 This is Len Cardin and I'm the chair of the Allenton School Committee. We are doing a remote meeting. This open meeting is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. And we are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order is included with the agenda materials, which you can find on the town website. This meeting is being convened by Zoom telephone conference, video conference, and also is being broadcast by ACMI. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and the panelists you're all on video, unless you turn it off so everyone can see that. So if you, if you screen share, they will see what's on your screen. On to the ground rules, we will take turns speaking. I don't have my list in order, so I'm just going to go on and how you arrange on my screen this time folks so as we go through and also for roll call votes. For items with public comment. We will, I will unmute you and allow you to speak. If you did join. If you are if you did join by zoom, you're able to get in by zoom and and want to be seen then then I can, we can work on that but presumably I think it's enough just for us to be able to hear you. The last thing actually tonight is our annual school choice hearing public hearing. This is something that we're required to do under Massachusetts law, if we vote to approve school choice then we participate in the program if we do not then we continue, which is what our policy has been for the past many many years, then we will not participate in the program. So, can I get a motion to open the public hearing on school choice. I'll move. Second. All right. I guess we need a roll call. Yes, Dr. Allison. Don't don't we have to take attendance of the meeting first. Yes. That's right. Sorry. Let's get back. Just to confirm that everybody is that members are present. Let's go ahead and make sure respond that you can hear me and can participate. Mr. Thielman here. Dr. Allison ampy. Here. Ms. Morgan. Yeah. Mrs. Here. I'll make loud and clear. Yeah. Mr. Schlegman present. And from the administrative team, Dr bullets. Here. Dr McNeil. Yeah. Mr. Speagle. Here. Miss Elmer. Mr. Mason. Here. And, uh, we also have a misfits, Gerald who is taking the minutes. Okay. Are you still with us? Yes. Great. Karen's here. Great. All right. Thank you. Okay. So back to the. Motion to open the school choice public hearing. We'll go through the roll call. Mr. Thielman. You're on mute. Here. Here. Yes. You want to say yes to vote. Yes. Yes. Okay. Here. Thank you very much. Dr. Eisenham P. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Haener. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I'm also a yes. All right. Mr. Fitzgerald. Do we have any comments or any requests to speak about school or any substantive issues, but for any technical issues as we have been, and for this purposes, if there's anyone who is on the chat that wants to speak to this issue, please let me know. All right. Are there any school committee members that need to speak, would like to speak to this issue? Mr. Shukran. Oh, you just muted yourself. I'm prepared to make the motion once we end the hearing. Great. Thank you. Move to close the public hearing. Is there a second? Dr. Allison Ampe. I'll second. All right. Any further discussion? Mr. Thielman. Yes. People moved around. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Kainer. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Shukman. Yes. And I'm also yes. Sorry, Karen, I will write down everybody's order now as they sit at the table so I can do this correct going forward. Thank you. All right. Mr. Shukman, did you want to make the motion about school choice? Yes, I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we withdraw from the state school choice program for the 2020-21 school year and notify the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that we are doing so due to a lack of space in the district. Second. Thank you. We'll go through just if there's any discussion. Mr. Kainer. I have nothing to add. Dr. Ellis and Anne B. I just want to point out that this school choice is talking about people coming in from other towns into our district, not going to from one elementary school here in Arlington or not. Great. Ms. Seuss. Nothing to add. Mr. Thielman. Nothing to add. Mr. Shukman. Ms. Morgan. All right. And so roll call vote. Mr. Kainer. Yes. Dr. Ellis and Anne B. Yes. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Shukman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm also yes. All right. Thank you. So our next item is public comment. I don't know if Adam was able to join. Does not seem like that. There was one other person who dialed in. This 617 number. Is this someone? Is Adam who wanted to participate in public participation on the phone line? Unfortunately not. Okay. So, Lynette Martin. You were on the 7-8-1 number, I believe. Hi, yes. All right. Go ahead. I participated yesterday listening to the meeting on community outreach. So I was happy to hear that your moving forward was trying to schedule some parent forums which I think is good. I would just like to reiterate that I like Jennifer Seuss' suggestion that you return to having school chats online because I feel the community really is looking for a place to speak. And the listening session that I hosted, I sent the notes to the school committee. It was very constructive. Everybody was really engaged and had lots of good feedback on what their experiences are. But I appreciate that you wanted to wait a week or so until the new program is underway. But also, I know that you said it falls under day-to-day operations. But as a policy to consider for when we're having distance learning, I'd like to suggest that the school committee consider advocating for a policy where there are scheduled parent-teacher-type conferences to determine what each family needs since they're gonna be very different needs so that the teachers have an understanding of what's going on in the homes. I know even for myself and become from a privileged family with kids that are engaged, I think talking to a teacher would help sort of tailor what we're doing moving forward and understanding of where we're struggling technologically. So I hope that that'll be something that's discussed by the district moving forward as well as looking into whether or not we can look at the budget to get more technology help because that's also been difficult for my family and I imagine others. There's currently a Google form, but it's sort of hard to get to it when you're stuck, you know, when you're having a computer problem and your kid's trying to access it, it would be great if there was a phone number or an email address that we could do directly as opposed to a Google form, which is sort of harder to access and get through. So those are just some things that I wanted to bring to the forefront. Thank you for the time. Great, thank you. All right. So again, I'm gonna give people an opportunity who did join and are able to access the chat to state if they do wanna participate in public participation, not seeing anyone else. And I do not see that Adam has joined us. So unfortunately, we will follow up with him and ask for his comments by email. All right, so our next item is our rainbow commission appointment. And I believe Keith has joined us. Keith, I am going to allow you to speak. And actually I can, Jennifer, do you wanna introduce him? Sure, so the rainbow commission was established, I think two years ago, this is relatively recent. And the school committee has one appointee. Our previous appointee, Anna Watson, who is fabulous had to step down for personal reasons. And so we issued a call. Didn't get actually a lot of applicants, but Keith is actually a great person. He's an educator from Burlington, an art educator. He's done a lot of sort of engagement at his district there and other personal things. And I just think he'd be a great asset. We actually met community relations months ago to recommend him, but for various reasons, he wasn't able to be sort of brought to the full committee until now. So I'd like to recommend him to the full committee. Great, thank you. And Keith, I did promote you to panelists if you wanna join my video, but we don't need you to. Do you just wanna say a couple words about why you responded to the invitation? Sure, I can be myself. There we go. Hi. Hi everybody. Thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm just, I'm really excited about this to be involved in it. I've lived in Arlington for about four years and I really love this community. And this is a cause that's really close to my heart, especially with kids and teenagers, but also with adults as well. And I had my first meeting, kind of to see what it was like a few weeks ago with the rainbow commission. And I'm really looking forward to the great work that the people in Arlington do. And I'm happy to be a part of this community. So I thank you very much for including me and for recommending me to the commission. Great. Great. I'd like to make a motion to recommend Keith to the rainbow commission as the school committee appointee. Okay. All right. Is there any further discussion? Anybody can just wave this time. Yes, Mr. Schuchman. Yeah. Thank you. And Keith, I just want to welcome you. Thank you for serving. Noting that you have one of the most typographically attractive resumes I've ever seen. It is a work of art and I appreciated that the quality of your presentation. Well, thank you. I was a graphic designer before I became a teacher. So I appreciate that. All right. Anybody else? You can just wave if you need to talk. All right. So we'll go through the roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schuchman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I am also yes. And just a, I just want to thank you Keith for your service and just to let you know that you should feel free to come back to the school committee at some point to sort of report on your work and anything he has to do especially with kids. I think the committee would love to know. Absolutely. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for serving. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Go ahead. Just to follow up on what Ms. Seuss just said I think it would be move the committee to have each one of our appointees as a group if we have more than one on a regular basis maybe monthly to an annual report not just wait if there's a crisis or something big coming up. So we can stay informed and ahead of the game. Thank you. Great. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? All right. Thank you Keith. Thanks. Okay. The next item is the COVID-19 update. So Dr. Bodie, unless this is going to be for you we have a couple of items listed but feel free to start and where you want as long as we recover those issues may make sense to give a break for questions from the committee after you go over the survey after you go over the latest updates and at other times that you think appropriate. So, or if you see somebody waving like this. All right. But you'll have to tell me if you see somebody waving like that. I'll watch out for you. All right. Well, good evening everyone. We certainly a week is more than a week has passed since we received the news from Governor Baker that schools are going to be closed for the remaining part of this year. I think it was certainly disappointing to the district and sure to parents as well. We would have loved to have had our students return but as they said in the letter I sent out to parents last night. I know how important it is that we all do our part to make sure that the spread of this virus remains more contained. We've had some as a district I wouldn't say that we knew that we were going to be closed but we suspected that might be a possibility a couple of weeks ago and we've actually started to make some plans along the lines of what would be essential standards that we might need to teach before the end of the school year. So over the over the last week one of the things we've wanted to learn more about was the experience of our families as well as our staff and we sent out a survey and we had a remarkable turnout for both surveys. So I want to do my report in a couple of ways. We're first gonna start giving an overview of the survey results from parents and then I'm gonna give an overview of what our plan is going forward. And part of that will also be an addressing special education because there's certainly been a lot of directors around special education from the Department of Education over the last few weeks. So to give the presentation on the survey results I'm gonna ask Dr. Muneal to do that. Okay, good evening everyone. I'm going to have to share my screen in order to provide access so everybody can view the slide deck that I'm going to use in order to report out the results from the parent guardian school closure survey. Okay, so I don't know if I have to get permission because when I go to share screen I get a message host disabled attendee screen sharing. All right. Let me see if I can put you up there Rod, okay? Okay. I might have to share it from my device. Okay. Host disabled participants screen sharing. I think we're all gonna be technologically savvy in a year from now. I think I just changed it. Yeah, I think I just changed it under options. Can you try again Dr. Muneal? Sure. Okay, yes, it works now. Thank you. Sure. So can everybody see my screen? Yes, thank you. Perfect. So as I stated, as Dr. Bodie stated last Friday we sent out two surveys, one to our APS parents and guardians and one out to our district staff. So the survey results that I will be sharing tonight are from the parent guardian school closure survey. And then I will also interject certain highlights from the staff survey that align with some of the questions and will help to illuminate some of the points that we received back from the parent guardians survey. So the objective of the survey for the presentation is to communicate the results of the APS parent guardian closure survey to the public. I'm going to also review some of the highlights of the survey and then you'll see the various graphs that have been constructed in order to share the information in an organized and readable format. And then I will be able to respond to comments or questions at the end. So just to give an overview, we had 3,187 parents respond to the survey. And I do want to add that it was sent out via Google form and parents had the opportunity to submit a form for every child in their household because we understood that some of the experiences may vary based upon the needs of the child. And we just wanted to make sure we were getting a very clear picture of everyone's experience. The majority of the respondents answered that they have the proper number of devices to access the activities provided by classroom teachers. And I think that was also due to our Chromebook distribution. Respondents indicated that having flexibility in timing is an important element for us to consider as we move forward in our remote learning plan. Most respondents indicated that their child is currently completing one to two hours of activities. Most respondents also indicated that they're receiving the proper amount of information from the district. And finally, most respondents answered student motivation as a challenge for students not completing the activities provided by classroom teachers. So these are just some of the major highlights that I noticed as I go through the slides, there might be other things that individuals notice. So I just wanted to identify these to begin. So this, and I'm not gonna talk extensively at each for each slide. I'll just touch upon some important points, but this just gives you an overview of who responded and where the students go to the schools from the families that responded. And this gives an overview of the grade levels that were represented in the survey. And this slide, and I also went to direct everyone to, I also put in each slide, not everybody responded to every prompt or question. So based upon a situation or what pertained to each child, that's why some people did not respond to certain prompts. So this one, we had 757 responses. And this is just asking about the, if a child is on an IEP, 504. So we wanted to be able to disaggregate the data based upon that, on what the child's, what type of support various respondents, or the children of various respondents were receiving. And this one I do wanna touch upon because it does talk to this, to what modes of communication are viewed as most successful. And you'll see that the live video sessions with the classroom teachers and Google classroom, which is a mode that we use to push out activities and assignments to students. Those are the two most popular ways that were viewed as being most successful with communication and receiving activities. This slide was interesting as well. Again, we had 3,170 responses to this question that asked, is your child able to engage in the recommended time? So that three hours and three and a half hours for high school to three hours for K through eight, those are recommendations from the state. And that's what, that is our target for our remote learning plan as we design the activities. And it's not just the core content areas. This also includes specials, electives, so that we can make sure we're addressing the whole child. This is a follow-up question to the previous question because it's asking, what are some of the challenges if they answered no, what are people saying about the challenges that's why students are not completing, the activities are not able to. And as you can see, student motivation was the primary reason. In this slide, we talked about this asking how many hours. And then you can notice that most students are completing about one to two hours of activities on a daily basis. So that gives us a benchmark on things that we need to consider as we go forward in our remote learning plan. This is how you would characterize the communication. And we were trying to see the ways that we're communicating the information. Are we being successful? And based upon the remarks, it seems that we're being moderate to high success with our communication. So as we move forward, this is something that we can also consider. I think this one, this question is just asking us the amount of communication. Where are we with the amount that individuals are receiving from the district and the middle? Because most people responded to three, I think I'm interpreting that as they're receiving the correct amount of information. This lets us know what the concern is as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and how people are handling it and the stress level. So it kind of gives us an idea of the stress level in each household as it relates to that and their concern. This is letting us know, again, as I mentioned at the beginning, that most parents are indicating that they do have a sufficient number of digital devices within their household for their child or children to access to activities. And this slide right here, and this is a piece of information that we can disaggregate by grade level, but we're looking at how much support our parents saying that their students need. And this is something that we would definitely disaggregate to determine like, is it at elementary level? Is it at the high school level? So this will let us know at what level we need to consider as we're designing our activities. And just again, I spoke at the beginning that the flexibility of timing is one of the most, is one of the things that people want us to focus on as we move forward with our remote learning plan. This one is what are some of the key areas that parents want us to focus on as we move forward in our remote learning plan, academics and preparation for next year, connection with teachers and peers are all, actually the academics and connection with teachers and peers were the highest, but also people are concerned about being, there's children being prepared for next year. This slide is talking about, I wanted to see how Google translate, how effective it is for our families who their preferred language is not English. So are they able to translate the information that they're receiving? And this slide only had very little, very few people responded to this. And I don't know if it's because of the language barrier, but I wanted to know if you, if we all wanted to know if the Google translate was not something that was, that they were viewing as effective, what are the languages that we need to make sure we pay attention to? And so this overall just gives us an idea of what people are dealing with within their individual households. This slide is giving us that information. And as you can see at the top of the list, you can't see it because it's cut off, but the first one is a person with an underlining condition and then unemployment. Those are the two highest concerns throughout the district for our families. And then it goes down the list. And there is also some individual responses that let us know that our parents and guardians and members of our community are dealing with some very serious issues. So I think this is definitely something that we need to take into consideration as we move forward and try to make sure that we're providing a balance for our families and that we're considering the equity piece of how we're pushing out our activities and assignments. So our next steps is that we're gonna use the data from the parent guardian survey to develop the next phase of the district's remote learning plan. The data will continue to be disaggregated by the building of district administrators and then district personnel are developing the next phase of the district's remote learning plan which will use the state's recent updated guidelines and curriculum standards as a foundation for moving forward. And the goal is to advance the curriculum so that we prepare our students for the next phase of learning and also to make sure that we're using the key standards and identifying the ones that we have not covered over the year and then the ones that are critical to advance that learning at each level. So I can open it up for comments and questions and I will stop sharing my screen as well. Or do you want me to keep the slideshow up for during the comments and questions? I'm gonna refer to it with my questions. Okay. Okay, so if you just let me know I can go to a particular slide if you would like. All right, sure. Mr. Heiner, why don't we go in order to start? I've got a couple of questions there. Was that slide, slow down. It was the last slide that you talked about. Oh, the last one? Okay, sorry. The one that had all the experiences? Yes. Right there. What I'd like to suggest, less like a question is that it's on our website and all our communication that we provide parents with whatever webpage we have in the town to get things of food security, health, things of this nature. We're concerned with it. Just let them know that if we can connect with the town link, the town has a lot of support facilities. So in our communication with that. The other one was, and I started just a small number not having Wi-Fi capability. My understanding is that the town will provide for it freely or ACMI or somebody will provide that freely for them. So we should be able to eliminate that piece of it. And my last question basically, and may go to the slides here or maybe it's to be deferred to the next section on remote learning. Work that is sent to the kids and things of that nature. Do the teachers check it over? Is there feedback to the students? And when a student doesn't do his or her work, if there is that feedback or there, it's not done correctly or they're not doing their work, are we informing the parents? So that's a very good question. And this is something that we've been doing since the inception of school closure. So I think that at the first phase of our remote learning plan, we wanted to make sure that, we were worried about, everybody's social emotional wellbeing, making sure that they had the various things that they need in order to progress academically and to also make sure that we're checking in with our families. And in doing so, we also, so part of that check-in was, as teachers reach out synchronously to the different, to the students on their caseload and a class list, the ones that they were not able to make contact with, they were, we were taking the time to make sure that we were reaching out and involving social workers and counselors in order to follow up in order to see how those students were doing. And then the enrichment activities for the enrichment activities, the classroom teachers were identifying and trying to encourage students to hand in their assignments. And then when they did, they did receive feedback, when we go into this next phase, we're gonna just be a little bit more structured. And so that, one thing from the curriculum and instruction department, I've made sure that the curriculum leaders know that when they're designing the lessons and they're identifying the activities to explicitly identify those activities that students will need to turn in to receive feedback. And these activities will be aligned with the key understandings that need to be addressed to move forward. Just a quick follow-up. Will is, and I don't mean to overburden the teachers or the administration, but periodic feedback to the parents as well, that the children are doing well or need some extra support or something like that. I don't know whether an email or something. Absolutely. We're definitely where it's warranted and we're definitely keep our parents up to date as to how students are doing, especially the ones who are not engaging. Those are the ones that we're also targeting to make sure that we're reaching out to the, to the families, the parents, in order to see what we need to do to support the engagement for those students. Great. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Dr. McNeil, thank you for this report. I'm hoping that we'll get a copy of the survey. And the survey results to look at in terms of the questions and stuff. I didn't write, I didn't make a copy of the questions as I took the survey and I regretted it afterwards. Two things about this. One, I think there was a lot of quibbling about grumbling that the survey was done in such a time limited fashion, especially without putting the information that it was going to be on a very short timeline in the email that was sent out. Second, I think there's a few things, I didn't think there was a question asked about internet access. There was a question about devices, but if internet access was not assessed, that is something that we should be asking about. I saw devices, I didn't see... So this question was a precursor. So we asked, is your child able to engage in three hours? And then the next one, if you looked at the options that were available for people to check off, it's lack of wifi and internet. And from the individuals of the 1,632 responses to this prompt, only eight people indicated that the reason why their kids cannot participate is due to a lack of wifi or internet. Okay, I'm just concerned. Okay, I appreciate that. Yes, you did kind of check it. It's buried. And I think given the other concerns I raised that it's not as clear that someone who actually has problems with wifi and or internet is going to be answering this survey fast enough to actually get an answer in. But one other thing I was concerned about is that there wasn't anything about asking how satisfied parents were with how school has been going up until now. And I think from what I'm hearing on social media and other places, that is something that would have been nice to have numbers on. My sense is that people have not been really happy with how it's going and it'd be useful to know how it's, what their satisfaction has been with what we had been doing and then hopefully it's going to increase with what we're pivoting to next week. So that's my comments. Thank you. All right, thank you. I just want to note to participants that the chat is only to be used for technical issues. For open meeting law reasons, we cannot have chats going on with members of the committee during an open meeting unless there are technical issues. So we're not ignoring you, but we actually should not be looking at your comments, unfortunately under the open meeting law. Ms. Seuss, you're next. Yes, hi. So a couple of things, one is that I note that 74% of the respondents say that students are spending less than two hours a day on activities. And one thing I think this survey sort of missed, right, so there's this slide, but then if you look at how much time people are spending, it comes out to 74% were doing less than two hours. So one thing I think that the survey missed in asking why that is, it assumed that there were some barriers like motivation or something, but what I'm hearing from parents almost universally is there just isn't that much work given. It's not required work, not optional work, not suggested activities. There just isn't enough that would fill out three hours in a day or three and a half hours in a day. So I wish we had sort of asked that in the survey because I think that would have been helpful. But then another comment, so just to let people note that, I mean, you've gone through this, but there are sort of a new set of recommendations from the Department of Education that, which is why things will look very differently in the next couple of months or a month and a half. The recommendations so far up until now had been to only cover established content and a bunch of other things. So it's just sort of, so there's another level and this is why things are gonna look very different. And I wanna note that one thing that that current recommendation is, has stressed very heavily that engagement with students is very high priority and that they recommend very heavily that that engagement be synchronous. So while essential learning shouldn't happen synchronously, I mean, people are looking for a lot of flexibility in that, that the 25 page document that sort of laid out the recommendations gave it a whole bunch of different sort of recommendations for a check-in or an office hour or something that is synchronous as an engagement perspective, not as a content level work, but that is now the current, but very new recommendation from the Department of Education. Yes, and I just wanna comment that your view of the daily activities and the amount of time we view that the same thing, we saw that and that is gone into how we have moved forward with our plan. And I also, that's why I also want to emphasize that when you look at, I don't know, and this is one thing that we're trying to make sure we're very cognizant of is that the synchronous or asynchronous communication or using the asynchronous method for trying to push lessons out, the synchronous contacts will focus on the social, emotional and making connections with students. We are emphasizing that as we move forward and Dr. Bodie will speak to that as she talks about the next phase of our remote learning plan, but in the design of the lessons, we did take into consideration that information. We are viewing it the same way you are that we're trying to get to that three hours. And that's why I also added when I got to this slide that we're not just talking about content area, we're not just talking about reading, writing, math and science and social studies, but we're also making sure that the community knows that when you receive an art project or some physical activities from the physical education teachers that focus on certain skills, and then you also have music, that it also should be incorporated into that three, three and a half hours determination. So we're also trying to make sure we have a nice balance between academic, physical activity and creative aspects that can be offered by our electives. So I just wanna make sure that we point that out and we have taken that in consideration. So I just wanna support what you're saying that I agree with you that we need to make sure where we're looking at as we're designing our activities to be very specific about making sure that it's filling up that we're meeting that guidelines of three and three and a half hours at the high school level. And yes, we also are going to start, we looked at the survey and we saw that parents identified as the synchronous connections to the Google Live Hangouts meet as very successful and something that they want more of. So that's where we're also gonna emphasize that as well. Great. So thank you for your comments. And I just wanted to assure you that we have, we're seeing that the same way that you're viewing it as well. Great, thank you. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, thanks very much for the survey. I would, we're on the slide that I had the question on, you don't have a breakdown of more than three and a half hours, three hours, or you know, the 74% that are, what is it, less than? Less than two. Less than two, less than two hours. You don't have a breakdown of that by any other, by grade. Do you have a breakdown of that by grade? I do have a way of desegregating the data by grade level. And you know, we are looking at that. As I said before, the building principles and the district level administrators are desegregating that data and our curriculum leaders. So again, we're looking at this information and we're using it as we plan and design lessons moving forward. At the same time, we are also taking into consideration that we don't want kids to be, you know, we wanna balance between like activities and like, and you know, looking at a screen as well. So we're trying to make sure that when we design our lessons and our activities that there's a balance of projects, you know, individual assignments that don't require staring at a screen. Yeah, not fair enough. I think that's, I mean, the other thing is I look at this chart. I mean, I suspect a lot of the students are doing more than three and a half hours. Maybe it's, I mean, it's hard to desegregate that our most motivated students in the district. Although I, you know, I have no way, we have no way of knowing that, but I assume that there's a lot of, a lot of those who are doing more than three, three and a half hours probably are our most motivated students. Would you, do you think that's probably true? We have no way of knowing. But, you know, that is hard to really understand that dynamic of it, but, you know, we want to make sure that, you know, the assignments, like we're looking at like 20 to 30 minutes per content area too. So we wanna make sure that it's a balance over disciplines and content areas. And so, you know, if a student is going through their assignment, you have to also understand like when you're in class, we have like cooperative grouping. There's a lot of discussion that's going on. There's dialogue. So, you know, some of that is, that element is taken out of it. So, you know, some of our students may get, you know, some activities and are able to complete the activities in a short amount of time. So therefore we're also adding like enrichment activities that can go along with that activity that was assigned for that day or for that week that students can also engage in and also support what they're doing that can help fulfill that three hour suggestion. So we're also making sure that we're pushing these out through Google classroom at the, you know, and so that that's where, you know, we can get feedback from teachers and students and we can just continue to tweak this as we move along. And I think that's also the message I would like everyone to understand. Like we're, this is something that we're, you know, we were hit with and as we've moved through the weeks, we're collecting information and we're tweaking what we're doing and we're trying to make sure that we're meeting the goals that have been outlined by the state, but it's been a learning process. You know, it's, you know, if you think about this, a lot of our teachers were trained to deliver instruction based upon being in session. And now we have to learn a brand new way of delivering instruction in a remote learning environment. So, you know, within a short amount of time. So we're trying to make sure that we are using the information and, you know, learning and continually to improve upon what we're doing. Yeah, no, thank you, Rod. And thanks for this. I mean, I'm assuming that you're taking the data from the parent survey and you're layering it on all the data you have inside the district in terms of the number of students that are in Google Hangouts. And because I mean, because if you kind of study at grade, grade level by grade level and, you know, academic level, especially at the high school, I'm sure you're seeing trends in terms of the number of students participating based on levels in the high school for sure. Absolutely. And I just want everybody to know that we're continuing to use this data and we're going to continue to learn from that data. Yeah. And we're going to continue to tweak it and improve upon what we're doing. Okay, thank you. I have a couple of comments on that. We have been talking with principals about the level of the student engagement. One, one, there's two ways you can look at it. You can look at it from the number of students that synchronously go on Google Hangout Meet. And you can also look at it from the perspective of what percentage students actually turn in assignments every week. Absolutely. And get feedback. And they're different. We have a much higher percentage of students that are actually participating in Google Classroom and getting assignments in. And those percentages have been going up. I know that just for one grade level, for example, eighth grade, the percentages are sometimes anywhere from 75 to 90% of the students. So that's a great percentage. Obviously, we love it to be closer to 100, if not 100. But the number of students that are synchronously going in Hangout can be less and vary by grade. I will say that one of the things that we were, we got a very strong turnout also in responses from staff. And if you take out on the question of how many times have you had Google Hangout during the week for students, and you take out those that are not applicable, like bus drivers and secretaries, 94% of the teachers in the last couple of weeks have been going and doing Hangout at least once. 70% are two to five and five plus time. So it is definitely happening, but the turnout in Hangout isn't as high as the submissions of work, which is interesting. Yes. So that's the intersection between the staff survey results and the parent results. And we're trying to calibrate that and then also emphasize that as we move forward those synchronous live sessions. Great, thank you. Mr. Schipman, you're up next. Thank you. For a quick survey that is being done with a bunch of questions we're not experienced with, I thought this is well done. I share Dr. Allison Ampey's desire to see the crosstabs because I'm sure there's some really interesting information here. The other concern I have obviously is that when we're asking in English for issues of second language learners in a predominantly English format prompted by an English email, we may be a little off on that. And when we're asking if you're able to get online easily on the online format, that's obviously gonna be skewing the data on those questions as well. The only other question I have, which will be resolved if we get the crosstabs is on slide 20, which was the next to last. Okay, I also wanna say like, it was stated that the questions that you see on the slides are the actual questions from the survey. So I just wanna make sure if everybody has a copy of this and I know that I sent one to Karen. And so I know if you're able to have a copy of this slide deck, these are all the actual questions. I just wanna make sure. Yeah, the thing is, is that we're locked in here into this format and it's difficult enough to be looking at the Zoom and the slides and... Right, exactly. So that becomes a little more difficult. The usual papers and space that we have doesn't exist within the confines of the laptop. Which led me, oh yeah, on slide 20, just the slide cuts off the text of the prompt on the... Survey question, so that it reads a person with a blank. Oh, right, right. Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay, I can try that. So that would be helpful. But I've gotta say that, this has been incredibly difficult times for everybody. We weren't set up to do this. We're not trained to do this. I'm watching partially on the other end as my wife is teaching piano and negotiating with students to set up times that don't conflict with schooling and parents work schedules. And getting common time within the course of the class is probably the biggest challenge that we're seeing. And I'm very grateful for all the efforts of folks to make connections with kids. I appreciate it. And I appreciate everybody's comments and questions as well because it definitely helps us to continue to think how we can evolve on what we're doing. Okay, thank you. Ms. Morgan, you're next. So first of all, I think it's really important to acknowledge that while there may be imperfections with how the survey was administered or the tone or specifics of some of the questions potentially that we could look back on, I think the fact that this was sent out and that input was solicited should be really commended because I think that when you're doing something as a district or as an administrative team that I think we can all feel sort of understandably uncomfortable with the position that we're in right now, asking for feedback can be really hard. And so I'm really, really grateful that you all chose to do this. So I have a couple of comments. I'm gonna try and do my comments first and then do my questions at the end. So as others have said, that I don't put a whole lot of stock in the data that we're getting about digital devices and Wi-Fi from a survey that had a limited opening period was only accessible online. I do know that at the Audison, Mr. Merringer and Ms. Murphy had initiated a plan where they were working on a sort of census 2020 system where they were looking to connect with every single student. And if you had a device and adequate internet, you were also asked to fill out the survey and then you were sort of dropped out of the pool of people that they were looking to connect with and presumably have whittled down that list to like a very small handful of students who still either don't have adequate devices or Wi-Fi. And I know that as a district from what we've heard over the last six weeks that that has been something that you guys have been doing is sort of just, eventually you're gonna connect with everybody, I would assume. So I just, I hope that that work continues. I'm sure that it does. I'm much more interested in the results of that outreach than I am in what we hear from a survey. So, I wanted to touch on, Dr. Bodie said that it sounds like, we don't have the slides, which is fine, but in the teacher survey, it sounds as though there were 6% of teachers who are not doing hangouts. This is the 6% that responded to the survey and felt that it was appropriate to say they weren't doing hangouts. So I worry that that, you know, 6% is still pretty high to me if there are students out there, even in Gen Ed classes who have had no contact with their classroom or their teacher. And I have no idea how many weeks into this we are. Actually, it's like, it feels like 1,006, 7, 6, I don't know, a long, really long time that really concerns me, 6% is really high, especially if you think it might be higher than that because people didn't respond. So I really hope we can get to a place where that's the expectation and that that's being delivered to our families. They're obviously saying that it's really important. So if that's not happening, it's not been my experience with my children, but, you know, that worries me. To Dr. McNeil's point about the academic and elective time and the three hours and the three and a half hours, you know, I appreciate that and I understand sort of macroscopically that the direction Jesse has been to do all of these pieces. I will say that as an educator and as a parent, I am far better able to serve my children's elective needs in art, music, physical education, outside. Like I can't, you know, I don't see there is, you know, with all due respect to our physical education teachers, I don't need necessarily those kinds of assignments. I think it's fine that they're being provided, but the, you know, the academic piece is what, as parents, it's really, really difficult to provide. So again, you know, I understand that three hours encompasses all of that. I appreciate the need for balance. I think that that's important, but it's, you know, I also think there has to be an acknowledgement that our kids are far better able to meet their elective and personal interests, you know, in their own time and, you know, on their own than they are necessarily to meet their academic needs sometimes. So I had, actually I think I'm down, oh no, I have two questions. So one of them, Dr. Muneal, I think is pretty straightforward. If you go back to the special education slide, it was very early on, two, three, four, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, this one. What, do you have a sense of what other means if the following apply to your child? I understand what an IEP is. I understand what the 504 is. I understand what ELL support is. I understand substantially separate. Do you have any sense of what that 96 other group is? Yes, so the survey, yes, the answer is yes. Good. We could capture what the individual others are and they just come out. And the reason why I put 96 on there is because these graphs will not allow me to put every single solitary type of support. Was that like a type in answer? It was an individual response. Once you hit other on the form, it allows you to type in an individual response. Got it, okay, all right, great. And so if we had some, would we have some access at some point, just understand, I don't need specifics obviously to like students, but like I am curious, like 96 is a lot, I'm not totally clear what that group represents. I'm glad you guys know, because that's... Well, yeah, like people would, yes, so the answer is yes. So people wrote in like my child receives reading support or my child receives this or, you know, there's all different kinds of different support that we provide. And so that's why we wanted to make sure that we were being inclusive of, you know, you can't list all the things that kids are receiving. So that's why we put other in there in order to encompass that desire to get that type of information. Thank you, that's super helpful. So I think the last piece for me that has been tricky, and I've talked to a lot of other parents is this whole notion of feedback, right? What is feedback? How is feedback helpful? How does feedback drive engagement? You know, I work for a fully online university, our classes, our class in a can, we provide the course materials to our faculty and we are really paying our adjunct faculty to provide feedback to our students, right? That is the driving force towards student engagement and achievement and that's what we pay, you know, in my day job, that's what we pay people to do, right? And so I'm curious, you know, we're talking about feedback and that they're receiving feedback on one assignment per week. And I'm curious what sort of administratively your vision is for what this feedback looks like. Understandably, it's different in first grade versus 12th grade or kindergarten. But I have noticed in my conversations with families in my own experiences that, you know, there is a lot of inconsistency, obviously, but I don't know that there's a shared definition of feedback that is being used and scaffolded by grade level across our schools. And I hope that that's something, you know, I'm sure that it's something that you guys are talking about. It's something that I hope that you talk about more because it's a huge driver towards this idea of engagement, right? That we're looking to engage our students and we're looking for them to have, you know, both, you know, learning experiences along their path and then some sort of like formative, you know, and substantive feedback, you know, when they reach some kind of, you know, benchmark or standard. So I guess I'm curious, you know, for Dr. McNeil, I suspect you have a strong sense of what feedback looks, sounds and feels like, but I'm curious about how we're going to work with all of our faculty to be able to do that for our students. Yeah, so I mean, we've talked about feedback and the feedback that we provide, you know, as we, again, we're aligning the activities and so to your point, moving forward, there's like, before we were offering like a choice board. So parents were receiving a lot more, we're being more prescriptive about it. So it would be more than just one assignment per week. So parents will be receiving and it's gonna depend on the key understanding that we're trying to address. And so what is that going to look like moving forward? But the feedback will be able to give students an understanding of how they're progressing towards that key understanding. And so what needs to be still reviewed by that student? And so that's where the feedback will primarily center on trying to advance the understanding for that particular student's ability to grasp that concept that we're trying to teach just as it would be, just as it would be when we're in session. So I mean, perhaps maybe even a little bit more qualitative because it's going to be, you know, some of the, most of the feedback is gonna be from in a narrative form instead of like using a grade. So I'm very excited about the way that teachers are approaching this. And I think that the feedback that they provide on these very, you know, these identified activities is going to be something that can lead our students forward. Okay. I guess, you know, I think that you speak articulately about it. I think that we as a parent community and I still think, you know, on the ground with the faculty who are delivering this, I think that we, you know, continue to need to be educated and engaged in what that means and how it's effective for our students and why, you know, if we have curriculum leaders who are producing curriculum materials, which I think is absolutely appropriate at this point, I don't think that every kindergarten teacher needs to prepare a science lesson. But if, you know, if a lot of this curriculum is being provided, especially K-5, then the efforts and energy of our teachers needs to be on providing feedback to students. Absolutely, absolutely. And I would say that we're not there yet, right? Which is okay. I mean, it feels like it's been a million years, but we're not at a place where we're providing, you know, robust, actionable, substantive feedback to students. And it's really hard and it's super time consuming and, you know, I hope that we, you know, there are ways to provide, you know, Dreambox in math, for example, is a way to provide, like students are getting feedback, right? They're getting canned. And again, it's automatically graded feedback, right? That they're getting on some of the things that they're doing. And I think that we can talk about the value of that, right? It's like automatic feedback. I think that things like Google Forms or quizzes or whatever that can be done that provides students with auto graded automatic feedback, I think is really useful. And making sure that, you know, I mean, my preference is that my, you know, my kids' teachers and all of our kids' teachers are providing, you know, the feedback that we can't get from a Dreambox, from a Google Form, you know, from any of that work. You know, that's where, you know, they're the professionals, they're the subject matter experts. That's what we really, what I hope that we get to a place where that's what they're working to do. And it's really, really hard. It's really very time consuming. And so I just, you know, encourage you to continue to have this to be, you know, an area for professional development and conversation and growth. Because I think it's the biggest piece here that we could, you know, we can potentially get to in the next couple of months. Absolutely. Yes, thank you for that. Yes, absolutely. We're going to continue to have those type of conversations about the whole design process and a part of the learning process and the teaching aspect of it is assessment and feedback. So thank you for that. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. So just a couple of things from me. One is that, you know, as we evolve, you know, I hope we'll do two things. One is continue to build in, you know, what we've learned from this survey. So we hear clearly how these hangout meetings, connections are very important, yet we still don't have a mandate that all elementary teachers do one or there's no expectation that, you know, I mean, they seem more important at the younger grade level. So maybe there, we say twice a week, they'll be done. But there's no, it's great that 94% of teachers are doing them, but there's, again, no structure, official requirement that this is going to be part of everyone's experience. So again, I would encourage you to do that and move forward. And the other thing is the other way to get feedback is, you know, your principles are sort of your ears on the ground, even though they're not in their buildings, they know their communities, they can, they can and should be reaching, I'm sure they're hearing a lot from parents, but they also can be reaching out to parents that they know, you know, parents of certain types of children who might not be engaging and parents of other children who may be overengaging and sort of doing focus type groups of feedback. The forms next week that you're scheduling will be useful, but on an ongoing basis, I'm sure they're getting some feedback, but I would definitely encourage, you know, as an administrative team to continue, you know, to continually to reach out to parents to see what's working and what's not working because we're changing this on the go and it's very difficult. But clearly there are things, you know, the survey shows, there's things that people like, things that aren't working so well, and we need to continue to get that feedback as we go forward. Absolutely, I agree with you. All right, thank you. Is there any other? Mr. Hainer, you have your hand. I guess I'd ask the chair. Is this the time to ask Dr. Elmer some questions? Or is that going to be a little later? She has her presentation, I think. Okay, I'll wait. Thank you. So once again, I just want to thank everybody for your comments and questions. They're definitely thought provoking and we'll be taken in consideration. The reason that we did send a survey and it may have seen like a short amount of time, I do want to address that before I end my presentation is that we're trying to gather all this information and a lot of this planning is taking place this week. So like we're pushing out, you know, the next phase of the remote learning plan next week. So we have to be able to, you know, take this information. So as you evolve state, we will continue to reach out to the community and get more feedback as we push forward in our next phase in order to continue to evolve in what we're doing. So thank you for everything. And Dr. Alice Hampi, do you have anything else? Thanks, sorry. I can't mute and then raise my hand and everything at the same time. I just wanted to speak and as long as we're talking about feedback, I just wanted to speak to some stuff that I've seen over the past couple of weeks on social media, summarizing between 50 and 100 different people's. You went on mute, you went on mute, you went on mute somehow. Sorry, am I okay? I'm summarizing between 50 and 100 people's responses and boiling them down just into like five, six high points. The strong desire for synchronous activity, one thing that wasn't clear always was whether it was for learning or just as a check-in or as a means to engage, to hopefully motivate learning, but this very strong desire for synchronous activity that there's a feeling among many parents that they felt kind of abandoned by the teachers because of the administration, because of the decision made to not really to do just asynchronous teaching to begin with, especially among the younger kids during the first few weeks of the break, people felt lost, the kids felt lost and that was something that was a real negative that they felt. There's been a very highly variable experience among different parents, I mean, different students even at the same grade, same school, same subject. And there was a desire for understanding, for more communication about how choices are made and wanting more parental inputs. So I'm glad that there's a forum. Then the last one was that there is a concern that it feels like other districts are doing a better job of faster response, but just to speak, I've been in contact with other districts and basically everyone seems to be hearing that. So all other districts everywhere are doing it better than the home district for any particular town. So that's all. Thank you for that. And I just wanna also acknowledge the hard work that our teachers are doing to reach out to families and we understand that this is something we're gonna, like I said before, we're gonna continue to tweak, take the feedback, try to evolve, but I just can't end this presentation without giving my utmost appreciation for everybody's effort within the district, working together, administrators, teachers, TAs, all our educators, support people, they're doing a phenomenal job and they're working very hard. So I just wanna acknowledge everybody in the district. Yes. Thank you. Go ahead, Dr. Modi. I would wanna echo that. I believe the teachers are working very hard. This has been a very difficult thing for everyone to really change the whole way that we teach, the way we communicate, we live. All of this has been very challenging for all of us. I think it's particularly hard for parents that have children at home. You weren't trained to be teachers, most of you, and we also have our teachers from home doing exactly the same thing. So they have the experience of what you're talking about and what you're experiencing. To Dr. Allison Ampey's point, yes, I would say that's probably a very common thing that everybody thinks other districts doing better, but being in very weakly communication with a lot of superintendents right around this area, districts are doing the same thing. The emphasis is on very, very few exceptions. One exception I can think of. The emphasis has been on asynchronous and synchronous learning. And the synchronous has been the emails, chats, hangouts for the purpose of maintaining those connections with students, but the actual instruction and the lesson plan, the lessons and the feedback, that's all been done asynchronously through classroom or a similar kind of platform. The Google classroom seems to be the most common. So our teachers are working very hard. I think they feel a little discouraged that people don't recognize that they are working is very hard. One thing that's most surprised to us on the survey is a number of people who teachers and staff who themselves have some internet issues. Not always in some areas, you actually get the great connections you might have in Arlington with the closest city. So there are issues that everybody's been working through this as best they can, but it doesn't mean that there's not a lot of things that we can do to improve. And I think that's what we have had a lot of discussion about over the last couple of weeks about how we can do a better job. So I appreciate your comments. And we certainly, we're certainly working very hard and want to do the very best we can for all the children in Arlington who are in our schools. That's my comment on that. So we can go on if you'd like to, Mr. Cardin into the next part of this. Sure, I just want to just shout out to Mr. Levy. If you ever, at any point you want to participate, just go ahead and go off, either reach your hand through the app or go off mute and that'll be a sign for me to call on you. Thanks. Go ahead, Dr. Podi. Mr. Mason, can you put the next PowerPoint up? I'll have to share a screen again. This has been Novus, by the way, if you want to look at it through that. All right. Can you move it? The next slide. All right. Late last Friday, we received new guidance from the Department of Education with respect to what districts should be considering doing the direct guidance in terms of the next phase, which in our case is from May 4th to June 19th. And the most important message I believe in this guidance is that they highly recommend that we move all students toward a consistent engagement with the focus on connectedness, which we've been talking about, and content grade standards that are critical for the success in the next grade. In both cases, we've been looking at how we can improve engagement. And we have particularly been looking at what are the critical standards that we've not taught this year at every grade level in every discipline, and have been looking at at that for the last couple of weeks. Next. So, the key things that the Department of Education has put out in its guidelines to strengthen the remote learning plan. With that, the connection of educators and students, provide engaging core instruction focused on the content standards, critical for success in the next grade, as well as they want us to continue having enrichment, emphasizing the importance of exercise and the importance of play. I suspect parents will say there's no issue on the play part, but ensuring a programming that's accessible and communication that is streamlined to students and family and I was, you know, for the most part, I think that there was the feedback we received from the survey was that the communication is been pretty good for the district, but doesn't mean there's not areas that we definitely can improve upon. And we certainly are looking at ways that we can do that. And one of them is that we, now that we have a chance to get into this next phase, an opportunity for sort of a, I don't wanna say a Tom Hall, but it's sort of an opportunity to answer questions in a life format like this. Next. So they also, what we've talked about tonight, they want educators to reach out to students that are not effectively engaged in the remote learning. And I will say that this is something that teachers have been doing. Students have not been turning through Google classroom. They have, it's certainly sixth through grade 12, they have been sending emails trying to engage with those students to find out, you know, what's going on and what can they do to support them. At the elementary level, teachers reach out not directly to students, but have to do that through emails with parents. And have asked to have conversations with parents about what they can do to help support the students more. This is something that we know that is important to do. We have been doing it and we're going to continue and probably up this even more as we go into this next phase because we are going to be advancing the curriculum over the next seven weeks. So consider strategic collaboration, teaming and differentiation that makes the remote learning possible. This is happening a lot and it has been going on. There are a tremendous amount of collaboration that's going on at a grade level in department, in learning communities at the middle school, in same teachers are teaching the same course. This has really been a significant effort. And one of the things that I know that teachers are engaged in meetings, we have a master calendar where I can see a lot of the meetings that are going on. And I can tell you there are many, dozens, every day, everywhere. Next. All right, so in the last, we all pretty much know where we've been in the last couple of phases. We've been looking at student connections. We've been engaging in enrichment and deeper learning. And we're focusing already taught skills and concepts. And actually I've been a teacher for many years myself. There's still some great value of going deeper into already taught concepts. Sometimes you feel that as you're marching through a curriculum, scope and sequence, that perhaps the deeper learning of some of that material, it doesn't happen for all students. So while this may have been an issue that people didn't think that this was worthwhile, that it's something that actually is a great opportunity for students to deepen their learning. Yes? So what are our key changes that are gonna be going forward in the next seven weeks? Well, the important thing is that we have identified the essential concepts and skills that we think that are critical for students to address to the next phase. Now, the Department of Education when they gave their guidelines last week identified what they would call the power standards in the major content area. Well, I don't wanna label it major, but in MCAS-Tested areas, but one of the things that some state level organization doesn't know is the sequence in which you've taught these concepts, probably for math, that's a little bit unique in that it does have a sequential progression. But for example, with science, when we teach science concepts at the elementary level depends upon which classroom has that particular kit for those four weeks. So we've taken, we've looked at our own, the state standards, we've looked at our scope and sequence to identify what are the essential and critical skills that students need to have to progress next year. And that is part of our plans for each of the next seven weeks. So at the elementary level, in order to have consistency across the whole district, the curriculum leaders have and add teachers as well and coaches have been working together to make sure that we have a uniform approach at all the schools in the elementary level. The same thing's true at department levels, at the middle school and as well as the high school. And all of, and why this is particularly important, it will inform our planning for the fall 2020. And we understand that it's going to be very important to do, to assess when students come back where they are, to do extensive reteaching and reviewing. But what is going to be important for a foundation in that, all students have had the same experience this year. Next. So our plan going forward is to blend of two things. It's a blend of asynchronous lessons as well as synchronous times for students to be in contact with teachers. The lessons will be pushed out, that's the right word shared through Google Classroom. Sometimes these will include, in fact, I suspect somewhat frequently, these will include videos of instruction anywhere from four minute to 20 minute videos. One of the things that I think is really a strength of this plan in terms of equity, in terms of our students who need multiple times of hearing a lesson is that you can go back as many times as you want and review and look at the video. So rather, we're not going to be advancing the curriculum through Google Hangout Meets or the chats. It's going to be through Google Classroom, videos for instruction, explanation of assignments and we'll also include teacher feedback on those assignments because another feature of going forward is that at the end of this period, we want to be able to reflect on where students have progressed over this period of time. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Next. So our synchronous connections are again, a stronger, much stronger emphasis on live video sessions, at least once per week for each student. One of the things that we are seeing at the elementary is that teachers are finding having Google Hangouts and live video with a class of 22 students that are second graders, first graders, it just doesn't work well. This has been a learning experience as we go forward. So many teachers are trying to break these into much smaller groups and before a shorter period of time, because again, we're learning as to what students can actually manage in that kind of environment. The one thing that we saw in the parent survey is that one of the major reason why students have not been turning in assignments as motivation and maybe it's from the inspired, maybe it's because they don't think it really counts or they've already done this before. But clearly motivation has been an issue. And one of the things that we want to emphasize through these video sessions is to inspire students to be continuing with their learning. We'll continue, at this time, we'll have a little bit more uniformity through the district in terms of defined office hours when students know that a teacher will be synchronous at that particular time. The hangouts can take place in that, emails, phone calls in some cases. So this is a time that they know they can get immediate response. So having said that, I will say that teachers get emails all the time from students from six through 12. And I think the response time is actually quite impressive. So the office hours will include a variety of communication that are timely. All right, next, Michael. So Dr. Janger sent out to parents last night and the two middle schools today to parents and to students to understand what is the plan in much more detail. My letter was really just to sort of set the overall picture of where we were going, what the underlying rationale was, how we came to it, but the very specifics are being given out through the schools. So one of the things that all students and maybe can take a deep breath on is that if they've completed all of their work and have grades for terms one through three, for year-long courses, they will get their five credits if they were taking a semester class, they will get their full 2.5 credits at the end of third term or the PE courses 2.5 for the year. What I think is very innovative and very student-focused is the plan for the next quarter, the next fourth term. And that is we are moving on in the curriculum in all courses in the high school. And there is going to be a rubric for what would be considered the amount of work that would be sufficient and quality sufficient for a student to receive an audit for that course for the spring fourth term. If they receive an audit, that will go on their transcript and it will also be available when they apply to colleges down the road. So obviously we can't, a teacher can't perhaps make up all of what was missed over the last seven weeks. So the focus is really on what are the key concepts, skills, products and experiences that will be necessary going forward and what they would need to be able to do. So for students who failed term one to three, they're going to be able to use this time to focus on credit recovery. And in fact, all of that began weeks ago in terms of credit recovery. We all, as part of the high school, this is not new this year. The high school focuses particularly for seniors in the last half of the year on students receiving the credit, doing credit recovery so they're able to graduate. Okay, thanks. So that was, but as I said, Dr. Janger sent out a very long, in fact, I think it's, I don't know, 16 or 18 pages long in terms of more information about the plan high school. So for Audison and Gibbs, one of the things that has been happening over the last couple of weeks is a lot of conversations so that basically they're operating as a middle school. We wanted to make sure that the way that the next seven weeks were approached by department, by grade, it was similar. And as as the high school, the key concepts and skills that are identified that students should be able to do in order to move on to the next grade, the next course are going to be the focus of the next seven weeks, the next seven weeks of assignments and lessons. Again, going back to this issue of motivation and another answer on that survey was the students may not have turned things in because it was optional. Though I will say as time has been going on the last few weeks, the percentage of students turning in work has really been much better. So they have agreed to having a non-traditional grading system for the next seven weeks. And it's going to be a three part. So it's going to be MP and U. So N meaning that the students have participated and engaged in decent learning activities with consistency, have they have applied the teacher feedback with instruction and their effort and the evidence of work quality. If a student is less than consistent engagement and distance learning and the work reflects some student effort but student has not fully met the distance learning expectations they will get a P at the end of these seven weeks. And then U will be that they've unable to determine a distance learning grade at all. They have not participated and there's been little or no student work turned in for feedback. It's a little bit different approach but this will also be helpful as they move from one grade to the next so that the teachers in the next grade can get a sense of who's coming into their classes have been a fully participant or less so during this spring term. And this is going to be, as I said both Addison and Gibbs. All right, thank you. Next one. The elementary school implementation. Again, I mentioned earlier how important we feel it is that there's consistency across all of the schools. So we move into the fall and know what we need to assess and know what we need to review. We know that there's been a foundation at all the schools. So there is going to be a uniform work grid that is gonna be used in all of the elementary schools. And that grid will have all the assignments for every day of the week, Monday through Friday and then we'll have it for every single discipline in the elementary schools. So if you have an art assignment, it'll be decided but that can be on a Tuesday or is that on that grade or it's gonna be on a Wednesday. Music, digital learning, we're emphasizing that students practice keyboarding. We're gonna give a certain amount of time for each one of the subjects, math, reading, writing, science, social studies, all of that is gonna be on the grid. The other thing is that that grid, we've had feedback from parents at the elementary level that they just knew what to sort of expect for the week. It'd be easier to sort of be up and running on Monday. So the overview of the week is going to be sent out to parents on Sunday night. What you can do in Google Classroom, which is a wonderful feature is that you can schedule it on a Thursday or even on a Friday to be sent out at a certain time. So that's gonna be happening. Now the actual assignments will be in Google Classroom beginning on Monday. So you would see the Monday assignments in Google Classroom, you would not see Tuesday or the other days. So consistency and the other thing is we're going to, we know how important emotional learning and enrichment activities are and those will also still be part of the activities and assignments for the week. We are, the assignments are replacing choice boards. The other piece of feedback principles and teachers too have had is that it's hard, it's been hard for parents to sort of pick out what the most important assignments are from all the choice boards. Well, we're not having choice boards anymore. It's going to be a very defined lesson, very structured. So these are the big, the overviews. More information will come to parents and to students directly from their teachers in schools. And so that is the overview and I'm open to see if there's any questions or comments. Great, thank you. I think most of us, let's go down the list in order. Mr. Haynor, do you want to start? Yeah, first off, I'm a little bit concerned and I hope you can align my concerns on the grading at the middle school that you put on that slide. Oh, anyway, it basically unable to make a determination because of material that's not coming in. I'm concerned with any students that do not have a device. I know it's very small. I'm concerned with students that do not have internet capability. I'm concerned with students with English second language that they may not do it. Second language, you may be providing the material in that language. So it's less of a concern. The first two I'm concerned with. So if you want to answer them one at a time, I'll save my other two. That would be, yeah, so that's probably makes sense. We are constantly trying to find out who does not have device principles. By the way, have continued to pass out devices when they find out that someone doesn't have one or there's insufficient. I think that's one of the things we're finding more that they don't have a device at all. It's that there's not enough devices. We have, when we find out someone doesn't have internet, we help them contact, because you've somebody mentioned earlier that they can get free internet and they can through Comcast and Verizon. So we haven't, we could not agree with you more. And that's been actually one of the issues around equity in the district the last few weeks is trying to narrow it and hopefully we can narrow to zero those differences. In a regular school environment, if a student was failing all of a sudden or not turning in work, I'd go to the principal, the principal talked to the social worker, they'd be outreach to the family. I'm hoping that this is going to be able to continue that we don't wait till the end of the marking period to give a grade that if, once we have all the students getting the material, if somebody starts to fall, I don't want them to fall through the cracks. If they start not doing something for whatever reason or not turning anything in from the beginning, we find a way to communicate, find out at the home. There may be something that happened. We always find out something physically, something in the family. It's easy to do in the know, we're more comfortable in the normal environment. So I'd ask you to consider that going forward, activating the social workers and things of that nature. I know there's a lot on everybody's mind, but I don't want all of a sudden to find out the end of a marking period that a parent or a sibling or somebody got very sick during this and interfered with the communication. It's good for the school to know this. No, you're totally correct on that. And that's actually probably our most important concern. Great. Going forward. You've talked about that before. My other. We are totally in agreement on that. One of the things they're building in at the secondary level is that that last week also is an opportunity for kids to make up work and then maybe have enrichment for others. We know that and we're trying to, probably the best way is to actually just pick up the phone and call people, but we have been watching that. We have been watching that and we have been reaching out, but I think that now that we're moving on and advancing the curriculum, I think that it's even more important. We agree. Did I hear you say that you're going to do an assessment or an evaluation at the end of the term to make it a terminate? No, no, no, not this year. Next year we need to take a look at where we are, but we will be doing a review and we teaching us some things next year. I think that an assessment sometime at the beginning of the year will be helpful in knowing what actually does need to be retodd. And we always. Okay. Do the elementary students have a lifetime visual contact with their teachers? Yes. Yes. Okay. Is the school providing emails, school emails to the elementary level? No. Why aren't we doing that? What? Why aren't we doing that? I'm concerned with the safety of our teachers communicating with uncontrolled emails. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I'm not sure. Well, I mean, at the secondary level, if I'm a student at the secondary level, I have a school email and my teacher talks to me on that email back and forth. They're not private emails, they can be monitored and there's no, the emails are not a private concern. And I know other school districts, even at the elementary level are providing email accounts for their elementary students. And I think it's beneficial for all the students and the teachers to be using school emails, not private emails. We only use school emails. The teachers do, the students don't. You just said that we're not providing school emails accounts for elementary students. Did I misunderstand you? We don't, teachers don't email students directly in the elementary. They only email parents. Okay, maybe I missed that. I asked my first question was, is there a real time, virtual time with an elementary student and a teacher communicating? Yes, in Google Hangout, they can also, they can also communicate in Google Classroom. And by the way, parents, you should know that you can have your student have you be able to be into Google Classroom. The student is the one who has to actually let the parent in. Yes, they can. No, parents, teachers in elementary only email parents. They do not email students directly. Now, part of our Google Classroom does have, our elementary is having an account. And we did discuss at some length actually, whether we would allow even fifth grade or fourth grade to have active emails, accounts, activate them other than for their Google Classroom or we've decided that it's probably not a wise idea. I would ask you or someone in the administration to talk to other school districts in the area and find out the benefit of that going forward. Thank you. Okay, Dr. Alex Ampe. Just to follow up on the tag end of what Mr. Hiner was saying, I was actually in contact with the district today that is doing, they rolled out emails to all their students over the past few weeks and they are finding it helpful. I didn't get into specifics about how it's being used. So first I wanted to mention, I appreciate that Dr. Janger sent out the new plan to parents is helpful having an understanding of what's going on as we go forward as opposed to just giving it to the students who lose it in their backpacker. So I too had questions about the Odyssey grading and first I'm just wondering why is there a difference between the high school and the middle school in terms of grading? Whereas the high school kind of has a credit ish versus no record and Odyssey and Gibbs are doing something where you're dinged if you're not able to participate. I had the same concerns that Mr. Hiner did especially about kids being sick or family members being sick and being unable to participate for those reasons. So I'm just wondering why was the decision made to have different grading systems? Well, the grading system between middle and high school have a different effect. You have to have a certain number of credits to graduate from high school. You have to have certain number of credits as part of entrance to colleges in terms of number of courses and credits in those courses. It was thought that this would be much more, would be very positive for students to not have credit, no credit hanging over their heads last term for exactly the reasons that you're talking about. That there are a lot of family situations that make it difficult for students to perhaps complete all the work in all of their courses. So while we certainly want kids to be able to continue at the level of rigor that will be there, it may not be possible for a host of reasons. They may be sick themselves. So we don't want to affect their graduation number of credits they need. We don't want to affect in any way what would be happening with applying to colleges later on, if that's what they choose to do. So this was thought to be a much more, it talked to be very student-centric in terms of how high school is different than middle schools. In the middle school, there's not going to be any ding to them. It's just trying to, it's part of it is also, we saw in the survey that having assignments having no, or having student motivation was an issue that what this is an opportunity to sort of have students feel like that they are being nice for the work they're doing. And in fact, there was initial discussions about whether it would be binary. And I think that, again, going to a more student-centric view of this, we don't want any student to feel that they sort of give it all up when they don't feel like they're meeting everything that they are being asked to do. We want to acknowledge their efforts. And we realize that there's gonna be a host of concerns in terms of, that might prevent them from doing all of this. So we're trying to try to get that balance between being student-focused because we know that there's a lot of issues that the families are dealing with right now. And at the same time, because we're moving on with advancing the curriculum, we want to be able to reflect back to students what they are doing and accomplishing as well as be able when teachers next year see their reports, they're gonna get a better sense of what the level of participation was. Okay. Then my other question is, when you were talking about for the elementary students having live video and stuff, I'm wondering how are you transmitting best practice experience to teachers because apparently for younger age groups, it's easier if the teacher actually shares their screen with, instead of having it live on their iPad or whatever and because Google Hangouts pops around as someone speaks and stuff, it works better if the teacher has the group on their screen and then shares that to the students. So the teacher can see everybody and the students can see everyone, but it's because they're seeing the shared screen. And it technologically it works better, but clearly you have to know what you're doing and stuff and I'm wondering how are you, how are people learning about best practices and then sharing, how are other teachers learning about it? We've spent a lot of time creating classes for people and I may be, Dr. McNeil wants to jump in on this question, the answer too. This is all new. This is very new in terms of how teachers are connected with students as well as how to teach in a remote learning environment. We're certainly learning as we go along. Teachers, when we offer these classes and sign up in droves, as we go forward, there's gonna be classes and really how, what are some of the best practices in remote learning? So the answer is that it's evolving, I guess is the best way to say it, but we have a pretty robust and will increasingly robust PD in some of these issues, just the technology of it all. How do you do as you were describing what is the best way to organize a hang-up? Dr. McNeil, do you wanna add anything to that? Yeah, so we do have a digital learning team. We also have a director of digital learning, Dr. Susan Bisson. She just successfully defended her dissertation, so she is now Dr. Susan Bisson, but she is our director of digital learning for the district and we do have technology specialists at the elementary, middle and high school level. And on this digital literacy, digital learning team, there's representation from all buildings. So they've worked together to put together a very robust professional development plan that includes the initial instruction on how to set up Google Classroom and utilize Google Hangouts Meet. And they've also done a very good job of looking at the various extensions that can be utilized with those Google tools that can provide just what you were talking about, a gallery view of the class, and also a Jamboard, which is like a virtual whiteboard that can be shared with students so they can create projects. So, and then they've also sent out a survey to teachers to get feedback on things that they still need to learn in order to increase their knowledge and how to use these various tools. And so based upon that feedback, they're setting up more additional professional development classes that can add on to that basic understanding of how to use all of the tools within the Google Suite. That's great. I guess I'd just add that it'd be helpful to be looping parents into that also to understand where things are breaking down because like the Google stuff, it seems to work kind of okay if you're on a computer, but if you're on an iPad, which a lot of the younger kids may well be, it doesn't, there aren't as many options and it doesn't work as well. And that's when the teacher has to implement like you said, the gallery view and stuff but the teacher isn't gonna know about that cause they're gonna be working on their computer probably. So that's a suggestion. Thank you. Thank you for that. One suggestion that came up yesterday in the Community Relations Subcommittee is classes for parents on some of these things. Yeah. Cause we're all sort of learning, the older of us are a little bit slower on learning some of these things. I know that I'll talk with the director of community education. I know there's gonna be some technology, virtual classes there. That might be the best way for us to engage parents in some opportunities like that. And I thought about that yesterday and I just haven't had a chance to talk with her today about it, but that may be the avenue for that. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So there's been questions about special education and there's been a lot of guidance that we have had for the federal government as well as the state. And I think Ms. Selmer is gonna give us sort of another overview of special ed and then answer your questions, Mr. Heiner. Yeah. I think there are still questions on your presentation. Oh, there are. Oh, sorry. You're all the way through yet. I can't. I don't see them. Sorry. Ms. Seuss, you're next. Yeah. I have a easy question and then a little harder question. So the easy question is how is this information being sent out to parents? Is it the same information being sent out to all parents or are there great specific, you know, so elementary parents are getting some pieces of information and high school parents are getting a very different piece of information. It might be interesting to do both actually to have something that's targeted to each level, but also sort of say, oh, by the way, here's what else is going on in the rest of the district. Then on communication as well, just a reminder that it might be helpful to give parents instructions about how to tell their kids to invite them to the Google classroom because that's something that only some parents know about. So it might be good to spread that more widely. That's the easy question. Then the harder question or the bigger picture question is, I know something that Arlington has done really well in the past is that teachers share, teachers who are expert at a subject or a technique or are doing something really well have all these ways to share that knowledge with each other and teaching can be very lonely. And I suspect it's even more lonely feeling right now. So I'm wondering if there are some either formal or informal avenues for teachers to talk to each other, to share what they're doing, to support each other in new ideas and so forth. Okay, yes, to Google classroom, we should get that instructions out to parents so they know how to do it. In fact, I was just doing it with my own daughter today. I said, you know, you can be invited into Google classroom. So we will do that. We need to get that instruction out. But just back to sharing, there's a lot. It's, let's not, I think I need to be clear. It's not the same as being in school where you see people next door to you or you're walked down the hall or you're attending curriculum meetings in the afternoon. It's not the same. But having said that, there's been a major effort to create opportunities for teachers to communicate with each other and be together. For example, one of the things of the elementary, as you know, this year we've had these grade-level meetings at which we look at the data and special educators, coaches, principals are all part of those grade-level meetings. Those are still going on. We're still having robust department meetings. Learning, we're at the middle school, learning community meetings. Yeah. I was just gonna add to that, Dr. Bodie, in that to answer your question, Dr. Seuss. So as far as the social-emotional connection that you were speaking to and uplifting, since I'm on all of the building mailing lists, they are doing trivia teams, they're doing book clubs, they're doing daily meditation, they have health and wellness check-ins that are just for them, they're not about outside of the student SST teams. So they're doing a lot and also our school counseling department and through the teams, through the school counselors and social workers have also been pushing out a lot of support in that regard. And then as Dr. Neal mentioned, the digital learning folks, so in addition to what's being offered kind of district-wide in those PD, each person is reaching out at the building level to do smaller, when people are like, I can't get onto that calendar again, because I'm on all these mailing lists. I see the back and forth. So what's helping them to get on the mailing list or setting up a smaller group so they can go over how to share your calendar view or things like that. So the teachers are really looking out for each other and the principals have been taking a big lead on that kind of support for the staff as well. Did we get all your questions? Oh, the other question was about how are you sending the information out? Is it by grade level or is it just one sort of document with everything? Well, Dr. Janker sent his out last night and Ms. Francisco and Mr. Merringer sent them out today. These are parent-specific and then the staff and at the middle school, actually in elementary too, actually at all of our levels. There's sort of the morning messages that are going out too. So there's been a big effort to try to keep people in the loop and in communicating. All right, Mr. Thielman, you're up next. Thank you, Len. So I wanna applaud the district for coming up with this plan. It's pretty clear to me there's a lot of thought that went into it. There's a lot of conversation among the district leadership teachers. I had the same experience that Kersi had in that I've spoken to a few other people that are other districts. In fact, I got an email from a constituent who was praising this district and I happened to have a colleague who has a child in that district and she was not singing the praises of the district. She said what they had on the website looked great but her actual experience on the ground is entirely different, at least with her child. So I think this is great progress and I think we're moving in the right direction. So I think that's a good thing. I do a couple of things. One is, I hope we're, I'm sure we are, but we're collecting best practices from this whole experience and we're making notes about it because I think in the future, this might be doing, saying we're gonna go to remote learning is a way to reduce or eliminate snow days. I also think it's time and education to do some assessment and reflection about seed time because we may have something here that challenges some of those assumptions. And the other thing I am most interested in seeing is how the district on a grade by grade and student by student level assesses each student's progress to determine how to craft their learning and the instruction they're gonna need next year in the fall. So I'd love to know, first I'll stop there and then Dr. Boat, I'd love to know if you've kind of thought about how you're gonna do that kind of an assessment so that when we return to traditional instruction, you're able to respond to where each learner is because every child is gonna have three children in my house, three different learning styles, three different responses to this whole pandemic. And so, I'm just wondering how you're gonna do that. Well, in a couple of ways, we're gonna assess it. It's already been going on in terms of what's working well or not. There's so many different ways to look at it technologically in terms of the kind of assignments, how long, how do you do feedback that's not where you get the piece of paper directly. There's a lot of things that we're learning. We'll do some of it qualitatively from our curriculum leaders and principals for sure. We will also be doing, I think this first time through at the survey, we'll craft maybe a better survey as we go through the next, so halfway through and then toward the end, we have to gather this. But I think to your point is that one of the things that's been on our mind is the uncertainty of the next year. I don't know if we're gonna start in September. I certainly hope so. I don't know if there's gonna be disruptions during the winter. I don't know if there's gonna be disruptions to individual schools. What will we do then? And so, when we talked about this, we realized that this is an important learning experience for all of us, not just our students as we go through these next few weeks as to what we're gonna learn from it that's going to inform what we could do next year and maybe even beyond that. I mean, you're at your point about snow days. I don't know what this is. We all know that this is a pivotal moment not only in education, in families, in communities, in the country, in terms of how it's going to be future. And we don't have a full crystal ball, but we need to learn from what we're doing so we're better prepared the next time. Okay, all right. And then I would imagine that when we return to instruction, there's gonna have to be a period of time in which you assess each learner and get a sense of the degree to which they advanced last year and how far behind they are on the concepts they needed to have learned to have entered, say fifth grade or sixth grade or seventh grade. And then you're gonna have to modify instruction in the fall, or you're gonna have to do some recovery in the fall. Is that? That's absolutely correct. And so we will have to figure out what those assessments will look like in the fall. And fortunately this time we have some time over the summer to spend planning for a different eventuality, what that's gonna look like in terms of review, what it's gonna look like in terms of assessments. So we know that. We know that we are gonna have to be doing that next year because of what we've all said is that some, for some students, this is gonna be very hard. Yeah. And then I'm assuming that there are discussions taking place within the district about if we're not able to, if we have to continue remote work in the fall and that is probably out of our hands, are you, do you have kind of a team, is the team working on what happens if that's the case? Well, we certainly had discussions about it. I think we've been also being undated in managing currently where we are. We haven't spent a lot of time on that, but we've acknowledged that we need to and let's document what's going on now so that this becomes a basis for the planning that we know will have to take place. And finally, we had a conversation yesterday about forums. Are you gonna talk, have you kind of given some thought to how you're gonna do parent forums? Well, the answer is what I thought maybe 24 hours ago may have shifted a little bit. I had, as you know, there's been some forums. There was one last week and then there was one with the Board of Health last night on the town side. And I said, I thought it would be a great idea if the schools could, we could do it as well. But I thought it would be better to do it after we start the new plan. Yesterday, when we discussed this a little bit, there was some thought about maybe, you know, doing it by level. And that may be the best way of doing it. Maybe that it might be better to do it at least at the elementary level, maybe by school. So that kind of conversation started this afternoon. So this is an evolving plan, but the answer is that yes, we're planning to do something and to find out what would be the best kind of format for that. And I've talked to our town manager about what he's learned from these experiences and have some advice on that on that front. So yes, it's, we are going to do it. I don't have dates at this point, but we certainly are gonna do this and I'll let people know when they're going to be and how to participate. All right, thank you. My final comment is that I realized we're two and a half hours into this meeting is that I wanna thank, Kristen B. Francisco sent out a video last night or this morning, whatever, that's when I saw it for the sixth grade gift school. And I thought it was just great. It was very clear. She had a PowerPoint in it. It was very warm, friendly, clear. So kudos to her. And I met Janger's information that he sent out last night too. The 16 page document was also very helpful. So thank you to them. And I just wanna thank everybody in the district for the work. I mean, working under these conditions is stressful. It's confusing. People are tired. Parents are tired. People doing the work are tired. So thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Schickman, you're next. Thank you. So one of the questions that I was pondering has already been asked. I will confess that I'm also listening with an ear for what's gonna happen next year. If I had to guess, my guess would be that we'd come back and then be interrupted at some point during the year. So one of the things that I'd like to hear about in the future, not this meeting, is what our budgetary asks would be in order to have the infrastructure available. So that if we're forced to go out again, we're, we have the resources that we want to have in order to plan out an interruption. And so I'll just leave the questioning at a desire to hear a little more about how we're servicing our second language learners. I'm sorry, was that something you wanted to address in the future, Paul, or do you want me to answer, right? Brief answer and something for the future. With respect to budget, that is definitely on our mind. Now, the English language learners, if you want to know. The English language learners, yes. There's been a tremendous outreach to our English language learners through the teachers at the schools. And I know that from personally talking to some of them and I know that from the director. So they are in communication with students. And yes, this remote environment is very challenging for a lot of families. They've also helped us be able to put some devices into students' hands as well. One of the things that is a glitch in, when I send things out on School Messenger, if anything goes over 5,000 characters, I can't translate. So when I send something out, I always try to translate, but if it exceeds that, so maybe I should just do it in two parts, but I don't know how that could be received. But I go part one, part two to parents, then I could translate it. But we, the teachers are also then contacting parents, translating what's going on. It is an issue. But I say our teachers have just been absolutely fantastic in reaching out. That's basically been my biggest concern through all of this because that's probably the most at risk group we've got. And that those are the parents who are least likely to be having the skills to interact aggressively with the system. And so that some sort of a report going forward, specifically on how we're interacting with that population, I think would be very important. The practice we could, yes, we can put that on the agenda going forward at some time, give you more information. Great, thank you. Ms. Bargen? I just have two quick questions. The first is, you know, I know that information has come from the principals in grades six through 12. Do we expect to hear from elementary principals about what next week looks like tomorrow? So that's my first question. And the second question is at any grade level are, I know that, you know, you were talking about how there would be assignments posted in Google classroom. Is there a vision? And I was looking through the email that Mr. Jinger sent or Dr. Jinger sent about the high school. Will there be a time or an assignment that will be due at any point the same day that it is assigned? So are any of these assignments that are gonna be given out starting Monday gonna be due, you know, same day or 24 hours later? Or can you tell us a little bit more about the structure of that? I've heard from a number of parents, especially about the elementary level that they're pretty anxious about what's gonna happen on Monday. Well, the answer is mixed. I mean, sometimes the assignments, well, at the secondary level, they're gonna get their assignments for the whole week on Monday. Or it gives in the high school, it's staggered as you will, the communications. So in other words, you won't get everything on Monday, but you might get all of math on Monday and you might get social studies on Tuesday, that type of thing. So, but the elementary level, there will be a mix of longer assignments and shorter, let's do the work right now. Parents, as I said, can get onto Google Classroom and sort of monitor that if they so choose. So could theoretically an assignment be posted at nine o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday and due at four o'clock on Tuesday? Well, the thing about the remote learning is there is a lot of ability to turn something in. So say that there was something like that. And I'm not saying there wouldn't be, but if there was, it doesn't, you can also turn it in the next day or the following day. What we're trying to do is to have this be as family, child-focused as possible. We don't want a lot of rigidity in this because we know that that's not going to work well and it's not gonna work well for students. So are they going to be, there's no grade on it. It's an opportunity for feedback for learning. That's what we're looking at, it's for learning. Okay, I guess my feedback just about that is that we talk a lot in our family about how what we're doing now is gonna translate into where we are in September and we're using a lot of the same tools, right? We're using Google Classroom and we talk a lot in our family about the need to make sure that you're submitting things and that things are getting done in a timely way. And I just wanna make sure that the expectations for submission are realistic. And I don't wanna get into a situation where we have a lot of families who are saying, well, yeah, I mean, it says it's due at four o'clock on Tuesday, but there's no way you're gonna get it done. So don't worry about that. You can do it late. The messaging becomes really hard with kids, right? So I hope that that's just something that I'm sure that people will be mindful of that. I'm not saying it would never happen, but the thing about all of this is it's asynchronous. You might find some students doing this work in the evening when their parents can help them because their parents are working all day. We're not gonna have something to do at four o'clock when they're not even getting to it. Great. They have a day where they can do more work than the day before because someone's been sick. I mean, what we're trying to do is build in that sweet spot if you wanna think of it that way between something being flexible, but at the same time having structure to it. And I don't know if we can get the perfect balance, but that's what we're trying to achieve. Great. You'll never be able to get the perfect balance for every student, right? So, but the intention, as long as the intention sounds really promising. So, thank you. Great, thank you. So just briefly from myself, just to the committee. I mean, we do have a curriculum and instruction subcommittee. If people want more discussion of this plan and the issues over the next two weeks, that would be a good place to do that and take some of the load off of our next meeting. I guess reach out to Jane if that's your request. The only other thing I wanted to raise was out of the points from one of the submissions was this idea of parent-teacher conferences or more structured parent-teacher interaction. And I just wanted to request as we're going into new material in particular, that particularly at the elementary level, we think about a way to accomplish that. It can be an email from the teacher saying, you know, I have my office hours, please send up for, sign up for a 10 minute block or whatever, but I think we need to give our parents a way to talk with their teachers. A parent can email a teacher right now and ask if they can have an email response teacher. Yeah, but none of the communications have said that. None of the communications have sort of said that. That's not necessarily an expectation. So again, more structure as around that, I think might be a breach. Okay. Do we want to move on to special education? I just think I need to be allowed to share my screen if Michael or who you got it, Michael. You should be. Am I, is it, let's see here. Yeah. Am I okay? And then I just want to be able to start the slideshow. Alrighty. So I apologize. These were going to be embedded in Kathy's slide deck. So there's no opening titles or anything. So I understand from the request that we wanted an update on both the state regulations and how we're implementing them here regarding special education. So I did take from the actual, the DESE's PowerPoint on this and kind of edited it to put in Arlington what we're doing here. But as you've already heard, so I'll go quickly through this. You know, the emphasis on the safety and wellbeing of the students and families, as well as the equity and the connection between school and staff is still the guiding principles as it is with general education. And I mentioned this last time. So service delivery is a combination of both supports and services and instruction and supports and resources and instruction and services. And so early on from the beginning the supports and resources that special educators have been providing around the accommodations for the general enrichment, the sharing of individualized either lessons or schedules, all that kind of stuff was in place. And then as we moved, once we got the updated guidance, we've moved into teacher led instruction and delivery of related services or therapies, so to speak. And those come in, you know, the format of both for our supported learning center or SLC classes, you know, whole class instruction, small group or even individualized, some of them are getting one to ones. And so again, this is, I've said it last week as well, that it's a combination of the supports and resources for what, you know, kids who are getting, most of our students are in inclusion settings. So they're still participating in their Google classroom with their grade level teacher or peers. And so the special educators are joining those classes at some points. I just know this week, you know, one of them was leading a framing or thoughts lesson for the entire class, but the TAs and the special educators are co-teachers in the Google classroom and that they can, you know, see the assignments, they can add to it. TAs have been asked to jump on to the live sessions to help if teachers need people moderating chats or helping with that. So they're present in those settings and then quote general ed setting. And they'll continue, especially as we move forward with these new assignments coming out from the general educators to make the accommodations if modifications are required and to scaffold that instruction. And so this, I already shared with you last week what we have been doing around that. Again, the emphasis on communication prior to this, we were already in a space where they were to be reaching out to families directly twice a week. They have implemented, people can sign up for consults and so they can sign in to either for a phone call or a Google Hangout or some people are just emailing back and forth with questions around assignments or sending, you know, a picture of the work and getting, you know, feedback on what they should be doing. And so with Dr. Bodhi's, you know, directive around offering discrete office hours, you'll be seeing that in their schedules as well. And so this other piece is the instruction and services. And again, this is just again what the state's directive was around that. And we have our teachers have been similar to what you're hearing the feedback around general ed and either Dr. Bodhi or Mr. Levy can speak to the agreements around live sessions. You know, we have some teachers who are doing, you know, a morning meeting every day and then breaking out into their reading sessions, their math sessions. Some people are doing this through their own Google classrooms. A lot of people are participating in the PD that's being offered by the digital learning department and you'll see Google Slides and recordings from the teacher, you know, walking them through at some of our therapy providers, OTs and that you're gonna find more of that kind of format of I'm going to be videotaping obviously. Something, our PT. Similarly, you know, a live session isn't quite the same isn't as easily deliverable through, you know, a computer screen. And so, and then just even old school so to speak, telephone calls for some families that's worked well. I know Carla Bruzezi is shared as well that particularly for our EL families to your point Mr. Schlickman, the phone calls have seemed to be more successful with those families and that was a more effective way of communicating. And so we're seeing that with our, some of our special ed families, but it really is about what works for the individual. So I mentioned that we had sent out our individual remote learning plans and their lengthy documents, you know, and certainly, you know, can appreciate that they aren't necessarily translated as easily as I'm taking a grid and people who are used to seeing an IEP seeing that translated, but they're providing, whether that's consultation with staff or directly with families that those services are denoted in the individual learning plans. And then again, that general ed support that would be what we call the B grid that's denoted in those plans. And then the individual if you're getting, you know, pull out reading or the OT or the speech services, those things are also denoted separately in the plans. Again, it continues to be as the state has recommended a combination of those online. I think we are probably doing more of the live sessions. I think first our students who really need either feedback in the moment or able to ask questions while they're doing the work and generally special educators when they're doing those pull out. Services are working with smaller groups already. I know that we've been for the last four weeks, we've been working with Dr. Melissa Orkin who's been our reading consultant to she's been providing PD each week on how to deliver reading instruction through this new virtual format. So she's been leading them through the different tools and resources and how we can take our structured literacy routines and now move them online. And, you know, hearing stories from one very resourceful teacher who is still waiting for her webcam to arrive and who has learned to write backwards so that, you know, it comes out forward on the screen until she can get that webcam that flips. So people are being really innovative. I know a reading specialist who did do a reading session over the phone because the family was having technical difficulties with their connectivity and so she switched over to a phone call. So, and we've had some families who I'm gonna be frank I'm not gonna recommend this and it's unlikely but we've had some people who've even agreed to do a Saturday session because that worked with somebody. I don't think that should be set as an expectation but I just share that people are being really flexible. And so there was a question and I'm trying, I did receive your questions, Mr. Heiner in advance so I'm trying to include some of this in here. A team meeting was not required in order to develop these plans. However, families have those plans within the plan it indicates who they should contact. You know, if they have questions, if they, beyond the individual service provider it has listed the team chairperson and the coordinator as contact people or the liaison for those families. So if people do have questions about the remote learning plans and they wanna talk about that more they should reach out to the individuals that are listed in their individual letter because obviously that is different for each person. And so a question also came up just about how do we document or how are we keeping track of that? So as providers they're always taking their quote clinical notes while delivering servers but we also have created service logs that we've asked them to share as well as communication logs so that they're keeping track of both their outreach and the responses to the different types of outreach and tracking the services they're delivering. Obviously any emailing between they and a family is an email record. And so as I mentioned, we created one shared document we recommended that we created one shared document so that multiple providers could be putting that in for one student. So we didn't have an OT log, a speech log, a learning specialist log all for one student but that they're in one place if that's needed. So I think I went through that quickly I was trying to catch up on time. Do you have questions? Thank you, we'll run down the list Mr. Hainer. Mr. Hainer, you're on mute, Mr. Hainer. I apologize. You answered one of the questions clearly one of the other ones may not have been clear. What is the district's protocol for holding team meetings on annual reviews and expanded school programs that the kids normally have during the summer? So the first question is we are holding any meetings with mandated timelines that as I mentioned our last session. So annual reviews if they're scheduled during this period or were already in the beginning of the period we did I mentioned we had been working with our easy IEP our student database platform and we now do have the parent portal. So that's up and running. So we started IEP meetings last week and we're scheduling those that were previously missed between March and up until last week and then going forward. So any of those meetings with a mandated timeline so annuals evaluations so initials or three years if the testing was completed prior to the closure we're scheduling those meetings. And so those are more likely the meetings that were right around March 13th through the 25th, 30th because the testing would have already been done for those that we need to do the testing we were not able to obviously complete testing due to the social distancing requirements most of the standardized assessments require face-to-face interaction. So those meetings we're not having however we will hold an annual review for reevaluation if it's during this timeline. And as part of any IEP meeting when you're developing an IEP you need to consider the need for extended school year. We don't know currently right now what format that's going to take obviously until we learn more from the state what when they're going to be lifting social distancing and what that's gonna look like. So, but we are still having those discussions about whether a student requires extended school year at the time of the IEP. Those IEPs that you would require testing that you are unable to do are you communicating this to the parents? I guess I'm not looking to make anything litigious but the SPED law never anticipated this pandemic there's no question on that. And there's very little latitude in extending timelines under the law prior to this unless the parents agree. So my suggestion is to talk to Desi find out what you can and can't do and communicate this is in a proactive way with the parents to get them on your side. Right, so every Friday Russell Johnson will use the, what's his full title? Depp Commissioner, yeah. Yeah, so he's essentially the state director for special education. He has a weekly meeting with SPED directors so I'm on those calls each week. They've been clear around the piece with the testing and so we, if you go to the district website for the special ed page that's in there and then Dr. Bodie sent out a letter for us indicating that around that we would begin to be having the IAP meetings for required timelines. Anyone again can reach out to the team chair people and people have been reaching out with questions about when's my meeting coming up. As I mentioned, we just started last week so they're sending out the invitations. So I guess my thing is I would not wait for the parent to contact you. I would, and I think you just stated it we should be contacting them with what you can do, what you can't do, their choices and stuff and play like that. One other question I have for you, those students at the elementary level that have an IEP of one-to-one assistance, are they gonna be active with this program starting on Monday with the students that they're assigned to? So the special educators, we've already been, we had the directive back at the end of March that we needed to move forward with service delivery. So we have been delivering services. So- Right, but I'm talking about a child that's involved in inclusion that has a one-to-one support, they're gonna be giving assignments by the elementary teacher. Right, and I mentioned that the TAs are assigned up to those classes. So as I mentioned, maybe I was speaking quickly, the TAs are also in those classrooms so they're the TA, it's a co-teacher role in the Google classroom. So they've been asked to join those classrooms and then if there's an online session, we've been, they've been asked to join those online sessions. We don't have a large number of students that have one-to-ones per se, they may have TA support in their IEP, but there's few that have a dedicated one-to-one all day. Okay, thank you. Yep. Great. Dr. Bailes-Nampy. Thank you for your presentation. I don't have any questions, just a comment that as we solicit feedback from parents about how things are going, I hope that we would do a special effort to collect information from our special education parents in terms of are the services helpful, is there ways they could be tweaked to be more helpful? Are we doing what we can and is there any way of doing it better? That's all. Great. Thank you. Ms. Seuss. Yeah, nothing, actually I do have one question, sorry. So I know that we have a state and federal mandates around IEPs and those are obviously our students of greatest need. Are we also doing anything with kids on 504s or other sort of support? Is there? I don't know if Dr. McNeil wants to respond to that as the 504 coordinator for the district if you wanna jump in. Yeah, the expectation is that we're gonna continue and give the type of accommodations, but that's gonna change because in the 504 plan it's really based upon the accommodations that are given within the physical environment. So just moving forward with the 504 plans, I mean, that's gonna be very difficult because the students are at home, but we're still, yes, absolutely. The expectation is that whatever we can do to support the learning of those students on 504 plans that we're continuing that to the best of our ability. Okay. Great, thank you. Mr. Thielman. All my questions have been answered. Thanks very much for the presentation. Great, Mr. Schuchman. I'll also pass, thank you. Ms. Morgan. Yeah, so my question is how are you planning to evaluate the degree to which we are able to offer services to kids in this environment? Because I would imagine that if we're in the buildings and kids have IEPs and they have their grid and they're receiving their services based on what's in their grid. And at some point you could say, okay, yeah, we were able to provide X percentage or the vast majority of what we had been able to do and because of X, Y and Z, this didn't happen. I guess it just feels like right now with everybody, everybody is so dispersed. I'm just wondering what kind of accountability you're expecting from our service providers and how are you gonna measure whether or not, and how are you gonna define success, I guess, in terms of what you're delivering to these kids? Sure, so I mentioned that they have service logs. So they're logging not only that delivery of content, but any outreach, any communication, any consultation. So we can measure actually relatively easily how much was provided. The other thing that is, we have an obligation under the IEP to also report on progress. So teachers have to, at least as frequently as students receive report cards, they have to provide progress against their individual IEP goals. So teachers are collecting all of that data as we go along. We've talked about how do you collect it in this format where you might have kept a running record, for an example, while you were listening to somebody read. So they're definitely having to adapt that. One of the things that we're working with Dr. Orkin on is how do we use some of the online learning applications that can track progress, where CSaw is one tool that we're going to be giving that teachers professional development on for the next two weeks on those Thursday or the once a week sessions I mentioned we have with her. And CSaw is essentially, it has a learning component of it in that the teacher's design lesson and getting the input or the student has to respond and then they're collecting that data. So we've been exploring the different ways in which you can do that. But also, Ms. Nolan's not here this week, Mr. Levy is as our, but she's also a speaking language pathologist. So she can tell you how during their teletherapy they're taking notes on the output that they're getting from a student. We certainly have to shift it and it's not as easy as it has been, but that's part of the requirement for special ed. Anyway. Great. Thank you. I'll just add that it's an extremely difficult way to deliver most of these types of services, both in regular ed, but in special ed particularly, it's not just a matter of not progressing, but we're gonna see a lot of regression unfortunately. And we're gonna have to address this in the fall and as a country, we're gonna have to address it as well because unfortunately this population is really gonna be hurt by this, but thank you. I just wanted to add that when we do return, part of what was also shared in our communication into families is that everyone is entitled to have a meeting to discuss the impact and whether additional services are required as a result of that closure. And the state and we don't assume that everyone's going to need one of those meetings. As I mentioned, over 80% of our students are in inclusion settings in the first place. So not that everyone's gonna require that, but there is that option to have that meeting to directly assess that and whether there needs to be, they won't be changes to the IEP or say, it would be similar to what would be considered compensatory services in the sense, usually a compensatory service is the failure of the district to provide, but in this instance, obviously it's because we, as you just mentioned, can't always provide it given the format. Great, thank you. Okay, Dr. Bodhi, was there any other impacts? I did want you to mention the new food program that you've launched and anything else related to COVID-19, you're on mute. You're right, I'm on mute. Yes, we've launched a new food service program. As you remember, when we first closed, we did the grab and go and Denise Boucher who was our director of food services set up a very effective program. After a couple of weeks, we shifted to having it be a more community-based, but it became very clear that we needed to go back to a model where we provided lunches and breakfasts. So what has been going on for the last two weeks this week, yeah, the last two weeks, is that we've been delivering a week's worth of lunches and breakfast to students, anyone who's between the ages of zero, you're a very young child and 18, not zero, but and you do not need to have the status of free and reduced, all you need to do is to contact, you can do it through the town, but you can also do it on a phone number, which I am going to give you right now, but we are going to make sure that it's on our website. We've had it on available for teachers, but we need to make sure that it's also available on our website as well as the town. But every week we're increasing the number of students and the last week we had, I don't know, a high 100s or they went up another 20. Next week we have about 205 students signed up for this and how it works is that the lunches and breakfasts are prepared at Thompson and we have people on the staff of the APS staff that have been delivering these bags to different people's homes and we've had teachers do it, nurses, deans, we've had the transportation department that our athletic director has been involved, we've had a lot of people who've given up time to make sure that these get delivered and I just really want to compliment them all, they've just done an absolutely fantastic job and obviously successful because it continues to increase. So I do want to mention this, I don't know if people are listening that would be the people who would want to be reaching at this hour of the night, but I will give the number, the hotline number is 781-316-3400. And as I said, there is this flyer, I will make sure that it's not buried on our website to make sure people have it, but I'm sure you're probably also wondering, how are we funding this? So maybe I'll just let Mr. Mason talk just a minute about how we're funding this program. Yes, so just to follow up on the funding portion is that fortunately we are still able to claim reimbursements for the meals that are being served through this wonderful program. So during this time, we typically receive about 60% of reimbursement for the cost of this program. The other 40% would come from the actual, the food program revolving funds and which we have a healthy balance to be able to cover the expenses to be able to provide the meals. Another thing that I wanted to mention is that the team did a great job on submitting all the documents required to get families in the district PEBT access, which is the pandemic EVT access, which would give families of students that would be either free or reduced lunch, the ability to get access to funds for meals that they would have missed during the closing period, which is quaced about $5 to $6 per day during this period. So it's pretty good. And I really am glad that we're able to provide these meals for students and able to get students and families some resources that they may need during these typical times. Great, thank you. And anything else, Dr. Bodean? Well, I think the one of the things that is mentioned here is the issue of fees. And we've had a meeting with the budget subcommittee on fees because we collect fees for instrumental music, for athletic fees, for after school programs, daycare, preschool, there's quite a bit that we do. And I don't know if you really want to go through specifically each one of these and what we're doing, but for example, athletic fees, we're unfortunately not gonna have our spring season. So we will be refunding all of those fees, but this is gonna take a little bit of time just because of the immensity of all this work. I'll take your lead, Mr. Cardin, how much you want us to talk about this? I deferred to Dr. Allison Amby, and it wasn't there for the end of the meeting. So the budget subcommittee, if there's anything that she wants to report now or later. I think the main thing that we should let people know is the preschool fees and that the budget subcommittee took a vote to recommend to the administration to refund the preschool fees, refund 90% of tuition that was incurred or due after the closure of school in March. So we felt that because there is some education going on that there was reason to maintain a small amount of payment and also thinking, kind of looking into the fall and stuff, but we felt that 90% seemed like a good number and that's what we recommended. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions from the committee? Don't see any. All right. Can we move on, Dr. Vody, or is there anything else? There's nothing else to move on. All right, the next item related is though, is the MCAS update. Well, there was a- The cancel. There was a, well, we all know we don't have MCAS this year for our grades, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10, but I think what's really been weighing on everyone is the issue in the state, I should say, is the competency requirement for seniors to graduate. There are, they have to pass the MCAS, but they also have to pass a science MCAS as well. And because we were closed in March and we haven't had a, they wouldn't have a chance to retake the test, the Board of Education this week, actually it was just the 28th, must have been Tuesday, voted some new guidelines around competency requirements. Essentially the idea is that, for example, for science, if you can show in a portfolio that you had a course that was equivalent to the science exam that you might have been taking, biology, physics, physical science, that you could be given credit for having passed. So we, I believe in high schools in a very fortunate position that we have one or possibly two students that are in this position and will be doing portfolios for these students. We hope that that will be able to be the hurdle that they need to cross to have a diploma from the high school. But I thought that was a very wise decision on the part of the Board of Education. Great, thank you. Any questions from the committee? All right, so now is the superintendent's update. All right, a number of things. I realize there's a certain time and but let me just go through some of these, some of them will be quick. The where we are with the high school. I think one of the important things for people to know in the community as well as on the committee is that the 60% documents were submitted to MSBA. In that process of before submitting them, there's a reconciliation again at this point in terms of the budget. And very good news is that at this point, we would have a 1.2 million that can be used for contingencies as we go forward. So we're not over budget. Essentially, that's the important message. We're not over budget. And that was very positive because other projects, that's not been the case at this stage. Then you're starting to finally see some beginnings of where we are in the project. You're gonna see fencing going up with the high school. You've already seen the trees along Mass Ave have fencing around them, exterior fencing. So we are in the process of setting the high school is definitely beginning. We had board of selectmen earlier this week passed the recommendation on tree removal that was submitted and then reviewed and approved by the town warden. So we're moving forward with that. So there will be some trees that are removed from the park area, but that was all part of the major plan for the high school. It's also important for people to know that there have been COVID-19 protocols that have been put in place for all workers that are on site as well as that's been true at Parmitter and that's been going pretty well, in fact, very well at Parmitter. So those are in place. And the other important piece of news on that is that Parmitter's timeline is projected to be on time. So at this point, we don't anticipate a problem with the preschool in the fall being able to start there at Parmitter. That's great. And hopefully that stays that way. In terms of, I just really want to remind people how important the census is. They've moved the timeline back and they're not going to go door to door, but it's really important that people fill out the census, the federal census, because it really affects the funding for education and I guess I'm looking at it from that land, but it has other implications for the state as well in terms of funding in general, as well as our representation in Congress. So it's just a reminder about that and maybe we can just do that at other meetings just to remind people that how important this is. We have it on our website, in fact, as a reminder. The other thing I wanted to bring up is that the governor has designated September 14 as a state holiday next year and that's for the marathon. We still have the Patriots' Day, but there's going to be this added holiday in the fall. So what we've done in past years with the Arlington calendar is we've given you updates that have happened since January in May to vote on the school calendar. So we'll just include this day, but I thought you'd want to know that we're going to be doing that. I don't think you want to stop it. I have a couple of more things. Should I just keep going or do you want to? Sure. Yeah. Sure. Keep going. One of the things that, you know, as we have been in closure, I think that in all of the, all of the what has happened since then, we have not acknowledged some important things that, like recognitions that have happened. As you all know, we got to the point, we're right before we were going to have the state championship for ice hockey. Arlington High School had been the number one seed in the Super 8. We'd come down to having a game on Sunday, but that had to be canceled. So as the final designation was that Arlington High School were co-state champions this year in ice hockey. But one of the other things that happened after that was that John Missouri, who is the coach, was named the Boston Globe Division 1A Hockey Coach of the Year. And the hockey team, as I said, was the only team in the Super 8 not to lose a game. The team was named Division 1 Super 8 State Co-Champions, as I said, because they couldn't play the final game. And in the history of the MIA Hockey Tournament with two Super 8, I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time reading in this diminished light here. In the history of the MIA Hockey Tournament to win Super 8 championships, we won in 2017 and 2020, which is quite an accomplishment. The boys hockey team finished the season, ranked number one in the state. So congratulations to the boys hockey team. It's quite an accomplishment. And congratulations to John Missouri for being named the Hockey Coach of the Year. So the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Massachusetts Hockey Association boys hockey final record was 19, 1, and 4, and they were the middle sex league champions as well. Just give me a second, I just turned another light on. The other acknowledgement we want to give is for Kevin Cummings, who was named the Boston Globe Division Two wrestling coach of the year. And he was named Division Two sectional coach of the year, voted by the coaches in the Division Two Metro wrestling sectional. Coach Cummings team this year was the MIA, Division Two sectional champion for the first time in the school's history. The wrestling team's final record was 25 and two and they also were the middle sex league champions. The girls hockey was also the middle sex league champions. And unfortunately, as you know, the spring season has been canceled and of course one of the things is we feel very badly for the seniors in their last year to have that happen. Another recognition that has come this week, in fact, was for our director of history, social studies, Denton Conklin. And this comes from the Massachusetts Council for Social Studies. They are presenting as outstanding educators in the state and he has been named this year's recipient of the Charles Masakos Outstanding Supervisor Award. And his nomination came from a member of his own department, Melanie Constantakis. So unfortunately, that would have been a presentation in the spring, so it's been deferred till October, but I wanna congratulate Mr. Conklin. We're certainly very, could not be happier that he is part of our administrative team and educator in Arlington. Let me just make sure I have gotten everything. One thing you may know, want to know is that May 6th is National Nurses Day. And the other thing I was gonna mention which you've already come up earlier today is that we will have some kind of a forum. Hopefully next week, we're working on some scheduling to make that happen. So that is my report. Great, thank you. The consent agenda, all items are considered routine will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of the items unless a member of committee serve requests in which the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval of warrant number 20254 dated 414, 2020 in the amount of 102987.78. Approval of school committee minutes, regular meeting minutes of remote meeting, March 26th, 2020. Can I get a motion? I'll move. And a second. Second. Okay, roll call, Mr. Hainer. Aye. Dr. Allison Ampey. Aye. Mrs. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I am also yes. Okay, the next item is the superintendent search process update. Mr. Schlickman, are you leading that? I just want to note that Mr. Hainer is requested to make a comment on the topic. Yeah. Chair, go ahead, Mr. Hainer. I think right now, with time, the way it is we have two applicants from myself reading the two applications. I would recommend that we accept MASC as the search group. They have a good history. They've picked superintendents in the local area. And I think it's for time-wise to go forward rather than send this out a second time and probably have the same results. So I'm not looking for a motion tonight, possibly for the next meeting, but I'd like us to consider that. Okay, Mr. Dr. Allison Ampey. I would support this. I've had the same thought myself. Okay. I had a functional question. Are we required to do a search or can we just provide, can we just assign? I'm sorry, you're asking a procurement question for Mr. Mason? Yeah, I think so. Just, are we required to do another? I believe, yeah. You can confirm, but I believe we can negotiate with one of the bidders, right, Mr. Mason? Technically, you should go through the evaluation process and choose the vendor by the valuation mechanism that we stated in the RFP. So if you decide to waive the interview portion of the two vendors, you can do so as long as you're not choosing to interview one and not the other. So I believe that you can go through this process and choose one of the two vendors exempting that part of the criteria for choosing the vendor. But if you, there is the possibility that, see the thing is doing the RFP, I have yet to see the prices because the prices are sealed until the group evaluates the two vendors or the two proposals. The committee could go and just solicit one of the proposals and if it's under 10,000, you can go forward with whichever vendor. I just do not know what the prices will come in at. They would usually come in probably around 10,000 and I've seen that before in my past experience, but I'm not quite sure what MASC would be charging. Does that enter your question, Dr. Hatnampi? As soon as you're next. So just, I just want to point out that the subcommittee has not had a chance to discuss among ourselves what, and as Mr. Mason pointed out, we have not had a chance to do sort of the formal evaluation process. So I do think we should do that at least, but the second thing is that one of the things that we had briefly talked about last time is the question of whether we should make another request for proposals. It sounds like a lot of people don't want that. That's fine with me. I just wanted to get a sense if there's anyone who felt differently and if they felt differently, why would they feel differently? I think that was one of the reasons we wanted to discuss it. The third point is that we're very close to 10 o'clock. All right, do you want to make a motion to waive the 10 o'clock rule? I make a motion to waive the 10 o'clock rule. Second. Until when? 10 30. Oh. That's too late. 10 15. 10 15. 10 15. We have an executive session, folks. I know, yeah. Yeah, 10 30. It's going to be 10 30. Second. Roll call, Mr. Heyner. Yes. Dr. Austin Ampey. Yes. Mrs. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yep. So on the superintendent search, I mean, I just, I'd like to go forward. So I'd like to, I'd like the committee, the subcommittee to, you know, review the bids, make a selection. I don't think moving from in-person, in-person focus groups to possibly online focus groups is a substantial enough change to have to restart the process. So that's my suggestion. Do any of you guys want to comment? Yeah, I did, Len. So there's two, just to understand there's two bidders at this point in time. Are you able to share their names? M-A-S-C Sunshine Enterprises. To be quite honest, I don't think, I'm just giving you answers to mitigate risk if a vendor was to complain to the attorney general. But I think it'd be very little since Sunshine Enterprises is based out of Florida. Is being what? Is based out of Florida. Yeah, that's the thing. Okay. I mean, I think the subcommittee should me make a recommendation. I mean, at this point, I don't think it's a value. I don't think it makes any sense to go back to the market. We went to the market, we only got two vendors. I think that's the market right now for this kind of work. I mean, I don't, I don't, I haven't, I'm not as close to this as other people are. So I don't know what other districts have tried to do. And I don't know if other districts have gotten more vendors than we have. If they have, I'd like to know why and how, but that's it. Yes, Mr. Mason. There is one other vendor. They don't typically follow up from RFPs. And they're exempt from the procurement because they're a public agency, which would be the Carlton Center at UMass, which they do a lot of these, they do a lot of searches for executives for public agencies. Mr. Haynor. How are we to judge them, Mr. Mason, if they don't provide a document? We have to reach out to them? Yes, I could reach out to them, but that's basically a lot of these organizations would work that way. You would reach out to them and solicit that or let them know. So when we put out the RFP, we put it out in multiple venues, but we didn't actually go and reach out specific vendors. All right. Well, I think the subcommittee should try to come to an agreement as to how to proceed. I think it's very possible for the subcommittee to come to agreement is just that having a sense of the full committee is an important part of the deliberations of the subcommittee. One of the things that was in the original RFP were timelines, which had been blown out of the water in terms of where we anticipated being if we didn't go into the COVID situation, we would be in the middle of soliciting community input right now. Ms. Morgan. I think all the more reason to try and move forward and recoup whatever time in that timeline without being hasty or irresponsible, but it seems like we should keep moving. I would just like to say one other thing is that given the fact that everybody seems to be dead in the water, I think that our selection of candidates, the beginning of next year should be significant. We should have a large number of good candidates to choose from. All right. Anything else on this? All right. So we'll go through the subcommittee list. I know that budget met. So Dr. Al-Sampi, anything you want to say? No, we discussed fees, which we've already discussed and we discussed this year's budget and next year's budget and basically we're waiting on further information from the house and stuff on those. Yes. There is a budget and revenue task force meeting next Thursday at 8 a.m. So we'll get some sense of what the town is thinking, perhaps. But right now, nothing. There's absolutely no information. Nothing we can do. Community relations? Yeah, so we met yesterday and as has already been discussed, there was a discussion about how to do outreach to the community. The agreement was to have a series of meetings, grade level meetings with the public. I know that that's under, there might be some changes to that. I would urge us to have at least two meetings though, one at the upper and one at the elementary because I do think the concerns and questions are very different at those levels, if that's possible, Dr. Ruddy. And I mean, happy to talk more soon. My biggest concern though is just that it not be pushed too far away, right? It means it's gonna take a while to get everyone together and agree to meet and the format. I still want to take too long on this because we are rolling out some pretty big changes and it would be good to hear people's questions and answer them very soon. All right, I don't think any other subcommittees met. Is there any other subcommittee reports? No, how about liaison report announcement or future agenda items? Mr. Heyner. I would just like to have the administration provide any slide presentations to us ahead of time so we can look at them. We had three of them tonight. One of them was a repeat, but I'd just like to have them available to look through ahead of time, not try to digest them as they're being presented. Thank you. All right. Ms. Tuss. Yeah, so one thing we didn't talk about of the survey is the large number of students who are maybe having social and emotional sort of worries. I would love to see a presentation by a Sarah Bird, both about sort of how parents can help their children with social and emotional issues now, but also what next year might look like and what we might be doing as a district to help support people who might be having problems. Okay, we'll consider that. Anybody else? All right, a negative session. To conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiation with union or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union personnel which have held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted, discuss AEA stipends, and to enter into the executive session to comply with a general law, MGL section 268, chapter 268A section 23C2 with regards to EDCO. I get a motion to enter into the executive session. So move. Second. Second. Roll call, Mr. Hayner. Aye. Dr. Allison Ampe. Aye. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Dr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Shuklin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm yes also. We will not be returning to open session after executive session.