 Good evening, I'm Bill Hainett, Chair of the Allington School Committee. This open meeting of the Allington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020. Due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law and have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. For this meeting, the Allington School Committee is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying all the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and then take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus agenda dashboard or the town on the town website. And we recommend that the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless I that she had notes otherwise. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda. After they conclude their remarks, I will invite members to raise their hand and seek questions, comment, or motions. Please hold until your name is called further. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. But maybe to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Rampe. Yes. Mr. Carden. I see Mr. Carden. Just wave. Gotcha. Ms. Morgan. Yes, thank you. Dr. Bodie. Present. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Mason. Yes, Mr. President. Is Ms. Elma with us tonight? She's not. She's not. Okay, thank you. Julie Anakies, the Islington Education Association Representative. Yes. Dr. Janger. Here. Great. Okay. The first item on the agenda tonight is school choice public hearing. It is the policy of the school district not to admit non-resident students under the terms and conditions of the Inter-District School Choice Law. This decision must be reaffirmed annually prior to June 1st by a vote of the school committee following a public hearing. Do any of the members wish to speak about this before I call the vote? If you do, just raise your hand and I will call on you. If not, we are voting not to have school choice. I'm gonna call the roll call. So an affirmative vote is to not have school choice. Mr. Heiner? Yes. I move that the Arlington Public Schools notify the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that Arlington will not be participating in Inter-District School Choice because of a lack of available seats. Thank you, Mr. Schultz. And is there a second? Mr. Thielman is seconded. Yes, I second, yeah. And there's no further discussion as far as I know. We'll call a vote. Ms. Exton? Yes. Mr. Schlipman? Yes. Mr. Thielman? Yes. Dr. Rampe? Yes. Mr. Codden? Yes. Ms. Morgan? Yes. And I vote yes. It's a unanimous vote. At this time, Ms. Fitzgerald, will we have anybody for public comment? No, we do not. Okay, then we will move on to the next item on the agenda. The next item on the agenda is Arlington Report from Dr. Janga on AHS Return to Full in Person. Back to Janga. Hi, thank you very much. I have to say that having heard that masks, that the vaccination results that are so positive going forward, that the limits on masks are in the works, sort of in keeping with, I don't know, we have had a great start. I just don't even know. So happy to have kids in the building and babbling. You know, the kids have been great. The teachers have been wonderful. A lot of things that we worried about have turned out to be pretty smooth. We've had over 85% of our students return in person and the trend is pretty high that after the first couple of days, we got a whole bunch of new emails of kids saying, I want to come in too. So we're working on that. We have set up, we've actually done, in terms of the way we assigned the classes, we assigned classes based on their capacity so that we would be able to absorb students shifting in. So we're pretty able to absorb kids shifting in to in person. It's just a matter of we want to make sure that we know who they are. We get them on the right track. We have the reporting properly. The teacher knows they're coming. So we have been saying that it may take up to a couple of weeks to switch people over, but it's been taking a day or two. And at this point, we're trying to, if a kid wants to come in in person, we're trying to switch them in as quickly as we can so that there's not a disruption for them. One of the things we found is that we were very concerned about was the traffic flow on the hallways. Given the way the spacing is with the block scheduling and the open campus, we're finding that the flow in the halls is not that bad. And we are finding that the one-way halls make the building a maze and increase the amount of travel. So as of today, but tomorrow we'll be piloting two-way hallways with everyone walking to the right, which is what I know they're doing in other schools. And we're pretty hopeful that that'll work pretty well. Unfortunately, it turns out to be difficult to get those stickers off the floor. So I think we're gonna be going around with duct tape and making the arrows point in both directions. Rather than peeling those up off of the floor. One of the things that's been working pretty well with one little hiccup has been the open campus. We're seeing good cooperation with the parts of the kids in terms of coming and going through the sort of specified areas. One of the issues that has happened is it creates a lot more flow in and out through the courtyard gates. And so that became that point of access for the outside folks who came in to the building a few days ago, they were able to come in through a door where there's someone else exited. And in our video, it shows actually the good news is it took them a while to get in. It wasn't like they just were able to stroll on into the building. But as a result of that, we're gonna make sure that we have full-time supervision at that entrance. The thing that some folks didn't understand in the letter that I sent out is that after school starts, all of the doors are locked and students are expected to buzz in through main entrance one or main entrance two. Main entrance one, that's easy. They've got to come down the walkway and we can see them approaching on the camera. But at the back, that entrance is right next to the gates. And because there's a lot of flow in and out, we really wanna make sure that kids are being checked. We've been using these QR codes as a way so our freshmen don't have new IDs and the process of getting them IDs for this period would be pretty challenging. So the QR code allows us to say to a student, let's enter your QR code. And then we know that that student can come in. So most students are scanning that, putting in their ID, letting us know when they're leaving or coming in. Others may not, but when they're coming in through the gates, they either have to check in at the, through the, I'm sorry, through the buzzed in door, they either have to check in at that door or they can simply check in in person with them. And that's tough. It's a new routine for us. We don't have hardened entrances. We all know that the history of this building is it's got 55 doors and 33 entrances that they are not hardened entrances. And the way we really have safety in the building is that our students report people who are inappropriate and our staff report people who are inappropriate. And so we are really reminding students that that's important because if we were lucky, it was just someone coming in. We suspect to deal drugs, but it was someone coming into the building briefly and then leaving, but we really don't want people coming into the building who shouldn't be there. We had the infrastructure trial today. Which was a kind of a challenge with the kids bringing in their own Chromebooks, dealing with the Chromebooks that we're giving out, but it did teach us what it is we need to do going forward. And we are gonna make adjustments. It looks like it may not be necessary to have the rest of the school remain remote that day. So parents and the school committee should look for us to stop for a couple of weeks to update the schedule around there because we would rather be able to keep kids in and not have to switch remote instruction if we think we can do that in terms of space and supervision. And I think that's basically the highlights. All in all, it's been going really well. I mean, I walk around the school and I see smiling, well, I see smiling faces. I see smiling eyes and people who are really positive and this is pretty much sufficient to get kids to be redirected when they forget that their masks are slipping. Thank you, Dr. Jenga. Members, I'm not gonna go through a roll call. If anyone has a comment or a question, just raise your hand in front of the camera and I'll call on you. Oh my gosh, we're gonna get out early tonight. Oh, Dr. Ampey. We'll still get out early. So I appreciate that you brought up the incident from a couple, I mean, from last week or whenever it was. I know that it's a topic of concern among parents that seems more so among parents who do not actually have kids in the school. I'm in the high school right now. I'm trying to figure out how I can ask questions about safety measures without basically displaying our hand. But I guess have we, besides the additional staff at the door, have we done anything else to increase safety, to decrease the chances of someone coming in? Well, I mean, so in the letter, what we have reminded students is that, propping doors, allowing other people to come in when you're leaving is really an issue that people should report folks that shouldn't be in the building. So we've increased vigilance there. We've shifted our duties to a focus more on, particularly because the hallway issue in terms of kids lingering in hallways or being unmasked is less of an issue. So we've shifted our duty personnel to watching entrances more. I will say that if anyone out there is concerned, we have open pair of professional positions and the more folks we could get to help us cover the spaces, the better. Other than that, we've had police presence around for these last few days. And the case itself is resolved. So it's really more of an issue it reveals sort of this issue around the new flow. And we're really trying to make it so that the kids, I mean, the new building is designed so there's two points of entrance and exit. It's very easily supervised. This one, we've really been trying to emphasize and to push the kids to make it easy to go in and out through those spaces that we can supervise. And so now we're trying to make sure that we're really limiting anybody coming in any other place. So the space that they came in was the place that we knew was the most porous. So we're watching that now. But I will emphasize this because I had a long conversation with our police leader with our SRO and our court liaison and about kind of the way we do security. And it's really important to recognize and understand that security in buildings like the high school is about how people behave. We could lock every door and if kids prop them open, they're open. And if kids don't prop them open, they are. And in some ways, we could set up big pylons and have people scan in, although I'd need a ton of staff and construction to do it. But the reality is, if kids don't wanna come in that way, they can come in the back door, right? And that will not be, we will have much more of that in the new building. But in the current building, it would be months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars to harden the entrances. And it wouldn't really make us more safe. It would just give us more physical control of the doors. Okay. I guess the other thing is actually, it'll help after the first week or so that people don't know everyone yet. I mean, they're not used to seeing each other in person. They're not used to seeing each other in masks. And after they've been there for a week or so, it'll become more familiar with kind of who's around and what they look like. I think that is true, yeah. No, and in just a few weeks, the seniors will be gone again. And so our numbers will go down and it'll really pin down the number of people you're supervising. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Carden and then Mr. Thielman. Thank you. And congratulations, Dr. Janger on reopening the building. It's a wonderful accomplishment for our community. I know a lot of hard work went into it and the teachers are still working very hard. So two questions. One is a concern was passed on about the lunches. And it's working well with the open campus, but on a rainy day with 85% and it's a little bit more than you were expecting, can you really fit everybody inside on a rainy day for each lunch? We can. What's funny is right now, because the weather's been so nice, that it's empty. Like there's, the blue gym is completely empty and the cafeteria has got a handful of kids in it, but we do have enough seats. I mean, it will be an interesting experience. It will be much more, you really all need to be at your spaces, but we do have the capacity. Great. And then just, I know it's early, but how is the hybrid classes, with the kids zooming in, working out so far? Is it, have we had a lot of technical issues or is it people getting adjusted to it? Do you have any feedback on that yet? So we had a step. I mean, the honest truth is it's a lot of work for the teachers. The teachers put a lot of work into it and they thought really hard about how to do it, but people have really taken it on. I mean, it's testament to the teachers that we had a staff meeting yesterday, we went through kind of issues that did not come up as one of the issues that people were having. Our library has been getting out, you know, all kinds of anything that anybody needs to make their connections and connectivity work. I thought it was a good sign that when we told staff that they could be, that we were gonna be all remote again today, I didn't hear staff going, yay, I can get back to my remote class. I heard people going, like, why? Why? We just got here. We just figured this out. So I think that's a good sign that people are finding that they're able to be successful. And it is helpful that the number of students zooming in is pretty small, right? So you're not trying to run a class of 10 kids here and a class of 10 kids there. You're running a class of 20 kids here and a class of three kids there. So it makes it really just kind of a few kids you're checking in with. But one thing I don't know and I will be looking to find out is the extent to which we're sustaining. Cause if you are now only two or three kids, one of the things that the letter was, my daughter thought that more people were gonna stay home. When she realized everybody was in school, she's going back, right? And there will still be some students who remote and need to be remote. So we do wanna make sure they don't feel left behind. Great, thank you very much. Mr. Thielman. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. Congratulations, Dr. Janger on getting the school open up for only good things from people. So to follow up on Mr. Cardin's question about the lunches are, so are you trying to make more tables, chairs and stuff like that outside, available outside for kids to sit at? Or is that, is that even realistically? We have about 35 individual chairs that kids can move around out there. We have the benches and the sides of the things. The kids are not, there are many, many chairs with nobody in them and many kids choosing to sit on the ground. Yeah, right. I have a letter that I need to write back to someone who said my kid needs a chair to say there is a chair. She probably either is a freshman who's shy about going over and getting it or a kid didn't realize it was her, but there are chairs and they're not being filled. So if I hear that there's a need for more furniture out there, we'll certainly see what we can do. I've got the same letter I think. The other question is just, could you just speak to cleaning of the building and just speak to a general comment that's been made that I've tried to answer myself from a building committee perspective, but any interference or any, how the relationship is working with the building project and maybe just a lay any concerns the public might have about that. So I mean, I have another letter that I have to write back to which was someone talking about sort of it being dirty. And the issue is the floors are gonna be dirty. It's a school with a thousand kids in it. So if you put your stuff down on the floor, it's gonna be dirty. I don't believe at this point that that is a result of the construction. The construction, my window, which by the way has a gap about that wide in it, looks right out on the middle of that construction project. They are not generating dust or debris right now. It's fairly enclosed activities that are going on. So whatever dirt people are experiencing on the floors is dirt coming from inside the building that we're in. The cleaning that they're doing in the building has to do with frequently touched services and the things that are really recommended by the CDC and just general cleanliness. And I think the custodians are working pretty hard at it. I'm trying to think of, and then I know folks have asked, there's a pretty extensive memo. I mean, you have to look a couple of clicks, but if you go both to the building project site, they have their regular reports on their air quality testing and other activities, but they also wrote a response specifically to people returning to the building. If you look in the FAQ, you can find that and click through. There's actually three documents connected there around cleaning routines and the stuff. But I think, we're not gonna pass the white glove test, but that's not because of the project. And it's not because we're not cleaning spaces that are relevant to COVID. Thank you. I just wanted to give you an invitation to say that. Yeah. For the good hearing. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? We're gonna move on to the summer program plan update, Dr. McNeil. I'm gonna take off if that's okay, unless Dr. McNeil wants me to say something. That's up to the boss, bosses. You can hang around. There might be some questions about the MOOCs or the credit recovery. This should be quick though. Thank you. Thank you for asking too. So I just wanna begin with some very positive news that we are fully staffed, not fully, I wanna say fully staffed, but we're staffed for all of the, we're appropriately staffed for all of the students that we have in all of our programs at this current time. So that includes the Title I expanded program, our ELL, the enrichment, both parts of that, both options, the enrichment program and the targeted assistant program. And I do want to also highlight the fact that the program administrator for our Title I expanded program have been working very hard and they've been planning this since around February and that's Sorrell Cohen for the ELA program and Abby Kaminsky for the math portion of the program. And I also wanna give a praise to Carla Busceci, our ELL director who's been working very hard to recruit teachers for the ELL program and Rob Spiegel for helping out with posting the various positions throughout this time. So I have generated a report and I will open it up to questions right now, but because all of the details of the information regarding the programs I've covered in past meetings, so I will open it up to questions. Any members wish to ask Dr. McNeil any questions with regard to the report that you received? I'd like to thank you Dr. McNeil for that finding the staff and the job that you and all the people that you've mentioned, it's a phenomenal job. And I think it would have been hard to do just on a regular condition under these conditions it's even that much harder. So thank you, thank you Mr. Spiegel and everyone involved. We all set? I would just like to thank- Go right ahead. I would like to thank Dr. McNeil and Mr. Spiegel for getting this done, we appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much, absolutely. Yes, Ms. Exton. I'll echo the things and I also just wanna say that I appreciate the written document, it helps to see how many students, how many teachers, the time of the program all in one place. So I appreciate you putting that all together for us as well. Sure thing. Mr. Schlickman. I agree, nice to have the written report, nice to have the outcome. Just wanna let our viewers know that that report is in Novus and it's on the webpage, it's on the town webpage as well as for the on the agenda. It's available. And I will add that, I just wanna let, since you said that to the public, that this is a fluid situation. We have parents that are reaching out to the program coordinators on a daily basis, asking for if their children can be a part of the program. So the information, the data inside the report is going to change with time. And I will, I can provide another updated report when a lot of the information has changed substantially. Thank you for that clarification. That's important. Okay, moving on. So thank you, Dr. Janger. Mr. Hayner, is it okay if I ask, if I let Dr. Janger know that he can go at this time since there are no other questions. You know best. Thank you, sir. Hey, moving on to the approval of assistant director of human resources, job description, Mr. Spiegel. Thank you. So this is just an updated job description for, it's not really a new position, it's a title change for someone who's currently the benefits coordinator and HR specialist in the office who really handles all of the HR benefits for the district and really is the lead person on a lot of our HR technology systems that we use. So this aligns the title is a change that aligns with what the town has where they have a director of human resources and an assistant director of human resources. And the positions, the positions are pretty equivalent. So we thought it was a good time to make a change and align those positions. And it is a recognition of the person who's been in the position for several years. Kelly Pigget has done great work and worked very hard and it really aligns with the position she has in the district now that this role has evolved into. I think it would be a minimal budget, really not much of a budget effect. There might be a small equity adjustment we have to look at but that would be it. And then I think the position does say it would have supervised responsibility. If you recall about, I don't even know it was last year or the year before in the budget we had approved a position, a halftime HR and a position that was really split between HR and payroll. And we did fill that position this past year and that would be the person in that position would be the person that the assistant director would have supervisory responsibility, mostly directing work for that person. I'll entertain a motion for the purpose of discussion. Mr. Schlippen. Move approval of the job description. Is there a second? Yep, second. Would any members care to discuss this? Mr. Kiden, then Mr. Schlippen. Thanks. So since it's supervisory, does it move from the clerical unit to AA or what? So it's a non-union position. The position has been non-union. It was originally hired, it was originally thought of as a confidential administrative assistant for HR because of the confidential nature of the position when it was a first hired several years ago. But that position has evolved but it's remained a confidential non-union position. Okay, thank you. Mr. Schlippen. I wanna say that I appreciate the work to upgrade the position, upgrade the title to align with the work that the person is doing. I think it's very important to recognize the skills that people are obtaining as they're working with us and to upgrade jobs as their skills align with it rather than losing people or having people in positions where the title doesn't align with their responsibilities. So thank you very much for bringing this forward. I very appreciate it. Thank you. Any other members to comment or question? Call for a vote to approve the new job description, Ms. Hexton. Yes. Mr. Schlippen. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I go, yes, unanimous vote. Thank you, Mr. Spiegel. The next item on the agenda is the session school committee regular meeting on June 10th. We only have one meeting scheduled. It initially there were some thought that it hasn't become a reality that there might be some conflict on the staff recognition which will take place on June 10th at four o'clock in the courtyard of the high school. Am I correct, Dr. Buddy, on that? I believe it's 330. Thank you for the correction. We'll all show up a half hour late and the food will all be gone. Anyway, I don't know if there's gonna be anything. So I don't, right now, I don't know of any need for us to have a second meeting in June at this time. It'll be definitely solidified. If anyone has any comment about this at this time, I'll entertain it. Seeing none, I'm gonna move on. The next item, discussion return meeting school committee to the regular school committee chamber. Nothing to report at this time. And if there's no objection, I would move this item to the subcommittee liaison report and announcement area so that we can handle it there. I'll be happy to report on a regular basis on that if there's any change. Mr. Schlickman. I just wanna note that the CDC has significantly loosened restrictions, particularly for people who have had, who are fully vaccinated. So I think that we really need to start thinking about getting back together in person, in our hearing room with the provisor. The one thing we need to work on is being able to access Zoom within the meeting so that if we have people we want to bring into the meeting via Zoom, we're able to do that. So I'd like to ask informally if we are going to be able to advance, say a large monitor or the technology required to have a Zoom connection within the school committee room so that we can bring people into our meetings. I will report back to next meeting dealing with the technology part. We also have the issue with the health department here in town. They have been, when I brought this to Ms. Morgan, when she was the chair, I wanna say a month, four or five weeks ago, she asked me to go check and the health department said no at that time. So that's one L aspect. Dr. Ampey. The CDC has radically changed the ground rules so that we need to rethink and readdress this. Thank you. Dr. Ampey. So in terms of thinking about this, I appreciate what you're saying about the need to get back to the room. And I'm not disagreeing with that, but I personally, I'm going to have some hardship doing this because things have changed as a combination of COVID and other stuff. And I'm now double booked on Thursday nights. And I've been able to make it work with Zoom if we can continue having Zoom as an option for regular participants, that would be great. If it's not, then I'll need, the problem is I'm not sure what alternatives I have. I mean, thinking of my, the things that I can change. So I'm just bringing that up as something. And also just as we discussed this, I think we need to be very cognizant that we have had so much better participation from our public this past year because of Zoom. And I understand they can watch on TV and stuff, but I'm not sure it gets the same, but I don't think it's as easy for people. And I think we need to remember that and that that is a really good thing. And that needs to be part of the discussion. So... I agree wholeheartedly with that. Just quick example, the Allington Rotary, we're lucky to have a quorum in the past. And now we're having like 75% membership because it could be anywhere in the country and participate. So I've put it down as one of the things and as Mr. Schlifrin said, looking into the technology, this is, we're in the planning stages, we're in the discussion stages of this right now. So I appreciate that. And if anyone else, anyone else have a comment on this at this time? I guess what I'm saying is when you're talking about technology, you need to be at least thinking about the possibility of a regular participant as opposed to the speaker, which to me is a little bit different, right? And I don't know how you want to do that, but I'm just saying that there's two different things going on here. I understand it clearly and be very frank, we've just about worked it out for the Rotary thing to keep the active people involved remotely and live. So we'll be able to share that with them. Mr. Filman. Yes, I just want to make sure I understand the process. This is going to be referred to which is to a subcommittee to kind of figure out. I'm creating the subcommittee of me and anyone else that wants to join at a given time. I'm doing the research, I'm talking to the different people. I will make the effort to go for the technology and the space and the whole thing. I've already talked to Mr. Mason a little bit about it. Now he's going to hear more about it from me. Well, I'm just wondering if we should either form a subcommittee or refer to a subcommittee you sit on so that we can, so that we can, you know, members can talk about different issues in a smaller group. I think be happy to have a recommendation for a subcommittee. Which one? Because you should be on it. I'll join it. I'm exo-officio on all subs. Policies and procedures. Seems reasonable to me. Okay, so I move that we're. What about community relations? Okay, because it's talking to people. Okay. Does that make you comfortable with that? Sure. I'm just going to grab to take that position and what you didn't know, and I told her that it was an easy committee this past year. Little by little, she's getting more and more added to it. Okay, so I move that we, what do you have to do? I was going to say, you're on that committee too. I know that. I know that. I had a whole plan to get out of this. You guys taught me. Okay, well, that didn't work. Okay, so that we refer the question of resuming our meetings in the school committee room to the committee relations committee with the preliminary report due to the school committee on June 10th. Do we need a vote on that? Yeah, we probably. Yeah, we'll call it, okay. No, there needs to be a second. Is there a second? Okay, we got a second. Any further discussion? Can I make a friendly amendment of honor before? Honor before, yes, yes. That's what I meant to say. Thank you. Oh, yeah, yeah. We all said, one call. Ms. Exit. Yes. Reluctantly, Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Filman. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I. So a happy three begrudging. That works. Okay. Moving on. M-A-S-C Delegate Assembly Representative. Is there, raise your hand if you were interested in becoming the delegate from the Eileenton School Committee. I'm happy to do it if nobody else wants to do it. It's a good thing to do. So if you want to go and play, I recommend it. I move that we nominate that we select Mr. Schlickman to be our representative of the M-A-S-C Delegate Assembly. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? One call. Ms. Exit. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Filman. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Mr. Schlickman, did you want to speak to the committee about resolutions? Yeah. One of the things that the Delegate Assembly does is to vote on resolutions that are generated either by the Board of Directors or by individual school committees. So if Arlington wishes to do so to submit a resolution, we would need to have that adopted at the next meeting. So if anybody wants to write a resolution or has a topic they want to propose, let me know and I can work with you to get it up to resolution form and we can bring it forward at the next meeting. Sounds good. Thank you. And thank you for serving. Superintendent's report. Dr. Bodie. I don't think that we've had Superintendent's report this early ever. The community is recovering from the trauma of town meeting. So we've got to demonstrate a good example tonight. That's what's going on. I'm going to stall for at least a half hour because I don't want to be held to this every time. No, we want the town meeting to be held at this standard. That's what we want. Dr. Bodie. Well, you're all very tired from this week. So it's probably good that we're having a short meeting. There's three things I want to bring up tonight. One is enrollment. Two is the new information on close contact quarantining and the return to school after quarantine and then of course the high school project update. So let me begin with enrollment. I think one of the, let's talk about kindergarten enrollment first. Where we are right now is not substantially different than where we had been with our enrollment for kindergarten. So right now, our kindergarten enrollment, there's two different categories. It's when they're pending and when they're approved and moving into our school information system, i.e. power school. And right now, if we look at how many we've actually been delivered into power school, there are 394, but when you add the pending, which could mean some very minor or substantial document and needs that need to be completed, 400, 443. The registration office still is continuing to project 505 for kindergarten next year. Now, I think Dr. Allison Ampe brought up the question last meeting about where we are with enrollment in general. As everyone knows, we had enrollment dip this year. And so what's happening in terms of something that would be additive to our enrollment next year. So right now, we have a total delivered to the SIS system of 503. Now, keep in mind that we're going to have a 329 graduates very soon. So if you were to think about a net on that, we're up about from where we worked over one 579 students. And again, this is very fluid. That is actually delivered to power school. When you look at where we are in terms of pending, and this is a K-12 look at our enrollment, we would have a differential of 254 students. So it's only May and we'll see where we are, but if it could well be that by the end of this month, we will find that the deficit we have in October will be erased. So I think this is one of the things that the school committee will want to keep abreast of. It's certainly something that we are in the school department because it's really going to affect class sizes, it's going to affect number of classes, reserve teachers. So the situation right now is that this is fairly spread out across the district. I think that the enrollment as it's developing with kindergarten already suggests that we're going to need two kindergarten positions. So not necessarily, I should say there's going to be two additional positions. They won't necessarily be kindergarten because classes roll up and it may be that the actual need at a school will be at another grade level, grade two, grade three. So, but we can already see that that is definitely in the work and whether there'll be more as we move along, we're not sure yet. So that's where I will get a hard copy of this out to you so you can see it. But maybe before I go on to the next topic, there might be some questions or requests for more information. Mr. Carden. Thank you. So where do we account for students that have told us that they're going to Minuteman or to our private school for high school or moving out of town next year? That's a great question and I will follow up on what I'm giving right now is really just the numbers. So we usually have coming up from the eighth grade, it can vary, but if I was to say about how many, it's usually between 30 and 40 students because we have about at Minuteman anywhere from one, and then giving you a 120, 135. So that's why it gives you an idea of where we are. So it's not going to be a big drop in the eighth grade enrollment, but it is going to represent. And I don't think, in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not representing these numbers right now. Yeah, we had actually had a long discussion at town meeting last night about Minuteman. Because 98 students applied from Arlington, 98. So, and there's 13 that are still on a wait list because they don't have space. So I believe there are 70 that are enrolled. I don't have the exact number, but around 70 are enrolled from Arlington. So some of them may not be at Audison, some of them may be homeschooled or elsewhere, but I think it's a lot more than 30. Yeah, I didn't know the numbers off from Audison, but I will definitely check into that. And we've had years where there's been more that have signed up to go, and that's not what actually ends up happening. But yes, these numbers that I'm giving you right now, I'm fairly certain, do not include the Minuteman because they haven't been withdrawn from the system yet. And that could be a function of the height, obviously of the high school. Though everybody needs to remember that the STEAM and the Performing Arts Wing will be open next year. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Thank you for this update, Dr. Bodie. And I especially look forward to having a hard copy of this because it was a little hard for me to follow all the numbers. Are there any deadlines that people who are re-enrolling in the district need to be aware of? And how are we communicating this information to them? The answer is there isn't a deadline on that. There never is. Certainly we would like people to and we can to enroll if they're going to return. And if you recall, Mr. Mason has sent a survey out back in the fall. And this is something that we can do is remind people because class sizes and staffing needs are based on where our moment is going to be. So that's something that we had planned to do and we'll do that. But there is no deadline. Anyone who moves into Arlington that lives here can enroll in our public school system. Right, but I guess there's a difference. I mean, it's good to know there's not a deadline but we still would like to encourage them to enroll as soon as possible so that they can so that everyone can have the best educational experience possible because it enables us to balance our classes by their higher enough teachers and stuff. And so what actions are you taking or plan to take to help kind of let people know that and help push them along? Well, we're certainly going to reach out to the people who left the system. What's important to also know is that any family that's remote in the remote academy, that's not a re-enrollment. That's just simply going to be a shift into in-person. They'll be okay. Actually, some people didn't realize that but we had some discussions about whether families that were in the remote academy would just stay in the Arlington public schools. My understanding is that we at this point I'm not aware of families leaving. So yes, then we have planned to follow up and remind people as I said, we had done that earlier and we had gotten a survey back from them saying that which families would probably come back and at that time we had about half that were interested in returning once and the caveat was for some parents once we were back in person fully and of course that will happen next year. Right, so I'm just thinking it's time to start. What I'm thinking is we're going to have to justify use of some of the reserve monies potentially if we're going into enrollment over what had been predicted and the sooner we can do that the smoother it's going to make hiring and decisions. And so anything we can do to help kind of move that along seems like it would be pretty good. Well, what's curious to me in these numbers and this would take some time to look at this is that we're actually seeing an increase in the number of students who are rolling for next year. Some are actually have started this spring but I don't know if these numbers are the same people who were through last year. It's probably likely that they are but we'd have to spend some time with who enrolls and compare that to who left. But it's interesting that what these deltas are they're looking in terms of pending we have something like a differential of 254 students. So I suspect strongly that many of those numbers many of those families are in these numbers but I can't verify that that's the case without actually going through having someone go through all of them which we could do it. Ms. Bogan did you have something you wanna ask? Yeah, I just had a question. So if a family withdrew their student their elementary age student this year to home school or go to a private school and they're reenrolling do they go back through the buffer zone process if they live in a buffer zone or are you automatically sending them back to their school that they attended previously? Well, that's a great question. And it has come up a couple of times already. Yes. I always get those ones that are right on the edge. So yeah, tell us. It has come up and it has gone both ways. Yes, somebody may have been in a school for all of a couple of days. And that would not, it would just depend on what the enrollments were as we were looking at them in time when we did buffer zones. And yes, there were a couple of people who did not get an assignment back to that school but there was also some families that did. So these are kids who were in APS for until March of 2020 and then for whatever reason didn't reenroll in September and then but are we enrolling for September, 2021? Correct. And it's real clear as to when they were, I mean, we've had people who, yes, who had been in the schools for a while and had been in a particular school. That was a consideration in their placement for sure. But if someone was only in the school for four days before they were through, that was less weighty in the decision. What was more important in that decision was the enrollment at that school. I don't understand how somebody would be enrolled for a few days. Like they came in September of 2020, my years are messed up. And they came in September of 2020, we're like, I don't like this hybrid thing. I'm out of here and okay, I get it. So that's how somebody, because I was like, I don't see how somebody could be there for a few days, but that makes sense. If they enrolled in September didn't persist for whatever reason and now we're coming back for September of 2021. Great, thank you. That's my question. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. Yes, that's exactly right. Anybody else on this issue? Thank you, Dr. Bordi, you can continue. Thank you. So one of the things that you were all aware of and I have sent out letters this week yesterday to staff and then today to families about the new guidance that we have received from the Department of Education with regard to quarantining closed contacts. And I will say that the new guidance from the Department of Education aligns with Department of Public Health. DPH supports the new guidance, which essentially says this, that if you are less than three feet for a total of 15 minutes over 24 hour periods, then you might be a closed contact with need to quarantine. But if you are at a distance greater than three feet, then you would not. Now you would be notified that there was someone in a class or a school with mainly a classroom that had a positive case, was a positive case for COVID-19. But that class would not need to quarantine as we've had done through most of this year. The Orange and Public Schools have set up structurally for students to be within three to six feet. And at the beginning of the year, if you recall, we have a lot of discussion about this issue. Our view, which was strongly supported by our health department was that in a classroom, if there was a positive case, then the prudent thing to do was to have all of the, everyone in the class be quarantined for the 10 days to turn on day 11. But like everything with COVID, we see an evolution of our understanding of it. We see evolution due to vaccinations. And as Dr. Jango was mentioning earlier, there's now a discussion about not having masks indoors in certain situations. So it's all evolving. And I think that one of the also the precipitating motivations to really look at this issue had to do with students returning full-time. So in prior situations this year, students might only miss the two days or possibly another day of hybrid. But now students are back five days a week, they would potentially miss a lot more school if they were partially, if only part of the class was a close contact or they'd be in remote instruction again if the entire class was quarantined for that period of time. So you would ask me at the last meeting, does this mean that we are not going to be sending whole classes or learning communities into quarantine as we have in the past? And the answer is that is correct. Now, will the school department need to maintain some discretion in certain situations? And perhaps those situations may involve more are really younger students. The answer is yes. And that would be handled on a case by case basis. But overall in the vast majority of situations that we will not be sending a whole class or a learning community into quarantine. What we will do to sort of assure everybody of safety within that classroom is that we're going to increase our pool testing. In fact, we may even do pool testing every day for up to two weeks. Just to stay on top to make sure that we did not have any transmissions in that class. To date this year, we have no evidence of transmissions. And we've actually had very few positive cases that we've identified in the school system through our pool testing, not many. And yet we've had some time when you consider there's 10 swabs in a vial that we do pool testing with. We've had close to 37,000 tests since we began pool testing. And we've had just a few throughout our KAA school. So do we think that our schools will remain safe with this new guideline? The answer is yes. And we will, as I said, maintain testing to make sure that's the case. So that's one part of this. The next part is that we do have students and staff members who have tested positive either identify through pool testing but more often actually from outside testing. And they have to remain out of school and we've had, up until now, it's really been the 10 days return on day 11. We are aligning with the new Department of Education guideline on this, supported by DPH, and it's that if you are out because you tested positive, you can test on day five, which allows you to return to school on day eight. The actual regulation says that your quarantine ends at the end of day seven, but for all practical purposes, you don't come back to school for the next day. So we have begun that and we will continue to have that be our standard for the rest of the year. So there's two parts to this and those are the two parts which I outlined to both staff and parents. So that's basically it. I will say that I didn't have this information with staff yesterday, but the new information from the high school is a very positive respect to vaccinations. As Dr. Janko was saying earlier, we see a very high percentage of students who've been vaccinated are senior classes at 80%, juniors are close to 80%, then because as of until Pfizer was approved, you had to be 16 or over. So in the sophomore class, the 10th grade class, the number of vaccinations is 748%, but if you look only at the students who are eligible who are 16 or over, it jumps to 67%. So in that respect, one of the other parts of the new guidance is that if you are vaccinated or you've had COVID within the last 90 days, I suppose for 15 minutes. So I think that all in all, I think that we will maintain very safe schools with these guidelines. And I'm happy to answer any questions or clarify any points that I made this evening in that regard. Mr. Cardi, then the sextant. Yeah, just to, I don't know if you know this, but where are we getting the vaccination data? Does that come from down through the state or in Manchester up to our students? We're getting it from our school nurses. And yes, if you, we are running clinics in the school and have been and we'll have four more clinics in the next couple of weeks for day 12. So the data comes from our school nurses. Okay, as a parent, I don't recall being asked to provide that information. So I don't know, maybe I missed it. The section. Thank you. So I'm just thinking about the new close contact guidelines and I'm very much appreciated sort of the decision that a whole cohort would quarantine. And I, you've mentioned this, but I just want to sort of reemphasize the importance with the younger grades of how close those kids are getting to each other. And even though the desks might be three to six feet apart, especially at this point in the year, kids are getting really comfortable with each other and, you know, are closer to one another than we might even want them to be. So I just, I want to make sure that we're really careful about the decisions made for close contacts for the primary grades, you know, keeping in mind how young kids might be with their masks and distancing and their own, you know, ability to stay away from one another. I will say one of those guidelines came out or the new guidelines came out. It made me a little bit uncomfortable for the younger grades. And I don't, I mean, I see six, seven eighth graders were really close to each other too in the hallways. So, you know, I don't, I just want to make sure that principals and teachers are consulted when there's a case like this so that we can get a clear idea of, do we really think kids were truly three feet apart all day long? We agree completely. And I have seen some kindergarten classrooms recently. And yes, I would agree that they, you know, it's really hard to necessarily maintain the three feet and you know that every day. So that's why I want, I think it's prudent wise for the district to, you know, maintain some discretion on this. And we've actually already had a test case in this regard. So, and we, we had a very, I thought appropriate middle ground on this and we've continued to test and we, there's been no transmission. So, I totally agree with you. And so we would have to look at each of these situations very carefully when they came up as the lower grades are preschool for that matter. So, yes, I totally agree. We do agree. And at the older grades, I mean, they're getting more comfortable as you say as well. That's true. And if you watch kids walk into down the hall or into school, you can see that as well. But the one thing about that is, it's also not for long periods of time, you know, you transfer between classes three minutes. So we can't keep track of all of the two minutes, three minutes here plus for every single child. That's just impossible. So I think as we get to the upper grades, I think, you know, we can feel comfortable with our structural set up of our schools. There's certainly their deserter three feet apart. They eat lunch six feet apart and we're maintaining, you know, good, good safety protocols. Okay. One day at a time. I'm not sure if I misunderstood what you said or if you misspoke. I thought that you said, Dr. Boddy, that someone could return to someone who is COVID positive could return to school in seven days. I mean, after a negative test at five days. And I think, is that what you meant or did you mean someone who was exposed to someone who was COVID positive? Clear or not having, for the most part, that's what we're just talking with Ms. Ekshen about we're pretty much will not be having students identified as close contact for the purpose of quarantine. But that is my understanding. No, they can't be symptomatic. I probably should have add that piece to it. I'm still, I'm confused whether you're talking about close contacts or people who were actually COVID positive tested COVID positive. I believe those are tested COVID positive and they're not symptomatic. Yes, they can test on day five and return on day eight. But they have to be not symptomatic. If they become symptomatic, then that gets extended. I will double check that, but I'm fairly certain. Yeah, I'm having, I'm stuck in the DESI website and can't find things to read them quickly and check. Okay, that's... Dr. Boyd, when you get that clarified, would you send it out to all the members? So the DPH policy is the coming out of quarantine. So that individual who receives a negative COVID-19 test result on day five or later is able to come out of quarantine at the end of day seven. But when you have COVID, you isolate, you don't quarantine. Yes, quarantine. It's not applied to people who have COVID. No. Yeah. You are isolated. That's true. And probably that is a mis... Let me clarify that, but thank you. We have all of our... Anyone who tests positive is that whole return to school, whether a teacher or a student, is overseen by a nursing department. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you. Dr. Boyd, do you have something to say about the building, new building? I do. There's nothing else to talk about with this. Well, there's not much to say. Mr. Mason can share the screen up. I just have one picture I want to show you, which is actually part of the presentation that Mr. Thielman is going to be giving to town medium. Not quite sure when that's going to happen. If you drive by MassAd, you can just see that we're just making so much more progress every day and we're watching every day. So if you're looking at the building from Mass Ave, this is what you would see right now. But, and then you can see how the design of that would be once it's complete. So we're really moving along quite well with this. And in terms of the committee work that's going on, an interiorist committee will continue to meet. There's still some more decisions on colors and patterning. Some of the big decisions I mentioned last meeting about mortar that was taken care of. So the, you can't see this from here, but this is relevant to the students returning to the high school. Along the, where CVS is, there is a pathway that comes in and takes a turn the back of this so you can actually still come in the front door. You can't really see it from here, but I thought it would be helpful for people who are driving by all the time to realize what we're actually going to see. And we're going to be starting to see this probably late this, maybe earlier this fall. So, but there's really not much to report other than the work continues with some subcommittees and Mr. Thielman is going to give a complete report to town meeting. I don't believe it's been scheduled yet, but it will be happening before town meeting adjourns. That's that we do know. And the next meeting of the building committee will be in early June. It's the first Tuesday of the month, which I believe is the 6th of June. So anyway, that's my report on the high school and my report for this evening. Thank you. Moving on to the consent agenda at this time, all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be a routine and will be enacted by one mode. Sorry. Mr. Thielman, I have a question. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, just a quick question on the high school. Are we still on target for a February move into the front of the building? We believe so. There was a little bit of a hiccup recently with Eversource and some of that has been resolved. So what happens when there is some sideways from the schedule, there's often some compensatory time that is given, whether it's later in the day or Saturdays. And we've had some Saturdays this spring. So at this point, I believe that we are still targeted for early February with the move happening over February break. I have nothing that would suggest that that schedule has changed. If it does change, then we will report that out at our next or June meeting. Thank you very much. You know, one thing if I could add to what Dr. Boody said is that, you know, the building is about a million dollars under budget and I can't think correct me and so can Terci, but we have purchased everything. So, you know, we're locked in. This is it. This is the budget. We'll make the budget unless there's a major catastrophe somewhere in the world. But Terci, you want to correct me? No, no, no, no. I was going to chime in with the problems that the town is seeing with DPW, that graph that they showed on steel prices, I think we managed to buy at the dip and now DPW is having to buy at peak and it's helpful. Yeah, Dr. Boody and Dr. Allison Ampe studied the market very carefully and knew when to buy. They just knew when to do it. Yeah, we did it. They wouldn't be sitting here. We'd have a recession. Yeah, they just knew and we did it. So that's it. We hit execute, yeah. Anyone predicting that would be down to Bahamas right now. Any other questions or comments on the building before I move on? Little anxious, sorry. Consent agenda, all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant for approval, warrant number 21239 dated May 4th, 2021. Total warrant amount, $996,689.95. Minutes for approval, school committee regular meeting, April 29th, 2021, and organizational meeting, April 12th, 2021. Approval of the annual E. Nelson Blake Jr. Book Award given to the top 10 students with the highest GPA due to COVID. The recipients will not be aware of this award until graduation day, June 5th, 2021. Ms. Hexen. Can you hold up for 29 minutes? The 29, yes. Anything else? Do I have a motion for approval? Some moved. Second. Second. Thank you. Roll call, Ms. Hexen. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Rampe. Yes. Ms. Carden. Mr. Carden, excuse me. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Now we're gonna take a vote on a school committee regular meeting, April 29th, 2021, and the order, I assume the order. Yes. Do you wish to speak to it, Ms. Hexen? We're talking about the 429 minutes. Yes. So it says that Ms. Morgan opened the meeting and I believe that you were the chair at the time. Thank you. It shows that I didn't look at them. I apologize. Thank you. Just wanna make sure that we make that administrative change before we present. No objections. So move. Provolous school committee minutes for April 29th, 2021, as amended. Ms. Hexen. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Rampe. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. I vote yes also. Unanimous. Subcommittee and Liaison Report Announcements. Pledge it, Dr. Rampe. We'll be scheduling a meeting in the next few weeks. Next couple of weeks. Thank you. Community relations, Ms. Hexen. Thank you. So there will be another school committee chat this Saturday for families and caregivers of children in kindergarten to fifth grade. This is, there are three more chats. So there's this Saturday, K to five. The following Saturday, there I had the deeps and now I'm, there they are. Saturday, May 22nd at 11 a.m. is for Metco families. And then the final chat of the year is on Saturday, May 29th for families and caregivers of students in grade six through 12. I will be scheduling a meeting soon to discuss returning in person to the school committee room. And I also would like to find a time to evaluate the chats from the spring and set up the schedule or determine, based on the feedback, decide what we're gonna do in the fall. Thank you. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Accountability. Mr. Cardin, your report. Distribute these, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy and procedure, Mr. Schlickman. In recognition of the fact that we're in the middle of a long drawn out town meeting, we really need to do a quick meeting of the subcommittee between now and the next full school committee meeting. So I'll be sitting around a duel or some sort of a query of the membership. Shouldn't go more than 20 minutes. Ellington High School Building Committee. Mr. Thielman. We meet June 6th, Dr. Boatysen. Are there any liaison reports? I attended the CPAC meeting the other morning. It went well, it was well attended and they're planning one in June. Nothing more than that to report. Any announcements and any future agenda items that you'd like me to, okay. As far as I know, there's no executive session. Is that correct? To be coaching town meeting on how to do a meeting, you should be consulting over there. Look, I was doing great until I got to the consent agenda and I fell apart. Main or for moderator? I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Thank you. It's non-debatable. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. DeHane. Yes. Have a good night, wonderful week everyone. Be safe.