 Okay. Hi. Welcome to this slightly delayed meeting regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, May 11th, 2023. We're sorry for the delay. We have been having some problems with the ACMI broadcast and zoom. And I think it's going to mean if anyone's actually on zoom, they may have the volume may be an issue. Watch right now. I only know right now the only person I know of who's going to be on zoom is Mr. Cardin, but he was going to join us late. So we'll watch for him. And that's about it. So we will begin with public comment. We have two speakers today. And I forgot the word that I am here. I'm sorry. We seem to be having functional meeting disorder today. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I don't know. There's, I don't have my, oh, there it is. No. There we go. Okay. Okay. So I want to review the sections of our policy BEDH, which governs public comment. During public comment segment of regular meetings of the committee, individuals or group representatives may address the committee on items of school business. The length of public participation shall normally be no more than 20 minutes, but may be extended by the chair. Speakers must identify themselves by name and address and will be allowed up to 3 minutes to present their material. The chair may reduce speaking time if needed. I don't think we need to improper conduct and remarks, including use of obscenity or abusive language will not be allowed. Defamatory or abusive remarks are always out of order. If a speaker persists in improper conduct or remarks, the chair may terminate that individual's privilege of address. All remarks will be addressed through the chair of the meeting. Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations and programs as concerned them. But in public session, the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel, nor against any member of the school community, except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as operational leader of the Arlington Public Schools. Under most circumstances, administrative channels are the proper means for disposition of legitimate complaints involving staff members. The public has reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel, other than that of the superintendent. Thank you. So the first, our first public comment is M. Phillips. Do I need anything else? Okay. Oh, I live on Surrey Road in the Arlington Heights. I am non-binary. I use them. There's pronouns. I'm senior at AHS, and I've been working with the GSA since my sophomore year, ever working with the Rainbow Commission since seventh grade. I came before you guys about a month ago to talk about all of the great work that the Rain Task Force has been doing alongside Dr. McNeil and Molly Gillis. And since then, a lot has happened in the community regarding LGBTQ discussions. And I just want to remind the school committee that our youth of LGBTQ youth are some of the most important people to me, at least in this community. And I adamantly fight for them and all of their just acceptance in this community. We have a Pride event this Saturday specifically for youth in the middle school and the elementary school and the high school to gather together to see that you can make it to high school. You can make it through middle school. We're hoping families come to show that there is a really great world out there. But sadly, that does not excuse some of the disruptions that have been happening with the discussion of the human growth and development curriculum. And again, I just want to come here and say that acceptance and inclusion as low as the elementary school levels can be suicide prevention. It starts so young of when we start to internalize hate and to get that out of our system in years. And when we have a big chunk of our community against that identity that we are questioning we are struggling with, it can lead to depression, suicide, terrible things that happen, honestly, in the middle school, high school level. And that is still when these members of the LGBTQ community are at Arlington Public Schools and still under this jurisdiction. I do want to say that there has been a lot of work that we have done, a lot of positives. We've put together all of the rainbow commissions we are showing on Saturday, all of this community that we have built. But that still doesn't mean that we can ignore the hatred that has been building. Thank you so much for letting me come and speak to you. Thank you. And next, Beatrice Croto. Good evening. My name is Beat Croto and I am from 67 Overlook Road in Arlington. I graduated from AHS last year and I just completed my first year at Mount Holyoke College. During my junior year at AHS, I served as a student representative on the Superintendant Search Committee. Mr. Schlickman and Dr. Harmon, it's nice to see you again. I'm here to offer comment on the need for LGBTQIA plus inclusive curricula across all academic disciplines and the need for mandatory training for faculty and staff on how to foster classroom-wide and school-wide cultures that are safe for LGBTQIA plus students. In 2021, results from the Middlesex League Youth Behavioral Health Survey showed that one out of every four Arlington Middle School students reported that they felt overwhelming stress, were depressed, or thought a lot about suicide. Most of the time were always. But for LGBTQIA plus students, the results were flipped. Three out of every four, 76% said that they were depressed or suicidal. When I was in fifth grade, I was really excited to go to AHS in middle school. I really wanted to learn with the big kids. I was very excited. But by seventh grade, my mental health profile fit that of the majority of LGBTQIA middle schoolers documented in the 2021 YRBS report. As I was figuring out how to come up as gay to my friends, I attended sex head classes with the during which the teacher took us on a very long and very thorough journey through the peaks and pitfalls of straight relationships, all the glory details. She would occasionally mention the homosexuals in passing. In fact, toward the end of one lesson, she turned to look at us and said, you know, you should be friends with gay people. They're actually pretty nice. I know she meant well, but it was just really weird to hear an adult scribe me as if I were someone's special project. Go make friends with a gay kid. They aren't so bad. My experiences are not unique on honors night for my graduating class, students with the 10 highest grades in that class get an award. Two of us in that group were gay and one of them was trans. To my knowledge, that was all of the queer students there, but there were probably more. The trans student and the other gay student had experiences like mine in Arlington schools, meaning that their first formative experiences with anti gay and anti trans bigotry occurred with a teacher. In middle school, for example, a trans student was beginning to transition and come out as transgender and he wanted students and teachers to address him by a different name. I noticed that only one teacher used his new name. Most of the teachers were confused and consistently misgendered him, but a couple of the teachers were openly hostile. By their behavior, they let students know that in their classroom, they were free to use the wrong name and the wrong gender and there would be no consequences. I have two moms. I grew up with lots of LGBTQIA plus people in my life. That's three minutes. You can finish up. Okay, thank you. But watching teachers and I just want to let you know that I absolutely revere teachers. I love learning and I love school, but watching teachers behave in that way was deeply unsettling and very confusing. I'll never know if things could have been different for me, but those experiences in seventh grade combined with the challenges of coming out created a mental health crisis that was for me and my family devastating. You can see from these stories, Arlington schools are not safe places for LGBTQIA plus students. Safety is situational. It is completely dependent on who you have as a teacher and sexuality education should be inclusive of LGBTQIA plus students. History and literature curriculum should also be inclusive, but first every classroom has to be safe. As a student, I had lots of good experiences with my teachers. I had a great time at AHS. I really loved it. I love saying that I'm from Arlington, but things in middle school could have and they should have been much better. Sorry. As leaders, you can make things better. It would be helpful if you had a real understanding of what school is like for LGBTQIA plus students and you should attend some GSA meetings. You should talk to students and ask them questions. There's a districtwide, as I mentioned, there's a districtwide pride festival happening on Saturday and every one of you should attend. You should ensure that training on how to foster a school-wide and classroom-wide culture that is safe for LGBTQIA plus students is not optional. It should be mandatory because all the time the teachers who sign up for that training are not the teachers who need it. Trans people are under attack across the country. It doesn't matter that we are in Arlington, Massachusetts and not Arlington, Texas. These attacks affect all of us as school leaders and political leaders who have just dealt with what was in essence an attack on gender diverse kids. I ask that you make it very clear that you do not agree with these attacks and that you will be taking action to make sure every classroom from kindergarten to 12th grade is safe for LGBTQIA plus students. Thank you. Calm down, please. Okay, so I keep forgetting to say at the start, but we don't respond to public comment, but we appreciate your coming and talking. Next, we would have the AHS student representative to school committee, but they are not here. So now we have the CPAC report and this is Lam Barton and just tell me when you need that. You can just go to the next slide anyway since that's just the, plus then everyone will know who's here because it's ENA, myself and Jess. Thank you for having us again this year. We saw you around this time last year, I think. What I wanted to use today's report for was really to talk about what we do as a CPAC because I think it gets a little bit lost and also so that you can understand how we can fit better as an asset to the district and to school committee because we're well positioned right now and we're doing some good work on acting as a conduit for two-way communication between the district and families and there's basically, stay here, stay here. There's three things that Massachusetts state regulations say that CPACs should do and that is that we should advise you all on matters related to special education students that we should work with the district on planning and evaluating programming that's relevant to special education students and that we provide with the district a workshop explaining basic rights to parents. So what I'm going to do going through the slides with ENA and Jess is look at how we are fulfilling those particular goals. All right, go ahead. So this is a list of all of the workshops that we presented this year. I'd like to note that, oh yes that's true, one's coming up please come. Sexuality across the spectrum, bodies, relationships and safety for autistic youth will be presented by Tufts professor Eileen Crayhan. So anyone can email Arlington CPAC at gmail.com to get the zoom link for that one that will be on Tuesday at seven. The thing I want to note on this is that the only workshop that is paid for on this list is the basic rights transition workshop which is paid through the district's membership with the federation for children with special needs. The rest of the workshops that we present which are well attended, particularly things like the recognizing and treating anxiety are done by the goodwill of providers that we beg nicely to come and present to us. I know that it's been a topic that's been talked about before but we'd like maybe to revisit with the school committee ways that we could hold a revolving account for instance if we were able to fundraise or to have a line item of some sort but some extra source of funding so that we can more consistently present the kinds of workshops that families are looking for. And I want to add that that's also an equity issue because we many of these folks who come and present for us are in industries that often are underpaid and they're doing this out of the kindness of their hearts but honestly they should be doing this and getting paid and paid well for coming to speak to us about topics they are actually experts on and and then we are undervaluing their work and it's a true equity issue in our communities because of that. The other thing to note on the workshop front is that at our transition workshop I'd like to thank Ms. Elmer who's not here tonight but also Annalise Abdelnor at the high school she's the transition coordinator they had a request for Portuguese translation for that meeting and it was not an easy thing to arrange. We had hoped based on the Federation for special needs rhetoric that they would be more helpful in finding a translator but they were not and the district paid for that with their lexicate membership. We would like to find ways to let parents know that that is more available moving forward I think that's something when we have the new director of communications that we really need to look into because I think parents don't know that that's available and I think it was incredibly valuable we did have a parent come to the meeting and use the Portuguese translation channel. All right next slide. So at our monthly meetings we alternate mornings and evenings to try and catch as many parents as we can. I'm Dr. Barton and Ms. Elmer comes to every single meeting and most of her staff come to morning meetings that happen during work hours so that would include most of the coordinators for special education at the various levels. She always gives an update which is incredibly useful for families not just on what's going on in special education but in the district generally and it's very accessible for people who maybe don't feel comfortable listening to a school committee meeting or know how to do that or how to click through the novice agenda to find all of the information. We also this year had Dr. McNeil come and speak with us about the literacy curriculum search and I really want to highlight that because again if you didn't click through the novice agenda to find Dr. McNeil's talks to school committee we were one of the few ways that parents learned about the literacy curriculum search. I noticed on some of the social media like the Arlington Parents page we were highlighted when people asked about what was going on with the literacy curriculum they said oh I saw a CPAC presentation it's the only thing I've heard about it. Go look here and you can see the presentation. So we really are a source of information that's accessible for parents. We also at the beginning of the year had Magalie Olander before she was acting in her position as director of SEL. I think at the time it was like mental health outreach was her job came and talked about all of the mental health screeners that the schools are doing at the various age levels and parents could come with questions about those. We do meet with Dr. Holman and Ms. Elmer. We've met with Dr. Holman twice this year and with Ms. Elmer regularly we have a great relationship and we also had as those of you who were running again this year know Amita candidates for parents. Which has actually been right yes apparently our minutes are being slow so people really want to see them. Just says they're up now so you can see. But one of the things that was highlighted in our talk with Desi during the tiered focus monitoring process Ina and I had an interview with the I don't either with the on-site rep who was conducting the interviews is that one of the areas of weakness that the district could work on with their CPAC is our role in providing feedback on the planning and development of special education programming and I think Ina might be a good one to talk about access there. So we did so we do you know a bunch of planning and advisory which which Sarah's already talked about I think we're the next slide. Yeah oh don't go back sorry. Tonight's the night of fun with functionality. Yeah so you know we've developed really great relationships I think throughout the district. We have good relationships with building principles with different administrators and even some folks on the ground. But what we don't have access to and what we don't have the ability to to really glean information so that we can one provide it to families and two also provide back to the district is how are these programs working for families. What do these programs actually look like. What does that feel like for a kiddo in that in that particular classroom in that particular building in that particular you know with the type of supports of particular kiddo may be getting. Even understanding that these are individualized and they should be and so every student is going to have a slightly different interaction with whichever type of supports they're having. We don't have access to any of that information. Some of that's for privacy concerns and we fully understand that but there are ways in which we can evaluate these programs that we are not really given access to. Recently I've had a couple of different families ask me hey my kid was just diagnosed as autistic. I know there's programs but what do they look like. What do they do. How does that work. And I can't answer that because I don't I I've never actually been able to go into the building and and see what that looks like and to get a feel of that. And and and when I get feedback from families that the challenge is it's there's no reference point right. It's the it's the one it's the one story but without any parameters on what what the program ought to look like and what the child is or isn't accessing in that particular environment. So we don't have any way to evaluate or discuss even the ways in which we're going to continue to develop or continue to support our students as a whole. And that is an area that we're not sure how we we do this but I think that we need some better transparency and communication around and problem solving around how do we do a better job of telling our families no no really they're doing a great job with your kid. It's just that like a lot of things it's a black box they go into the building they come out the other end you just you just don't know and that doesn't fill anyone with any confidence ever. I mean how anxious do y'all feel when when you're like and I'm going to drop it this thing my child off somewhere and they're going to come out the other end and hopefully it worked right like that is not a thing that it that inspires people any confidence. So having some some window into what could it look like what should it look like what are we trying to do how are we trying to do it what is the philosophy and what is the theoretical modeling that we're utilizing in a lot of this programming in a lot of these structures and supports so that we can also support our families in feeling more confident in the programming that we have which much of which is is working for a lot of our families and also then maybe advocating for it to be better because maybe the program isn't actually working the way it's modeled to right maybe this is the theory and this is the philosophy but we're not actually the program actually isn't working at that level and we have no access to any of that information we would really honestly I mean I have a background in ed Sarah has some ed background I mean like we're we're deep in this and and what we want to do is build a better system for everybody. I think like one of the easiest examples to give is if you all remember when SLCD opened two years ago now we found out at the same time as everyone else so obviously we were not involved in the planning there I would like to highlight that this year we've been involved in quite a few hiring committees which is an improvement we are getting more input into those central office positions and are able to represent special education families at those so that's that's a movement forward but sort of on the transparency front some more on programming would be great. All right next slide so I'm not going to talk too much about the survey because it's linked in this presentation which you have and it was provided to you in the materials for the meeting it's very difficult to make any sweeping statements because everyone's experience is highly individual everyone's philosophy on public education and what its aims are and what services they feel entitled to or expect and what outcome they expect from public education varies wildly it can be difficult because obviously when you're in the special education when you first encounter the special education system a lot of parents are in a very emotional state because they have either just received a life altering diagnosis for a child or their child is struggling so much in school that things are breaking down at home so it's stressful and everyone's emotions are high what helps in those situations is clear expectations transparency and communication and so the other reasons why there's it's hard to make some sweeping statements about what what what the the survey this year states we had significantly fewer respondents some of which I think is just a lot of people's return to work and and and the sort of balance of everyone no longer being home all of the time being a piece of it as we always state we have challenges with getting things translated and accessible to folks it's only online so these are all real limitations to our survey fundamentally we have the same themes coming up but since it's just a year since our last one we're not going to see any true trends yet but we hope to continue to do this so that we can see trends and see what where we are maybe making some headway and where maybe we're actually starting to lose ground in certain areas so some of those areas are transparency communication this is my this is my if I was going to hammer home this is my little pet project um transparency and communication so not every parent is going to be happy all the time with what services are offered to their child and how the process goes but it goes a long way if everyone starts the process understanding what's going on what the expectations are and how decisions are made so then you could disagree about the decision that's been made but you understand what rubric is being used to evaluate to parents right now it can feel very isolating and confusing and opaque so when things are going well and we do have quite a few people on our survey who have reported positive experiences it's because the team is open and transparent and flexible and when it's not going well then you see those answers where it's difficult to get email responses um people don't feel heard they don't feel as though the words that they are saying are being listened to or respected um and students also have reported feeling unseen or not like they belong in their classrooms so I would encourage you to read through particularly the comments the qualitative comments that were listed in that survey so that you can get an idea of the balance of how families are feeling and it really does fall across the spectrum it is not all terrible doom and gloom news but it is also not all roses let's go to the last slide you know you want to talk about our priorities for next year we really really would love some way to fund the programming that we're doing um free labor is is a problem for everybody and um if we were able to fundraise and then use those funds that would that would we were we're happy to do so but as it stands whatever funding we raise goes to the general fund and we don't have access to that unless someone else gives us access to that specifically and I don't know that that that's really quite equitable for the work that we're doing and we do a lot of work so being able to do so would mean the world to not just us but the families that we serve which is all the families you all serve um so that's one too we really really want to be much better embedded in how we develop how we strategically plan for and uh and evaluate the programming that we have and how well that is or isn't serving families with the caveat that not everyone can be happy and we understand that I mean I I promise you my kids are pain and I am not happy with what's going on and some of that's us and some of that's the district but that's not my agenda my agenda is how do we make it better for everybody and I want to be clear that I'm not in this for me I'm in this for the 900 and I don't remember however many I something IEP's we have in this district and for all of the other students who are being supported because those students are being supported right all of the supports that we put in around those students also support all of the other students in those classrooms um and uh really we we just would love to have better communication which I appreciate we are working on but for many of us it's a long road and it's been very quiet so a lot more transparency a lot more consistency and um and some transparency about the accountability of what is or isn't happening behind the scenes I think I got it all questions comments okay one have questions or comments mr. Schuchman okay um I had a good time meeting with the CPAC at the candidate swarm and I think between you and the sped alliance uh there are a lot of really good questions raised and a lot of good perspectives put out there and I hope you continue to do that going forward um you're right in that we're dealing with a lot of individual uh education plans and that where we as a committee can get a sense of something that's public and sort of universal like what's going on in second grade it's really very difficult for us to get a sense of what's happening with the 900 or so IEP's that are being written every year uh a lot of questions that came up had to deal with trust between parents and the district and understanding the trust is a lagging indicator and then it takes a long time to uh ruin a reputation and it takes a long time to build it back up um my question is do you think it would be helpful to collect data on how many team meetings are conducted in which outside evaluators advocates or attorneys are participating useful to just have as data but I don't know that it's indicative of anything specifically because in part like you said that trust and that the relationship building comes over time but there's also a reputational piece and so there are many families that are new to the system of special ed within our school district who who through outside sources are then uh uh I lost the word um um encouraged encouraged to bring a lawyer or bring an advocate yeah um before they've ever met like this is their first encounter with this bed you know in general and and um and they bring someone so I'm not sure that it's clear data in any way shape or form so I'm not sure what it would what it would illuminate so how do we how do we get at the stress issue then so transparency can you speak into the mic transparency I mean it's really about the more often so if you look through the comments right almost always that the families that trust that the district is is at least trying and working towards the best interest of their child are the ones where not only the child feels that they have a sense of belonging in their particular school system and their specific small system but also where the family feels belonging in the process right so a lot of this has to do with how do we and I know this is part of the strategic plan as well overall how do we ensure that our families district wide feel like they actually belong as part of our district right you know a thing I've brought up time and time again is we have these slc's right we have these separate learning communities that really serve um some students who have much greater needs and they need a very specific environment however a lot of those families have a hard time feeling like they belong in that school because their child is busted from a different area of the town and those students don't stand outside with any other students before they come into the building they're marched straight into their classroom they don't actually get to spend any time with them and it depending on the school they go in through a completely different door than everyone else does right like these are they're small but they're very very very clear messages that these kids are busted and out of here but they don't belong here even if that's not what the teachers are saying right so we have some real structural barriers of how do we create belonging I worry about the trust issue because it's something that's not readily measurable and you know the thing is from our perspective as a school committee what we do is we do strategic plans and do all these broad evaluations at this table either programmatically or evaluating the superintendent and and I'm sort of looking this is the hardest thing to get a hold of because as a principal I sat through every one of my buildings team meetings so I knew what was going on and I but but as as a school committee member you've got almost a thousand of these going on every year we've got no sense of whether or not we're doing what we're doing is successful so I think as well um I don't think that measuring advocates is a great way to go because one thing you're just measuring privilege yeah good point also it's not just an Arlington culture problem but a special education culture problem and one that I personally overcame when my kids were little is that the rhetoric around it is that you are your child's you know your child best you understand what your child needs the best and your job is to fight for your child and you are your child's advocate so I almost went in with like battle armor on right like I'm gonna mama bear this um so then you're starting from a position where it feels like the district is the opposition the other problem that we have is that there is a reputation problem as I know Mr. Cardin would tell you our tiered focus monitoring previously was not good it is it we passed everything this year right it was better but that positive feedback loop of reputation is very difficult to break so when people feel like 18 years ago the state called Mr. Thielman in when he became chair of the school committee to deliver the report because it was probably the worst right and memory is long and one of the comments that we got on our survey was um from parents who are unhappy that this year's survey listed sort of questions as this year in your in your interaction with the school what happened because they said well I still have things that I haven't been able to communicate or voice from previous years and I'm still holding that and I have no place to put it and who wanted to be able to put into the survey things that happened before because it's your child and it's very emotive so yes so the point is that it is very difficult to get to a place where it's not a question of people just saying Arlington is notorious for XYZ you know but the other thing is that the survey that we're doing is is over time hopefully going to show the trend hopefully right that this is a thing that's improving as opposed to devolving and that is part of the reason why we're doing this so that we can gather that type of data it is it is such an ephemeral piece trust but it is absolutely essential when you're sending your kid to a building and you hope that they're coming out the other end better yeah yeah thanks and which is why I have high hopes for the welcome center and the communications director and all of those kind of moves I think I like fingers crossed knock on wood is where that trust piece comes from yeah any other Ms. Exton I appreciated your reflection on wanting to be able to give sort of feedback or be involved in the in the various programs and I also appreciate that each individual student has individual needs but I guess I'm curious about two things one are you aware of CPACs in other districts where they have those kinds of opportunities to somehow get whether it's a presentation by the program directors whether it's the present whether it's as a program is developing that they've given feedback because I a lot of the programs that we have in Arlington overall are um programs for identified disability and so there are best practices around teaching students with that identified need there are programmatic recommendations that that program should have so I guess I'm just trying to figure out like do those programs ever get reviewed as an individual program because it does that does feel like something that CPAC should have an opportunity to reflect on and give feedback and so yes there there are districts that do you have that that role that they're much more active and involved in um there are plenty of other CPACs that don't absolutely true it goes both ways um so there we have very specific programming and then we have sort of diffuse programming because like we said every child has a different plan right and there are very specific best practices but there's also the piece where sometimes when you're in the middle of the storm you can't tell how you've constructed the building right so you're in this house but you actually don't know how the house is built I said storm I meant house anyway um so the the question is if if if the reach program is constructed in x x particular way what are those parameters and and how do we know what that is right philosophically or best practices or which research and then if that's the case how are we implementing them right we don't have access to any of that because if we have that as our benchmarks then we can actually as outside observers and talking to you know we can ask families if they would be willing to anonymously tell us which many of them may or may not depends on the programming because sometimes there's too few kids in it and then they feel like that's too identifiable understandable whether or not they feel like uh that program is actually hitting those benchmarks that we've already laid out because we understand what the philosophy is for the particular programming what the best practices are what those best practices are built on right like we have the capacity to do all of that we don't have any of the access to any of it right and I get that's I guess my sort of is there a cycle of revisiting those that those programs and asking these questions because the tier focus monitoring is like looking at paperwork yeah it's well yeah the tfm is mostly about whether or not we've dotted all our eyes and right he's and showed up on time so you can do systematic program reviews and we've had some programs some organizations that do some of those program reviews in not to do program reviews but to do professional development particularly for the teachers for example at hardy where the new uh where the program has moved um that was previously a bracket um that's all cc so and we've partnered with programs with organizations like that also to provide professional learning and some program development work at stratton I know that happened two years ago I would have to ask miss elmer when the last time was that we did a program review I think it was done by lab most recently yes um and I forget the year it was yeah it was a while ago so one of the things that's in the strategic plan is to create a review cycle for curriculum programs and creating a similar mirrored review cycle of every couple years one of these programs is up for an audit by one of these companies is something that we could budget for with a sort of mirrored system to the curriculum reviews again I would need to talk to miss elmer about that and then also think about how we would involve cpac but I also want to add that we're not talking about just specific programming for our sub separate spaces we're also talking about the curriculum general because most of our students are in are in inclusive settings which means that the curriculum you're using in math or in social studies still has to have enough supports built in I mean I I would hope that they're actually all done in a universal design thank you it's my it's my favorite term if whether or not the the curricula are actually developed with universal design in mind or not right and whether or not that implementation of that is actually occurring in the classroom or not right because it can be built a certain way but I mean some of you have taught in the classroom it doesn't always hit the ground that way right so there's there's no knowing but that is actually just as important to our students who have IEPs as they are to everybody else but in some ways more so because we're talking about an equity issue as well then right I think this is another place to where like rhetoric around MTSS is a question of whether where the rubber meets the road right we can talk a good game about MTSS but if we're talking about every student being served at tier one then how are we gonna check which I think Mr. Cardin has his hand up so we're gonna see if we can hear you Mr. Dickens yes yes all right well first I want to thank the seat back for all their work and for presenting and doing the survey it's very valuable to the district and we appreciate your partnership and all your hard work just a couple of comments so on the on the communication and the some of the issues that I think people are coming to us about uh you know I somebody suggested to me I mean probably it's because of the turnover right so we still have a lot of turnover with our team chairs and liaisons so that's part of the problem but so I do think we should look into building a training program for that role in particular because it's so important and and somebody suggested to me that you know one of again one of the the issues is the communication and the empathy that is or is not being shown by these people which is which is hard to train for but there are people who do that I mean there's a whole team of facilitators at the state level somebody's training them how to do a facilitated IEP meeting so there there should be someone who can help us particularly for the people that are new to this role um get some training so that's just a suggestion and then um you mostly covered you know the discussion about where the CPAC can have input and I think that's a good discussion and something that we should work on going forward and I'm hoping that as the strategic plan moves forward MTS the MTSS initiative will you know we'll cover some of the special education entry points and um uh programming as well um so that the CPAC can help us in that process as well thank you so I know I know I know Alison's not here tonight but I would I do know that that they did in fact do some um active listening training very recently and conflict resolution training recently which I I have heard has been very helpful so yet more of that I just want to chime in because I'm looking at this in so many places where it says parent you could replace it with teacher and the same statement would be true um and we've been having a lot of district level discussions about special ed because our focus this year was how do we support our special ed staff because they've been drowning through the pandemic and it's gone interestingly um the low numbers have not helped like the the vacancies make it hard um but one of the sort of lights that we've managed to turn on is and this kind of goes to what Paul was saying and what you were saying is that we don't have a good shared vision of what advocacy looks like and I think we run into situations where we're all fighting for what we think is best for the kids and it's not the same thing and we're not good at communicating why we think that's best for the kids or seeing the other side of it and so you end up with a teacher who's saying I think this kid needs to go for an out placement because they have more they they need more than we can give them and they deserve more and you've got the district saying I don't want to out place the kid and the teacher hears or the parent hears it's too expensive and what the district is thinking is the best place for this kid is their homeschool and when they go they're not coming back and we want to keep this kid in their homeschool and how do we fight to do that and I think the more we can get at the why and the more we can explain our thinking when we're in these meetings rather than just making decisions and sticking to them that's how we build that trust so I would agree that like education for instance on the least restrictive environment which is the legal requirement for where kids should be as well as very clear communication to parents who unlike me don't watch every school committee meeting on zoom what mtss is and that the fact is that the goal is to meet students needs regardless of disability in the classroom you know and that tier one is for everyone and that and that therefore the the general education teacher may feel like they're advocating for a student and saying like this student needs more from the special educator because I don't know what to do but the answer there is then that we need to teach that general educator what to do because that general educator is responsible for everyone in the classroom and if the child needs extra support at tier two that's great but that doesn't take away the tier one responsibility thank you very much you have anything you want to add only to say thank you for the comprehensive feedback we will go through it together and keep thinking meeting and thinking together about how to meet the needs of families I'm very excited about the director of communications and family engagement working directly with you all to build out some of this programming and to have a cohesive approach to how we engage parents and help inform them about the work of the district and work that will help them and us better serve kids and I can always count on the two of you and everyone else in CPAC and all the conversations that we have to raise the very complex challenges and highlight how they all fit together exceptionally well which you've done tonight so thanks so much for all the work you do for our families thank you okay so next we have the elementary literacy curriculum recommendation impossible vote with dr mcneal before dr homing gives an introduction I just want to point out so I think b e d a allows the chair to determine that it would be beneficial to extend the presentation time and because of the importance of this topic and because we didn't have a super full agenda I have asked dr mcneal to not only give us the presentation that he was anticipating but to also go into in depth a lesson planned for one of the modules and some of the things that we would see in it so his his presentation is going to take longer than our 15 minutes and that is with my blessing and request and now dr homing yeah so before dr mcneal gets started I just want to note what an extensive comprehensive time consuming process this has been and also challenging at times and we have finally arrived at a decision and we're also still learning about this curriculum as a system about what it's going to look like when we implement it in APS so while I know dr mcneal will go into a little bit of detail on a lesson that is a new like that this is all still really new to all of us and we haven't been trained yet so we will be and we won't be able to answer every single question probably tonight but as they arise and as they emerge we certainly are happy to address them so dr mcneal has done extensive amount of work on this and I'm looking forward to the presentation go ahead thank you very much okay so um this is the final selection slide I mean slide presentation that I have created um I have I just want to review that we've been coming I've been coming and giving you updates throughout the throughout the years since last year so this is a recommendation on behalf of uh dr homing we have made this recommendation to dr homing and now we're making the recommendation to the school committee so we can go to the next the first slide thank you so the objectives of this slide deck is or this presentation is to review the selection process present selection data identify the final selection or or our recommendation uh give an anatomy of a module that's uh located inside of the program provide a lesson example and then respond to comments and questions so just to review the process uh real quickly this is a some of the highlights it was a 12 month process we established a district core literacy team that um can uh consisted of people from various roles because we wanted to make sure we got a diverse set of perspectives as we thought about what our next literacy program should offer we partnered with the hill for literacy they have extensive experience with creating a selection process and they also provided us with the review tool that we use to evaluate the programs um the data selection process it included k5 staff community members and families we had family and staff publisher roundtable discussions we did it and then we on on top of that we did a district team analysis which included visits to other school districts to to observe the implementation of each of the final programs that we were considering this is just a timeline i'm not going to go through it so people can read through the timeline and then if you see the link at the bottom of the slide that is a comprehensive schedule of everything that was included in the and enlist the various activities that we um conducted in order to come to this final selection again i'm not going to go too extensively into this this is just a review of the tool and the different elements of each program that we reviewed um the review tool like i mentioned before came from the hill for literacy and because they've had extensive experience with using various tools they they looked at the they've combined tools from other research research organizations in order to come up with the tool that we we utilized so the next slide um we're going to look at some of the data collection results this is a table and a graph and i'm just going to explain very briefly what this represents just looking at the chart looking at some of the acronyms there um the id stands for instructional design the v stands for vocabulary the c for comprehension c r s e is the cultural responsive sustaining education and then you have writing so as i mentioned before we used the review tool and we had various rounds that we that took place throughout the year we had vertical teams at each one of our schools that included all staff they completed the review tool and then this is the representation of the various components of the review tools so each review the review tool have various elements that um we need to consider based on research that need to be considered when you're evaluating various literacy programs and so once we they completed that tool we sent it to the hill for literacy and then they scored it and this is a percentage as you look at the percentages in the graph or in the chart those are the percentages of the total possible points that are available on each element if a certain element was not filled out um just to give you an idea of the scoring that took place it was zero to three and if the if a certain element was not filled out then it was not counted in the total possible points so as you can see um and the and the reason why you see this there were there were many more components of the review tool that were considered but as we got closer to making a final selection we narrowed it down to these five different areas that we wanted to make sure that we had that we were considering as we move forward you'll see what's missing in there is phonics phonemic and um awareness but we had already taken care of that and we've done extensive early literacy work over the last uh two or three years and so we have that in place so we're not really looking for these programs to address that because our k through three early literacy instruction we have adopted hegerty for phonemic awareness we have foundations that we teach k through three and we have our decodable texts we're not getting rid of any of that um we're going to keep that in place and so these are the five other areas that we wanted to consider on top of the early literacy instruction and the work that we've done around that and all that is based on the science of reading so this is the tool that you know the that was sent out to all the elementary schools and the different vertical teams um scored so as you can see there um that's representing of the percentage so we go to the next slide so this is a district uh result as we were getting closer to the making a final selection we noticed that some of the sections there were some some quite substantial or chunks of the tool that were not completed so what I did in order to enhance the process or supplement the process we put together a district team of individuals from the core team that we had created last year and then we asked our literacy coaches also to ask uh other teachers who they could join and we took two days to really do a deep dive with our literacy coaches and other uh individuals who we recruited to be a part of the process and they took two days per program because we had three finalists and they took time to really dive in to make sure that we were handing in completed tools so in any area that was not completed from the tools that were sent out to the schools we could rely on these completed tools from our literacy coaches and other people who did a deep dive over the two-day period and and just compare and contrast uh what the how the results came out and so we this is a representation of a full completed tool again we're focusing on those five areas um and then these are the percentage of the points of the total points that um were available and as you can see there's this little difference uh because if you look at the ones that were filled out by the all the schools if you look at the average the final averages they were so close it was the the results were almost negligible so we really looked at the district um perspective as well that completed tool and that really gave us a strong indication of the program that we wanted to select and or the strong indication that we what we wanted to recommend to dr homer okay we can go to the next slide excuse me so those three colors of the three programs you evaluated on the bar chart is that what you can't quite see that you can't see colors which yeah yeah so so if you look at the bar chart uh the blue represents el education the red is my view literacy and the green would be written wisdom i'm sorry the legend didn't come out though did that that answer your question yeah okay perfect any other questions about the data sorry can you say again with the id instructional design okay thank you yeah so i'll go through that the instructional design v is vocabulary c is comprehensive you got it okay perfect so next slide can i ask questions oh you don't have any anecdotal stuff from the data collection right just oh i have tons of anecdotal stuff oh i have tons okay thank you for your questions so so in the in the tool and this is something another benefit of having the district team really dive in like creating a district team is on the tool you have a you know the different columns you have the different elements and then and it's arranged by grade level and so then they have a column for notes so the notes were completely filled out some of the notes were not complete out completely filled out from the all the staff conducting the review but the district team and that two-day dive they really i told them i really want you to like give a comment on each element so that i could understand your thinking as to why you scored a certain element certain way and so they provided that type of they provided that documentation so i have an actual tool the tools and we have a spreadsheet with all the tools on there with all the anecdotal notes from the schools and from the district team great thank you so our final selection that we came out with was el education so our recommendation is going to be el education and i'm going to go through some of the key attributes of the program i'm also going to give like an anatomy of one of the modules so you can kind of get an understanding of what this program can offer and then at the end i have some resources that i'll also direct you to if you want to get more information or do a deeper dive and i will say that i did send out a link to the entire uh arlington school community that included parents that gave a link in those links for each one of the programs where they could do a deep dive look at lesson materials look at the modules see how they're constructed um and then they they were also invited to a publishers round table where the publishers each came and presented um and why they thought that their program was the best so we have a an extensive amount of background material that are is available to parents if they want to go now dive into and i had those links at the end of the slide day so looking at the final selection some of the key attributes and again this is based on the science of reading and what is best practice so you have knowledge building so the the way that the modules are set up they're set up thematic units so the students are um developing their literacy skills as they learn about various topics associated with social studies and science they have access to complex texts robust vocabulary instruction accountable talk that's supported by protocols higher level questioning integrated writing instruction explicit instruction and morphology and grammar and purpose purposeful meaningful project based learning so everything is like integrated together so when we talk about interdisciplinary units the EL education program definitely has that we can go to the next slide so this is the so when you think about EL education the way that we're going to receive our professional learning is we're going to receive it in two segments you're going to have the k2 because the k2 modules are constructed a certain way in order to address specific skills that we know we want our early learners to have and then we have grades three through five that would be another segment of the uh professional learning because those modules are also constructed with the learner in mind so they're going to be developing certain skills for skills that are needed for students in grades three through five so looking at the module lessons there's a focus on teaching and assessing reading comprehension writing listening speaking and language and then for the k2 modules you have your skills blocked but i want to say that again i want to emphasize that we're not really looking at the program to provide that so that's a part of the program that we're really we're going to purchase it but we're not going to really use it we can maybe use it for intervention but we got to still think about that as part of the learning that we're going to go through and and to really think about that portion of the program because we have our skills block which will be utilized to continue what we've already started in early literacy instruction and that's addressing those foundational reading skills as we continue to use foundations hegerty and decode and decodable text also and the that's available at the k2 level you have labs which incorporates project-based learning that reinforces the content that's taught in the module lessons so in the module lessons you have the lessons you have the skills block and you have the labs and so the labs reinforces the content knowledge literacy skills oral language and habits of character taught and that's taught in the module lessons and it provides time for teachers also to have small groups and one-on-one support provide small group and one-on-one support for students as they look at and they can differentiate their instruction to meet the needs of individual students next slide so when you look at the modules they're taught in a certain sequence the module one is for k2 the focus is on building literacy in a collaborative classroom it also establishes routines introduces those various protocols that we'll use for accountable talk that supports a peer-to-peer discussion and then you have learning through science and stories and that's where that you know the other content the knowledge building comes in and that's where you're introducing complex text they're growing as researchers because as you get deeper into the modules that are teaching a certain topic they're going to research that using the various texts that are available and also other sources and then contributing to the community that's where they can also look at the project-based learning and apply what they've learned in the first two three modules so the next slide offers k through two these are the topics that are available and so each module you'll see there those are not live links so I just want to say that's a screenshot that's the reason why they're that color but at the end you'll see that there is a link and you can dive into the modules through that link so just to note none of our links are live so if we can just a PDF yes if we can just get an email a PDF to us later of this that'd be okay yes we can definitely do that I got all the information you need Jane it's coming at you all right so our three five modules so they're they're constructed a little differently because they're they're again they're looking at the developmental needs of those students that are in gray street through five and so there's a focus again on teaching and assessing reading comprehension writing listening speaking in language but in the for the grace three through five you have they call the all block which is additional language and literacy that's an acronym wouldn't be education if we didn't have an acronym and it provides time for independent reading individual and small group work to reinforce again going back to the modules it's reinforcing what's taught through the module lessons which is the reading comprehension skills the practice of oral language and vocabulary development okay everybody's still with me so the next slide you see that these are the different topics that are available in the different modules for grace three through five to the next slide so the three through five module progression is they the first the first again the module one is setting up all the rest of the modules for the for instruction so again you're establishing routines looking at you looking at how to use protocols again a lot of anchor charts norming a lot of the practices are going to be again repeated throughout each of the modules as they progress throughout the year so becoming a close reader and writing to learn researching to build knowledge and teach others module three is considering perspectives and supporting opinions and module four is gathering evidence and speaking to others so this is the anatomy of a module and what I did is I looked at the different things that are available in k through two and three through five and I kind of put them together so just to give you some information so each module is broken down into three units and the number of lessons that are contained in each unit varies but it's around 12 to 15 lessons that are available in each unit the length of the modules take eight to nine weeks so and I will say that one thing that is suggested in order to for this program is a lot of backwards planning so you start with the end in mind and you try to plan backwards to understand like what are the lessons how the lessons going to be sequenced throughout the year and so looking at eight to nine weeks that's why it's eight to nine eight to nine weeks and then the k through two module one is shorter to allow for teachers to establish classroom teams and build relationships with students and we know that those early learners are probably have a little spend a little bit more time on that and so the program allows for that so that first module is probably about six weeks and so the k through two module each module begins with the story and guiding questions and big ideas now all the modules begin with the guiding question or big ideas but in the grace three through five it might be a poem it might not necessarily be a story that starts off and the highlights of each each module is habits of character you know talking about you know persistence and what are those things that we want our kids to through the scl practices to develop as they're going through their learning again it's a big focus on oral language goal setting and reflection having students set personal goals learning goals through each one of the modules and be able to reflect on those learning goals after each lesson we have access to rich complex text there's close reading and and when I say close reading they actually provide and this is something that we wanted to make sure that teachers had as we looked at the program a manual for how to conduct that close reading so that close reading takes place over a series of lessons a progression and it really guides the teacher through that and then looking at the volume of reading we want to make sure that our students have access to that complex rich literature different kinds of literature so that each module comes with a suggested and recommended list of literature there's a culminating performance task that's completed at the end of each module and there's a formative and some of a standards-based assessments that are also available in all the modules there's writing for understanding explicit EL instruction so as you can see and you'll see in one of the sample lesson that there's recommendations for the teacher and how to make sure that the students who are identified as EL learners are accessing the curriculum and the material and I said at the bottom there's standards based assessments there's one per unit in k through two and there's two per unit in grace three through five and again I'm not going to read each one of these but this is the k2 through two unit level assessments and it just I wanted to add this because it gives you an idea of what the focus on is on as they look at this as you look at the assessments and what are the skills that are being assessed and how they're assessed so we talked about universal design for learning there's multiple ways that students receive instruction and multiple ways that they can provide how they have mastered a certain standard so they're looking at addressing those multiple intelligences and making sure that all students are able to access the curriculum and again I want to highlight the scaffold a lot of scaffolds for the reading and the writing which provides structure and a way for the teachers to really parse out how they're going to sequence the lessons and how they're going to actually introduce those skills and how they build on each other and then grace three through five you'll see the unit level assessments as well this gives you an idea of what that was being assessed and how they're being assessed so this is a the next slide is a kindergarten sample lesson and I picked it because if you look over here to my left you see all the materials that we have and and I I don't know if you've noticed but throughout the year you've seen this our school committee room because this has been like the headquarters for us reviewing the materials so we've kept a lot of the materials here and we've also ordered ones for each each of the schools so I want to just point that out in case you have any free time you want to read through some of the manuals they're there for for you so you can access but I'm going to have Dr. Holman if you can go to that so I'm just going to right here is a summary so on the slide there's a summary but I'm going to have Dr. Holman click on lesson one speaking listening and that's just going to give oh that's okay so if you can type in you want me to do yours okay so if you type in Arlington ps at example.com and then the password don't tell anybody okay it's highly confidential it's teacher lowercase yes oh my goodness it worked awesome all right so this is a sample kindergarten lesson and so we're going to go through this and like I said before as I was giving you a description of the module the lesson it starts off with the a lesson a story excuse me and it it the one thing also I like about this program is that it provides a script for teachers teachers can use it or can they cannot use it it's up to the teacher but I would imagine that at the beginning it'd be very helpful for the teachers to have that script and as it become more familiar with the lessons in the program that they'll be able to discard that script but it's there and again it could be utilized or not utilized so this is something that it provides as you see there in the bullets some of the things that the teacher can refer to as they're talking to the students so it starts off giving the the the the lesson target and it talks about the protocols that they're going to use the picture t part of protocol t party protocol and then they watch a video so these are some of the highlights that the teacher can use some of the highlights that teachers can articulate to the students and so as you go through the next you read the story they talk about the things that the teacher that you're going to do in the lesson and then so the learning target for lesson one is I can participate in a discussion with my classmates about whether a meteorologist meteorologist so hold on slide back up that's okay so right here is the mystery whether photos so here this is where the knowledge building takes place so you introduce the lesson you introduce a story you introduce the guiding question you introduce the target the lesson target and then the two guiding questions for this one lesson one module two unit one lesson one is what is whether how can I be prepared for any type of weather you read you do the read aloud and the name of the story is curious Sophia and so then hold on go back all right so those highlights so you had to read aloud thank you very much on the right hand side is the things that the teacher right having that metacognition for the teachers so these are things that you're going to think about as they're talking about the lesson they and then in the manuals they actually have a script that the teacher can refer to so if you look at the right hand side you'll see that so if you go they read the story then as they're reading the story they're having these questions they may stop and ask these questions to the students what do you see in this picture as I read think about what Sophia Sophia wanted to do and they keep going and then continues to ask questions to the students as they're listening to the story so they can think about the things that they want the students to consider so that's the story so they complete the story they started lesson with the story then they stop okay stop here go back up what questions does Sophia ask about the weather they were review of the story so again they're they have these questions that they need to be answered right and they're looking at and they're building that knowledge they're building that those guiding questions they're setting the purpose for the lesson so as they look at that and then they they have that graphic up there we we have you know other cards that are I'm sorry you can't see it because it's so far away but this is you'll be able to see it because when I give you the the version that has the link that works you'll be able to dive into it so you go to next to the guiding question what is there's like a physical book right that they have like the teacher's like reading are they reading like a book or are they reading the slides both so we we're going to persist there's going to be a there's going to be a dashboard a platform that teachers will be able to access and then we're going to have the higher copy so this is the manual right here in my hands module two weather wonders so this is the topic there's one of those for each module there's one of these for each module but like but like here I'm like the like I'm the kindergarten teacher and I'm sitting in my classroom right and and I'm just trying to understand like am I like doing a read aloud yes it's a read aloud or are we like reading a slideshow no no no it's a read aloud okay it's a read aloud from that there's a there's a there's a supplemental book that's over there can help hold up and his supplemental materials in there there are gorgeous picture books okay associated with thank you very much okay we're good okay let me just say like this this particular story but I want to be very clear this particular story is in the manual but and when they go to lesson two they get another text that they can read that's more that's a non-fiction text so some of the things that they read like poems and songs are located in the manual module but they do give you a list of books and texts that the kids can hold and you can read from as a teacher so it's a mix of how they're presenting materials texts like this an example as an example would be used to teach a skill and as part of a module lesson and then they might then go read some set of supplemental texts during the all block that are book books or they might have a small excerpt of text that they're doing a close read on but then they'll go and engage with book books so there will be a lot of book lots of books lots of materials they're not all it's not all just like it's not it's not an anthology like a basal reader or anything like that they're like authentic text non-fiction and fiction text that that's kids will be able to put their hands on and they'll be able to be able to select from okay then I answer your question okay perfect okay so you go back up I'm sorry we have the right there so we have the guiding questions okay and then you can go thank you so this is how we we talk about accountable tech accountable talk there's lots of protocols that are available in the program that the teacher can utilize in order to teach students how to engage in peer-to-peer conversations and they have other things like sentence starters so that the teacher will get the protocol on this one a picture tea party and they use mystery whether whether photos that are available in a supplemental they're full color and you can utilize those you hand them out to the students and then if you go to the next one you'll see like this is not this is not this is just a representation online but we do have actual the cards and the pictures of the weather and then you go to the next slide so you define I'm sorry go back up you define what weather is you define the terms and then you go to the next and then you have you know kids engage in activities like how do you say weather in different languages so you're trying to expose them to a multicultural piece and so keep going again you go you revisit the learning target target because you want your setting kids up in order to have discussions about weather all right keep going then you have a poem that you introduce to students as they think about again this is activating their schema trying to get them into the habit of thinking about whether what it's about then keep going this is a repeated thing too this this target poem that's something they'll do repeatedly and there's like hand motions and r motions that go with it that help the kids internalize the target so with little kids developmentally it's exceptionally appropriate because it helps them understand this is what I'm learning today so this learning target poem is something that's repeated particularly for the younger grades can you just read it out loud you want to read it read the reading target poem read it for you okay learning target poem so I'm going to have you think right so you're my kindergarten students you're gonna think you're gonna say what happens when two people have a discussion you're gonna take out your magic bowls and you're gonna take aim at the target while you recite the learning target poem out loud learning target poem think of the thing you desire to learn believe in yourself and your efforts will earn the ability learned to learn something new now take your aim at the target true it's cute I'm I would have to look it's not every lesson necessarily but they get used to that as a routine so one of the things this curriculum built in are some of those routines so that they understand this is the part of the lesson I'm in and that gets repeated which is good for their brains okay so these are things that are integrated into the lessons in order to that are developmentally appropriate for early learners again there's songs that are also in that are have been integrated in some of the lessons and again is to activate their schema in order to get them involved engaged into learning so we go to the next and this is a picture tea party protocol so again I want to also emphasize that a lot of in module one you're putting together a lot of like anchor charts and you're norming how students will engage with one another you're setting like expectations and routines you're hanging these are anchor charts around the room this could be one of the anchor charts that you use in order to this is one that they use in order to have students engage in a conversation about weather and this is where you use those photos and then you you're talking to students and and you're introducing this protocol and you take them through this protocol that they're going to utilize to have a discussion so a lot of modeling a lot of you know in order to engage students and so you you would do this you would model it for the students and then you would have them try it out and then you would go around the room with a checklist and you would listen in on the conversations that they're having and you would use the checklist that comes along with this in order to assess how each one of the students are participating in a discussion and then you would be able to maybe work on some individual skills that that you notice based on the checklist either some trends that you've noticed that are going on with all the students or you would go back and maybe you can work on individual students in order to help them understand how to have the discussion or you and using those checklists will help you to assess that activity part of the story no it's the how it's the pedagogy okay this is the protocol right this is the how exactly in that sort of tea party thing would extend throughout multiple units right you would introduce like all these all these modules built on each other so you have a you you have these protocols that you can refer back to as you have students engage in conversations so just like back to back is another protocol that at the kindergarten level that they introduce face to face this is another protocol that you can utilize and as you can see at the top of this they're sentence starters so you would go through and you would use these center starters in order to have students to engage in conversations and so like I said a lot of the activities and the thank you Sean so those are the kind of things that that are introduced because you don't want you don't want to just assume that students know how to engage in a conversation so we want to make sure that we're introducing protocols and there's protocols for everything in this particular program and so that's one of the things that we liked about it is because it's providing though that direction that modeling and we're having students engage in these discussions and we're showing them how to do it and we're modeling for them I'd also like to know a lot of these protocols are designed with the explicit intention of embedding social emotional learning skills into the curriculum so they they get that sort of academic belonging and confidence from sitting in a circle with peers and looking at a picture and saying I see this and so I think we're going to learn about this and I wonder this and that builds their confidence to use the language that's in the unit so they can use it later when they're reading the text they'll comprehend it they'll build the vocabulary so the next we go to the next part of the lesson you you can stop here as you're showing out these again we're going back to the pictures because the tea party protocol is in conjunction with using these pictures these weather pictures that the students will look at and as they look at the picture they are making a prediction or they make a prediction before as what is happening in that picture as it relates to weather so again as you look to the side you see on the right again this is focused on and then and then this is a skill that they're working on because remember the lesson the target let the target learning target for the lesson is speaking and listening so a lot of the activities that take place in this lesson are based upon having kid having the students speaking to each other and listening to each other so these are the pictures that they're looking at in the protocol these are the pictures exactly so you go back and you reinforce okay just show the pictures there we go so right here you reinforce and then again there's all kinds of conversation norms anchor charts that are available you see on the right hand side of the lesson and these are things that the teacher will these are things that you review before as you're developing a lesson that you'll have to understand how to do so we go on to the next again we're knowledge building so the next part of this remember the the we we are talking about weather and meteorologists what does a meteorologist do and so like when you're introducing these vocabularies you're also creating a word wall and then we have picture cards that go along with the the words and then you're hanging up a word wall in your classroom and so the first two vocabulary words that you're going to introduce to students that's connected to the learning target is weather and meteorologists and so as you're doing that you're also phonetically going through and you're tapping it out kids through foundations will learn how to tap out words they'll be able to go through and decode what the word is and then based upon the science of reading you're not only doing that but you're also defining what that word means so as you introduce these words you're tapping out the words you're understanding how to read the words and so this part of it is providing meaning so you have a video of what a meteorologist does I was going to have you watch the video but that might be a too too much but that's also linked into the lesson there's a link to a video of a meteorologist now what you can do in order to customize it is you can also the teacher can also go to a local news network like you know look online get the the link to channel five news and see how we do here in boston they can use utilize that and access that and so the one thing that you're doing you're building that knowledge so students understand what a meteorologist does okay and so this part of it is that you are looking at this video and you're building that background knowledge it also feels like you could bring in you know you can have pictures of meteorologists from all over so that you can show that it's not just exactly one you know a white male or you know there can be people of all different races and actually in the in the video here it is a is it a african-american meteorologist that is part of that video but to your point you can also there's lots of extensions you can do from around the world you can say oh and then in different languages this is what it looks like in various countries when they report on the weather because at the end okay remember and this is where that backwards design comes in at the end the kids are going to actually do the do this so right now you're building that background knowledge and then at the end they're going to apply what they're learning at the end of this lesson so this is your picture card for the vocabulary word a meteorologist scientist who studies to earth's weather so you would have that up you will put the picture card up on your word wall for weather and meteorologists and so let's go to the next one okay so right here this is how you're going to debrief and again you're constructing meaning and so these are some of the questions that you'll ask the students after they watch after they watch the video what did you notice what did you notice that the meteorologist was doing and then this is where you can have those protocols come into play or they have back to back and face to face and you can have an anchor chart remember how we had our discussions in module one remember these protocols that we introduced in module one you're introducing them again and they're circling around and they're going to have conversations with one another about what they noticed in the video and so that that's the one thing that they're focusing on the learning target is speaking and listening and then that's when the teacher can go around again with their checklist to check in on those conversations okay so I'm going to just jump because I don't want to I want to don't take up all the time so right here is in the assessment if you go down to the interactive writing introducing the class weather journal so now students have gone through this background knowledge building they've introduced the vocabulary you've had a story about weather and now they're going to do their own you're going to introduce the classroom weather journal again it's scaffolding this there's a template for it then you again revisit you have this question and then you go on and then this is what they have in their own workbooks they'll have a template and then they'll report they'll look outside and they'll report on the weather and so they'll you know they'll go through talk about the date you have the pictures and then you have at the bottom of that you have that sentence that they have to fill out and be able to report on what the weather conditions are for that day that's a sample of lesson one so we can go back to the slide deck and I can finish up that's just one lesson is that over one day that's over one day that's one module lesson also that's not the block skill block or labs so I also want to note that like there is a script there is one not our expectation it is absolutely our expectation that teachers are building in relevant examples from our students lives and following them through this and not that they use the script but it's useful to have when you have a brand new teacher to a curriculum brand new teacher to a classroom substitute teacher that that they can implement the lesson because that does exist and when you're stuck you can go back to that like what how is this supposed to be connected to that and it can help you understand how it's intended to be connected to that but one of the things we're telling our staff is that this offers so many opportunities for creativity and tapping into local meteorologists or like literally what's the weather outside today and having deeper discussions that get kids really excited and curious that that's part of why this is the selection so I want to note that because I don't I don't want the expectation to be that this get that you walk from one classroom to another classroom you're seeing the exact same thing happen we don't want automaton so that is not what this is about and that's not why we selected this curriculum quite the contrary we selected it because it offers so many opportunities to tap into the relevancy of our local community and to to build out and expand upon for students who are ready to take another step or go a little bit deeper so as we as and as as teachers become more familiar with the curriculum I'm sure that they will they will be able to internalize some of this and they will be able to do this without the script some teachers like I said will use it and some teachers will not but there there's as Dr. Homan said there is opportunities for creativity so and I and I want to say that the skills the the the recommended time for the module lesson that was just a lesson is 60 minutes so you have 60 minutes and as you can see on the side it had recommended times for when for how long each section of the lesson would take okay and there's like there's also movement in there it's not and this is not kids just sitting down as you saw in there they're having discussions with one another up there's multiple modal ways that they can show their learning they can dance they can actually act out what a meteorologist does in their discussion so it's not just kids sitting down and receiving this there's lots of activities that are active so I don't want anybody to think that this whole lesson kids are just sitting there and just listening there there's lots of movement there's lots of discussion they can act out they can choose different ways that they want to express their learning so what are the next steps for us for the implementation of the program so one things that a couple of things that we've already done we've had a couple of meetings with the representatives from Imagine Learning in order to talk about the information they need in order to purchase the materials we also already have planned professional learning for our literacy coaches elementary principals we have special educators we have our ELL director they're all going to get this first round of PD for both grade bands K2 and 35 so we have a three hour session plan for all of those individuals to start learning the curriculum we put together a interdisciplinary team again people from different roles that include principals special education ELL director and so in order for us to come together in order to understand what we need to do in order to roll this out in a very strategic and effective manner and so a large part of that is providing the professional learning and support the ongoing support that teachers will need going into next year and then we're going to look at our daily instructional schedule the program offers examples of how you can structure your day so that you can fit the modules and all the literacy instruction in along with other things and I want to emphasize this because this is something that I want to make sure that I'm representing all content areas that we're also looking at like the impact that it will have on math instruction we want to make sure that we don't decrease the amount of math instruction and we also want to make sure that we're also planning for explicit social studies and science instruction even though these are interdisciplinary units and include social studies and science topics they do but they don't cover all of the standards so right now our directors of science and social studies are have started creating curriculum maps they align with the module lessons and so that's the summer work that's going to happen as we move forward and into next year so I would be remiss if I didn't list all the individuals that are part of the district core team as Dr. Holman stated this has been a year-long process that has included lots of conversations I want to thank Dr. Darcy Burns the executive director of Hill for Literacy who has been there and been a thought partner for myself and Deb Perry and Allison Elmer who are co-chairs of the along with me with the district core team so it's been a lot of discussions and one thing I think that this process is done it's elevated our discussions amongst teachers about what is best practice for literacy instruction we've done and we've added that into our professional district-wide professional learning series that we have going on in order to support the different instructional shifts that we're going to have to make in order to adopt EL education so we go to the last slide which has the resources on there these are all live links we're going to make sure that anybody can link to this and if they want to dive into other grade levels other modules other lessons they can do so and then there's also an article about the the science of reading we have the program review tool in there and the link to the EL education publisher roundtable that took place we recorded it so anybody can access it who didn't have a chance to attend and with that that ends my presentation and now I open it up for comments and questions so before I do questions I just want to thank Dr. McNeil for creating the part of presentation which was about the lesson which he did since about four o'clock this afternoon so he pulled that together really quickly at my request and I do appreciate it because I think this is a huge decision and I think we should know what we're getting with it and also I wanted the parents who you know our millions of watchers out have an idea and it this also gives us something that we can refer people back to to about you know what's coming and how does it look different and I think this was really helpful for me at least and and I hope for some of you so does anyone have any so as the parent of a current kindergarten watch and I've subbed in kindergarten it was like really helpful for me to see the example but one thing I would just think as we go forward with this that I think will alleviate some anxieties among parents of the kids in these early learning classes is to emphasize perhaps a little more strongly that the Hegerty and Foundation's work that their kids have started doing and that you know I've personally seen with my own kindergarten are like have really worked that that that we're trying we're we're we're going to start this new thing it's exciting there's going to be you know we don't know exactly what the implementation is but those phonics like fundamentals are we're not like playing with those right now that's because I don't think people I'm not sure that people know that or you know assume that I think they're sort of a feeling like oh we're about to like like change it all up so I think emphasizing that will help with just especially the kindergarten and first graders I mean I don't know obviously you haven't figured out yet what the implementation plan is so I think communicating about that is also going to be really important because I've already been asked like you know is it all you know it's every kindergarten or next year getting the new curriculum is tools of the mind like you know sort of what people want and are curious about how this is going to look and I know you can't answer that today but just the communication around that once we have our implementation plan we will make sure that it's you know we definitely communicate it out to everyone and I will continue to emphasize that thank you very much for that and you so what's the how does this work with tools in at kindergarten like are we like what what's the vision when we when I mean I some of the sort of as we move our way back to getting to kindergarten with this are like are we keeping tools of the mind no so no tools of the mind just this yes I'm sorry yes the scary sharks oh yes the magic treehouse jack and Annie jack and Annie yes can I also speak to you about the sharks there were earlier conversations that where we were thinking about how to roll this out effectively and I think some of our current thinking is not that we move backwards okay so I just we're still working out exactly what we're thinking we're going to do but we it our approach is probably going to be start with the coalition of the willing the people who are really ready to jump in with two feet so that could look a little bit different and keep teachers and teams working together on this in the first year and that'll form the implementation plan but it's not looking like we're going to go okay backwards at this point okay so I wanted to be I think this is a great work and I thank Dr McNeil and everyone who worked on this this is a lot of time and effort and it looks like it was very thoroughly done very thoroughly researched so you all should be committed for that thank you so good work that's what I wanted some clarity but I was confused by the phase in I think you answered it and I wanted to understand like the professional development training the teachers are going to get to get ready for this and is your vision so fall of 20 fall of 24 it's all going to be used by everybody all all grades so a year so myself Dr McNeil and Dr Ford Walker are very closely working with the implementation team which is a cross role group to answer for ourselves that very question okay what is it what kind of supports would we need for those we have teachers who are ready to jump in with two feet they're like let's do this fall 23 how many we're they're developing a survey right now to figure out exactly how many of those are out there and whether we have full grade level teams that are going to commit to some summer work paid to get on boarded and then really jump in we want to make sure that that's that cannot be obviously everyone because our coaches really need to work closely with the grade level teams that do it and how many folks are out there that are saying I want to try a module next year but not go full in and then where people are with an full implementation maybe fall 24 maybe through 24 with a full implementation fall 25 we want to be we want to take advantage of the fact that there's a lot of enthusiasm right now people are excited about it and acknowledge and respect the fact that these are big instructional shifts that Dr McNeil just showed you and that takes time to learn how to work with protocols and to do knowledge building and to deal with spiral standards where you hit this and you're going to come back to it later in the year so we're we're on a I'm on a listening tour right now I'm going to every single school listening to the faculty and talking to them about what the shifts are and how this is aligned with deeper learning and at the end of May we will have a final implementation plan starting tonight we're proving the curriculum correct and then you're going to work on some of these details and then there's going to be a roll out communication to parents including explaining when totals in the mine is phased out yes in early June we should have the full implementation plan and cost out for next year that is the next question is there um like is there anything we should know about the cost of all this it's expensive okay yeah okay maybe that's all we need to know it's in the budget we've spent hundreds of thousands on texts for years and some of those texts will keep because they're aligned with these topics um and others of them will cease using and we'll start purchasing more texts but we have a line in the budget for this um and we have additional funds that we can use towards this in our SR three dollars yeah there's funds okay okay those are funds okay and it's in the strategic plan yeah this no I know it is so yeah um we we have uh like I said they have a list of required and recommended texts yeah so I am going to work with um our director of digital learning and libraries Rashmi Pimpacar and we are going to do a cross-reference to see exactly what are the recommended texts and how many that we have that we need to purchase we're it's a far-going conclusion we're going to buy all the required texts but we're going to look at the recommended texts and see what we already have because we have spent a a lot of money on building up classroom libraries and we want to be able to continue to access those libraries for our students well I mean this is something we should be spending a lot of money on I think this is pretty fundamental to it right you and education so this is I'm all for spending money on this so um my final question is I don't know when the tools in the mind conversation took place but we had a nice conversation and then there was a group that came to us and they were not in agreement including some internal staff I'm just I'm sure there were thoughtful conversations among all the staff is there was there alignment on this curriculum at the end of the day I mean you made the final decision that's what you're you're charged with doing but I'm kind of just wondering was there a consensus what was it like inside the room with all the folks involved I so I'm sure I mean I hope it was well yes but I think I think based upon the the work and the and the research that we've done and the training we've done over the last couple of years I I want to say that teachers knew that this was coming yeah because we did the work around the science of reading we understood that our current program does not align with the thinking that goes into the science of reading so we've done the professional learning around it and yes you might have some teachers to say they wanted to keep units of study or tools of the mind but overall I think that the the understanding is that we were going to adopt a new literacy program and I think that uh as as we get closer and closer to I mean now that we're actually doing it I haven't heard any uh you know people pushing back and like holding on with two like no I want to keep tools of the mind um and we've we've had lots of discussions about it so I think people knew that this was coming yeah and so they're prepared I would say that they're prepared and they know that this is going to take place it does sound like it was well set up there was a good process everyone had a say in it at the end of the day it was clear you guys leadership was going to make a decision based on feedback and input so good okay I'm going to vote yes as soon as we get the motion on the table okay any more questions Mr. Cardin no Mr. Shlick okay Mr. Shlick yeah I I think that most of my questions have been answered through the but as a as an educator an elementary educator I'm really interested in the process of phasing it in uh because early adopters is a great way to do it but then you know you have to make sure the kids who have entered through the early adopters are able to continue as they move up up the grade levels and my sense in watching this is this thing is spiraled enough so that getting kindergarten early is sort of the seems to be a priority and if we were going to hit two grades as a priority because the natural shift uh starting at k and three and and working out but I'm impressed with the fact that we've got asset funds right now because that's great for one-time purchases and getting into this curriculum is a one-time purchase but I think that the thinking behind literacy curriculum right now is so different than like when I was a kid in the kindergarten we were barely hitting Dick Jane and Sally and now we got meteorologists and I I know they can do it I know kids can do this because I had preschool kids sitting on trapezoids in their classroom uh the only danger is is that uh by the time you hit December or January you're going to have about 500 critics of the superintendent's decision for snow days but this is impressive and I and I'm going to be pleased to vote for this thank you very much any further questions okay you've already answered mine with the presentation I appreciate that thank you so do I have a motion to approve I move approval of the the curriculum is presented second any further comments all in favor we need a roll call because mr card oh you're right you're right okay roll call vote miss govilsson yes mr cardin yes okay miss miss morgan yes mr thelman yes miss exton yes mr flickman yes and I also vote yes can I say a couple words please Dr. McNeil as you're parting work for the students of the Arlington public schools there's very little I can say that expresses the gratitude that I have for how much effort you have given this how many people's voices you have made sure will be heard in this process your advocacy for the needs of all of the people involved in its implementation and the thoughtfulness with which you put this process together this is an amazing legacy to leave to Arlington students um and we'll miss you next year but thank you thank you very much but we'll see you next at our next couple of weeks you're not excuse me absolutely okay thank you very much okay so next we have the monthly financial report mr mason am I driving for you yes because this computer is uh i was high legs thank you thank you Dr. Holman and uh good evening school committee members it's hard to follow up with that last presentation yeah um what I will say is that if you're tracking the playoffs the Celtics are winning so so tonight I'm presenting you the finance monthly financial reports for um period 10 but not exactly period 10 it's it's financial reports as of May 9th so it's the most recent financials that I could provide at the time um and I'm gonna go a little detail in terms of explaining some of the reports for those that may not um have been exposed to some of the reports previously but um we have a few reports that are included which is a general fund report which is report of the town appropriation there's the grant financial report and there are the special revenue and revolving report and so each of those reports um they report by object code which is the description of expense um that it usually includes for the general fund is a category of or a column that says the original budget which is the original uh some of object some of all the budgets for that object code um then there is an adjusted column based on some adjustments that are between the current budget accounts which leads to a revised budget amount there's then the actual which is the actual expenditures um as of the date of the in the of the finances in our financial system as well as the encumbrances is what we've approved um to be spent so encumbrances could be salaries that you have to repeat out that we know of um and that our budget and or you know contracts that we've established with outside vendors or procurements and then projected expenses normally you know um every period before april um it's a formula um based on assuming departments will spend down their funds and it includes some holding for some vacant positions um now that we're at the end of the year this you know there's not likely that we're going to be filling these vacant positions um and they're more you know tuned like tuned in to spending that we do anticipate to happen um until june 30th in which then that's out to a projected balance and so we are projecting the balance at the end of this to be around 77 thousand dollars um this is once again an estimate I wouldn't use it as um you know a hard number to go by but um there's we're in the black so that's good um that's an approximate right not a minus on yeah that's an approximate that is not a deficit or anything like that and I just don't want to give an exact number right so just um and there's still expenditures that that have not been identified you know and projects that that we need to work on so we can go down into the next slide which explains the expending the darker maroon is the actual spending um versus um for each budget category where then there's a lighter gray there that's the encumbered amounts that's remaining till the end of the year and then if there's black that means that there's money left in that particular category and some others are a little overspent which um in the encumbrances which will uh talk about future budget transfers with the budget subcommittee and then propose in the final meeting our final budget transfers you go to the next slide um this is just our total um spending for the general fund by month uh with the black line as the um the total um cumulative for the year at this point and so uh at this point we are at um about 63 million dollars in total spending um you go to the next slide so there I well that's not good um something something yeah spammers yes it was actually it was a spammer um they just knew I was right in this point in the meeting um so the next slide is there was some questions that was uh provided before the the meeting which is always greatly appreciated so that I can focus in on certain items that may need clarification one a line or object code um was asked about it was about around student activity supports support stipends and about why the spending was so high and I I do want to just remind like you know the philosophy in terms of how the budget is set up is that every program and cost center you know there are line items in the budget and there's like a bottom line number that every department head works to and the lines may not necessarily always align based on what they've identified as that what they're intending to spend in a particular year um and uh and sometimes when they do submit the actual payments their classification is actually incorrect and so therefore the business office corrects that and so when looking at the budget versus actual um we we we were at one point adjusting entries and doing transfers and then we actually slowed down on those because we you know of a request to make sure that we are providing transfers in advance of of um between different categories uh to the to the school committee so um what I will say is that the student activity support stipends are actually not um high so if you look at this this is up till 2017 we use this object code and this is reflecting the data of um actual spending which you'll see is in blue and then encumbered which is only for fiscal 23 um which is in black and so you'll see that actually our student activity support stipends where we're projecting to end is actually lower than fiscal 22 all right um if you go to the next slide um this is um just a question in in terms of you know what are other stipends um so the other stipends is like I catch all um there are various different type of expenses that could go in this include project stipends um this includes school committee stipends that were recently funded this year um and um various overtime payments so I just wanted to provide clarity on that um if you go to the next slide um one of our biggest and I I spoke about it in a previous presentation is you know power elect uh electricity power um for our buildings and you know this year utilities I mean our supply agreements are um you know we we have negotiated supply agreements the high school was not originally the newer the new phase the first phase um in the whole new building is going to be on one meter but it wasn't negotiated and so part of this year we were paying market right right uh utilities for the electricity um at some point I don't know that exact date it it's it did switch but then you have to consider that that building is mainly using electricity to maintain temperatures in the building um so that's why we are seeing increases along with the increases on the delivery charges that is a lot of you know residential homes are seeing that as well as the same thing like we're a business we we are seeing those type of increased expenses so but with that knowing that that's a concern um what you'll see is that there's about a six hundred thousand dollars that's going to be transferred and put on to building rentals at the end of the year to make sure we budget our balance our budget and um you'll see that there's a great a line here in this slide which represents what we currently budgeting for fiscal 24 and the current budget that the school committee approved and that got approved at town meeting um and so we are pretty good and we anticipate that with the new rates in the the next rate change will actually have the high school at a lower rate than what we're currently paying but it's still higher than what we had previously negotiated so but we anticipate that we'll have sufficient funding for next year if we go to the next slide um it was there was a question about custodial supplies cleaning and and why it might have been higher once again that's a bottom line budgeting thing and um we're actually in line fiscal 21 you know you'll see that it had a big uptick because of COVID so we if you want to go to the next slide um so professional tech services in terms of increased spending um this year I don't know I will come back to the committee um in regards to more details in regards to this this does seem like there's been an uptick um and it's likely due to contracted services within facilities so we have not been able to fill um HVAC positions in facilities and so you'll see in the line by the object report there's about $200,000 available on the maintenance salaries but HVAC contract of services maybe I'm actually maybe I'm speaking I could be speaking off but um I will definitely double check in low battery here we go um I definitely want to do some more diving in um but I think we have these are definitely outside vendors that we've contracted out last but not least um in terms of instructional materials once again bottom line budgeting does not mean that it was that there it just means that the the items are not aligned and we're in about around where we spent last year um for fiscal 23 if we include the encumbrances and where we're going to end up some some follow-up questions if you go to one more slide which is under there were some other questions in terms of contracted transportation you know I I do want to provide anything on this yet because I definitely want to look at um I've seen some charges in terms of some foster uh transportation um that seems like there's some additional uh homeless transportation this year that um that that I wasn't necessarily aware of so I just want to confirm some of that data um but that's um mainly the uptick and contract with transportation not necessarily is tied to out of district contract with transportation and then some of the capital expenditures um there were some cafeteria tables at the Gibbs repairs for the bracket school at the bracket school um playground that was included in the current expenditures but then what's what um is in the projected there are some projects which include the um we're doing an autism projector project for end of year spending um hearty projectors and some projectors for the autism media media center um and these are projects that uh definitely will make the space make the instructional experience for those spaces great so I think uh I think that wraps is there anything else after this I think I think that wraps it up um the grant and revolving funds I did not include in this presentation but they're in the memo um spending is expected besides the electricity costs of you know being a little higher and that's going to be covered off of building rentals and we have the funds there so I'll open up to any questions and defer to the chair yes morgan so so that I can understand so I'm I'm reconciling the email with the pdf and all the boxes right and then the the grant like the the presentation and the the slides so yours the take home here is that you're you're explaining to us why so for example um custodial supplies right um so you're explaining to us that the the actual spending is in line with what we've done historically but perhaps the reason that we're seeing some big bigger very big positive or negative numbers on that right hand projected balance is that we maybe didn't get the left hand original budget right is that kind of the narrative here on some of these so what I will say is that the the budget on like this is custodial supplies right sure if you start with that what is that like gloves cleaning supplies chemicals you know great anything that the custodians yeah mobs it could be anything um paper um so if you look there were transfer outs within the facility's line items there if you if you see there there was a reduction in the original budget so the original budget was actually higher at some times at some point of time we reduced it internally along with the facility but only by 194 dollars adjustments only let me double let me make sure it's 18904 correct you're right I was looking at it earlier I was looking at um some of the closing out of encumbrances last year so um yeah so that yeah exactly so correct so those numbers were lower because of the lines were not necessarily adequately funded but that was also to cover the electricity costs we knew that there was that in order to balance this you know I had to reduce some of the lines and when I was developing the budget last year the fund facilities facilities facilities overall increased substantially but working with the facilities director then putting in what they were requesting for what they wanted from lines and then overall I had to make some adjustments to make the budget balance some lines were reduced at the end of the day so even and and didn't take into consideration necessarily I mean because like if you if you look at the the if you look at 82904 you're like holy moly would you people spend 140 000 dollars on right but then when you go over to the bar graph you're like well you spent what you did last year so like you're clearly not stockpiling Clorox right so that's good um okay so but it's it's that we're we're going to continue to sort of dial in that original budget number so that the so that what we because I mean to me when I look at 140 000 I think you're stockpiling Clorox and then when I look at your bar graph I'm like well I guess you're not so I the the more that we can dial in that original budget column um that'll be great okay super that makes sense all of these these all make sense to me given that context thank you any more mr schlickman the only question I have is is it going forward because we're showing electric costs uh changing in this building because we're building a building is dependent on electricity as we demolish I would assume then our gas costs are going down correct so that if we're talking about our increased electric costs might make sense as we talk about this next year when we start tearing down where we're sitting that the we're also showing uh gas expenditures in this building as well correct yeah okay so we'll want to look at utilities as a yeah together yeah we we do have some analysis we've worked on that and we're starting to see that some of the delivery charges are muting the savings so some of like so it's been beneficial that as we're phasing out some of the parts of the high school that it's overall helping the budget but um yeah we're continuously monitoring that it's only we can only um do this like you know make sure that we have the right budget amounts so long that our projections are good so as we add more equipment you know whether that's ventilation to different buildings that means that more energy is being used um throughout the district and that then becomes more difficult for tolia fox the sustainability manager for the town to then do projections that are more accurate um then along with the other changes that are on the delivery side we can only control what we negotiate on the the supply side understood but I mean it just to compete you know completes the rest of the picture if we're talking about increasing electric costs because of we're going into an all-electric building we should also pair that with what's happening on the on the natural gas side that's all yeah okay you know I'm not concerned about it but I think it's sort of an interesting point and because it's brought up yeah yeah I'd like chapter two of the story okay any more questions mr cardin no okay so I just want to say the questions were brought to you by me wearing my mr hanger hat because I felt we needed someone to be asking questions of the budget um so moving on superintendent's update good evening everyone I have a few updates for you this evening first of all happy teacher appreciation week we've been celebrating our educators and our nurses because teacher or nurse appreciation day was yesterday school nurse appreciation day um with lots of love from our pto's and snacks and breakfasts and stuff so um thank a teacher this week please uh congratulations to a hs student uh Gosha Lubachev is a semi-finalist for the u.s department of education's presidential scholar program he's among 11 other finalists in the state of massachusetts and we're very proud of that accomplishment it's really very very exciting and there will be celebrations and press releases about this coming congratulations to linda kralla a hearty crossing guard at lake and brooks who was named the massachusetts school crossing guard of the year which is awesome um congratulations to linda we were so excited that we got out a little bit ahead of the state um in sharing this information but it's at this point been shared on the hearty pto page and everybody's been um expressing their congratulations for it there will be a press release on this as well that we'll be sure to share out that we're so proud of her and grateful for her long-standing service and ensuring that our hearty students get to school safely every single day isn't there an event tied to yes there's an event tied to this as well i believe at the state house is that right yeah i'm so we'll have more details as we get them uh i have a brief update um and it's possible mr thielman will speak to this as well uh but we have messaged out about the high school phase two move schedule um arlington high school so the move schedule was moved out to october into october and we've told everybody about those delays a couple of notes about sort of how that impacts programming is that arlington high school will have some early release days in mid october around the 16th and 17th in order to accommodate um the actual move itself get the movers into the building while students aren't there um and they will move the in the afternoon through the evening so part of the reason for the early release is that they need an extensive elongated period of time to actually get things from one building to another um and so well they'll release midday and then they'll work through the evening um to do those moves on those two days we'll have some rolling blackout days by discipline to allow the teachers to unpack and set up their classrooms so there will be one day per department and depending on which department moves say uh department moves on the 16th um after the early release through that evening and it's the uh ELA department then the next day the students wouldn't have any LA class and then the next day maybe in the 17th the history department moves the students who have a history class that next day wouldn't have a history class that day so it should it won't even impact all students because not all students have every discipline every day um to have been missing that class but that's the way we're going to be able to accommodate this without the three-day weekend originally the move was planned for a three-day weekend um now that it's not we need to make a couple of adjustments to timing uh students teachers and central office should be fully moved in and operational on october 19th according to this new timeline I also wanted to let everybody know that Arlington Public Schools is working on partnering with Cartwheel Care to offer referral and emergency telehealth services for Arlington Public Schools students this is very similar to the interface partnership that we've had the biggest differences that Cartwheel offers actual real-time um sort of uh buffer services so like if you are having trouble you're you've done a referral and you're having trouble getting access to a permanent healthcare provider that uh Cartwheel Care will fill in the gap with some telehealth services so we can get students immediate support if they need it um and not need to wait for the referral service to actually link a student up with services so we are this will be replacing interface um which was which had gotten a lot of use during the pandemic as a referral service but our usage had gone down pretty significantly um and so this seems like a really great uh service for us to use and they've had a lot of success in other districts and we're excited to be partnering with them few updates on administrative hiring searches we have a few of them happening um we have announced the bishop and bracket principles congratulations to Eva Liner and congratulations and welcome to Dr. Gretchen Weiss the new uh principal at Brackett who I understand will be beginning her transition work very very soon um and hiring new assistant principal very very soon as well uh our director of communications and family engagement has completed its final round within announcement coming early next week we're working on reference checks right now our director of research data and accountability had their initial interviews this week right Dr. McNeal uh Dr. McNeal and Margaret Cuddle-Thomas our director of diversity equity inclusion belonging justices are running that search together um our assistant director of high school counseling has an offer accepted within announcement coming soon um our director of SEL and counseling also has an offer accepted within announcement coming soon I'll probably um be sending that out tomorrow morning assistant director of finance is in the final round yes and looking like an announcement before long and assistant principal ships at bishop and bracket that posting has closed had a very deep pool of applicants for both schools um and we'll be doing initial interviews they'll be planning those so that we can sort of um have efficient efforts in those two searches between those two principles um and oh and the stratin search is posted is posted for another week and a half I think um and then they will the interviews will launch I've met with the stratin faculty um about sort of what they're looking for in their next principle the process will launch um we have community members who have volunteered to participate in that I'm working with the school council on a family forum um we'll do the initial search the last week of May uh and the final round in the last couple days of May and into the first week of June and we should have an announcement at the end of that first week of June so that's first stratin principle and your enrollments are in your packet I'm happy to answer any questions that you have any question I just um this is actually normally Dr. Allison and this question but um I'm just looking at the Thompson numbers for first and second grade and I guess my question there is is there space in the building to add a section that's the challenge with this one um so the answer to that is no not without taking away the multi-purpose space which is used for PE classes that would otherwise be huge in the gym um and so and I've spoken with uh Ms. Donato pretty extensively about this and we're thinking about what solutions to this would be including adding service provider um per grade level and piloting some work that would allow us to work on some co-teaching um and we are not set on whether or not that will be a way that we can use one of those floating roles to alleviate some of this pressure um if we are going to alleviate this pressure I would love to do so with a licensed educator in some way but it may not be that that is it's it would be to reduce the ratio student to teacher but not necessarily the section size so okay thank thank you those numbers are creeping up mm-hmm any other questions no okay thank you very much moving on um so approval of senior award letters uh the e nelson blake junior book awards letter and the idah robinson idah robin scholarship for 2023 award letters so those are both in novice and you've seen them they are not available to the public I did check because we're not supposed to be telling people before it comes out um so I need um motion to approve them as they were presented to us but we're not so much mention the names second any further discussion okay roll call vote Ms. Goodelson yes Mr. Cardin Ms. Morgan yes Mr. Thielman yes Ms. Ekston yes Mr. Schlickman yes and I also vote yes Mr. Cardin is getting awfully dark yeah are you okay Len? sorry we're getting to the end okay consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted with one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number 23250 600 and 2500 and 6 yeah 600 and 2574 dollars and 35 cents from May 2nd 2023 and meeting minutes for approval April 27 2023 cell moved second second okay all in favor roll call Ms. Goodelson yes Mr. Cardin yes Ms. Morgan yes Mr. Thielman yes Ms. Ekston yeah Mr. Schlickman yes and I vote yes that's unanimous then we have policy and procedures first read file BEE Mr. Schlickman explanation of BEE is our esteemed chair brought up the fact that this policy is a little ambiguous that what it's really meant to apply to our legally mandated public hearings such as the budget hearing and the school choice hearing and that if we choose to do a hearing we're not required to go along with the state laws and regulations that apply to state mandated hearings so we're just clarifying that this is first read we'll go forward and I'll hit the rest and subcommittee we assign okay any no comments questions no subcommittee and liaison reports budget Mr. Cardin community relations Ms. Ekston there will be a school committee chat on Saturday May 20th at 11 a.m. on zoom and the link is on the APS calendar okay great curriculum instruction assessment accountability we are meeting on the 22nd to talk about district goals I guess we're getting some kind of HDI update and we are hearing about a job description okay facilities no report policy and procedures we've met a couple times including this afternoon we're still working on ways of tweaking our policies regarding parent and community inquiries on curriculum issues in novice today are the thinking of how to adjust it by using ke and dash are which that would be a new policy as a vehicle to clarify what our expectations are there's also the theelman plan which effectuates a couple of different policies but basically says the same thing so sometime between now and two weeks from now policies and procedures committee will be meeting to hash out what we'll present back to the committee we haven't really had a discussion so it's going great it's going great except that the chair of the subcommittee got flummoxed by an 8 a.m. meeting and then didn't get the subsequent meeting post and so we've been a little off kilter okay okay right we're getting there yeah we'll get there um high school building committee dr. homo gave the report october 11th is the is the is the new turnover and our communication has gone out to the community and we'll be able to move at that point too administration it's going to be everything yeah everything yeah administration everything correct yeah okay because the discussion was is that we'd be delaying that wing uh a couple of weeks or something much the same way that the theater was they they changed no they changed they changed they originally going to do that and then they changed except yeah okay i just wanted yeah i just wanted to note that that was different so that we were all expecting to evacuate this building so it could be demolished on after we depart right and just to reiterate for parents who may be curious so because we had voted to delay the demolition of this building the students will have classrooms and places to be going to school full-time normal schedule until the building the new building is turned over uh liaison reports no liaison reports announcements no announcements future agenda items no future agenda items okay i have a motion to adjourn okay any second second okay are you gonna sound a doodle okay vote first okay so miss kettleson yes mr cardin yes yes yes yes yes okay i called out their names you didn't hear by said it okay thank you