can argue that kids are getting diagnosed with concussions more. We have far more rigorous screening tools. We don't diagnose them here. They get diagnosed by a physician or a nurse practitioner or a PA. But these numbers are rising. And these are students that require a lot of care because they come into the office every day with symptoms related to their concussion and how we're going to manage that. And actually, we can take these numbers and break them down even further to tell you how much time they're spending in our offices. And these are reportable medical conditions to the state. We have approximately 185 kids with asthma or asthma-like illnesses, such as reactive airway disease. Life-threatening allergies, 213 in our district. I didn't know one when I was growing up. I didn't know anybody with a peanut allergy or treated allergy. But these numbers are just continually growing. And we actually have nine students with diabetes in the town. Interestingly, a large cohort of these students are in the Thompson district. I would love an epidemiological study on that, quite honestly. So these are projections for resource utilization. We know the population is increasing. We know that health acuity is increasing. Like I said, we have students coming into our offices that we never would have seen 25 years ago. Because sadly, these students might not have survived some of the medical conditions or syndromes that they have. And we have to take care of them and we have to keep them safe. And that's my biggest fear in the future is how are we going to keep these kids safe? You know, I think about it being like a firefighter. In some ways, nurses are like firefighters. We have to constantly put out emergencies. If there were one little campfire, I could probably say that any of our nurses could handle that. But with the growing population, one could use an analogy of more and more campfires having to put out until we get a forest fire. And I would hate to see that happen. We are a community that is surrounded by some amazing hospitals. And so a lot of kids move into the district because they have the health care around this area as well. And as I'm going to touch on, I wanted to touch on the autism. That's what I wanted to move to. The number of kids coming in with mental health-related issues such as anxiety is just jumping off the charts. I've never seen anything like this. I don't know why. There's many theories out there. I don't think anyone can pinpoint it to anything. And what makes it more complicated is nurses get sick too. They're in the trenches working with the kids that are sick and they get sick as well or they have children that are out sick. So we don't always have great coverage in our offices. I just wanted to touch just briefly on the Innovative Care Coordinator Grant. I've joined the Department of Public Health Task Force to help sort of procure this. We get about a little over $35,000 a year towards having a care coordinator oversee the issues, whether they're concussion related, whether they're anxiety-related school adjustment issues. That person is the gatekeeper and the go-to person for when a child has these problems and they're trying to make it through the school day. So the care coordinator is the one that communicates with everybody in the schools, with the parents, and sort of oversees the general care of the students. We just got an AEF grant this week, so I was very excited to also allow half a day a week for the care coordinator and I think we can stretch it to a day a week to go into the elementary schools. It's one year. In order to create sustainability with care coordination in elementary schools, we want her or him because we're reposting for the position to teach the elementary school nurses how to be instrumental in coordinating the care of a child that has medical or mental health-related issues. So we're very excited about that. And also we're able to track a lot of these student encounters for children with anxiety issues. So I picked on Onneson because I couldn't believe the numbers and the way they were rising. When I say M-H, it's related to stress, anxiety, or any behavioral-related encounters that children might be experiencing. And these numbers are just dropping off the chart. Because we've been tracking this closely this year until April, and I don't have numbers for a full year, in the previous years I also used the same number of days just to make sure that the data was equal. And these are our Audison encounters. So I remember being at the Audison and working there and I would see on average about 20 students a day. Now we're seeing anywhere from 40 to 60 students a day. That was just two years ago. So we're seeing 100% to 200% rise in encounters just within the last two years. I can't account for this. I don't know what's going on, but it's concerning. And we've been using our per diem nurses to help cover there, but I'm sort of afraid of losing those that are really good. We really need some extra. We really need another nurse up at that school. We really do. I wanted to break down some mental health encounters even more at the Audison. Just this year we've had 23 mental health-related hospitalizations. That's probably double what we have here at the high school this year alone. These are what we're seeing. And this is how we capture our data. We can actually capture the amount of time the students are in the health office. And for one student who's only been there for 16 times, this is how long that particular student was in the health office. One student, B, has been there for 51 visits and they've been there for almost 1,600 minutes. As I said, I've been there the last three days covering and I had one student who just came down for something quite benign. And I said, do you know that you've been here 60 times this year already? And he said, I have? And I said, yes, you have. Let's get you back to class. And 119 students with greater than 10 office visits and so far I've captured this data just a few days ago. It's been over 3,000 visits with those 119 students alone. I just also wanted to touch on the nominee preschool. This has been something in the back of my mind for the last year and this year. And then I just went down to the preschool to work with them in a meeting. And because of the services we offer here in town, a lot of kids that could not get into other preschools because of health-related issues are able to get into monotony. And it's a wonderful program. It's worthy of a lot of support. And my biggest fear is that we in general have one school nurse here in the high school. These parents come in thinking that, you know, that nurse is going to be able to service all the needs of those younger children. Some of those kids are coming in with very serious medical conditions. And I'm not talking about just the kids that are enrolled in the program. I'm also talking about the kids that come in for services and they may come in for OT or PT or speech just for a 45-minute session or half-hour session and the parents drop them off and leave. So that therapist is with a student and if something happens to that student, it probably takes a couple of minutes for the nurse to get down there to drop what she's doing to get down there. And that is concerning to me. So in talking with them, I said, you know, the acuity of your students are statistically very high. So you really need some more support. Either we need another nurse in the high school or you need at least somebody during a good chunk of the day while those kids are down there to help meet those needs and maybe even help out a little bit in the office doing some paperwork for us because we have endless amounts of paperwork that we're always trying to catch up on. So I just wanted to raise that as an issue because this is something parents are expecting and I think it behooves us to be cautious and make sure that no child is at risk. Mr. Herr. Number one, thank you for a great presentation. I, too, am very concerned about the issue of one nurse being available in this facility. I could just see a nurse on the fifth floor in this building getting called to the other side of the Islington almost to go down a monotony. I support that in any way we can remediate that. The other thing, and I direct to see that Dr. Bodie or you are together, do we have a way to determine if we have a sick building? I know we have a very old building, but I mean you talk about health issues and stuff and reoccurring and stuff. So, Dr. Bodie? Okay. We do have, are you looking at it in terms of the kind of testing that we do or the... I mean, you mentioned about a school having quite a few illnesses and stuff like that. I mean, as a teacher, I can remember all of a sudden and it was determined that the building itself had issues. We had an issue a year or so ago in one school that could have promulgated health hazards with the mold and mildew. But I mean, some of these buildings, with the data that we capture and everything, may show we have a history that it is not just the sickness that we share among ourselves, but the buildings themselves may be supporting it and we may be able to remediate that with the building and stuff. Just like the building in Boston a few years back. Yes, yes. Interesting question. We actually, we had an interesting situation at the beginning of the year that I was calling to help with. We had a student, we have a lot of students with asthma and that particular student was in the health office constantly, constantly, and I even went in, I'm a nurse practitioner, so I went in and I did my own physical assessment on the child and I said, you know, something, I don't know, something isn't really right here. So kept sending them, the child off to specialists, asthma specialists, et cetera. And one of the concerns was maybe let's look at, let's look at when she comes down, what classrooms she's in, what part of the building she's in. This was, as I said, an Autism student and we couldn't, in the end, the student wasn't as bad off as we thought. But it was an interesting experiment because we did look at, okay, she's in this particular section of the building or this particular room of the building during these hours. I worked with Kristin Keneally on this. She did a lot of the work and we were able to track and there was no correlation between her symptoms or when she came down for symptoms. It seemed to be mostly during math. So I thought maybe it was the math class. You know, always during math. I don't know how many kids I lose. I thought that too, but one cannot assume anything. So in as far as specific testing, I'm not aware of anything that we do, but I do know that there are some agencies that do that. I realize that. I'm not looking for us to go out and spend an exorbitant amount. I didn't know if, I think what you've done, you're looking at to see if there's anything anecdotal. At that point, if it was coming from one section of the building, then you'd go to Dr. Bodie and stuff and say, maybe we need to look at the building. No, that answers my question. Mr. Pierce, thank you. Is there a difference between the elementary and secondary student population? I have a question right after that. In terms of workload, in terms of what types of more typical presentations they see. Encounters, student encounters, what they're coming to the health office for. We can capture that data. It's interesting, I'll be honest with you. The anxiety-related issues or somatic issues we see more at the middle school. Those numbers are jumping off the charts. They've always existed at the high school. I think we're definitely seeing more, but not, you know, when I looked at that data, it wasn't substantially more, to be honest with you. You know, maybe a 5% bump up, unlike Audison, that's a huge percent bump up. In the elementary schools, it's funny, we can capture the specifics. And we can capture them by day of the week. And we can capture them by time of the year, by month. So if you look at injuries, they're higher in the warm weather. And the elementary schools, because they're out at recess. And March is one of the toughest months that we have for some reason. The numbers might be higher because March generally doesn't have any holidays. The kids, it's a longer month. There's no vacations. So I don't know that that data is completely accurate if you take into account that there's no days off. But yeah, we can break it all down, and we have. I have to do a monthly report that I send into the state, and then I do, we send in reports, tons of reports to the state, to DPH. I don't break down the elementary schools versus the other schools for that particular report, but I do look at it on a month-to-month basis. And I look at the encounters every day. I'll tell you, the electronic medical records make it very easy to figure out what's going on quite often. And on that follow-up, with regard to the anxiety, we've been hearing this as a school committee yearly. Not quite in the dramatic disposition you put it on the slide, but what strikes me is interesting is that, I mean, you said it a couple of times in your talk, we cannot pinpoint the reasons. And I mean, I would imagine that as a nurse, one takes a history, you know, when did this start? What is this coming on as, or when do you feel this? And is it home-related, is it school-related, is it a mixture of both? I guess my question is really, when are we going to figure out the root causes of the anxiety and target them? If we report by breakdown to the state, why can't the state note these dramatic increases and help Arlington do something about it? Why can't... This is across the board. Arlington's not the only... Alone in this. This is everywhere. But we're talking about here tonight. Right. And DPH is funding studies to do this. As a matter of fact, the ICC grant that we have is a pilot grant to see if we can figure out what's going on and capture it. This is a huge issue. Even in Boston, there's anxiety clinics now for students. This didn't exist 10 years ago. We have more and more therapists moving into the area to sort of meet the needs of students because before we didn't have enough, I mean, AYCC was one of the few games in town. So I wish I could... If I could answer that, I'd make a lot of money. Honestly, I wish I could answer that. I don't know. I think what makes me more concerned is not just kids coming down because they're anxious or nervous or upset. I had... One student came down yesterday because her friend was being mean and she had a big test coming up. That doesn't concern me. We can take care of that. What concerns me is the cutting, is the suicidal ideation that we're seeing in young people. When I was in one of the elementary schools a few years ago, I had three students with eating disorders and two of them were kindergartners. I've never seen that in my medical practice. I mean, I work in college health, but it... And I see it all the time, but I didn't even... I was speechless when I saw that. I really was. And on medications for it, this is what we have in our schools. Mr. Thielman. So we've seen an increase of 10,000 visits to the nursing offices over the past three years. Has our nurse staffing stayed the same over the past three years or increased? So are there more nurses to go to or fewer nurses to go to? We have almost two more nurses to go to because of the ESHS grant, the permanent per diem positions. But those are, you know, they're not permanent. We call them permanent, but they're not permanent. Look, I'd love to have more nurses, but I'm just asking a question. Do you think it's a correlation between the increase in the nurses and the increase in the visits? No, I don't think there's a correlation at all. They're going to come no matter what. Do you kind of break down the numbers and look at the ones who are repeat students who just want to get out of Algebra I? We do sometimes. As a matter of fact, one of our unwritten policies is that if you see a student coming down more than X amount of times within a given period, I think we, you know, basically in the fall we talked about it as a group, as a team. And we said if they come down more than 10 times in a three month period for non-serious issues, you know, you see that little spot? You know, I need a band-aid. It's like I have to put my glasses on to see and there's nothing there. So they come down maybe for somatic issues or what have you. We do track that. And what we try to do is get the parents involved. We certainly try to get out either guidance or the social workers involved. So there really is a lot of collaboration in the schools. I'd like to see more collaboration between the guidance and between the social workers and the nurses, because it is a team approach. So we do try to, you know, sometimes we have good luck. We'll call in the parents and say, you know, just so you know, they've been down a lot of times because we really want to get them back to class. That's the objective. You know, certainly if a child is truly ill, that's a moot point. But we do make a concerted effort to try and dig deeper to figure out what's going on. And if you looked into, have we had in this district student nurses that can help support the nurses? And is that, do you? We take more student nurses now than we ever did. And that's probably because I teach. So, you know, and they love to come into the public schools. There's a little bit of an issue with that. There's always a liability issue with that. There's the training, trying to, you know, they're only there for maybe 10 weeks at best per student because generally for community health, they take this for community health and come into the schools. That's 60 hours of clinical time for that particular course. And that's the only time you're going to see them. So we've used a lot of grad students, nurse practitioner grad students as our per diem nurses. In fact, I'm just hiring one right now. So does that alleviate the burden on the nurses, do you think? That's a good question. It's really hard to say because what I find is you can get some people certain days. I mean, here's the reality. You know, we pay so much for a substitute nurse. And then I use my ESH grant to boost up the daily salary, the per diem salary because otherwise we're not going to get them. But even then, a nurse can make three times as much, three times more working in a hospital in Boston or two and a half times more working at a local hospital in our demographics. So where's the incentive? Sometimes we get nurses that say that I want to go into school nursing someday so I'm going to get my foot in the door and I'm going to become a sub. But they usually have a couple of jobs. So they're usually working in a hospital per diem and then they're working for us per diem. So it's hit or miss whether we're going to get them or not. It's hard to call someone. I had three calls this morning at 6 a.m. No, I'm sorry, two. One came in last night at 10. Because they were sick. Do you know how hard it is getting a substitute nurse at 6 a.m.? So I was an ace off at 6 a.m. this morning. Thank you. Ms. Starks. I was wondering if and when you do work with the social workers especially around anxiety. What does that look like? If someone were to show up with one of our nurses and they're realizing that the realization is that it's anxiety, do they ever call the social worker? Absolutely. Or start seeing them instead. Oh, absolutely. But try to get the social workers because they're full. Their schedules are so full. Sometimes we can't. If it's certainly if it's an emergency situation they'll come out. And fortunately we don't see that too often. But they're working straight through also. So it's really hard to capture their time too. They're excellent. They want to help. And anytime we go to one of the social workers and say this is what I'm seeing, this is a problem, the vast majority of time they're on top of it and helping us with it. But when they're busy we're the first port of call quite often. Sometimes the student will go to guidance or sometimes they'll go to the social worker but if the social worker is in a meeting quite often we're the ones that are managing the student's anxiety. I also have a couple of budget questions. I'm wondering if we bill Medicaid at all for any of these healthcare. That's an excellent question. I think we bill on like a handful of students. Honestly for the kids with acute medical conditions, no. And I was just made aware that in January that we might be able to start billing Medicaid which would be fabulous. So I've been trying to find out how this is done and UMass runs the billing and it's been very difficult to get the information. So far, let's take if a child is on MassHealth for example and we do an oxygen saturation for cough. Just put a little finger probe on and see what this adds. We could bill for that. We're not billing for it now and I don't know how to make that work to be honest with you. I don't know how that works. But from what I was told recently is that that's what we're going to be able to do. We do have a decent amount of students on MassHealth in our town. Okay, because I know that one of the big legislative priorities for MASC, which is our organization, Mass Association of School Committees is two of their big ones are retention of Medicaid covered services. So I wondered what services there are that we can use. And also they wanted more coverage for medically insured services in schools. And so I also was just trying to see. I mean, it really sounds like given the extensive growth in people who are coming to see you and the seriousness of what we're seeing in our schools that we should be able to somehow get some reimbursement through insurance for some of the care that we're offering. Excellent point. And I think that's the future. Honestly, I really do. I think that's where healthcare is going. There was a study done by the School Health Unit at MassDPH that was able to prove that for every dollar that is spent on school nurses managing school health issues, it saves $3 in insurance. So that was just published last spring, I think. And it went nationwide. I think American Academy of Pediatrics even picked it up. But it's not happening yet. Now Cambridge, for example, has... Cambridge Health Alliance runs a clinic at the high school with nurse practitioners. So they're billing out. Yep. We should need to talk to them. Yeah, we do need to talk to them because I have thought about it. Dr. Pangburn is our school physician. I have not approached him about this. He's gone down a part-time. I don't know if he wants to take this on, but I have to be honest with you. I would love to see that happen. And I do think that's the future. You're going to see more people like myself working in schools. Our nurse practitioner is also working in a couple of Catholic schools, one in Lawrence and I want to say Brockton, but they're not allowed to prescribe and they don't send out diagnostic tests. So all they're doing really is assessing students very intense assessments, but unfortunately they can't practice within the full scope of their practice. But I'd love to see that happen someday. I have to be honest with you. I think that would be phenomenal. But who would run that? Trying to get a clinic started is an incredible amount of work. But if you had a hospital-based program that wanted to do all of that and you were part of that program, should I even be suggesting this? Given our strong, we have obviously very strong ties to Mount Auburn here. We do. In Arlington. We do. I spent many of you working there. Dr. Allison Ampe. Cambridge and the school nurses aren't part of the school budget. They belong to the Health Alliance in Cambridge. So they're paid in a completely different way as their crossing guards are part of their police department. So they're not in the school budget at all. So they're billing through their hospital organization. Exactly. Exactly. And there's a few towns and cities that do do that. Dr. Allison Ampe. First I want to say thank you because this is really helpful information. I wish we had had it before we were working on the budget and I hope that next year we'll get an update and a little bit earlier in the budget cycle. I think the numbers are really helpful to speak to FINCOM and others where we need to advocate for additional funds to populate these positions that we need. I'm kind of getting back to what's already been asked. Just wondering about the increased visits at the Odyssey and wondering what kind of data analysis you've done trying to figure out why this is happening. I haven't done any data analysis to find out why this is happening. I don't know. We had a care coordinator was here at the high school doing an excellent job. And one of the things that, and she stepped down from her position, one of the things though that she said, and I have to agree with her 100%, is that we would get more bang for a buck at the middle school level because we need to start intervening at a younger age. If these kids are starting to get anxious in the elementary schools and at the middle school level, that's the time that we need interventions. Because by the time they get to the high school and the teachers are deep. So as to why, I don't know. Why are we seeing, you're asking specifically why we're seeing increase in anxiety. No, I'm more wondering, we're seeing an increase in visits and then is it all anxiety? What are the different causes, and then you roll back from that and why is that happening? I could probably break that down. I haven't to be honest with you, but I could. No, I just think it'd be helpful to be thinking about what's the next step is then why is that happening? Right, right. And seeing, okay. And then the other thing is just, do you know if other towns are doing electronic tracking as you are? We all, all the towns around us use similar systems. I don't know that anybody's breaking it down like I am. We do break it down for the state, but not like this. I mean it's, I have to go in there and look at different line items and like I generate reports and then look, it takes a long time. I don't know that anyone's breaking it down like this. I was trying to figure out how easy it would be to put together a big picture of what's going on in the state and it sounds like it's more difficult. Well, I think you could, I'll be honest with you, the state does capture monthly reports and then they put out, I send monthly ones and then I send a big report out at the end of the year and then they do publish that information so I don't think that would be difficult to get. I think we could look at that and, but can we, you know, we would have to, I think a better analysis would be to look at districts that are similar to ours and see if the numbers are similar because there are some districts within the grant that have to produce these reports that have half the students and then there's Springfield and there's Boston and, you know, they're all part of this and there's some, too. So I can't compare our numbers to theirs. It wouldn't, it would be very difficult. I'd rather find, you know, another town that's similar in demographics. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Seuss. Yes, I was wondering about what you think of our special emotional programs at the audits and so I'm thinking specifically of the science of suicide program in the seventh grade and of the advisory program and how that interacts with the nurse's office of, is there communication? That's another really good question. It's, I'm trying to think of a good analogy. I think sometimes when the students have that ability to learn about something in advisory that, you know, and talk about something that's concerning and then they know that they're given the opportunity to say if you have this problem ever again, you know, you can speak to an adult and quite often they come to see us, which is a privilege because they trust us. So I think that the advisory is an excellent program to be honest with you because they're working in smaller groups and they're more open and honest and then these kids talk to each other and, you know, they know where they can go. Do I know that that's conclusively effective? I couldn't say. Mr. Heiner, very quickly. Very quick. The data collecting, is that done? Do you send it to DESI or to the State Health Department? I send it to DPH. DPH. And is that a public website that anyone can go on to look at the data? No, it's all done electronically through an Excel worksheet and then it goes off to the State but they probably publish it. There's probably a public forum that we could access. And who is it again? It's a general school health unit. Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is the warrant articles for the town meeting. Dr. Bode. Actually, I think this is a discussion for the committee in terms of going, looking at the warrant articles. Are there any warrant articles that the committee wants to discuss among themselves and even to take a position on. We have this meeting and we also have the meeting in later April but Tom meeting starts the Monday after the vacation. So it starts I think on the 27th. Our meeting will be a little bit later than that. Mr. Heiner. I assume article 19 is the revolving fund and it's our intent to be creating a certain amount of money in that when will we know how much money and I assume we're going to vote on that to put that it's going to require a vote from us isn't it to establish that revolving fund? To establish revolving fund? Maybe I mean is this the place hold where do we put the money that we give to the town to hold for us for special needs emergencies? That is a the stabilization account and I think what has happened is it's not a special time meeting that article that warrant was not put in. With the help of the finance chair and time manager we have another way that we're going to be able to take the savings that we are likely to have in our audit district. Okay then can you project when we're going to be ready to have that number? Will we have that number at the end of this fiscal year? By June? Absolutely. We'll be taking a vote on that am I correct? You'll present a number to us. Well we can't put it into the stabilization account at the end of the year. Okay then let me ask will the money go? The money will go into free cash which will be available. The town's free cash. Correct. Okay thank you. Mr. Steeleman. I think the capital budget is going to be before the town meeting and there's going to be a big part of it's going to be the strat. I don't know if they're going to ask me to speak to it. Certainly we'll be there when they take that up. This is going to come as a recommendation from the capital committee. I would think that the chair of the capital committee Charlie Foskett will speak to it. We'll be ready with any information and questions but I think it will be there more in a answer questions than it will be to do the presentation. I don't know if we should take a vote saying we support it or should we be on record. Would that be helpful to you? Yes I think that that's exactly what this is. If you want to have on record as the whole committee on different more articles. I move that the school committee is placed on record is in favor of article 24 the capital budget. And specifically the renovation of the stress school. I'll second that for the purpose of the discussion. Seconded by Mr. Heiner. In this capital budget it's also the athletic field. Do we have anything else in the capital budget besides it? Technology. If record is in favor of the whole capital budget then we've got everything. Specifically anything related to the schools. That's the motion. You got that Karen? The motion is to support the capital budget under article 24. Any discussion? Seeing none we'll take a vote. All in favor? Opposed? The unanimous vote. Mr. Heiner. Article 28 is the minute man budget. I don't know whether we want to get involved in that. It's okay thank you. And if you note there's no further appropriations capital stuff for regional agreement on the warrant right now for them. So they don't seem to meet anything else under the warrant articles. Hearing none monthly financial reports. Ms. Johnson. Thank you. There isn't a big change to report for this month. We are our deadline for submissions is April 17th. So I hope by the first report in May I'll have a better sense of where we'll come out next. I'm still not able to project savings right now. I'm still not projecting savings in line where I do expect to see savings. So we'll have a better sense. We still have sufficient reserves to cover the deficit as I'm reporting it but I do expect that to shrink. Even with the amount of money that we plan to leave as savings balance at the end of the day to go into free cash . So we'll let that slide. But the plan is that we're going to get it into some kind of reserve. It's just going to take an extra year. Questions, comments? Dr. Seuss. Just a question about this free cash. I know that the town budget usually takes half of the free cash amount. They wouldn't take half of this amount. I see I might just be. We're trying to find a mechanism to be able to put it into a stabilization account a year from now assuming that the money is not needed next year for current costs at that time. But it sort of then becomes a gentleman and gentleman's agreement of some sort. But we're all in agreement on how to do it. Superintendent's report. I don't have a lot this evening. But I do want to let you know that yesterday we held a coffee for applicants of color to come and meet department chairs principals to talk about their interests and hear more about the Alling to Public Schools. And I want to thank Rob Spiegel for organizing this and also my Superintendent's Advisory Committee for Diversity. They were very instrumental and showed up yesterday. And I want to thank Mr. Hayner for coming and representing the school committee. We had I think more candidates this year than we've had in past years which was terrific. And part of that is just getting the word out when Rob goes to a fair a job fair he also has all of the brochures about it. So it was very good and we had a number of candidates who actually had the certifications positions that we're going to need to fill. So hopefully we will have at least one of these candidates become Arlington employees next year. Thank you. This last Monday we had Michelle Gaye and Skont Sensenbaugh who was the Lieutenant in Wilmington come and do a presentation overview of Alice Protocol and this was organized by Cindy Sheridan Curran who is our the person who oversees a lot of our work around practices for lockdowns and shelter in place and also Steve Porchello who is our school resource officer. They have been working very closely with me as we begin the process of doing the education, the training that's going to be necessary as we introduce this protocol into the Arlington public schools. So I want to thank them and I think we had about 100 people attend on Monday night which was terrific. I also had a meeting last week with Stratton parents around the relocation and I acknowledge that there's a lot of work that has to be done. The important thing is getting the big pieces in place and I've talked a little bit about that at the last meeting in terms of the research that went into the decision about where we would locate the portable classrooms. I do want to correct one misconception though that parents brought up tonight and that is the cost of a modular we're hoping by having a number of modules we're going to bring the cost down but if you were to simply go and get a modular classroom it's more like $250,000. But our total modular installations will probably be in the neighborhood of about $1.5 million would you say that's about accurate in terms of the total cost for modules classrooms for next year assuming that we have or it'll be more than that. You'll be more than that. I think it's closer, I think it's just around $2 million. $2 million, okay. So it's a substantial amount of money that is going to be expended on this and the classrooms will be the classrooms that we put at Otteson will be of a different grade of classrooms and a much more expensive classroom. So it's a modular classrooms are expensive and so we didn't take this very lightly because if we could have students in our buildings we would because it is expensive and the capital committee is part of the budget for next year has included another additional $2 million just simply for relocation and I wish we didn't have to have that money spent but that's the situation we have in the district right now. So there will be more there's some we at that meeting we took copious notes there's a lot of things we need to address there's going to be future meetings with Stratton parents and staff members to talk more about this and get their input so that we have when we go when we actually do the relocation we're going to have a very smooth transition and a very successful year. And lastly the Board of Selectment as you know supported the submission of the statement of interest for the high school and we have the all the documents ready to go and part the last part of it is tonight when you vote on the minutes because then the new chair will sign those minutes and off it goes to the MSBA. That's it. Excellent. Next item day on the Hill we're going to be going off today on the Hill for MASC on April 29th I think majority of us will be attending but I wanted to reserve a little bit of time here to discuss what we might want to say the one thing I would say is that experience has it that when we visit our senator Mr. Donnelly he's very appreciative if we have a targeted list of things for him to do and also possibly pointing him towards bills that we're interested in so I would encourage us to do some research between now and the time to meet up with him in order to have a list of items that he can take action on. Ms. Starks. So I have been in contact with representatives Garbley Rogers and today I heard back from Senator Donnelly's office they are offering Senators Donnelly's office and Senator Donnelly for a meeting at 1130 with us and he graciously also invited the representatives Rogers and Garbley and so I responded yes please put us in there well we would be a fairly large group as they probably expected my response to them and I can forward it on to everybody but here is the list of things that I told I asked him if there was anything that they would like to hear from us like is there stuff that they need backing on that you know our Senators and our representatives I think are very good about supporting a lot of the things that we support but sometimes it might help if they have numbers or if they have information so I said is there anything that you wanted in addition I said that I wanted to talk about this list of things unfunded mandates and getting their help on figuring out how to stop them fund these or somehow better deal with these to what they think about the kindergarten fee and I want to share what that means personally to us and how we're going to deal with it if in fact the kindergarten grant goes away I also wanted to talk to them about our take on the foundation budget at Kiersey wrote that amazing letter and I really want her to be able to have some time to talk to them about that I want to talk to them about the stuff from the nursing specifically about how and what we can bill medicaid for how we can get information on that and that we need their backing and their help to make sure that we can do more of that because obviously we need the money for that special education I really want them to understand how fully funding the circuit breaker to be a part of the foundation budget I mean I don't know how that is possible but like if they could just fund special education better I feel like they would have so much more money in our budget because maybe we wouldn't have to use all the money for special education and I just really want to talk to them about that technology like there's no money from the state for technology yet we all have to do that and getting a teacher on the board of education so that was the list of things that I knew that we had all been interested in I know that there are probably other things so if people want to add to that I'm happy to be the liaison to kind of setting up an agenda with these people and I also think that the best thing we can do is try to have someone who's a point person doesn't mean that no one else can talk on that but if we have a point person for each topic it really helps if someone's gathering the information for that topic and then also it means that we don't all have to look into all of these things and be the point person the board of ed has been a sore point for me for many many years and you're my prime example is that once upon a time you were qualified to be a member of the state board of education and you got elected the school committee and you were disqualified by law and then you took a teaching job which gave you a double disqualification every other profession in this and trade has a governing board that is at least 50% made up of people who hold the license and actually active practitioners and one of the places of disagreement in terms of legislation in the past has been that between MASC and the teachers is that the teachers want a teacher on the board MASC wants the prohibition lifted so that what we really need is legislation to get everybody on board that not only requires there to be some licensed educators on the board to remove the prohibition of people who have knowledge of the profession from actually serving because this is our licensure board this board gives out our licenses and I think that it's sort of criminal that we're the only profession where we don't have a say in our own licensure who else would like to speak on this Dr. Bode actually I just want to bring up a point about Medicaid we do bill for students that have IEPs but the mechanism we have in this town is that money goes into the general fund and it goes through the formula that we have the other issue with Circuit Breaker if it becomes part of the foundation budget it will go the same direction so I think that's something we have to be conscious of the question is the Circuit Breaker the regional transportation are going to be a lot of people talking about that they are subject to appropriation so that if there's a formula that gets you in an ideal world $5 million and they only appropriate enough to go around for three and a half that's what you get regardless of what the underlying intent is so that's a problem nine C cuts and the impact of that the folding in of the other grants into a block grant reduction in the money and the foundation budget is certainly a critical issue because the underlying impact of the foundation budget is that it's supposed to rise as the cost of providing an education rises and the state is supposed to fill in the gap between what a municipality can afford and what the cost of an adequate education is and by under inflating the cost of an adequate education all they've ended up doing is reducing the amount that the state has to kick in to make up the gap between the town's ability to pay and the actual cost of an education which is why we've imposed fees and had to go for overrides and done all the stuff that we have to do and chapter 70 reform is really a critical issue for us Dr. Seuss I just want to point out the timing of the kindergarten grant cut is particularly devastating to us because we've already made our budget decisions that's almost a quarter of a million cut and if the cut is the right way to go and money gets shifted around just having more notice maybe gradual would be potentially something to push for Mr. Hayner I think that brings to the point that sometime in the near future we need to look at all our grants and how dependent we are on grants and to start weaning ourselves be able to take advantage of the grant money for just the purposes of grants and I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight but I think we and a lot of other communities have become because of economics are very dependent on grants and we can't we need to take a hard look at this and start working ourselves off thank you Dr. Allison Ampe first to add to your list we need to have the chapter 70 formula put on because that continues to have problems and under I think does not represent Arlington fairly in terms of how much we can pay and so we get less chapter 70 aid than we really should foundation budget as it stands to speak to the circuit breaker right now it's fine to ask for fully funding the circuit breaker but we're talking when I looked at the past 2011 to 2013 we had 607,000 6.7 million dollars in out of district tuitions that were eligible for total of that we only got 1.5 back of circuit breaker so if we have 25% you know if we could fully funded we're only talking maybe 25% on to that 1.5 million so another 0.5 million we need to be going after the 4 million that they're not including in foundation budget between what we spent and what the foundation budget was there was a 5.2 million dollar gap that's the bit we need to cover I mean you know the circuit breakers taken a little edge off the top but there's a huge amount of money that's not being covered at all we need the foundation budget to better represent what our actual needs and spending is and what the needs of our children is thank you consent agenda I'm going to ask to pull the minutes of March 26 from the consent agenda under the policy all items so be voted in one motion approval of warrant 1513 0 dated March 26 for the amount of 411,130 dollars and 28 cents approval of job descriptions teacher blind and visually impaired orientation mobility and speech language pathology assistant approval of second reading the superintendent's goals vote to approve the 4 goals for the survey of superintendent Bode practice goal 2014-15 student achievement goal 2014-2015 school committee superintendent's goal 3.4 and 4.3 motion by Mr. Thielman seconded by Mr. Pierce any discussion no of course not it's the consent agenda all in favor I opposed now approval of the minutes regular meeting of March 26 2015 moved by Dr. Allison Ampey seconded by Mr. Thielman all in favor I opposed and I abstain having been absent from that meeting subcommittee in liason reports and announcements I'm just trying to get the list of who's the I'll just go around the room Mr. Heyner the superintendent's evaluation part I would ask the group to approve a second reading we just pat did the goals on the survey presented I received some questions by Dr. Seuss I don't know if we're going to have a question on that if you want to okay well do you want me to so one of my sort of bigger concerns it's a small concern though is that several places just a question did we do just approve this in the consent agenda yeah we did so we don't have anything before we did not approve the survey okay thanks for the clarification no I just had a small point there were a couple places where all was included it felt like it made a much broader question that maybe an educator would feel uncomfortable answering that the superintendent is able to advance every single person professional development for example that a sort of a weaker question might be more accurate you might just get better responses that was sort of my one Mr. Heiner if I may through the chair is your concern of them being able to do it or being willing to do it as far as willing this survey I've talked to Mr. Good will be totally anonymous oh no if I were looking at that question I'd say I can't answer this accurately well then there's also that option of not applicable to them maybe I don't know how the board feels about it a comments spot down at the bottom where they could my only concern about that is this is such a lengthy survey some people may want to comment on every single question I don't know would it help if it said like for all you know or I mean I think that the intent of it was obviously in your realm of what you deal with it doesn't mean you know all it's only all in your world in your dealings with the superintendent is that the thing that needs to be clarified I think if you took out the word all you would get an accurate response so it would get you what you're looking for without causing somebody to pause that sort of was my feeling you'd still get the answer you're looking for but they all might sort of give someone a pause and say oh I'm not sure I can answer that I know about 80% but not the other ones okay Mr. Pierce policies and procedures we'll be meeting on Tuesday evening we'll be discussing the policies on student conduct and discipline as well as new revisions to family medical leave act policy and parental leave thank you Dr. Allison but it will be meeting on Wednesday at five we'll report to town meeting Miss Starks facilities we'll be calling a meeting in the next couple of weeks to further the conversations that started a couple weeks ago and I will send out a doodle for that Mr. Thielman Dr. Seuss no I guess I'm just newly chair of a committee so I'll send out something soon okay and Mr. Henry a committee same as Dr. Seuss okay we have concluded the public portion of our meeting Mr. Heiner I would ask the body for a matter of personal privilege I just want to read a very short statement if I may go ahead sir I wish to state for the record that my recent resignation from all negotiation subcommittees was not and I repeat not caused by any disagreement with any member of this school committee I wish to publicly state that the diligence and work ethic has and continues to be an inspiration to me thank you mostly mine all you Dr. Allison Ampe do we have to approve your signing of the minutes I know we approve the minutes but do we have to approve him authorize you to sign them or something he's the chair okay I'm verifying that that's a true voted set of minutes that's all and do it thank you anything else before we'll entertain a motion to go into executive session for which we will only return for the purpose of adjourning for the purposes of conducting strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect and to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declares motion by Mr. Pierce seconded by second Ms. Starks roll call Mr. Pierce Dr. Allison Ampe Mr. Starks Mr. Thielman Dr. Seuss Mr. Schluchman votes aye and we are now in the executive session