 All right. Welcome to the December 17th, 2020 meeting of the Arlington School Committee, our last meeting of the year. As people come in, I am going to do our script. This open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID virus. In order to mitigate the transmission, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation. This meeting will feature public comment. In this meeting, the Arlington School Committee is convening via Zoom. It's posted on the town's website. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. Some attendees are participating via video conference. Please be aware. Others may be able to see you. Take care not to screen share your computer. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All of the materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda dashboard. We recommend members of the public follow the agenda as posted unless I note otherwise. The ground rules for our meeting. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda. After they conclude, I will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide comment questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer. Speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yield the floor to you. All votes taken in this meeting will be conducted via a roll call vote. Let's go ahead and do attendance before we get started. We have a lot of friends here with us tonight. Let's start with members of the committee. Ms. Ekston here. Mr. Cardin here. Dr. Allison Ampe not yet. I don't think, oh, do we have two screens? Nope. Okay. Mr. Thielman here. Mr. Schlickman. Mr. Heiner here. Dr. Bodie here. Dr. McNeil here. Mr. Spiegel here. Mr. Mason here. Ms. Elmer here. And I believe that Ms. Higgins is our rep tonight from the AEA. I'm sorry that I didn't reach out earlier. I'm not the rep. I'm actually doing a presentation. Sif is here as the AEA rep. Super. Thank you. We can hear you. Super. Ms. Carmody is our student rep tonight. Mr. Schlickman, I'm just going to check your audio because I missed you on the first round. Hello. And then we have our elementary principals here and I'm pulling up the list so that I don't mess this up because that would be embarrassing. So bear with me. I saw Mr. Dingman. Good evening, everyone. And Ms. Donato. Hi, everybody. And Mr. McEnany. And Mr. Amade. Good evening. And Dr. Hannah. Good evening, everyone. And Ms. Urchikov. Hello, everyone. And Ms. Parrots. Good evening. Super. All right. I think we have an... Oh, and I see Ms. Carustas. Hello. You guys are over two screens tonight. So this is really wild. And Ms. Setsulis. Good evening. All right. I think that's it. Okay. Super. So welcome. We're all here. We've done our script. So the first item on the agenda is public comment. And I checked with Ms. Fitzgerald just before the meeting and nobody signed up for public comment tonight. So we're going to move to the next item on the agenda, which is around a contract for Dr. Holman. I'm excited to be here tonight to share that the School Committee has reached an agreement with Dr. Elizabeth Holman to be our next superintendent. We plan to vote on her contract tonight. The negotiations were straightforward and collegial. And I've enjoyed working with her to bring this contract forward. In addition, we also have a contract for transition work to be completed between mid-February and June 30th of 2021. Dr. Holman will become our superintendent on July 1st. So the transition work agreement is critical. The committee believes strongly there's a lot that Dr. Bodie will be able to share with Dr. Holman and that by affording them time to work together, we're supporting both Dr. Holman's success and Dr. Bodie's legacy. So I'm grateful Arlington was able to attract a capable leader with a proven track record around curriculum development and community engagement. And we're fortunate that Dr. Holman has chosen to accept our offer. And I know that she's looking forward to the work ahead. And to our community, our Arlington public schools community, our teachers, staff, administrators, parents, caregivers, students, we very much appreciate your vested interest in her success here in Arlington. Members on the town side have also extended a warm welcome to her and have shared their eagerness to work with and engage with her. So a strong relationship between town and schools is really critical. And it has been that relationship has been fostered very successfully by Dr. Bodie during her tenure. And I'm confident that will continue under Dr. Holman. So I'm going to read this. So I would entertain a motion to enter into a three year employment contract with Dr. Elizabeth Holman, appointing her as superintendent of the Arlington public schools for the period from July 1st, 2021 through June 30th, 2024, and authorizing the chair, me to sign that contract. So moved. Second. Okay, discussion. Mr. Schuchman. Thank you, Madam Chair. On this eighth and final day of Hanukkah, nine candles provide light at a time when the 415 sunset is much too early. It's also a good time to seek a bit of spiritual light. A Brooklyn College professor, Hershey H. Friedman looks to the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud as paradigms for lessons in leadership. He writes the Talmudists believe that a colleague who disagreed with his study partner could be more valuable than one who tended to agree. Rabbi Haya Bar Abba illustrated this point 1800 years ago, when he wrote even a father and son and teacher and student who studied Torah at the same gate become enemies of each other. Yet they do not leave from there until they come to love each other. We've reached this time to leave the gate. I cannot agree with my colleagues in making this vote. It is important that we acknowledge the debate and record our conclusions as a precursor to leaving our arguments at this place. Our agenda moves from deciding who will be our next superintendent toward the work of building a successful relationship with our new superintendent. The pandemic, the budget, and the plethora of other decisions on the horizon will provide us other interesting arguments to debate as we chart our future together. The Talmud reminds us that our one's best friends was a scholar one argued with the most, even though we can't agree tonight. I'm grateful that I get to share this work with you, my friends. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? I'm just making sure that we're all actually on this first screen. Seeing nobody voting on the motion by Mr. Yelman, Ms. Eksten. Yeah, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. No. Mr. Hayner. Yes. And I am also yes. And the second piece is I will entertain a motion to enter into a contract with Dr. Elizabeth Holman for transition work to be performed on or between February 22nd, 2021 and June 30th, 2021, not to exceed 15 eight-hour days in the aggregate and directing me to sign the said agreement. So I'll move. So motion by Mr. Hayner, second by Mr. Thielman. Discussion. I just want to say one thing is this, you know, we set a goal early on of hiring the superintendent by December, having her start onboarding and transition him or her in the, you know, February, winter timeframe. And we have delivered. And I'm grateful to everyone on the search committee, search process committee, screening committee for the work they did to get us to where we are today. Great. Anybody else? Seeing none. Let's vote. Ms. Eksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Hayner. Yes. And I am also yes. Okay. So congratulations, Dr. Holman. We're looking forward to working with you. And thank you to Dr. Bodie for all of your support and encouragement throughout this process. It's meant a lot to me personally, especially. And I'm grateful. I'm very grateful for that. And you've made this, you've made this really, really easy and rewarding for us. So thank you. All right. The next motion, next item on the agenda is the FY22 elementary budget needs. So we're going to first hear from our elementary principles, and then we are going to hear from the AA. And so I guess I will turn it over to you. For those who are in attendance tonight, this is sort of the part of the process. I said this last week when we did secondary, this is sort of the easier part of the process, I think, because we come and we all say, oh, these are all such great ideas. And we want to do all of these things. And they're all very reasonable. And they're all things that we need. And then as we go into the darker colder winter months of January and February heading into town meeting in April, we get to the harder conversations about what of these very reasonable, meaningful, and important asks for our students, we will not be able to make happen given the constraints of our budget. This is a particularly uncertain year. I think that we all feel that as part of this process concurrent with these meetings and what will happen in our regular school committee meetings, the budget subcommittee meets regularly during this time to go over some of these other important pieces. And Mr. Mason and Dr. Bodie are really critical to keeping this whole process moving forward. So we spend a lot of time with them during these dark winter months. And this is just the beginning of the process as we sift through the requests from the elementary and secondary principals. So I will turn it over to you guys to let us know what you need. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Chair Morgan. I'm going to project the slide deck. Thank you. And I have the honor of starting this evening. So hello, everyone. My name is Kate Parris and I am the principal of Hardy Elementary School. And I am entering into, or this is my third year here in Arlington. And I'd like to first introduce everyone who is here with us. So Mark McEnany is the principal of the Bishop Elementary School, Stephanie Zerchikoff, Brackett Elementary School, that Dingman, Dallin Elementary School, Andrew Ahmadi is here from Pierce, Dr. Michael Hannah from Stratton, and Karen Donato from Thompson. And I would love to take a minute here just at the beginning to say thank you to all of these people for being such a wonderful group to work with this year. It has been a long and trying three, a few, I don't know, nine, 10 months going on now. And they've been really wonderful to work with. And the thing that I'd love everyone to remember at this point in time is that we did have, post, you know, before the pandemic began, some really wonderful goals that were in place. And some great school improvement plans with those goals written in them. And I think that the first thing to start with is just how honored we all are to be working in a district that really values education and really wants to support what's best for all of our students all the time. And in hard times, we know that that becomes even more important. So if we look back, we want to tell this story a little bit about the budget. And if we go back to the beginning of 2019 and 2020, you might remember that we started that year with some really actually substantial investments into our elementary schools in the form of staffing in the areas of art, music, and physical education. To begin that helped us to create some really wonderful schedules that in each one of our elementary schools helped us to think about adding additional times for teachers to work together with the building principles, coaches and district leadership in an extra common planning time each week. It also created a predictable classroom schedule each day for our students K through five. It provided additional enrichment opportunities for students in K through three and art music and PE and library, and additional enrichment opportunities for students in grades four and five and digital literacy and chorus and an instrumental music. Those times that we added were called the ace block times. And they were about assessment collaboration and the use of evidence. And they really were very critical in helping us to establish this data culture that we live in right now. And then we're trying to continue to move forward. We made a lot of progress from September to March. And so now as we think about the ace block, it has been impacted because we don't have that time that additional time in our schedule this year. But we would like to be able to keep the focus on that because the progress we made in order to be able to monitor the students work and to be able to think about instructional plans that would support our students going forward have become even more important for us now. Thankfully, there were some other supports that were put into our budget last year that helped us with these goals. We built assistant principles into two of our elementary schools last year. We added reading specialists, math interventionists, an elementary librarian and digital learning specialist and instructional coaches and science and social studies. And it's really very critical that we continue to support these plans that we've put in place coming into the next year. Our students need these resources and they need us to create even more targeted plans that will help to support and advance our student achievement in a way that is both equitable and responsible. So that's the introduction that brings us to now and I will pass it on to Andrew to continue the story. Good evening, members of the school committee and to my colleagues. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this evening. I'm Andrew. It is my first year in Arlington and I feel extremely fortunate to be the principal of Pierce Elementary. I want to start again by sharing some of the budget initiatives coming into this year that were recognized by school committee, including additions of assistant principals in two schools, supporting specialists both in reading and math, adding elementary librarian, as well as instructional coaches in both science and social studies. And for that we're very thankful. My sound's on, right? I've got my ear pods and I want to make sure, okay cool. We can hear you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. You know, this year has been unlike any year which we're all aware of and I think we're all very hopeful that moving into 21-22, we will have a more normal sense of what normal is. But I think, you know, speaking on behalf of the principals, we remain concerned about equity in all forms, academic, social, emotional, and what we think through the lens of our most vulnerable populations, students with disabilities, English language learners, those that are socioeconomically impacted, students of color. And as we move into future years, notably next year, we really see a couple of areas that we believe that we could focus on in terms of additions to elementary schools. First, you know, we believe that having the opportunity to add reserve teachers based on enrollment, particularly in grades K and 1, are vital. We believe this because we anticipate some early literacy gaps in the lowest grades, potentially larger early literacy gaps than what principals would ordinarily see coming into schools. And we want to ensure that we have professional faculty with the prerequisite skills required to be able to address those in our lowest grades so that students can come up to speed and up to grade level as quickly as possible so that they can access all grade level content and be fully immersed in all of the work that we do across our schools. We think that it's likely that enrollment in grades K and 1 may be more volatile than ordinary. We know of families that, you know, did not send their children to kindergarten this year, perhaps others that have either held back or gone a different route of education for their youngest students. And so we anticipate that there is a high likelihood that our numbers in both of those grades could be higher than ordinary and we want to be prepared with professional faculty to do the work necessary for all of those students. And I'd be remiss to not mention this evening the outstanding work that our educators have done in all of our schools, notably in the youngest grades. I think we are seeing some really outstanding work across our hybrid model both in person and online as well as in the remote academy. And so we are extremely thankful and impressed with the work that our educators are doing. And we think that the addition of reserve teachers in next year's budget can help support that. The second ask that we have this evening for school committee is to support full-time assistant principals in all elementary schools. This year has been challenging in many ways, but one of them has been supporting both the outstanding curriculum interventions and, you know, otherwise academic support that we want to give to all of our students and teachers while also managing the logistical and managerial aspect of running a building with some pretty tight parameters. And then, of course, doing the work required with contact tracing and that COVID-19 has required of us. And looking forward, you know, we expect, you know, like I said earlier that things move to a more new normal. But I think it's important to recognize that the logistical and operational work of all buildings will remain and to have only one administrator in a building, it's very difficult to do both the academic curricular work as well as the logistical management operation that's required of a building principle. The need for instructional leadership was really important prior to COVID-19 and we believe it'll be more profound moving into the future. The need to support our teachers, the need to, you know, tweak and implement curriculum in a really meaningful way will require strong leadership. And we want to make sure that we have that set of leadership in each of our schools. We're really proud of the fact that across our schools, across grades and across the district, our teachers work really closely with one another. We're very proud of the work that we do and we believe that in order to relaunch schools with even more nuance programming, moving into next year and the years beyond, it'll be vital to have two administrators in each of our elementary schools. I pulled some data and I'll just kind of go over the highlights. I believe they were shared in this evening's packet to give some idea of across the Commonwealth how administrators are deployed at the school level, but across all K-5 elementary schools. Oh thank you. So the first table here is for elementary schools K-5 across the Commonwealth. Schools with enrollment over 300, 70% of them have at least one assistant principal. In K-5 elementary schools with more than 450, almost 90% of schools have at least one assistant principal. For K-5 elementary schools that are in the top 20% of the state, that's a reference to achievement data, where four of our seven elementary schools currently are those with 300 or more students 63.3% have at least one assistant principal and those with 450 or more have 85%, actually 86% of them have at least one assistant principal. And if we move to the final section, again these are all K-5, just K-5, for schools that are in the top 10% with respect to achievement data, which right now as of 2019 none of our elementary schools fell within. Schools with 300 or more students, 66% of them had at least a second administrator and for schools with 450 students or more, close to 94% of them had at least one AP. And so I want to include that data this evening to offer a sense of kind of how building administrators at the school level kind of can be broken down for K-5 across the Commonwealth. And with that, that's what I have, I appreciate you listening to me and appreciate everyone's support. Thank you. Mr. Ramadi and Ms. Perth, thanks so much for beginning this conversation. I want to recognize this team very quickly again as both of my colleagues have. As an unusual group of collaborative school leaders, I think that we sometimes take it for granted the degree of collaboration, support and real frankly personal connection among all of the team members in this principal group. And I just think it's important for the for the committee and for Dr. Bodie as she's ending her tenure here in Arlington Public Schools to be recognized as the facilitator and the support that has led to this kind of collaborative teamwork. So there's many reasons to appreciate Dr. Bodie's legacy. And I think that this collaborative group is yet another moment of that. I'm just going to speak very briefly about the final petition for consideration of budget initiatives for FY22. And that would be the one additional admin beyond the assistant principles that Mr. Ramadi had mentioned, which is a K through five coordinator of reading curriculum and instruction. The district has been along with many districts in the Commonwealth, taking another look at reading instruction, recognizing the science of reading and reading development. And really in my view, and I think the view of my colleagues beginning to recognize the the linchpin of of bringing all children to reading proficiency across the school district. And in order to do that, it's necessary to revisit, revise and maybe even rework our assessment and curriculum frameworks. And in order to do that, we really do need to have someone who is thinking about nothing else other than this shift. Just yesterday, all of the K through two faculty across the district spent 90 minutes with Dr. Melissa Orkin, who's an expert in the science of reading. I think all of them walked away having been really connected closely to the science of reading, but probably with lots of questions about what's next and the excitement from from my faculty and I think others about what's next in shifting our thinking, and our curriculum and our assessment frameworks would really be possible in our view only if there were someone leading that across the district throughout upcoming school years. One of the just to give a notion of what we mean by the science of reading very briefly. Dr. Orkin shared a quote from Steven Pinker about just just the newest and probably most insightful way of thinking about the development of reading. Mr. Pinker says quote children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on. What do you meant by that? Again, very briefly, I hope, but we did record Dr. Orkin's presentation for anyone who'd like to take a take a look, that students are when they enter are very much language. As we all know, in working with kindergarten students, they are ready to express themselves and use language, but the connection between that spoken word and that part of their brain that registers sound connecting that to the part of the brain that sees things namely letters and script is quite a journey of neurology, and it really needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully. We're so excited about learning this new set of insights, as again, many districts across the Commonwealth and across the nation are as well. But we feel that we very much need to have a colleague in this work to lead it on a really a daily basis, weekly, monthly, to shift our instructional approach and our assessment approach accordingly. So that's a little bit of the rationale for that particular piece of budget initiatives. Again, we probably did not spend as much time as we should have at the beginning of the presentation. I know all of us would would would like to express together our deep appreciation to the committee for supporting our work, not just in budget initiatives, but just in more informal ways and throughout the process of this challenging shift to remote learning and hybrid learning. We're grateful to be working with the end for a committee and a parent community that so clearly supports our work in Arlington Public Schools. So thank you very much for your time and Chair Morgan, I'll then leave it to you for any questions that others would like to ask. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for coming. I'm going to be very quick and turn it over to Ms. Extin. My husband has turned back on the clothes dryer and all of their snow clothes are bashing around in the background. So I'm going to deal with that and give her a chance to ask her questions. Ms. Extin. Thanks. She's expecting me to have questions. Can you just share a little bit more about how this reading coordinator would compliment or work with the literacy coaches that are already the reading coaches that are already in place? I'm going to begin, but I know that my friends will also help to flesh that out a bit. Absolutely. The literacy coaches would be a component of the teamwork I can imagine that this coordinator would have. This coordinator would most definitely be a coach to the coaches. I think that we invited the coaches to Dr. Orkin's presentation yesterday. They are so valued. All we can think about, I think, when we think of our literacy coaches as having more of them, they connect so effectively with our faculty. Many of them come from our faculty, our Gen Ed faculty. Their coaching of our reading programming up to this point and then our Tier 1 instructional approach of units of study is just fantastic. I mean, I've got tons of stories. I know all of our principals do of how effective the coaches are, but this shift is new for all of us. It's a new way of framing, especially the teaching of the earliest and youngest readers. I know that, Ms. X, you have a particular awareness of that shift yourself. It is a challenging shift to imagine to say progress monitor students around the degree to which they're grasping nonsense words and what that would mean as opposed to letter sound fluency and that both of those things would mean very different responses. We know that that's based on great research, but what does that mean in the classroom? I think that our coaches would be essential to making this work. I'd look forward to an even deeper collaboration with them and with this person leading them as well. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So my first question, I know if it's Mr. Amadi or whoever put together the data on the assistant principals. I did try to look at that data a couple years ago when we first started down the path and it was a lot of manual work, so I was wondering what your source for this data was, this data set was. I contacted a representative, Desi, who is a friend of mine, to crunch the numbers and it's public data. Okay, because what I did find was that, I started with our peer, but we have an odd group of peer districts we call, which is more for town finance issues than for educational purposes, but this is a group called the town manager 12, which is in the area, but not towns like Lexington that superfund their schools or conquer the superfund their schools. So I did try to look through those 12 communities and I found that several like in Needham, the principals aren't really full-time principals. They're like a specialized coordinator and a principal or they're part-time and a couple of the other districts, the principals split between two schools. So each school does have an assistant principal, but they're split between two schools. So I don't know if that's captured in the data you have or if you want to comment on that. Well, I didn't specifically look at the, I believe they're called town manager 12. What I did is just look at the more broad data, K-5 across the state and what's more at performance data, both in the top 10 percentile, top 10 percent, top 20 percent, and then more generally K-5. And I debated bringing more data disaggregated by K-8, K-5, K-2, pre-K-5, but thought that the most succinct way I could present this evening would be on only K-5, but I would be happy to do the additional work to look specifically at the town manager, five in the models and percentages there as well. Okay. And I don't think we need to do that, but I do think, you know, particularly for the schools that are under 400, I don't think it's quite so clear. I'm surprised at the 70% figure there. Maybe if you count part time, this is in principles, yes. But again, at the data set I looked at, the very small schools did not have full-time assistant principles. I'm a little surprised by that. I think, you know, we've heard the case for this before, and I'm sympathetic to it. You know, the original five-year plan we put together called for a half-time assistant principle at six of the schools. And I think we were convinced that that was a reasonable place to start. I think where we've added full-time principles, particularly at the Stratton where there's an SLC, that makes sense. But this is, you know, we did see at the budget subcommittee a cost analysis for this, and it's almost a half a million dollars initiative, which is what we spent on the ACE block. So I think as we, you know, prioritize and go forward, as a team, not just you, but as a whole administrative team, first, I'm not sure it's so fair to invest that amount of money at the elementary level that we already invested that amount last year. And second, I just don't know that full-time at every school is really going to be a priority compared to the other things you're asking for. That's more of a comment than a question. Thank you. Dr. Allison Abbey. Thank you. I was wondering how these asks relate to your multi-year plan. And was just, it feels like the reading coordinator wasn't on the horizon at all. So I'm just wondering how are you, I mean, are we done with the multi-year plan or what's happening? Ms. Parrots. I'd be happy to talk to that. So I think there's a piece of this that is an adjustment to the plan because of what's happened most recently with our school closure and remote learning and COVID-19 and the impact that it's had on our children and the community. But it's also just a support and a continuation of plans, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation that we've had already. And I think that it's connected to the assistant principals as well because that investment of the time and the structure that we put in place with the ACE blocks is something that's going to be really important for us to continue to move forward in a way that makes sense. So to paint a picture just a little bit with that time, that ACE block time, our schools that had someone else who was a partner to the principal to be able to support that work were more successful in moving that initiative forward. So for example, at Hardy, I was able to really take the time to sit down with teams of teachers, with coaches, with other district leadership at meetings and not be interrupted and be able to create agendas and spend time focusing on the people in front of me, looking at the data and working on that culture in which we are looking at trends, looking at the information that came from assessment, adjusting our curriculum in order to make plans for our students and target the needs of our students. Other colleagues maybe did not have the luxury of being able to sit down at that table because as they tried to sit down at that table, there were a lot of interruptions for the day. It's a very, very busy place in elementary school, as many of you well know. And I think that being able to have more eyes on it, to have more team members ready to help and support that work, help to make that investment pay off for our kids. And I think that we made great progress in that, and that now it's even more urgent that we keep that work going forward. And the more and more we learn about reading specifically, as Dr. Hannah so nicely expressed is it becomes a very big task. And we need, with seven elementary schools, someone who is going to help to coordinate those efforts, especially if the building principal is being asked to be the manager of all. So I'd ask you just to keep that in mind as you consider the requests. So thank you. Okay, thanks. Just can I understand? Dr. MP, I'm sorry to interrupt. I wanted to add one thing to that just to build on what Kate just shared. I think also we're absolutely committed to the process of developing five-year plans and responsibly allocating the resources from the town to our schools. I think we also at the same time have an ethical responsibility to pay close attention to the trends that are happening nationally and statewide. Early literacy is a very big topic for educators in our state right now from a state level, down to a school level, and also pay attention to where those initiatives are affecting the achievement of our students. And it is not a new conversation for us to be looking at data starting in third grade that's telling us that it doesn't seem like, based on the populations that we serve, the amount of students that are reaching proficient are matching what we're seeing or should be seeing or would like to be seeing. And then as we disaggregate, we're noticing that there are populations of students that are disproportionately affected within that data. Certainly students who are identified as a professional education, black and brown populations, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and I think our responsibility is to do something with that data in a timely way. So I guess I'm just sort of pointing out the iterative nature of what we do that's hard to capture in a five-year plan. So I hope that makes sense too of why some of these asks may be more responsive to the moment that we're in than where we were when we created that first draft a few years back. Okay. I guess one question I have about the role of assistant principal is my understanding was that the principal was the one person in the school that could basically do anything and not be in violation contract or anything. Is assistant principal, are they able to do the same or is it more circumscribed in terms of what their job responsibilities can be? Dr. Hannah. Dr. Vody. Yeah. Oh, please. Vody, go ahead. The assistant principals in our district are members of the AAA administrative union. Having said that, we work, they're part of our team. And I have to tell you our system principals as well as all of our curriculum leaders work very hard and together. So I may be misinterpreting your question, but I'm assuming that you were thinking maybe about hours or? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. About actual. They work very long hours. Not questioning hours, questioning job responsibilities that my understanding was the principal can pick up and do anything that needs to be done. Whether or not they should be doing is a different question, but they can and it's not in violation of anything. And I'm just wondering if the assistant principals have the same carte blanche or if they're, I mean, as you say, they're in the AAA and does that make their, the things that they can do was open? I would say no. I don't know if Rob is looking to answer. They can and their job description is very, very broad. And basically there's one stipulation that they would, you know, attend to any task that the principal gave them. So it's very broad. They are evaluators in our, in our evaluation system. In some cases, they may have their secondary evaluator. In some cases, they may be a principal. So that has not been our experience. And I'm assuming that Dr. Hannah was going to say something similar to that. But you may even have more detail you'd like to give. Mr. Spiegel, did you have anything to add to Dr. Bodie's and then we'll go to- I was going to say they, you know, our assistant principals can supervise and evaluate staff. They do their work years a little different because they have a 205 day work year while principals have full year contracts. I think in some schools, the assistant principals tend to be more focused on operations and the principal is more focused on instructional leadership. But that is not probably, there's probably some crossover. They both do some of each or a lot of each. So that's what I would say. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Hannah. If Dr. Allison Ampe is happy with that response, I don't need to flesh that out any further. Okay. Great. Mr. Delman. Thanks very much. And thanks for the presentation. I just want to say that I support assistant principals. And so, you know, we'll see where the conversation goes at the full school committee level and the budget is presented to us. But my understanding has always been the principal stands for principal teacher. And in order to be the principal teacher in the building, you have to be talking to teachers, looking at data. You have to be the lead instructor in the building. And so I think this has been a need in our district for a long time. And as our school buildings have gotten fuller with more kids, this has become a more glaring need. So I think this is very important and I support it. And I realize the town manager 12 may be all over the place, but you folks are in the schools running them every day. And I support, I really support this. I think this is a good initiative. I also am glad to see that you have, you're thinking about reserve positions in the budget. I don't think we're going to have a lot of clarity about when we adopt this budget, usually, I guess, in March, and then it goes to town meeting in April. And there still won't be a lot, there'll be a lot of, I think, open questions that we'll have to answer over the summer. So I'm glad that's in there. And I really don't have any questions, but I do want to say I support the assistant principals. And I also want to thank you for your work in operating the hybrid model during this time. I think you're setting an example for other districts and all schools in our district. So I only have a comment, no questions, but thanks for all your work. And yes, to assistant principals, keep advocating for them. I agree. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you. First in terms of the data that was collected, the state has increased the amount of data they're asking from districts every year. So it's not a surprise that it's easier to collect it now because they're collecting very detailed staffing data, including the function, the site, name and licensure, and they're collecting the master schedule so that you're able to tie on the state level which teacher was with which students. So with the depth of data going to the state, it's easier to go to the state and call back that data and make those comparisons. And I'm thankful for the work that was done by our principals to collect that as a comparison. Of course, it depends on how accurate the state reporting is. I want to concur with my friend, Mr. Thielman, about assistant principals. So the one thing that we've learned going back a few years, when we have changed the evaluation procedure for teachers, that this has become far more labor intensive and it requires a lot more interaction time with the evaluator and the teacher so that there's only so many hours in the day for a principal to do a job and to be doing the job of supervising and evaluating staff and running the building is a huge conflict. And as our schools have gotten bigger, the need for assistant principals has gotten larger as well. The question I want to ask is that the secondary principals were talking about social workers, in that the social workers were essentially allocated to serve primarily or exclusively special ed students. And I want to ask the question of the elementary principals. Are social workers able to interact with and serve the needs of struggling students who don't have an IEP? If not, how are they being served? And if they're not being served well, is this a recommendation? Mr. Dingman? I'll be brief because I bet other people want to chime in on this too. But I think about every day when I'm going in the building and my different limbs, my teachers are that one limb that I know is going to meet the needs of all our kids from the second they walk in the door to the moment they leave. I think about Ms. Corustus, the assistant principal, and the roles that she's going to play throughout the day in support of whatever's in front of us for kids, for teachers, for managerial tasks and facility work. And then one of those, probably multiple limbs, I might be more like an activist, are these social workers in our buildings who are really more and more become central to the operations of schools. And obviously, this year's a little different because we have less students in front of us, but they're still as active as ever. And I think that's going to obviously be a big part of what we have to deal with in the fall. As important as they are, and I would say the quick answer to your question from my perspective is yes. It's always, we always wish that we had more time, more opportunity, more interaction, but our social workers are, we've made a priority to make them available to all kids and have a process of working closely with our teachers to understand who needs more of their time. And we work as a team, I think Ms. Corustus would agree with that that our social workers, myself, are a team in how we work with kids. The other thing that they do is they push all of us to be social workers at heart. So along with great, great initiatives and making social emotional learning a priority for classrooms and PD for teachers, we, you know, we operate in a way that has everybody thinking and acting a little bit like a social worker. So it's that influence in an elementary school that makes them their leadership and their work with kids so central. So I know that kind of spanned off a little bit, but I just, I love, I love what we're creating with these licensed social workers in our schools. I'm sure my colleagues can jump in on that too. Mr. McEnany. Yeah, good evening. And in addition to this year, I mean, although we only have like a third of our students in our buildings, our social workers are supporting all of our students who are in the remote academy. And that has become pretty expensive and frankly overwhelming for our social workers to try to come up with interventions and connection points with these students who are having, although they are in the remote setting are still having challenges accessing, you know, curriculum or just accessing the remote platform. So, you know, these are families that just have chosen to keep their kids out because of health reasons or whatever their values are to keep them at home. And as we continue to move forward to look at every student and their needs, Sarah Bird has been working with the schools and have sent out surveys to assess where our kids are at as far as their mental health. And those interventions and that family outreach that in response to those surveys are extremely important. So we don't want to, you know, do things just to do them. We need to have action plans and, you know, a path forward in supporting our kids. And as we continue to conduct surveys and to look at every student, the needs of our social workers are are integral to our programming on a daily basis. Ms. Parrots. I'd like to just add to that too that, you know, there's a short answer to the question as well, which is that at least at hearty, almost 100% of the time of our social worker is taking up servicing IEP minutes. And so when the time does come to support others, which she does, and we always work together as teams to find times to make sure that she's paying attention to those needs of any student at our school, it becomes very stressful and trying because she's missing whenever she's doing something for someone else, she's missing something that she needs to be doing for others. And so I guess I would ask that as we think about this idea of the reserve teacher, that we broaden that idea of what that means for us when we start to see what happens to our enrollment coming into the next year, that instead of just keeping that focus on classroom teachers, that really it's about keeping the ratio between the services and the different employees that we have within our buildings that have served different functions in mind. We also are really spending quite a lot of time thinking about an MTSS structure, which is that multi-tiered system of supports. And I think that's really what Mr. Dingman was talking about. And Mr. McEnany was referencing also is that we all wear many, many hats. And when we're trying to meet the social emotional needs of our kids, it's not always necessarily the social worker who needs to do that, is that there are a lot of wonderful people in the building who can build strong relationships and meet needs for children. So we do a lot with a very limited amount of time, but the social worker is clearly a critical member of that team. And if I could just do a quick follow-up on that, looking at going into the 2021-22 school year, as we're bringing the school back together and putting the pieces back together that we disassembled last March, I'm wondering what short-term needs would exist to meet the needs of students, both academically and social emotional learning, as we're recovering from the diaspora and recreating our school communities. Mr. Amadi. So, Mr. Schlickman, I appreciate the question. And I think one of the ways I tend to think through this is to continue to support with our social workers the social emotional needs of our students. But I think one of the ways that we can do that in this kind of bring it full circle is with full-time assistant principals. Assistant principals can support the social workers because the social workers in my assessment really ought to be working with the students to the extent possible throughout the school day. But assistant principals can be supportive of things like contacting families. Kind of the logistical work about partnering both the social worker and the student and with the families to be able to take some of the back-end work off of the social workers that they can focus their all of their time within the school day with students that they serve. Dr. Hanna. And Mr. Schlickman, another anticipation of what will be urgent in our reassembly is to quickly and effectively assess students in all ways. Both their academic readiness and their social emotional well-being. And to try to maintain as much as possible the again kind of circling back to a budget ask the smallest number of the smallest size cohorts possible. And that's not just simply classroom teachers to reduce class size. I know that there's plenty of research to talk about the relative effectiveness of general education class size. We deliberately kept open the precise targets for additional staffing professional staffing because we're going to let those assessments lead our employment decisions. We may very well find out as we've just been discussing in another context that the math struggles of our students seem to be more acute than we had anticipated. If that holds then we could anticipate that additional staffing would need to be deployed for math instruction, whether that's more interventionist and tutors or actual teachers of math, additional math coaches. So we'd like to find out exactly where our kids are at and then deploy resources to buoy the areas that are necessary. Mr. Shipman, are you done? You're still on mute. Yes, thank you very much. Mr. Heiner. Thank you. When I first came on the committee, the school, the Arlington school department had cut an awful lot of staff and we were starting to climb up. And in the past nine years we've done a good job of trying to fix all the things that had to be cut. One area and I applaud your recognition and the need for reading and the support of it. What I don't know, what I don't understand is why I have not heard to get full-time certified librarians back. Their job is not only the selection of books and dissemination of books, but is to foster a love of reading in a professional way, to support the faculty in all the academic areas of providing resources and supporting the faculty and teaching themselves, doing the teaching themselves on research and aiding and bringing a love of reading going forward. You get a student that likes to read and looks forward to read. You're nine-tenths of the way there and remediating any of the issues that they might have. I have no problems supporting a reading person that you've asked for, but not until we get full-time certified librarians back. We do not fund our libraries at the elementary level. We depend on support from PTOs. There's no coordination of the books in those libraries from one school to the other in the support of it. And I think that's a tragedy for one of the few... I don't know of any other school of our size that doesn't have that as a regular thing. I was appalled that they were cut originally. I understood something had to happen, but we've made no... And this is not a reflection on the people that you have running your libraries. I think they go way above. They do a phenomenal job, and I would support them becoming certified, but we need to get that piece there to support our teachers in a professional way instead of adding another administrator. Thank you. Ms. Parrots. I'd like to add just one quick positive thing in response to that. I know that wasn't a question, but Jennifer Lachlan has done an amazing job working with our library parents to look at the collection and find other ways to be able to access the library. So I think that really was a wonderful addition last year, and we've used that resource quite a lot. But there's no coordination throughout the district. There's no budget for purchasing books. There's no regular curricula aspect of inclusion within all the academics. And this is not a reflection on you folks. To me, it's a reflection on the district and its priorities. And I see this being a way to, right from the beginning, that child that walks into the kindergarten, we have a lot of highly educated parents in this district that support reading. That's great, but some of our kids don't have that. The only place they're going to get it is in school. And I see it as a beginning in a way to help a lot of the issues going forward. I mean it positively. I apologize if it comes off critical. I think I'd like to just see more going into that. Dr. McNeil. I just, Mr. Hainer, I just want to just, I want to correct one bit of fact of information so that the public knows that we have made great strides this year, building off of what Ms. Peretz has said. We've had Stacey Kitzis, who has worked very closely with Jennifer Lachlan, and they have, and along with the principals, to begin to curate the various collections across the district in order to bring them into alignment. And also we did, Mr. Mason can correct me if I'm wrong, add a line item in the operational budget to support various, the purchase of books to add to our collections. And we have actually focused on books that have SEL themes and multicultural authors and main characters. So I do want to talk about that we've made some progress in that area and not leave the public thinking that we have not done that with the addition of Ms. Lachlan this year. Ben, I ask how much money is in the budget to purchase books? Yes, I can answer that if the chair would let me. Mr. Mason. Yeah, so this year we funded each school at $5,000 and per, and that was going to be a continuous funding. So it will be, again, hopefully provided in the next year's budget as well. Does that include the middle schools? All schools. So it's a $50,000 set aside. The only place we have a certified librarian is at the high school, and that's required in order to maintain our certification. No, Jennifer Lachlan is a certified librarian at the elementary level. And we hired her and she began working this past year. Let me ask you, do you think that is sufficient to meet the, do you know of any other district that does this at the elementary level? Well, I can't speak to other districts, but if you look at the five-year plan, our in the five-year plan, our goal was to add more certified librarians throughout the years in order to build up that capacity. Is there anything in the budget this year requesting another or a part-time certified librarian at the elementary? Mr. Mason. So all of the five-year plan is still in effect. We haven't moved away from that. So anything that's part of that plan is actually a request for this year. There might be different priorities due to this unprecedented year from closing where we have to realign the priorities, but all the requests are still intact. But let me just drill down. Is there a request for at least one more elementary librarian, certified librarian, or is there just an X amount of money there will be? Let me also, there was this kind of nuance. So our in our five-year plan for this year, we were supposed to hire two certified librarians at the elementary level. Unfortunately, the pool of candidates was not up to our expectation. So we are very lucky to hire Jennifer Lachlan. She's extremely knowledgeable and has a very high level of a high skill set, not only in library science, but also in technology. And so she's able to assist with our technology specialist and work very intimately with her as it relates to making that connection and really evolving the traditional library or traditional profile of a library into more of like a multi-media. That's the current certification coming out of the schools. Excuse me. It's the certification technology and library. I agree with you. We're fortunate to have that. Very fortunate to have Jennifer. And when we were trying to hire additional people that had that type of skill set, we weren't able to do that because to be honest with you, that is, you know, it's very difficult. So you have to have a definitely a pool of candidates. So instead of hiring another, and because we didn't want to just take that position and not try to think of a way to, you know, utilize, you know, what you approved to our advantage, we hired Robin Peasley, elementary technology specialist. And so we kind of expedited that because that plan to hire more technology specialists at the elementary level, we were trying to do that as well. So we hired Robin Peasley and Jennifer Lachlan for this year. And then the goal was to work, we were going to work with Stacy Kitzes who has different relationships with the other, with library science programs, you know, the different undergraduate programs within, you know, Massachusetts and leverage that relationship in order to identify, you know, and recruit, you know, highly qualified candidates to fulfill that position. Simmons College original library science degree is now library science. That was another issue because not a lot of teacher preparation programs is not, you know, it's not a, you can't take that for granted that all teacher preparation programs or universities have a library science program. So that's also, you know, adds to the challenge for trying to fulfill this position. So is this current budget currently have a request similar to what you just said for this year? Well, it's in the five-year plan. We haven't, we haven't seen that, we haven't seen the full request though. This is the request from the elementary principles. Correct. It's in a five-year plan to add on. Thank you, Mr. Cardin. I'm sorry, I cut you, go ahead. No, I mean, so it's appropriate to ask the principles if they still think a librarian is a priority or not. But I think the question as to whether it's in the budget is premature because the budget hasn't been put together yet. Then I take Mr. Cardin's direction. I would ask the light, each one of the, if you had the ability to hire a certified librarian for your building, would you do so? Let me put it that way. Let me put it as a hypothetical. Anybody want to say that they don't want a certified librarian in their thing? If you're given the money to buy one, anybody, any takers? Sorry, does anybody know? No, I can just have that, I'm all right. My answer, Mr. Heiner's question. No takers now. Yes, we want, we would like that. But I mean, I also would like more social workers. Like, there's a lot of things that I think that we, you know, because we are very sensitive to being responsible financially as well. And so, I think that, you know, as we come forward, we're thinking about the best ways to move our programming forward to serve our students and our community. So, I think we can all agree that the earliest we can intervene with any type of learning issue, the best, it serves us better. And to me, a certified, qualified librarian, we talked about it before, and I appreciate Dr. McNeil and everyone else putting this in the five-year plan, is a way to deal with a lot of reading issues. Not all of them, but it is. Thank you. So, I just, I want to, I was actually also going to ask about the librarians just because of where we're at in the five-year plan, right? And we were hoping to do seven over five years, and we got a little behind because of some hiring. We punted one a year forward. So, we're, you know, we're just falling, you know, we're falling a little, we're falling a little behind of where we wanted to be with that. So, but I did see it was, I was actually sort of scrambling because I think that it was on the list, Mr. Mason, that we had yesterday. I'm conflating two meetings, is that right? Was it, it was on that list, I think that we had yesterday, the digital media specialist for elementary, no? No, it was not. Okay, all right. I feel like I've seen it somewhere on a list, but. So, can I clarify? So, I think what you're, what, and Dr. McNeil highlighted it, is that we did have it approved in the budget this year. So, the school committee approved the positions this year, where we just didn't fill it yet. And that's, and we would continue to hold that position as we go into the next year as well. So, there is still the intention of hiring and remaining on track in that way. And then we'll look at the five-year plan to make sure if there's any other requests in the current year to see if that would make it to be included in the 22 budget or the 23 budget, whenever that. Okay, because where we should have been, based on the five-year plan in FY22, is we should have been at four. And what I'm hearing is, is that we have two-ish, like we're counting the second one, which is fine. We have space for a third. And then the question would be, do we add a fourth for this year to stay on track with what we had, you know, we had hoped to be able to do before FY24, or do we hold that back as a request this year? So, I think that seems to be still pending, which is fine. I shared Ms. Ekston's question. I was reconciling the literacy coach that's in the five-year plan with the coordinator of reading, curriculum, and instruction. So that conversation was helpful for me. The piece, and this may be even more appropriate for Ms. Elmer, and I, we talked about this last year too, that the expanded inclusion programming at the elementary level was called out this year, as well as an increase in SLC staffing. We didn't do, I don't think the inclusion came up last year, but the increase in SLC staffing, I know I asked about last year, and Ms. Elmer said we're okay, we don't need it right now. So that's why we're not asking for it, but I was curious about how we're doing with that. Ms. Elmer, do you want to take that one? Sure, yeah. So we will be, and Mr. Mason, I don't know if he'll share with you in subcommittee or whatnot. The SLCC, which you asked about specifically last year, because of the age range, we were able to condense that to one class last year. Next year, that age span will increase beyond what's allowable, and we will be going back to two classrooms. So there will be an increase for the SLCC, because it will be splitting back to a K235 model. Okay, but that's what is needed right now. Yes, so that will be a ask for this year. Okay, great. Mr. Mason? Yes, and just to clarify, because I know that we spoke yesterday in a subcommittee meeting, these, there were, as we were going through the process, like Allison just mentioned, there's still more asked being added to the list. So that was a few of them, I will update the subcommittee on. Great, yeah, tis the season. Let's ask away, right? Let's get the whole list, bring it all down, get it all in a sheet. I love a good chart. Mr. Mason, nobody makes one like him. They're always pretty, always have lots of nice headers, and away we go. All right, great. Anybody else on the elementary budget asks from the principals before we hear from the AEA? Okay, seeing nobody. Ms. Higgins? Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for letting me present this evening on the FY22 budget for the elementary teachers. We actually have three requests only, and the requests are based around being ready to provide for the students returning after the pandemic world, and we're hopeful that will happen next fall. Children are going to require additional support, so I think that a lot of the conversations have already occurred about the need for the social work support. So first, I will be specific about keeping class sizes low so that teachers have the time to give extra attention to all the students. So we're asking that teaching positions that have been put in place and TA's this year are retained for next year, and we also anticipate a surge in students re-entering for the 21-22 school year. Adding more detail to the additional interventionists are going to be absolutely necessary, social work especially, but also reading speech, math interventionists, OTPT, and special education in general. These teachers are already overwhelmed with students, and we need to be prepared for an increased need for these services next year. Additional staff in these areas will enable us to address any learning gaps that teachers identify due to the challenges of this year. It will also allow more scheduling flexibility, which may be needed as students are identified for interventions throughout the school year. And finally, we are advocating that money be reserved for staff salary increases. I believe we can all agree that our teachers have been doing the impossible this year. The workload has tripled, and our teachers have worked tirelessly to provide students with a quality education. Many hybrid teachers remarked that it feels like they are working three jobs preparing for two different groups of students. Robot Academy teachers have had to completely redesign their curriculum and work to engage learners in a new virtual format. Arlington Elementary teachers are doing amazing work to teach and reach all students. And these heroes are worthy of a salary increase next year. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Higgins. From the committee, sorry, for us. I don't know. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So I don't want to put you on the spot, but I guess if you could, the fact that the assistant principals did not come up on your list, is that significant or is it just a reflection that it wasn't something that you happened to discuss with your members? So when we pulled our members, these were the three high priority areas. But as I was listening to the elementary principals, I really applaud them in all of their asks because they're all going to directly influence our jobs and the ability for us to have an administrator available, more available to us. It would be wonderful. Great. Thank you. Mr. Heiner. I guess my question is from Dr. McNeil and Mr. Mason with regard to some of the asks that Ms. Higgins asked for and some of the principals, the positions dealing with the issues resulting from the pandemic and stuff like that, would these be one or two year positions? Would we be looking to keep these people after we get back to whatever normal is? Okay. I wouldn't be able to, I think it would be premature to answer that question at this moment. I think that through the budget development process, we are evaluating the needs of the district and I think that the positions that we add are, I see it as temporary positions and that's how I track them. But I think that there's an opportunity for all the leadership to kind of look at the roles to see if we still need the roles going forward even beyond the pandemic. So I can't say for definite for sure, is it going to be a continuous position beyond the pandemic or, but I think that would be up for consideration when it's time to look at the budget. Okay. Sorry. Dr. McNeil, did you have something? I'll yield to Dr. Bodie. Dr. Bodie, you're on mute. Thank you. I'm sure Dr. McNeil also has some to add to this. We share Ms. Higgins' view on this that next year it's going to be very important as we have students coming back from the remote academy who've been remote since last March. We also have students who right now have very small classes and our average class size in the elementary schools in past years has been close to 23 students. We certainly would prefer not to go above that with the surge. One constraint I know the committee is aware of is the number of classrooms that exist in each school and in some schools that is more constrained than others. So we are going to work with together as a team and with the teachers to think about how we're going to address this issue as we look at next year. And to the extent that you might have to add classrooms, that is going to be within the constraint of a particular building. So we agree that we need to have more supports for students next year than probably we've ever had. And to the extent that we can provide that and want to provide that. Dr. McNeil, you might have something else to add to that. No, I echo everything that you just said. I think it's going to take us, you know, we're collecting data this year. We're looking at, you know, literacy data, map data. And I think that going, we're trying to be proactive. And then moving forward, we'll have to continue to have these conversations involve our teachers. And in order to understand what the needs are beyond this year into the next year, because some of the effects of this year, if you read any article or research, it's going to, you know, they're predicting it's going to be three to five years for us to be able to really address the learning loss that some of our students have endured due to the pandemic. I want to make it clear. I am in support of the things for just the reasons both you and Dr. Bodie have put. Mr. Mason answered my question up the front. He said he's listing them as temporary at this time to be revisited in the future. Thank you. Great. Anybody else for Mr. Thielman? Yeah, I see some, I see alignment between the AA's request and the principal's request. It made me think about an assistant principal and assistant principal can alleviate pressure on other administrative, other staff in the building. And so, and, and, you know, we all want to get class sizes. Parents, students, teachers want to get class sizes as low as possible. I don't think anyone is opposed to that. We are limited by space and budget. And so one way to address that actually is, is with an assistant principal who can take on some duties the principal was doing can support teachers, can support teachers who might need additional instructional pedagogical support. So I actually think there's an alignment at least in theory or spirit, I guess, in spirit between what Ms. Higgins is advocating for and what the principal's have advocated for. So that's it. Thank you. I just want to also add on the fact that we don't know what next fall is going to look like. Like we know that a vaccine is coming out. But we don't know, it's a fact, we don't know how many people in the communities are going to take the vaccine. So we really at this particular point in time, it's unknown what the learning environment will look like, you know, in the fall. So I just want to add that that we have, you know, we have definitely high hopes that we'll be able to be back in school full time with students learning every day as if we, you know, pre pandemic, but we it's that's still a question mark. Right. Anybody else on that uplifting note? You're not wrong. It's appropriate to be cautious. Thank you, Ms. Higgins for coming and for sharing these with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Okay, so that wraps up our elementary budget ask portion of the evening. We're so appreciative that all of you came to see us often. This is one of the few times that we see all of the elementary principals together each year on the sixth floor. And but we've spent so much time with all y'all all summer and all fall that this just feels like another meeting. So this was great. And I appreciate that we were able to get through this and the depth of questions that my colleagues were asking was appropriate. Dr. Bodie. I would just want to say that I invite all the elementary principals to leave the meetings they so choose. We and this might be an appropriate time to say why we are we are reopening schools tomorrow at the regular time. And I know that all of them have a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow. So if they leave, I want you to understand why that's the case. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming and thank you. I saw a lot of our assistant principals here as well. Thank you so much. It was it was great to see you. Thank you for coming. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. So the next item on our agenda is Dr. Bodie's evaluation from the 2019-2020 school year. Oh dear. I've just moved all you guys over. Hang on. Hang on. There we go. Okay. Sorry. So what I'd like to do is I provided our evaluations to Dr. Bodie. I created a compilation with the scores that people gave around the in the various areas so I wanted to give members of the committee an opportunity if they wanted to to share their general comments from the from the evaluation. So it is and you want to raise your hand if you would like to do that. I plan on sharing mine. So if that takes the pressure off of you or makes you more inclined to share either is fine. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. Sure. So this is just the word that I wrote. I would like to commend the superintendent on a year of superlative effort under extremely difficult conditions for the purposes of this evaluation. I am including the first few months of the 2021 school year in addition to 1920. In these past 12 months have been some of the most difficult times for our schools in our community. The superintendent has worked diligently to ensure a safe equitable education for students despite the ongoing pandemic and its associated challenges. The fact that we were able to reach an understanding with our teachers union this fall without strikes or votes of no confidence is a testament to the strong collaborative relationship with our staff which he has fostered over the past 10 years. Well there are things over the past year that could have been improved. I feel they have already been noted and work is being done towards their solution. The effects of her hard work are also seen in the Arlington High School building project which continues forward on time and under budget despite the pandemic. Again I commend the superintendent for continuously driving our district towards excellence by her personal example of hard work dedication and care for our children and staff. Thank you. Anybody else? Mr. Schuchman. Thank you. I recognize that at this point of the meeting because it's the evaluative document we can only read what we have written and not offer any other commentary. But I will read my commentary from the evaluation. In many ways this is a bittersweet evaluation to write as Dr. Bodie is now in her last year as our superintendent. It has also been a difficult year as the pandemic has required an extraordinary effort to keep up with the virus and state standards for responding to it. Dr. Bodie's leadership working with superintendents from neighboring districts was decisive and correct when she decided to close the schools before the state made the decision for the rest of the state. In retrospect we learned the February Biogen Conference at the Marriott Long Wharf was a super spreader event. This resulted in the virus entering Arlington significantly earlier than it did in most places in the United States. And I credit the work of Superintendent Bodie, her colleagues in surrounding districts and the town's health officials for their leadership last March. The pandemic challenges traditional methods of evaluating student performance. MCAS data is unavailable and many initiatives ground to a halt when schools are closed. While hard data is unavailable, the district's work has been thoughtful and deliberate. Work on the new high school has been commendable going forward. Students will feel Superintendent Bodie's influence throughout the building for the next half century. The new high school will be the capstone of a career in which Dr. Bodie is leaving the district in a much better position than she found it. Thank you. Mr. Damon. Thank you, Ms. Morgan. Just like Mr. Schlickman, I'm going to follow the rules here. Here are my comments. The 2019-20 school year was an extraordinary one. It marked the first time in 100 years in which schools had to close because of a pandemic. I don't think any public school district was prepared for such a challenge. And in March when we went remote, Dr. Bodie kept her cool, stayed on top of the impact of the pandemic, served as a leader among a group of superintendents trying to figure out the direction to take, and ultimately kept our kids and staff safe. She listened to multiple ideas from stakeholders about how to proceed and found ways to create the best online experience possible for our kids between March and June of 2020. The evidence and report of the school committee shows that she and the district met the goal of identifying, diagnosing, and intervening early and effectively with elementary students not reading at benchmark at the end of grade three. I gave Dr. Bodie a rating of exceeded on her professional practice school because that goal involved meeting with teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders to address all issues related to the construction of our new high school. Dr. Bodie worked nights, weekends, and throughout the day on this project. She set the strategy that led to the preschool opening in September at the Parment of School, ensured the site was safe for students and staff, and played a hugely important role in guiding the building committee as we wrestled with the value engineering process that was made all the more difficult by unforeseen challenges with the site, including the inability to use geothermal heat. Time and time again, the building committee and design team looked at Dr. Bodie for guidance on seemingly minute details of the project, and she responded under deadline and pressure with measured and reason solutions. Quite simply, the project would not be where it is today, very close to on time and under budget with a well-informed community without Dr. Bodie's leadership. One of her many legacies in Arlington will be our new high school. Thank you. Anybody else? So I wrote this a couple of days ago, so it actually, it doesn't, it feels a little weirder to read it now, but it is fitting that I was writing this narrative on the same day that I drove down Massachusetts Avenue and I saw the steel beams of the new high school begin to outline the building skeleton. Dr. Bodie has guided and led this project from an ethereal idea to a place where it is literally rising from the dirt. While the ribbon cutting will happen under the tenure of a new superintendent, this building is something that she will always share with the Arlington community, and we should be deeply grateful to her for her stewardship of it through many iterations and phases. There is no one who has been more faithful than Dr. Bodie that this building will come to fruition for our students. It is fitting that we are able to evaluate her for her work on the high school project as her professional practice goal for this last year. So the overall rating of proficient and rating of exceeded for professional practice and met for student learning. So the evaluation is a very formal process, which doesn't work very well for me because I like to sort of speak and say what I think at the time, but I really appreciate the members of the committee taking time to do this evaluation thoughtfully. And I think Ms. Fitzgerald for helping me put it together. So Ms. Ekston. Can I just, in step two, the sums of ratings don't match. And so I just want someone to double check. Okay. So they're not seven? Six? Seven? So for standard three? Yeah. Am I allowed to, I mean, am I allowed to publicly say what? Okay. So I gave a rating of these improvement, but it's not marked for students. So I probably put it in the wrong column. So I'll go back and check that and make sure that it's like, yeah. Before we, before it's totally done. Thank you. All right. Any other comments on the evaluation? All right. Seeing none, let's move to the end of year report, end of year 2020 report. This is a little while. Yeah. Okay. Great. Mr. Mason. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So this report, I sent you something to the school committee about a month ago. And I'm sure many of you had time to review it. And this report was submitted on time to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This report, as you may know, is required, one of the required reports that reports on all expenditures related to education here in Arlington. So it's not necessarily just for Arlington Public Schools. But the report was drafted by myself in the school council. I do want to acknowledge Jose Farias for his work as this was his first ever doing this end of year report. As well, I want to thank the town controller for helping us review and tying it out, because it's a very important report. And as Paul Slickman had mentioned earlier about all the data that they're collecting from the state, this is one of the data points and how they tie everything together. So the total expenditures reported for FY20 was $112 million, over $112 million. And that's, if you compare that to the previous year, which was fiscal 19, which was slightly over $103 million. So the difference between the two years was about nine and a half million dollars from all spending. So about 9.3%. And of that slightly over half of that spent comes from the school committee appropriation, so which was of $69 million. This did not include the prepaid expenditure for tuition that's related to fiscal 21. If you remember, we prepaid about $1.3 million in fiscal 20 that was related to fiscal 21, which is this current fiscal year's special ed out of district placement spending, which we're allowed to do by mass general laws. The town spending increased by over $6 million to the amount of $32 million of expenditures. And so most of those expenditures are tied to the shared resources between the school and town and capital related expenditures, such as the capital projects like the high school vehicle acquisitions and large expenditures for student and teacher devices. And once again, that main increase over the prior years, the high school as the high school is ramping up, more expenditures are actually related that are getting reported for the project. Some takeaways from this year's report. We didn't meet net school spending, of course, well over it. Required net school spending was $62 million, a little bit over $62 million, and the district spent of eligible net school spending type of expenses was about $84 million. So we overspent by $22 million. Total instruction related cost was $56 million, over $56 million. We increased our instructional spending by 6.69% from the prior year, that which was at $52.9 million. Pupil transportation increased, that was one of the larger increases, but it wasn't too substantial, it was one and a half percent from $1,829,000 to $1,857,000. Operational costs increased by 13.56%, that would include things from IT transportation facilities from $5.4 to $6.1 million. I'm sorry, that was actually facilities related, that was the big change. And then our payments to other schools for like special education outside district placement did decrease, that was a substantial change from $6 million to $5.7 million. So I know many of you may have time to review this already, but I open it up to any questions. I'll leave it to the chair to determine any questions that anybody may have. Absolutely. Questions? Okay. All right, put everybody to sleep. Now you're just clear, Dr. Mason, we're all, Dr. Allison Ampey coming in late. What do you got? No, I wasn't actually asking a question, but I just wanted to say I do actually appreciate your summary. And I think it's also good for our listening public, which sometimes now is larger than we normally have to hear this too. So thank you. Mr. Cardin. Yeah, so I'll just add that I appreciate the analysis as well. This is one of the more complicated reports that the state requires because it includes the funding from the town side, which we don't normally talk about. It includes debt service, which we never talk about. So it includes, I think, regional tuition for Minuteman, which isn't part of Arlington. So Arlington Public Schools. So it's a bit of an odd report. It's required and I'm glad we do it every year and I'm glad you pull out some of the highlights, but it's not a particularly useful report for my view. Thanks. Not useful, but very well done. I would say it's useful for town people in the town to see it, not maybe not for school committee discussions. That's my take on it. All right, any more conversation about the usefulness of this report? Mr. Schlickman. Well, in many ways, this is very useful because when you go to the state website and look for the town-by-town comparisons, this is what it's drawing from. So that you have a foundation of an understanding of Arlington before you go and start making comparisons to the town manager 12 districts or other communities that you're looking at. So to have this data as reported to the state with the state reporting codes attached to it and the funding sources is really an important tool to have for us and I'm very appreciative of having it shared with the committee and the community. Thank you. Mr. Cardin. Mr. Mason, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that when we talk about the per-pupil spending amount, that's a different report. They pull out different things. This is the data that feeds that report, but it doesn't include the debt service. It doesn't include Minuteman, for example. Is that correct? I don't believe that those, there are certain items that are not included and I don't believe that the items that you just spoke about are included in the per-pupil spending, but it does get pulled in different ways to show that what districts are investing in their schools and their buildings and whatnot. Exactly. Thank you. All right. Anybody else on the end of year report? Not to be confused with the next item on the agenda, which is the monthly report. Mr. Mason. Yes. Yes. So also, so the report that's was for your review tonight was all the expenditures as of November 30th in a projection. So the reports are the same format as you normally would receive it. And this, once again, is from July 1 to November 30th for the general fund, the grants, and the special revenue of revolving funds. The general fund report is the school committee appropriation. That's the funds that the town provide. And you'll see that as of November 30th, we spent about $21.1 million. And this is about in line of where we were last year, where we were around about $20.8 million, if you were to look at a report from last year. As well, you have about $52.1 million in encumbrances at this moment, which is actually more than where we were at last year. But tied to that is some tuition that we normally would encumber directly from Circuit Breaker, that we are going to do a transfer to Circuit Breaker this year, which is slightly different than what we've done in the past. So that may show a reflective of a lower amount of projected expenditures of $668,000. The projected expenses use a formula that just assumes that all departments will spend their departmental budgets. And the projections do not include any anticipated expenses for additional staffing needs or any additional staffing that might have been hired recently after the particular date of November 30th. And that would also include any staffing that might be needed for the reopening of the high school when that time comes, or anything that's been identified as additional expenditures for instruction that they may need. As well as any other transitional support that I think was discussed this evening, those kind of projections are not included. It also does not reflect any facilities related needs in the sense of some things that are above and beyond that we can anticipate, or any ventilation repairs or maintenance that may be needed due to this time. And as you may know that some of the coronavirus relief funds are coming to an end at the end of this month. And, you know, so the general fund appropriation will definitely be taking a maybe taking a hit for these additional expenditures to related to addressing COVID or like the sanitization materials that we've been using in part of our plan for reopening. So also there might be some additional, as I think about additional expenses that might need to be covered from specific revolving funds due to the reduction of revenue. And we also may need to consider if we're going to prepay special education again this year. But if there's an appetite for that. So I say that all the say that the $2.6 million does not necessarily reflect final surplus and that this can change actually based on the needs that I just discussed or anything that I may have missed out on. Also to move on from the general fund report the grants report is as always the grants report the draw downs are happening up the monthly reconciliation spending plans are happening as expected the special revenue and revolving funds. Most of them are holding strong but we do have to we're monitoring them. We definitely are seeing a decline in revenue of many of our programs. Some because due to decrease in part participation or just because of fewer offers offerings being offered. In some cases those cases the expense is correlating to that decline as well. So but we might have to think about like you know some programs that are struggling. I've heard feedback from even outside vendors of the afterschool programs that you know that are in our buildings. They're taking losses because of the pandemic and the participation rate being lower and that's the same for even our internal program. Also you know I did the edit didn't make to the to the surround of the report which I apologize which is the reduction of revenue for the building rentals of the Pierce field since there's actually no current outside use of our facilities except for the afterschool programs that are outside vendors providing support to our students for afterschool. And then the final report you'll see is the report that I've been trying to share with you all is just the COVID expenditures report which is all the expenditures that I've known for that are tied to COVID which now we're showing a $2.9 million total expenditures for both FY20 and when you consider FY20 expenditures for that at the end of the year and FY21 expenditures for this current year as of November 30th but what I do want to know is that the CBRF funds those are the relief funds that were a part of the CARES funding that for the schools and for reopening and all of the funds have been accounted for. We did make our final amendment to those this month to adjust for the different needs that we needed in that we were going to place on the grant and we'll be doing that final claim and by the claiming period deadline and that's that's it for this evening. Thank you Mr. Mason. Questions from the committee? Dr. Allison Ampe? Just a sec I have to bring this back up. I was just wondering if you feel like power or electric power is running within I mean do you feel like what you've encumbered and and or projected expenses will cover it or are you anticipating that it's going to be higher yet because we're not that far I mean we're just getting into the cold season and stuff. Good question. Good question. So currently I mean as you see you'll see in a report that we're around $264,000 of expenditures and we were you know Ken Pruitt the energy manager he does projections for us and we were going to land around slightly under $900,000 for electricity usage and that included a model that included the increase in usage this year due to the ventilation systems and that incorporated that and then incorporated the credits that we were getting from other programs that were trying to take advantage of such as the credits that we get for some of the panels on our roofs and so I believe right now that we're in a good good standing we are most of our heat is our heat is not provided through electricity and I think that due to some of the buildings not being fully used currently we are seeing some savings so we'll keep monitoring that and I believe that the additional 173 that's set aside to meet that projection that Ken Pruitt spoke about that we may need is you know we'll make sure that we'll have that set aside when it's time if it's needed. Great thank you. Mr. Gellman. Thank you. So my question Mr. Mason is right now it's we're showing an available budget of 2.7 million roughly and I'm just wondering if are you anticipating that we're going to get to the end of the year without using that money or are you are you so can you just talk a little bit about that what you're what you're thinking about in terms of that surplus. Yeah so um well a we're not 100 sure what some of the expenditures that we're going to need I don't think that that 2.6 million is going to be there towards the end of the year um you'll you can probably look at some budget line items on the report I mean we had a snowstorm today right we don't know what kind of winter we're going to have this year if you think about from 2015 it was a horrible winter that year and substantial expenses a lot of districts faced so um I can't speak on acts of God um I we're still trying to develop um um our understanding of all the needs that the high school is going to need for reopening we've been working closely with Matt Janger on that so once I get more information on that I'll provide that in the projection model um and I think that there's still hiring that's happening that will also adjust these projections so um what I think we should take away from this is that uh we got additional 1.3 million dollars this year we prepaid 1.3 million dollars right so that could clearly explain that but at the same time understand that um you know if if we don't spend all of these funds we we might consider we might we should go back to consider should we do another prepayment especially when we don't know the funding yet but that's kind of premature at this time I I do think that um and Kathy might want to add some more based on some of her knowledge of the matter but I I'm just very hesitant to speak of to say that that 2.6 million dollars is free right now freed up so use for some of those thank you Dr. Bodie go ahead oh I was just gonna say I I think Mr. Mason explained it quite well but we do have some uncertainties we always have uncertainties with the buildings and one of the things that's been true this year is that we do not have um rental income which has been often a source of paying for these we have other programs that also for example our international students we do not have any this year so it's hard to know we've had the elevators the high school have some hip cups I don't know what that could mean so we hopefully will have a surplus at the end of the year because I think that one way that we can help our our budget for next year is to go into uh the FY 22 in a stronger position than we would if we didn't prepay tuition so um I think every month we'll monitor this and as you can see in the spreadsheet we've had two we've had two storms and already we've had some low snow years and so that budget reflects it but that could change around this year that's just one thing yeah one thing I just wanted I I probably should have asked this offline but I just asked longer on call now is that um I we have not spent $100,000 that we're going to spend on air conditioners um in Fusco house is is it is it possible to use some of this money for that if we have to so Catherine if I could answer this I'm not sure if you wanted to answer it but I what I typically like to do when I look at the budget is you know instruction always goes first right yeah and then what what we do is there's a period towards the end of the year where we cut all the departments off from spending when we know that there's not much a chance of all unforeseen events to happen we look at what's available and then we ask what the facilities department needs and or IT or any other department to then reallocate the resources to them at that particular time frame similar to what we did last year so the answer your question is that I don't I don't think I don't see a problem why we wouldn't use that as an option towards the end of the year but we need to make it make it to that point because that would just slide $100,000 back into the high school building project right right good thing yeah it was a good thing yeah I just thank you for following my whole line of questions there thank you all right anybody else on the monthly report mr schlickman yeah I I just want to comment on the prepayment of out-of-district expenses and the possibility of putting money into the reserve fund for for a special ed for next year because I think that the one thing we need to be alert for is a funding drop for next year from the state at the very least because of the reduced enrollment this year and much of our chapter 70 increases has been fueled by an enrollment increase so I remain nervous and would be appreciative of any effort we can to prepay items that will ease the pressure on us for next year all right anybody else seeing none the next item on our agenda is the school budget analyst job description for approval mr mason do you want to share that with us or dr bodie do you want to share that with us I can okay go ahead cathy you want I don't know if she said something on me okay um thank you uh chair um I would like today to present the the but the we have to the committee the budget analyst position that would be added to the business office team um so from the start of my tenure in arlington public schools uh I've worked with a team of individuals that are very capable um however I I notice especially during the pandemic that there is a capacity issue in the business office and after reviewing the responsibilities of you know the current members in the department the roles of the department are very siloed and um it is such that when there is a leave like even recently you know the operations has to stop and so I that's not acceptable especially for a vital department in the district um because we need to always keep going and over the years um you know I've been looking at the you know the the workloads and the the funding the the office has acquired additional responsibilities um and such as increase in kind of accounts payable duties including the even the the accounts payable for the arlington high school project and all the related um documentation to that um which you know there are certain reports that we got a report to the us census bureau and we should have the capacity to the track and have a document tracking system to prepare for closeout of that project when it happens in you know the years down the road proactively instead of you know trying to be reactive to that and trying to do that towards the end and you know also there's the need for additional responsibilities for the student activities accounts that uh monitoring and um um we're doing reconciliation but there's you know which will come out later on there's nothing wrong with what's going on with in terms of fraudulent activities with the student activities account but there's additional oversight that's will be needed and that the business office will be stepping in to do and to streamline that the processes to that and um this position would support that and you know as we've modernized uh different workflows in the business office and throughout the district um such as uh as we're called there was a management letter for the switch of uh a manual process of procurement to electronic process but when we do those transitions um there's also there's there's a lot of headaches to those transitions and there was never really a look at the the if the the capacity of being able to handle that throughout the district while you decentralize that process what it would what it would mean to the departments and the support that the business office can provide to those departments as well as the additional ability to just provide um the the some analyzation ability in in the sense of providing that support so we can provide a trends or even even additional information to this committee um to this that's what the business office is for us to support the instructional and administrative teams better and uh to also support uh any request that you know uh the superintendent of the school committee needs so that's what the goal is for the adding this position in the business office Mr. Heiner just to from my understanding you're looking for us to approve the job description and uh the salary range am I correct correct because we have no control over any contract once we've we've done those two things thank you uh Dr. Allison Ampey and then Mr. Cardin um I just wanted to say that this position was discussed yesterday at budget and uh a motion was made and passed to recommend to the full school committee that we accept um and we accept the we agree with the with the request for the um position and we think it's a good idea Mr. Cardin thank you yes as I said yesterday at budget I think this is a very important position for us to have um both for uh uh covering um any absences that that occur it's a very thinly staffed office to begin with um and as a committee we need more you know we're always asking for more data and it's it's just Michael and and and Jose that that have that are around to produce it and that's not enough um because he's at the CFO he shouldn't be working with spreadsheets quite so much even though I know you love spreadsheets Michael so uh uh so I'm very supportive of the position one one quick question Michael is is the salary for this already encumbered in that that budget we just looked at or would this be um an additional cost that's not already accounted for no this is not included so that would be an additional staffing need that would be added will reduce from the balance of the surplus okay great thank you uh Mr. Tillman I move approval of the school budget analyst job description second uh discussion seeing none uh Ms. Exton oh sorry Mr. Schlickman did you want to talk about it I'm sorry yeah yeah I also agree this is necessary I'm just wondering uh in the marketplace is the salary range going to get us the person we want Mr. Mason so I'm the the salary range is very sensitive in the sense of it's very complicated so I do believe that we'll find the skills a person that the skill set that we need um with the salary range but at the same time mindful that we're at slots between the different personnel that's already in the on the team already yeah that's this you're just playing in an area that's not my uh area of expertise I don't know what the uh going rate is for for these kind of positions uh thanks for doing the work and analysis I look forward to the yes vote uh other discussion seeing none uh Ms. Exton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampey yes Mr. Tillman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hayner yes and I am also yes um all right Mr. Mason thank you guys appreciate the support uh Dr. Bodie superintendent's report well the first thing is saying again that tomorrow all of our schools will be uh starting uh at regular time the high school of course will remain a remote um I also want to thank um all of you for your comments particularly around two things the work that was done this year to make sure that we have safe schools that we could make sure that all of our students would be getting the kind of programming that we know they need and and they deserve to have but I also have to recognize that this work is really quite a team effort and many of the people are still here at the meeting tonight who are on that but you also heard from the elementary principals and I would include beyond that all the other principals and curriculum leaders it's a highly collaborative hardworking group of people and um I I think that Arlington is very fortunate to have this team of people and it is something that I know that the new superintendent will enjoy working with all these people and the other thing is the high school I mean this has been a labor of love for quite a long time just both back many many years really um and it really is a thrill to see it going up and I I'm there's a part of me that very much misses the idea that I will not see it all the way to the conclusion but um I will be driving down Mass Ave every once in a while just to see how it's going um and I have no doubt with this building committee that we have that it's going to be done on time and continue to be under budget it's really a terrific building committee and uh we we've hired the right people in in terms of our architects our contractor and our opm to do this um so it's it's really terrific and I hope I get invited to the ribbon cuttings thank you Jeff thank you um so with respect to the building if you drive down the street you're going to see changes all the time um looking out of you know I have some bird's eye view I think Mr. Mason has even probably one of the best views of what's taking place every day but it's really exciting to see at this point um and it's going to continue as we as we move along uh there's still a lot of planning meetings that continue behind the scenes not to mention the building committees but I'm thinking of some of the subcommittees that are existing that exist and some of that work is going to really ramp up in the next few months as we look at technology needs and all of the other the interior aspects of the building so um one of the things I've encouraged people who are listening tonight um I don't know how many that are there we not not too many but I will encourage them in my next newsletter to uh you know go to the ahsbuilding.org site because there there are some great videos and you're up to date with all this going on with the project and I want to thank Dr. Chrissy Allison Ampey and Amy Spear who is not here tonight for their work to make sure that website is up to date and terrifically organized um so I have one more thing and that is um our athletic report for the fall season. We our kids besides the fact that I know they really loved being together as we've talked about before they did some of the teams they all did very well um but some of our teams actually um were middle sex league division champions and I will start first with the boys varsity cross country team record was four and one they were the 2020 middle sex league division champions and they have a number of in by the way it's the third one the last four years so they had a lot of league all stars which I will put in the newsletter as well but not read them tonight um the girls uh the girls cross country team did well they have some league all stars varsity hockey um has also league all stars the um golf team have league all stars and the varsity um the boys varsity soccer team were the middle sex league division co-champions in addition to that one of the players um is not only an eastern middle of massachusetts all-star he is an all-state all-star and that is eric uh wadric wadric i'm sorry wadric and then the girls varsity soccer team um they have an all-state um champion as well and that's claire ewen so i will put all of these um in the newsletter so everyone can have a chance to um uh read it and appreciate the the um the great work of our of our student athletes so that's my my report for tonight uh miss elmer thank you dr votey miss elmer sure i just i just wanted to add sorry dr votey i didn't get this to you before um you had your list for your report um i just want last week we sent out a notification uh to the entire school community um it's posted on our website and it also went out in the public notices that in january we will have our on-site um tier focused monitoring which is formerly known as coordinated program review if you recall the desc um reviews comes on site every six years but every three years there's a mid-cycle review so this is now called tfm cycle b so we're in that mid-cycle um this is primarily um civil rights that they'll be reviewing and it's more policies and procedures but they will also be um observing facilities remotely um looking at floor plans to see locations rooms and they will be interviewing staff as well as family so um they send questionnaires to every parent uh of a student with an iep but then they there's also an opportunity that if you go to the special ed web page or you go to the cpaq new facebook page there is if you want to be interviewed you can um call directly to them do not call to our office to get on a list to be interviewed for that as well um so i just want to let the community know about that and that'll be in january uh the week of the 18th thank you um and we'll continue to put that out for the public to know uh that information but as we are um this one last comment and that is as we are ending 2020 very soon um i really do want to also acknowledge besides the administrative team our teachers and the sigans talked about this tonight but i i want to also say and and publicly appreciate again um and can't be said enough as how hard our teachers have been working and um and what is also remarkable is that we've had a number of situations where teachers have had to at eight o'clock at night find out that the next day they're working remotely due to a covid case and close contact and they've done it beautifully and seamlessly so i i think as a community i do want to have us all acknowledge as we hand this year and we're still going into a new one uh calendar wise anyway really what um terrific staff we have in our district and appreciate them and i also have to say our students could not be better in terms of their they're managing all of the protocols and safety practices that we have had uh to keep everyone safe they've been they've been terrific so uh again thank you very much thank you um um questions no mr. delman i just have one question a question came in to us um and the person actually reached out to me too as to why today was a half could you just explain why you made a decision to have today be a half day rather than a full day of school thank you i've answered a few of those today um well a couple reasons um um there's there is uh not unanimity though a majority of our staff um would prefer to have a remote day than uh a snow day when i was looking at this issue back on monday i really thought we were going to have a delayed opening uh we superintendents and the commonwealth get um much more details than you would even sometimes you even get on going to the national weather service and it looked like we were maybe having four inches which is about the cut off when we have delayed openings or we're just in school so in that situation um by time we get in 10 o'clock because that's when dpw does not want us to i shouldn't say does not want us but they have requested over the years that if we could have a delayed opening of 10 so i'm just looking at the sheer number of hours many of our teachers um while they they teach remotely on wednesday it's a half day there's a lot of nuances to this some of our hybrid teachers unless they were in quarantine i have not been teaching remotely a full day they've been teaching half days and so it seemed like a a lot to ask them to organize a remote half day i mean a full day and there's also the issue of um what do we want to do we want our kids on a snow day to be able to get outside and you know play um i think that was something i considered as well so there was a lot a lot of things and of course i i got a question today about well why not just let the high school have continued um as it as it is um already has a remote program and it came down to equity in the district uh we would be asking some some set of teachers to be um teaching all day um and some not i will say that for the for the four hours for that were this morning teachers did not have a prep and they did not have a lunch so those were sort of factored into the afternoon now should we change this in the future i'm definitely open to suggestions i'm going to get feedback when teachers hot went um i'm i'm certain that i've already gotten feedback from parents and uh the next time maybe we do have a full remote day or uh maybe we just have a snow day so that's that was sort of the reasoning that went into my thinking uh it was a lot of considerations and i just felt that this was the right call i know that some districts have had had full day of remote some closed completely and some had an abbreviated schedule it was all over the map in terms of the state and i just thought it was the best call for arlington for today that's why thank you yes okay um consent agenda all items listed with an asterix are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items and less a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence uh vote please hold hold the job description okay uh vote approval of minutes school committee meetings november 19th november 20th and november 24th 2020 vote approval of job description director of mathematics and computer science education k-12 so we're going to pull that one off so we're just going to vote the uh one two three minutes uh miss exton yes mr cardin yes dr ellison ampey yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes mr hainer yes and i am also yes um so the next item is the approval of the job point of all point of order madam chair yes sir i i think for today's minutes you need somebody to move in second that for today's minutes uh for the uh for the for the uh i need a move to send agenda motion yeah yeah you're right okay so let's do that does anybody want to make a motion on the consent agenda to move minus second job description super all right miss exton yes mr cardin i'm sorry what are we voting on uh we didn't we i didn't get a motion for the consent agenda okay so now we're going to re-vote it yes still yes all right cool uh dr ellison ampey yes mr thielman yes good mr schlickman sure yes mr hainer absolutely i'm also yes twice on those minutes miss vitzgerald please note they're the specialist minutes of all time all right uh job description director of mathematics and computer science education k-12 dr boaty do you want to mr hainer do you want to ask your question about this yeah uh first off you know number one it has no salary in it like the pharma job descriptions all our job descriptions usually have a range of salary that's minor is this a replacement for the curriculum uh curriculum leader the mathematics curriculum leader i i had um i had meant to to email you all some uh an explanation so i'm glad you pulled it from the consent agenda mr hainer um it's actually a reflection of what that position has been and um matt and for many years in fact um as we've increased our computer science program uh k-12 so that we were just looking to make sure that that the job description was consistent with what the current responsibilities are and there was a reason to do it now that um mr colman would prefer that we do it now rather than wait so that's the reason there's no change the the job the the salary range will depend upon triple a because the the we have a formula in the triple a contract for how administrators um that are part of triple a how their salaries are determined going forward i the hiring agent which is you you can hire somebody if they don't meet all the qualifications i i think it's important that that this job description so it doesn't have to be re rewritten in the future it talks about computer science yet uh qualifications there's no mention about having any background in computer science i'm not saying that matt doesn't have it but going forward we'd end up having to rewrite this again this just is the math curriculum lead is job description with all the adjustments throughout it after the requirements at the beginning so i i would recommend that you just add those other some sort of computer science qualifications you don't have to it doesn't have to have a degree at this time you can pick and choose with the person it's a very good suggestion um what happens with job descriptions um small adjustments like that we will we will include and as we update them the reason we're bringing this to you is that it's actually a change in title and um and and felt that that that is you know something that we do is bring job description to you i i don't question his value i value him i think he's a phenomenal person and everything in in all the work that everyone does but you're staying within the triple a contract with regard to salary absolutely okay thank you i'll support this calling forward anybody else uh mr carton i move approval of the job description for the director of math and computer science second um great any more discussion being none miss exton yes mr carton yes dr else yes mr fieldman yes mr schlickman yes mr heiner yes and i am also yes okay subcommittee uh liaison reports and announcements budget dr else and abby we met yesterday we discussed how the fyi 22 budget is shaping up and also um we mr mason gave us information about enrollment and what we're guessing enrollment could be next year and all of this was in anticipation of long range planning meeting on coming on monday um and we will be meeting again fairly soon hoping to loop mr bowler in to discuss the athletic fees which have kept coming just up to where we're about to discuss them and then the athletic director changes and so then they get passed and we're hoping to um so it's out whether we think we can push it through the cool line um so that's all okay um cia mr uh sorry community relations mr heiner we met a couple of days ago we uh discussed uh let me skip the school committee chat for a second uh we had members of cpaq come and discuss talk to us about communication dr bowdie was there mr wood's uh technology person was there and they seemed to uh work out some sort of uh understanding that they would be in contact with each other to deal with that i presented the committee i hope you all got it a list it looks fairly overwhelming 20 school committee chats uh the subcommittee agreed that the trial uh three one three school committee chats we had were very beneficial uh several of them had more people show up than we've ever had at the live ones um and uh one of the people's participants suggested a fourth meeting um and so i presented i'm presenting to you tonight a schedule um of approximately 20 meetings i will uh schedule a meeting for the subcommittee sometime in january and uh we will assess the fourth meeting that's listed as other uh i'm going to rely on this extent to possibly come up with topics or something for communication uh and uh go forward uh it is my intent uh to be presented every one of those meetings uh mr sterile has been holding my hand hopefully i'll be able to get the zoom meeting together better i apologize that was late getting it going the other day so uh unless anyone has any questions i will have uh work with karen to send out a doodle to get your input for participation on the school committee chats all right any questions for mr heiner on that okay uh seeing none um cia mr cardin nothing to report this time thanks facilities mr fieldman no report uh policy mr schlickman uh no report except that we'll be uh looking to schedule a meeting uh early in january uh superintendent search process mr schlickman i think we're done i think we're done um do what do we need to do to pull that off of the liaison reports and announcements do we need to like dissolve the search we can just leave it off the agenda it'll expire naturally at the end of the uh term super all right so mr sterile you can remove that from the um the list moving forward um high school building committee mr fieldman we meet january fifth tuesday january fifth at six p.m uh liaison reports announcements future agenda items mr cardin thank you um so i have two things one was the getting a report on the survey that went out to families about um learning this year to date um so hopefully we can get that at our one of our january meetings the other one um uh is related to the regulations that were passed by desi just this week on tuesday regarding live instruction and because this is a regulation i am going to make a motion for a report rather than just relying on the chair to schedule it um we do have to comply with this new regulation by january 19th so i would like to move that the superintendent um so just some some background in case people didn't see the globe article or anything else from me i see about it uh this is for the learning time regulations uh the change was to add a definition of live instruction which is either um remote either either synchronous remote instruction or in person instruction um there's a certain number of hours for live instruction that's now required um 40 hours over 10 days for the remote program 35 hours over 10 days for the hybrid program so um the motion is to move and karen i will email this to you i just typed it out um earlier in the meeting uh move that the superintendent present the school committee at the january fourthteenth meeting an analysis of the number of hours of live instruction every 10 days in the hybrid and remote programs and a plan to become compliant with the new regulations related there too second uh discussion mr yeah i'm i'm gonna support the motion on the date um it's going to be a good idea for the cia meeting to meet before the 14th to review and discuss it so maybe january 12th so you guys can review it um or no i don't yeah i defer to dr bodie i mean i think either way but well let me just say the 14th but maybe you guys can just have a try to it's always better if there's a little vetting and conversation by the cia committee and if we can get everybody in the room to hear it so we think about it in advance of a okay cool committee discussion that's all so maybe we just have this understanding that it's due the 14th but the 12th of the 13th dr bodie has a presentation ready we can have a cia meeting and everybody can be invited we can all weigh in or get educated before we because if we see it just at what happens sometimes we see it on the 14th it's in novice and there's not a lot of time to react to it i'd rather have a day or two to react to it at least i would i can't speak for anybody else mr schluckman did you want to speak on this one yeah yeah i'm i'm going to support the motion i think that having the report uh it is important my sense is that we're probably uh in compliance uh or close to it so it shouldn't be a big deal uh so i i don't see the need to in less we need to do something to be in compliance or there's some issue surrounding it i don't see the need to talk about it before that we receive the report so let me just ask the superintendent are we in compliance or do we have some work to be done at the level um we probably could have the students have another um asynchronous i mean sorry synchronous um class probably a special on the two remote days and we've already started talking about how that we could we could have that happen so the the discussion's already there i think that i think that's something that would be important to do anyway i i do think so that but we can talk about it in terms of what those numbers look like but i think one of the things that's happened the elementary uh this year is that with hand washing which takes a lot more time with young kids um recess time mass breaks there's a little bit more non-instructional time in this day than there might be on a regular year so that that's what plays a little bit into the numbers on this um okay thank you in that case i think it's worthwhile having a cia meeting just to hash it out before we go forward absolutely all right anybody else on this uh dr al snappy what about the high school in terms of compliance well i guess it does it count as hybrid or does it count as remote it counts as remote we're considered a blended district um um so it's it's based on where you were on november 2nd and you know when the high school becomes a hybrid program we we will not have the same requirement for the high school but even with that um and working through the numbers for dr janger and really looking at in terms of how they define it which is basically about what a typical student would have in a school day so i think that it's helpful to have this discussion so pretty much if you have a six and a half hour school day and with you know some passing time and 22 minutes for lunch the rest of this instructional time so if you look at that over the two weeks it's it's uh you know meets the requirements right i guess i'm thinking it doesn't to me it doesn't sound like that's what desi's doing so i understand we can't change what they said but i'm just anyway okay so i will try and attend the cia meeting i'm confused because i'm not sure desi's if i understood it correctly that desi's ask seems reasonable to me not that that changes anything and uh yeah okay so so for people who are listening who are not um they have set a standard of 35 hours as mr cardin said 35 hours of either in person or synchronous instruction over two weeks and um that is true at the elementary middle and high school but when they look at they look at in terms of a district average um so there the i don't even know what it would be for the i have to figure that out but it's it's based on a district average and you um and it's the same thing among the school so our elementary maybe it's different other district but we're pretty uniform in terms of time um both they they did a snapshot of grade one four seven and ten so it's not that's how they approach it so the Gibbs because that's the sixth grade school wasn't even in the in the in the data collection i'd be happy to talk about i think we should talk about it in a subcommittee meeting and and then we can present the report to the public i don't think that that i'm not sure exactly when the data will be made public that's that clear to me anywhere i haven't been told i just don't assume okay so my my comment on this is i support it being looked at in cia i we'll need to see um like charts with math and numbers and stuff um that that that'll that's that's how it's going to work for for me to understand um where we're at and where we're going so i'm assuming we're going to get some math and numbers and charts yes okay so many charts uh mr. Thielman yeah so i would just say just before we all go away and go and break and and i think getting away and going on break in that meeting as a school committee or a subcommittee for three three weeks or so is good for the district good for everybody um but i do think mr. Cardin would be great if you could sort of get a date work with dr. Bodie and mr. Sony get a date that works for everybody the 12th of the 13th and we can all try to be on a call for cia and get it on our calendars early great so can we vote on mr. Cardin's motion um super no more discussion great um is exton yes mr. Cardin yes dr. Allison ampe yes mr. Thielman yes mr. Schlickman yes mr. Heiner yes and i am also yes um so um dr. Bodie or dr. McNeil will one of you connect with ms. Fitzgerald about the panorama survey that mr. Cardin asked about and the other one that i was wondering about was the curriculum audit if we were going to see a readout from that at some point or when when is that a january thing or a february thing um when we might see that as an agenda item um let me when i get back to you on that okay great we can do that presentation super any other future agenda items was happened tonight guys uh oh and miss exton has one too all right yes miss exton sorry i just wanted to follow up on the board of health um request that you had made yeah so i heard back from them that they are happy to meet with us in the new year and that they would provide us with some dates um which i don't i think they wanted to set a date in the new year so um i will uh follow up with them i think it makes sense i i i didn't i think the evening is not usually great um for them um but i i i share your interest in that meeting and they are happy to meet with us which i think is great um it's just going to be setting up putting down a date thank you yeah miss one yes um it may be that you might want to put in a subcommittee because you're correct they would prefer to meet with the committee or a subset of the committee um during the day if that can be arranged we i i told them i'm happy to meet with them anytime so we will sort that out um but i it's helpful that it came up tonight because then i can go back to them and say that it's you know we still obviously want to do it so that's great thank you miss exton uh mr gillman you can just add it to the cia meeting that mr cardin's going to organize on the 12th of the 13th well we sure could we could meet all day five hour meeting is jeff on that subcommittee i just know yeah yes i figured that that's why jeff volunteers everybody i would no but i always go to those if i can okay all right we're gonna have so many meetings we're gonna take a few weeks off of meetings and then we're gonna have a lot it's almost a german time right on time absolutely that's i'm i've got a goal and i'm i'm chomping at the bit to make it to it all right uh anything else for future agenda items that was a solid 15 minutes nobody all right and we do not have executive session tonight even though we don't we don't we don't need it um so i would entertain a motion to adjourn so move wow a lot of enthusiasm for that um second great uh miss exton yes mr cardin yes dr elson ampie yes mr sealman yes mr schlickman yes yes and i'm also yes so happy new year to everybody happy holidays everyone happy new year happy holidays be safe be safe bye good night everybody good night