 Are we ready? Yes. Ready? Okay. And much more. Welcome. Today is Thursday, October 13th, to the school committee meeting. I'd like to open the session. Is there any public participation? Great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's none. Okay. So we'd like to invite up, actually come up and say your name. We're going to discuss an update on the school trips that are being offered for the year. I'll introduce Melanie Contadacas and Rebecca Bradley, who are both teachers here in the high school. And welcome. Who just came in is our assistant principal. Bill McCarthy. Good evening. Good evening. Do you want to set it up? Melanie Contadacas Schwartz. That's fine. I go Bibles. I know. I know. Well, one of the efforts we have been looking at as a school district is being able to offer more opportunities for the students to be able to do traveling, particularly international trips. As you know, last year we put together a global competence certification. And as part of that, one of the requirements of that is to do some form of travel. And so in that effort, we have been seeing more people that are interested in supporting and chaperoning and all the work involved in providing these opportunities to students. And tonight we're going to mention a few of them. The actual trip information you have in your packets in Novus and the approval of those trips is in the consent agenda. So we, unless you want to change it and vote approval after a presentation, so we've invited our staff that are going to be chaperoning these trips, organizing them to come and talk about them since in a couple of cases, these trips are new trips. And in the past, when we've had a new trip, we've had people come in and talk about it. So you have a chance to ask questions. They can answer them. But with trips that are, that you've seen before, but there's just some details, then we just present the information and someone doesn't come to present. So that's sort of background on the, on why they're here tonight. Great. Okay. We'd like to talk about the trips. Sure. Let's start. Yeah. My name is Rebecca Walsh Bradley and I'm an English teacher at the high school. And Tim Martin and I, Tim Martin is also an English teacher at the high school. We're proposing a trip to, over spring break, April break to England. It's an eight day or it's really a nine day trip, but a travel day on each side. The students would spend four days in London and, and then they would spend three days in the countryside, which would include Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Salisbury and Stonehenge. I just want to, I want to tell you the favorite day, or my favorite day of the trip is actually the last day of the trip in London. And that's because Tim and I kind of, we were able to work with a company which is Explorica and add and subtract a bunch of things based on what we thought would both sort of interest the students and would be the most educational. And so day eight is we would visit the Tate Museum. And probably walk across the Millennium Bridge, which is really cool. We were going to go to the Charles Dickens Museum, which is actually the house that he lived in in London and worked in. And it's supposed to be wonderful. We would also go on the London Eye, which is really just fun. And finally we would end the day with a visiting, or sorry, watching a production at the Globe Theater. So there's lots of great stuff on the trip, but I think of all the days that day, I think is pretty amazing. We have a lot of interest so far and are hoping to get even more. Great. Any questions? Yes, Mr. Heiner. And this will go for all the trips and stuff. I noticed in that particular trip it said for scholarships there's one for every six. Is that limited? Yeah, so right now we have between 18 and 20 students that have shown a lot of interest. So if we get 18 students, we would have one free spot because the other spots cover the cost of the chaperones traveling. So six students would cover Tim and then 12 would cover me. So it wouldn't be until we hit 18 that there would be a full scholarship available. I guess my question is to the school department or whatever, if a student is not able to pay and say you had three of those students that would be like that, what do we do? Well, there would be options in this. One would be to divide it three ways. Another would be to reduce the cost for all the students. So there are options with this extra position. No, I'm not talking about, I'm saying if you had three students showing financial need under what's going on right now is potentially there's only one. Would the school augment for the other two? What I'm saying is that it has a cash value to it. And it can be divided by three if there were three students that had need. But what if students sincerely wants to go? Would there be a complete scholarship? Yes, that's one of the options with this as well. It could be a complete scholarship. One of the things that I feel very strongly about is trying to find money to provide some scholarship for students. Whether we can be in the position of having an entirely free trip, I'm not sure that that is probably possible or even ideal because what we're hoping to do is to have enough notice with these trips that students can help, you know, earn some money for the trip. In fact, our long-term goal on this is to actually have a calendar of trips as much as two to three years out. Again, in fact, one of the trips that we talked about is a trip we used to have here and kids knew about this trip when they entered the high school and so they might have had three years or four years to prepare and save for it. And I do think it's important for students to do that because they're more invested in it instead of entirely giving a whole complete free trip to one student. I think it's very, very important that trips are available to everyone, not just to those that did financially afford it. I think the idea of having a calendar several years ahead of time, I think that gives opportunities for even the community to support these programs and stuff. And I would suggest coming back, not only sharing with us the results of the trip and have the students come in, but share with the community as well so that they understand and become invested in it in the future. May I add one more comment? Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, we have actually talked about this before, the financial need of some students to be scholarshiped on these trips. I think you're all familiar with Mary Vellano, the former principal. One thing she's been working on is developing a fundraising program throughout the year that would create a cash of money that could be held upon, not just this year, but in years future, for that very reason. There's different events in mind. It's still getting started. So there is nothing that's set in stone yet, but we all agree that there is a need. Great. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Would you like me to talk about South Africa? Yes. Great. Questions about London? I don't want to pull away if there's more. Nope. Sounds okay. So I'm Melanie Konstantak of Schwartz. And I'm proposing that we take a trip to South Africa this February. This is a slightly different kind of trip. It's not a tour, per se. It is focused on a cultural and service-based learning trip. So the students would go to South Africa. We would be, we would visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was held. We would be out in some of the environmental habitats. Like there's some gardens there that are amazing environmental habitats that are one of the only places in the world that you can see certain species of plants and fish and birds, etc. I'm desperate to go to the, it is a baby panther cub sanctuary. I don't know if we'll get that in there, but just because I like cats. We're also doing a safari. And the bulk of our time, however, will be spent out in the townships. We'll be working in the schools, in the black townships that are desperately underfunded unlike anything we see in the United States. The students will be working, providing some fun activities for the students at recess, doing some reading tutoring, some support, and just trying to bring some extra hope and light and life into those communities. So we'll be doing that for five out of our 12 days. Our trip is a little bit longer. The killer thing with South Africa is the travel time. It's actually surprisingly quite affordable because once we're in country it's not that expensive. It's the tickets that are so pricey. And because we are spending so much of our time doing service work as opposed to more traditional tourist things that would be very pricey, it comes to being a relatively affordable trip overall. To address Bill's point about affordability, we are definitely looking at that. I'm going to be approaching the Martin Luther King Committee and the Human Rights Committee to see if they would be willing to donate towards some of our cost of the trip and to kind of bring the overall cost down with the, oh, it's totally slipping my mind now. Kathy just mentioned it. The international, what is it that we have students get the certification of the global certificate? Right. And there is some funds in that for travel, right? Isn't there a $250 scholarship embedded in that? So we're hoping that's something that students will also be able to use towards this trip. And we're trying to find as many ways to bring down the overall cost in general to make this as affordable as possible. The students have also spoken to me about what they might be able to do to do some fundraising. So it's definitely a concern and something we take really seriously because we want as many people to have this experience as possible. So something we're really aware of. Great. Thanks. Any questions? I'll put a plug into Melanie's talking about it. We are looking very seriously for funds. We had for one of our trips, our Japan trip last year, we had a member of our community donate a complete scholarship for the trip. So what I'm hoping, and we're starting to begin, Bill is talking about this, is creating a fund that we would have as a source for scholarships. So if anyone in the community would like to donate to such a fund, please know that we are looking for that. And in some instances, we'll be looking at needs-based, a combination of merit too. So we have a combination of factors. So some of the community wanted to donate, who would they... They could send it to the college and public schools expressly for scholarships for foreign travel. And the tour company we're going with is offering a scholarship as well for students who show exceptional leadership and community service as well. So they're offering, I believe it's $500 off for a student that the faculty nominates as well, that feels that they would really benefit from this trip. Thanks. Any other questions? Great. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the principal at Arlington High School. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you for taking the time to hear us on these trips. And thank you to Rebecca and to Melanie for helping plan these. These are incredible opportunities for our students. I've always been a believer of hands-on learning and you can't get more hands-on when being placed in the country whether you're going to a Panther Cub... I think it's a great opportunity that we afford these students. So the trip that I'm proposing, we have done in the past as Dr. Bode has said, it's through EF educational tours and we will be touring through Krakow, Poland and Prague, the Czech Republic. I've actually been part of this trip. I think this will be my fifth time. The trip is being run in with Marie Radoazzo, who's a retired teacher here at Arlington High School, my former mentor, and Rob DiLoretto, the Dean of Students and Fusco host at Arlington High. The idea behind the tour sprung from a course that Marie used to teach here called the Literature of War and Genocide. I took that course on when Marie retired and the course has since evolved to be entitled Missing Voices and covers a broad range of different groups that are underrepresented whether it be in literature or in the world. So this trip itself would pull upon that curriculum as well as the curriculum of the U.S. History Department and what we would do is the three main sites we would attend would be the Terazine Concentration Camp, Oskar Schindler's Factory and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The trip itself right now is set up for 12 students from Arlington High School and we would be traveling with 12 students from Matignon High School and currently one student from Redding High School but we would see how that works out. The trip would be after school it would be during the summer it would be in June and as I've said before we've done this trip five times it is very moving and emotionally powerful we do talk to the students at length about the history of the Holocaust, its impact to the world how we still feel its presence in literature. I was actually just seeing last night there's a new movie coming out that deals with Holocaust denial and rebuking that so I don't know if there are any questions about the tour or places we'll be going. Any questions? Yes, Dr. Allison Ampey. My question kind of applies to all of them and it's actually more of an administrative question I'm thinking back to when there's been varying levels of unrest in the world over the past few years and that we've had questions of whether we should change plans or things and I understand we can't possibly predict the future but I'm wondering if as part of the notification and literature that's given out to parents for the trips if we should be giving out something that says just basically a big explanation that we can't just what I said that we can't predict the future that we follow State Department guidelines for whether or not the students should go on the trip and but we're not trying to micromanage I'm thinking about when there were bombings here in Spain or in places and that we feel I think following the State Department guidelines is the best thing we can do or we should come up with whatever it is that we decide but that we should be also conveying that to the parents as you see what I'm saying yeah similar to the message we give about snow or the weather yes I have lived through those those times and have been part of a situation where we've had to cancel a trip that has happened and we do use the State Department guidelines on this and we could put a disclaimer in our forms that you know this could be subject to cancellation should there be an incident that there is restricted travel put up by the State Department our hope of course is this will not happen but that's a good point now I think that we one of the things we've insisted on all of our trips is that the travel insurance be part of the cost of the trip I mean we've that is used to be optional but it can't be optional it has to be there so I think that we would be covered in case this happens actually speaking of that I think there are two points one is financially all three trips if there is a State Department issues a warning there is an insurance policy to pay back the students if it is deemed unsafe to go but I think the other concern is just letting parents know that there are unfortunately do live in an unsafe world at times and we want I mean I've traveled with both Melanie and Rebecca before and multiple other teachers and whenever we travel we obviously want to put our students first in our priority of taking care of their safety but there are liability concerns I don't know what's going to happen but having traveled with both of them before and I do know that we would put the students first but it is important to make parents aware of that so I do know we hold parent evenings where we would talk about the trip and any concerns that might arise from it and we do open ourselves up to emails if they have our questions at any time if anything does arise traveling in the past I have gone to Morocco, Spain, I have traveled all over the world and I can recognize that for the parents it's a huge issue of trust they are trusting us to bring their child on this trip and to bring them home and so we recognize that we do keep those lines of communication open whether they are cell phones, emails while we are on the trip and leading up to the trip it sounded like I was thinking about similar to our Incluent Weather sort of warning where we say this is our policy but of course if any parent feels that that situation is safe that's at your discretion or something like that although there would be a financial implication to that if a parent chose on their own because they felt and it wasn't officially cancelled they would assume the financial cost correct I think that Mr. McCarthy better captured my concerns that just to convey to parents that we know it's an unsafe world I feel it's important for the kids to get out in it but still you've got to know that there's problems we'll do the best we can to avoid them but there's problems Any other questions, comments? Anyone want to sign on for the trip? I want to sign on for all of these trips Do we need a vote? No these are going to be in the so the vote for this will happen in the consent agenda it will be a routine unless one of our members pulls it out but we just wanted to have the opportunity to talk about the trips and ask any questions so thank you for coming Is there a New York Trippers? That's something totally separate from you folks So there is a New York trip It's separate from them though It's just got changed So what I understand is these are not all the trips these are just a These are three of the larger international trips The New York trip is actually for our international students They will be going down to New York but as Karen said the dates have changed So I believe once I get that information I'll pass it on to everyone My only concern was that on the agenda it stated originally approved on that date I know this is a recurring trip that we do for the international students on a regular basis We approved that one in 2015 for that specific one I just don't want Under the consent agenda we are going to approve The way it was presented it says originally approved but each individual one is going to be approved separately as it comes forward That's all I wanted to say Thank you very much Thank you very much Thank you very much I did not welcome Ms. Higgins our AEA rep at the committee and today we have a student rep Lucy Bogus who is a school council member and we it's been our tradition from time to time we've sometimes fallen in this tradition to have student reps at our meetings and we welcome the opportunity to hear from students so I invite you to go back to the committee if there's something that you might want to talk about or present just give us enough time to put it on the agenda but we'd love to hear your perspectives and your concerns about being here okay so next on the agenda so the next thing on the agenda is the buffer zone report as I understand Mr. Remi was not able to make it tonight so we need to push it to the next meeting could I ask a copy of that report ahead of time yes thank you we didn't get the copy so he wasn't able to make it so the diversity hiring report Mr. Spiegel thank you so you have the report in your packet in Novus it's very similar to the same format as previous years showing the staff that we've hired one explanation that is sometimes confusing is the total staff that we had last year in the different categories they didn't all carry over to the previous hires who started this year when we ran the report last couple weeks ago and that's because there was some attrition some people resigned or left the district for various reasons so that's why the numbers are a little bit lower from the previous hires than the total staff and why our gains are not great because we are not retaining all the staff that we hire in certain categories or so it is making it challenging to increase our diversity as much as we would like we have had some good hires this year in a few key teaching positions in the district we have hired Asian American teachers at the elementary level in special education in kindergarten Hispanic teacher in social studies at the high school and black and African American teachers and social workers in the district in special education and social work and then we have other new employees of diverse backgrounds in other job categories teaching assistants cafeteria workers bus drivers substitute teachers and others and we continue to strive to increase the diversity and it is challenging to always retain and we also need to focus on retention of all the employees that we do have Questions, comments, Mrs. Starks I'm going to ask the same question I asked last year which was I would like to see these as percentages and I would like to see what the percentages are of students okay so my goal would be at some point to have that you know they match right closer to making them match but I don't really know what those are so I would love to know well what are the percentage of students that are Asian black, Hispanic, Native American white and what's the percentage then of staff that meet those as well can I off top of my head I can't tell you by each race but what I can tell you is that the percent of white teachers is about 84% teachers and professional staff and whereas our students about 75% are white so there is a disparity and the goal is that there is more congruence between the two which is why we have the efforts we have been trying to recruit but retention retention is an issue and we've looked at various things having coffees within the school year for our teachers of color those have had mixed reviews and sometimes people don't come they're busy we've had more people from the diversity committee that we've had sometimes the staff but I think one of the things that we work on is certainly the social emotional climate a robust mentoring program and just raising that conscious of what a welcoming school is but on the other hand we are more competitive than we used to be in terms of salaries but we are still not as competitive as some of our surrounding communities for sure. Well and I know this is a problem we are not unique in this at all as a matter of fact it would be interesting even at that high level to understand what other even if we just used the ones that we normally compare ourselves to it would be interesting even at that high level if we know that we are 75% 85% in Arlington what does it look like in Belmont at some point it would be interesting just to know because I think it's important for people to understand we're trying very hard but this is a real problem and we're not unique in our position I don't want people to think that we're not trying and I know we're trying I've been to those coffees I know that it's hard to find those people would that be easy to get from the other districts I could request it I will see even if we just do the town manager 10 measure 12 and it's right I make a try I'm sorry I just lost my thought I was gonna something well maybe we're thinking the same thing one of the things that is a challenge for all districts is that only 13% of the students in teacher preparation programs are our professionals of culture and so right away that is not many people that are being trained to be teachers which is why we as a district supported that today's students to miles teachers because this was a long term approach to how we're going to change the course of that and hopefully that still will we'll see at some point resurrect itself and as you know we're members of the MPDE and we last Friday the MPDE hosted a very interesting and successful day long conference touching on the topics that school districts are grappling with in this area and had presentations by Claude Steele who was fascinating talking about bias and stereotype threats and his research how that works for minority populations in whatever the minority is in different situations and John Safier spoke and he was great and other panelists and Dr. Bode was also part of a panel and it was just you know there's so much to cover and the day went really fast with because there was so much to talk about and go what's going on throughout the state from the Department of Education and Leslie University and people really brought their perspectives on this issue that in terms of just making our profession the education profession more diverse and welcoming for everybody and I think a lot of professions, a lot of industries a lot of different all across society are grappling with the same issues and almost no matter what field you're in I did want to say, speaking of the coffees we did hire a couple of the new teachers had come to the coffee social in the spring so we were able to sort of follow up and principals did follow up with some of those candidates who matched openings that we had so it did work for a couple people who came and we were able to do that. Yes, Mr. Hinner. From 2014 to 2015 we hired 130 teachers from 2015 to 2014 we lost 46 teachers that's something we should be excuse me, staff I realize it's not just staff but it is staff we had that large increase and then decrease I guess my question is is that budgetary, is it programs that we're not continuing from 2014 to 2015? From 2014 probably this is a question about general staff overall staff these are pretty big numbers we added 130 from 14 to 15 on the total staff and then dropped 46 from 15 I'm looking at the I'm just if this is something I'm not looking for a specific answer right now but it's budgetary we need to know about it and decide how we're going to allocate the money. I don't think it's budgetary I think there were some I know there were some positions that were we just finalized a hire today for a position that was vacant so we've had some vacancies I don't think that explains all the difference I'd have to look at there's also substitute teachers that's listed in these numbers they're incorporating these numbers and the substitute numbers fluctuate greatly substitute you're including a full-time substitutes they're not the day-to-day ones no we include the day-to-day ones as new hires yeah because they're on our staff they're hired we get their data and some substitutes who haven't been working we've taken off I just got to ask roles as a person who was substituted some years I'll be in two or three days a week other years two or three times a year if I was a minority would you be if you didn't work do I automatically get counted unless you're inactive for several months then we would deactivate you but if you are working periodically as a substitute so you wouldn't get counted if you maybe worked one day the past year or something it sounds like you wouldn't it depends when and it was months ago but I think that's important to understand maybe a slight rate how many of the the staff would be considered substitutes just to put it in perspective Dr. Allison Ampe Mr. Speaker I remember you spoke in another meeting that you do exit interviews for departing staff and I wonder if you've gleaned anything from the more diverse staff in terms of what why are they leaving what are the needs that we weren't meeting you know for different reasons but there's no one common denominator for why common reason for why staff are leaving and our diverse staff who've left have different reasons for leaving obviously not everybody who we hire and I've said this before is in what they feel is the right job for them sometimes it's we don't feel it's the right job for them and sometimes they're looking for different opportunities sometimes that really they're looking for a different type of working environment people and across the board people who've left no matter what race they are you know variety of reasons a few people it's more money a lot of people it's because they are moving or they have a spouse or partner who is being transferred elsewhere and they are moving out of state and they wouldn't have left otherwise other people you know some people aren't looking for other opportunities but other opportunities find them and they have a hard time saying no I mean there's every reason that people leave and obviously people who are dissatisfied and we try to we would like to minimize the number of people who are leaving because they're dissatisfied yeah thank you any other questions yes Mr. Slickman yeah I would definitely you know I'm doing the data dashboard for LOL have you seen the Boston dashboard on their diversity I think I've looked at it yeah it's quite interesting you've got a slidey thing based on mark off by classification so you know people in the district can readily look at how we're doing in various categories and it's really quite cool I agree I'd like to have the per diem subs out of the report or categorize differently because that's a totally different kettle of fish the opportunity for a student to interact with somebody on a day to day basis even if it's a long term sub basis that's fine but the per diems just to me don't really warrant inclusion in a report such as this yeah that's the one thing I did notice is the attrition rate and if you've got per diem subs in there that could certainly influence that and I guess everybody's asked about what we're doing to look at attrition among people we value in the district so if anything comes forward that might help us to retain people that's systemic enough to bring it to us we definitely want to hear about it so I just have a question about that so is the attrition in those categories of jobs that we normally get attrition no matter which group they're put into or is it so that I know that for example a sub or a aid there's just much higher attrition rate I will say there was more I think I mentioned this one in a previous report there was more attrition this year among our teaching staff and people in that in the A.A. Bargain unit for various reasons there were more people who were had spouses transferred of state I mean it just seemed like there were several people who fell in that category just a lot of different reasons including people with diverse backgrounds I think so yeah I have to think yeah and we had a couple people that reduced their hour to hour and a half commute to 15 minutes that's the other thing we had some people with long commutes who really decided for family reasons or whatever they needed to have shorter commutes okay great thanks percentage in people that come in like first year teachers second year teachers and then leave I guess from this past year or all I can remember is I would when I needed I took a job no matter where and I lived in Argentina it was a 40 minute ride northwest once I had the job if I hadn't moved out there I would have had the experience on my resume and I would have been able to be more selective of where I was I didn't know if that was a factor as well I know we were a great training ground for a lot of different people yeah I don't think that was a huge factor there were a couple people who were newer employees who left to do other things to not teach anymore actually we had a couple people who left the teaching profession yeah okay great thank you okay next on the agenda Dr. Cheson state accountability data report and analysis okay can I guess I can do it yeah we probably should turn the light down I think we should turn it down so again as we do each year we'll talk just very briefly about the components of accountability talk about the accountability results for this year and our plans to move forward before we go any further and one of the things I need to say that it's very unique about this year is that we with the school committee's approval took the park this year in order to get accountability numbers because as you may remember we use data from previous years on a weighted average should to get that because those years were MCAS years and this was a park year the state did a crosswalk the student got in park and they translated that into what they would have gotten in MCAS park has five ratings MCAS only has four in some cases the top of the three became what we would call proficient the top of the middle range became into the proficient and in some cases the bottom of the four became needs improvement and I say that just to let you know that there's a lot of manipulation of data and statistics that's going around here so for me these are of interest but they are not nearly as critical as they have been in the past years because they did a lot of manipulation of data in order to get our accountability ratings this year do you have a sense of is it math is one way it varied from year to year and from test to test okay yes Mr. question of reliability from your professional opinion on this I mean what you just said to me said I feel that this is more political to do this and going forward until we got 100% park I really question fiddling around trying to make an apple fit in an orange skin well I have to say that as we look at the data there was only one set of results that surprised us as a curriculum team I would say the rest of the data was pretty much what we expected so in terms of reliability I guess I would want if I understood better why the one schools data surprised me so much and that's something we're going to be working on throughout the next couple months then I would be able to answer that question better are you able to get information to break the questions down and look at the curriculum it's the way you could with the MCAS unfortunately no until you get that we will not get that so that's what I want to say we take this with a grain of salt it gives us some indication of where we will stand remember that the next test will be MCAS 2.0 it will not be park will we be able to analyze the test or is that still going to be verboten let's wait there's so many variables at this point it might be helpful to remind the public about what this year was supposed to be that it was sort of an experimental year that we knew that we wouldn't have results that would look that would help us as much and that we were sort of playing with this and that's why we decided to hold everything harmless yes that's correct I make one comment too it's not as though if you took an MCAS you're going to get any better data this year in part because the sample communities was so small was it 25% that the data there is not there it's not calculating comparables for anything so the state did is not we cannot compare ourselves against the state this year to look at the questions and stuff and analyze against what your performance is this something we put strength in and stuff well they will give you the questions but you don't know where your school answers to those questions so I don't know if 25% of my kids got it right or 25% of my kids got it wrong they're not giving us that information even if you were to we were to have chosen MCAS is that your question I guess what I'm going to ask what's the value of the test if you're not finding out how your school well if we remember this was an experimental year I thought I understood you that even in the future we won't oh no in the future we want to get into details but big picture questions the big picture is this compared to what on individual questions is tough because there's error but the real strength comes from grouping similar questions together in that sort of the diagnostic that if you're doing it well you're using you can't do that this year regardless of where you are because even if you have the MCAS you don't have to compare to what you don't have a reliable statewide sample you can't see how you're doing an open response vis-a-vis the rest of the state or the key content areas that you're worried about so no matter how you're doing it you're not going to get there you still have your growth scores you can take a look at your student growth scores they were all calculated similarly you know that's still a pretty valid measure and I think the concordance MCAS scores across the park is giving you a pretty reliable sense of how things are going statewide because it's based on a statewide sample and if your numbers move a little bit that could be a test effect if they're moving substantively there might be something else going on so there are things you can spot not to the degree that you would normally see but it's worth looking at the data and thinking about for a few minutes okay Dr. Allison be a big picture type of okay so there are three components to what we call the progress and performance index which is the PPI that we hear all about one is achievement or closing the achievement gap that's the CPI one is what Mr. Schlickman just alluded to which is the student growth percentile and then at the high school level we have drop out and graduation rates our schools continue to be high performing schools have challenged maintaining high growth our schools continue to have high percentile rankings this is one of the first times we're going to show you what that is across the board so you can see that sometimes the school have not a PPI that didn't hit the target but they're in a very high percentile so I wanted to take a look at that and then I guess we said this is the first year for a major shift in the testing format so this is easier to have it in front of you than it is however the visual I want to make here is that the yellows are things that are below the targets so for example the first set of yellows that you see there are for school accountability and assistance level and you will see which schools are level one those are white and then in what years each school were level two so for example Bishop was a level one in 2013-2014 level two school in 2015 which was the first year it had sufficient number of students to have its subgroups counted and then it was level two in 2016 then you'll notice the next set of data is about the cumulative PPI and the target for schools to be level one is 75 this is for all students you'll see that in this is from 2013 to 2016 and you'll see that in 2016 we had two schools that for all students were below the 75 target one being Dallin and the second one being Thompson and then the third set of data that you see here is cumulative PPI for our high need students and the ones that are yellow are the ones that are below the 75 PPI target and then the last set of data is data that we have not shared regularly and not because we were holding it back but just because it was not part of the presentation but we wanted to include it this year which is the school percentile within school type so for example Bishop has a 71 PPI for its high need students and 100 PPI for its all students but you'll see that it's in this 94th percentile so even though it's not making the 75 PPI it's ranked very high compared to other comparable schools so we just kind of wanted to say that that's an indicator that the school is doing well and then there's just an area that we need to continue to focus on. Quick question? Yeah, Mr. Henry. Down below where the Audison and the high school both level one schools listed last year and now they're level two if you go over to the third column I'm misunderstanding it they both have the single asterisk and saying that they're not going to be harmed by the park now I know they didn't take the park I don't know why they're listed in this. Well that actually Audison did take the park so if they were held harmless under park why did they and I'm going to get to that can I ask if you could great okay preview of coming attractions so here we go this is the the chart that you're used to seeing that shows you for each of the schools and for the district for 2014, 2015 and 2016 and you'll notice that as Mr. Henry just alluded to there are asterisks by some of the schools. Dallin had a 71 PPI for its high need students normally that would mean that that school would have moved down to level two because we decided to take the park this year they were held harmless so they remained at level one. Audison on the other hand had a 73 PPI for its sorry 61 PPI for its high need students in the 73 PPI for all of its students and they actually weren't held harmless and that is because you could be held harmless for your scores but you could not be held harmless for your participation rates and this is something that we've talked about prior. So in order to be a level one school you must have 95% of all of your students and 95% of your subgroups that have 20 or more students participate in the test. When you have a very small subgroup such as special education if one or two students usually two would pop you over you can fall below that 95% threshold and that means that the highest level that you can be is level two we have submitted as we have had to do the last two years for the high school submitted an appeal for Audison because we felt that the two students that were not counted in our participation rate they're not taking a test was out of our control and I'm waiting from the Department of Education to rule on that. Also for the high school even though they have sufficient PPI at both the high needs and the all PPI to qualify for this level one they also had a number of students who have been who were hospitalized either at the time of testing or just prior to the time of testing and so that caused one of their subgroups to fall below the 95% percent percentile threshold and so I also have an appeal into the Department of Education because we felt that that was beyond our control. Thank you. Does that explain? Excellent. Yeah, I know for the Audison it was 95% participation for your ELA and math and 94% on science which is only in two grades so that for you it's one grade. Yeah, I'm part of the law where a five through eight system. There's only one grade so that it's a third of the population is generating the denominator for your numerator so that's really a sensitive thing for such a small subgroup so it does seem unfair to knock the school down a level based on one test and one grade. I think we like this. Okay, yes, Dr. Allison. Two questions. One, so was our not the subgroup but what was our overall participation for Audison and for AHS? Mr. Schlickman I believe just said 95%. That was for the SPED but for everybody else the participation rate would have been for all students participation rate was 98 98 for ELA and math 97 for science for the high need subgroup it would have been 969695 for science. Okay, so then the other thing is I think there's a typo on brackets level on that chart. Oh, I'm sorry they should have been a level one. Yes, yes. Thank you. I didn't catch that. Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, Mr. Schlickman. I think that really the thing that disturbs me the most is that our PPI level at the high school has gone down at least seven points a year and that's disturbing. So we went from 90 to 83 to 79. Right? So we had a seven number drop then we had four drop like we are I mean 79 is nothing to be proud of so that is concerning to me. The trend there is that our PPI we started pretty high and we are not looking very good. Well, no. Same with Ottison. No, it's not quite true. What happened was is our PPI's for 2013-2015 in 2016 were in the 70s. It was 71 in 2013-71 in 2013. But in terms of the annual PPI No, that's the cumulative. And what happens is in 2014 we had 104 points. And this is weighted so on the year you get it that 104 is worth 40% of your score. The subsequent years the 104 is worth 30%, this year is worth 20% and that's going to drop the 10% of your overall average in with a 71, 71 and a 75. Because of the way that 104 is declining that's what's causing the score to the cumulative score which is a cumulative based on four years to decline. So this number reflects a three-year average. It's a four-year average. It's a four-year rated average. 40% the most recent year, 30 of the previous 20 of the previous and 10 for the fourth year out. Are you then saying that Ms. Stark's point about that we seem to be declining isn't quite right? No, it isn't quite right. We had a spike in 2014 and if you look at 13, 15 and 16 they're pretty consistent in the 70s. So rather than declining we just had a one-year spike. We had a one-year spike the other three years were pretty consistent. When I come back to present the MCAS and PARC results I will take a look at this so you can take a look at that. The issue was we had a whole bunch of extra credit points in 2014 because that was just a really great year for us. Cutting back on the students at the failing and increasing the students at the advanced. Is this your chart that you've created or is this from Desi? No, I created this. What I'm concerned with is when a parent or somebody goes to Desi and looks at it and says, you know, I don't have any data. People make quantum leaps and it's high-level math to really look at this and give it true value and not look at this and see what mistakes just drop, drop, drop. And they're not necessarily clearing themselves. I'm not knocking you. No, I understand. This is our annual PPI. Folks at home, if they're so inclined, can actually go and see the annual PPI all the data is out on the Department of Education website and it's available to everyone but I will bring you a chart back that shows annual PPI over time for the next time. Thank you. Oh yeah. Sorry, Mr. Cardin. Maybe you're going to get to this but is the down and drop that You were talking about that. was surprised at the results. So our overall trend in the data reflecting progress and closing the achievement gap at the elementary school levels where students and scheduling and staffing allow for consistent intervention services and coaching. We're seeing a positive trend in the PPI for high-need students because that's, you know, definitely the one that we wanna take a look at. At the secondary level, and that's why I wanna go back and show you the actual data because we really feel that, and if you notice this from the cumulative PPI for high-need students at the high school level was actually higher than the cumulative PPI for all students. And so we feel that at the high school level, that's where we get the most consistent scheduling of interventions for high-need students because they can put it in their schedule, it's blocked out, it doesn't get taken away unless there's some kind of assembly or something as Ms. Higgins, I sure will agree with me is that at the elementary school level, it is extraordinarily difficult to get students all the interventions that they need. It's also difficult at the middle school but even they have blocks of time in their day. At the elementary school, it is very, very difficult to get all the interventions that we might wanna give to a student that's a high-need student. So these are the individual schools and the reasons behind their results. So Bishop, again, the reason that they're a level two school is they're high-need students. If you remember, their cumulative PPI was 71. We saw an improvement in closing the achievement gap and they met their growth but they had no bonus for failing or advanced. Mr. Cardin just asked about Dallin, I'm gonna get to Dallin in a minute but just because I happen to know this off the top of my head, Dallin had two students, two, that were not proficient in one of the grade levels. If you wanna get, you have to get 10% of your students out of failing in order to get a bonus. When you have two students to get 10% of that is pretty, it's very tough, okay? So oftentimes when we see that schools are not getting their bonus, it's not because they're not doing a good job, it's because to get that 10% bonus, you really have to have a major effort. So that's English Language Arts and Math. We again didn't see a bonus but we saw a good CPI and SGP. We are piloting a piece of software called I Ready for Literacy to improve the information that we get around comprehensive skills development at the fourth and fifth grade level at Bishop and we're working with math and literacy coaches on a regular basis. So those are the things that we'll be doing to try to hopefully bring that 71 to 75 for the next year. Hardy again is a level two school because of their high need students. We also saw improvement in closing the achievement gap in their growth percentile at ELA but again no bonus, again, very difficult to do. We saw an improvement in their CPI in math, their SGP remained flat. We're gonna continue our title one tutor there. We're gonna focus on data analysis. We'll be reflected in changes in instruction including we'll be piloting a Fonteson-Panel comprehensive assessment, comprehension assessment. So you'll be seeing that we're piloting two assessments this year. One is I Ready, which is online and one is Fonteson-Panel, which is being done manually to provide more progress monitoring for students who are getting interventions. Pierce again, high need students. They met their target CPI and SGP in ELA but did not receive bonus points. In math, they met their target CPI and SGP but no bonus points. We're gonna continue our title one tutor in math there. We're piloting I Ready for Math to provide better progress monitoring for those students. At Thompson, the cumulative CPI was below the target for both all and high need students. They had a low slowing of the achievement gap but they did have improved SGP and ELA. They had some improved closing of the achievement gap in math and some improvement in growth. Again, no bonus. We will continue our title one tutor in math and ELA and professional development for grades three through five will focus on high need students. Stratton again, it was the high need student group that was below the target. We saw improved CPI and improved growth. Again, no bonus. We saw a low achievement gap closing in math and so we added a title one tutor for math support and we're piloting Fonteson-Panel Comprehension Assessment for ELA. And if we look to Dallin, they missed the target in both all students and high needs. There was no movement in closing the achievement gap and they had a low growth. But again, we're talking about a school that has very, very high performance so it's a lot harder to show those things and they got no bonus in either group. And in math, there was no movement in closing the achievement gap and they had a low growth. We're increasing the coaching in math and literacy. We're gonna focus on data analysis that will be reflected in changes in instruction including pilot the Fonteson-Panel Comprehensive Assessment, Comprehension Assessment. And finally, in Audison, all students and high need students in both areas, they had a low closing of the achievement gap and little or no growth and they had no bonus. And the same, pretty much the same thing exists for math. We're piloting already actually at the middle school for students in the math support classes to improve progress monitoring and intervention and we have an increased use of data in ELA. So these are the specific actions that we're gonna be taking and there's not the only actions but these are the areas that the curriculum team felt would get the most bang for the buck. And now if you remember what I talked about in this slide right here, that those schools where we're seeing our ability to provide consistent intervention services and coaching are showing positive growth and trends for our high need students. And if you were to look at this detailed chart, you'll see that Pierce met their CPI and their SGP target in ELA and they met their CPI and their SGP target in math and that's the school that's probably the easiest to make sure that students consistently get their interventions because there's only two teachers in each grade and so it's much easier to work the scheduling out. Dr. House-Nampi had a question. I'm wondering if any of the results specifically, Odeson had to do with the fact that they took electronic, they took PARC via electronic testing or that was what I remember. They did take it online. I can only, since I don't really have anything to compare it to, because they all took it online, I can go back to Bishop and if I look at Bishop's results compared to, they were the only school that took it online at the elementary level and I look at the other schools, I see no difference in their results nor when we did the surveys for students and teachers we saw students really saying that they were comfortable with it. A little bit less in third grade in terms of doing it online than the fourth and fifth grade. One of the things that we've done this year is to increase the amount of time that students have access to what we call kid blog so that they get more comfortable responding to online questions and that's because all fourth graders will be taking the test online this year across the district and so the teachers at the Bishop felt that their fourth and fifth grade students felt the most comfortable because they had spent a lot of time composing essays and short answer questions using kid blogs so we've expanded that across the district this year. So in terms of Audicent, I really don't have anything to compare it to. I don't have a sort of control group so. Yes, Mr. Thielen. So could you just talk a little bit about the discussions you might have had with teachers and principals about the results, how you impact the results and whether or not they're significant enough to change instruction or have conversations about change instruction or what do you think? I actually said at the beginning that I don't think, I think that we need to look at this. We need to think about it. We need to look at others. So for example, for Dallen, I wanna compare those results against writing samples that we're doing now in the fall. So to look at kids that may not have scored well in literacy and look at their writing samples that we're getting for them, look at their DRA scores, look at the math assessments that we're doing to see whether I think that we really sold people that we were trying out the test. And there was a varying response from school to school and test prep. And we really didn't want people to prepare too much. So I think that they took us at our word. They tested the test. They made sure the kids were comfortable with it. We did not have any reports of any students actually across the district being uncomfortable. But I feel like that because of the way we approached it, that it's really hard to really take it with less than a grain of salt. I feel like it gives us an indicator. We're gonna look at other measures to see whether this is something we should be concerned about or not concerned about. But we've also put things in place to provide us with more data. So it's just, it's maybe a year from now this kind of data might change, cause you to change practice. Yes, but right now I would say no. Got it, thank you. Mr. Heiner. You included Dallin in this chart here because of the PPI numbers that came out? Yes, they were held harmless, so that's why. And if they weren't held harmless and those numbers came out that way, they would have been a level two. That's correct. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Slipman. I know there's a decision point coming up now as to go to paper or electronic for the rest of the district. What's been the thinking? We have chosen to have all of, well Bishop did it all online last year and they will continue to do so. Pierce because it's a small school and it's easy to support with the number of tech support people we have. We'll also be taking it online. Audison took it online, they'll continue to take it online and fourth graders across the district will take it online. That's what the state expectation was and so we feel like we're prepared to meet that expectation. I think we'll see how the tech support goes this year. The state is asking for only fifth grade to be added next year. I mean, once we add fourth and fifth grade. Actually, to be honest, I have principles that are like do it all online. Teachers at Bishop, when we got the new iReady assessment, they were like as long as it's online, signing up. They just really felt like the online handling of the paperwork and the testing and everything was much, much smoother and we had a number of issues with what were you supposed to send back, what weren't you supposed to send back that we would be a lot better off across the district without a lot of paper? Just as a point, and it sort of surprised me, there was a widespread opinion upon our principles and law that we should do everything online this year. We have the technical capacity in terms of the servers and it's giving everybody a head start towards it. So it was a bit of a surprise for me to see that kind of a ground swell but it makes a lot of sense. And I think we would have done that. We have the bandwidth, we have the devices, that's not the issue. The issue is that we wanna put tech support people in each building, excuse me, for the first time that people are doing the testing and we just don't have enough people to go around. That's gonna be an issue for the budget. Okay, yeah, that does it. We've got a bunch of part-time people we can deploy. Yeah, one of the feedbacks I've heard is that some really valuable people were sort of put in the role of tech support because we could use them but they could be doing other things and should. So if we look at other assistance plans we now have district-wide elementary literacy and math websites with exemplar videos that are made available for all teachers. This concludes models of data analysis which impact instruction. So we're making a video of one of our literacy coaches doing a DRA score with a student and then talking about how you can break down pieces of that DRA score to help instruction in the classroom. We also have teachers that are making videos about different bends in Lucy Colkins and a teacher can actually watch it and then do the bend the next day. So we're gonna deepen our coaching model and try to increase our consistency and you're gonna find, as Dr. Bodie just alluded to, that our budget request for 2017-2018, at least in the curriculum director's opinion, we'll focus on items necessary to provide consistent support for high-need students and their teachers across the district. Other questions? I have one more question. So in the plans, there seems to be a wide variety of things that we're planning to do depending on the school and I'm just wondering why in certain cases do we do eye-ready for literacy but not for math and what's the decision point there? Is it just based on the numbers or is there some other? Well, in some cases, it's based on what we saw on the results but we're piloting eye-ready at two schools to try to decide whether it's giving us the kind of information that we really want. It's not expensive but it's not cheap. And so we wanna make sure that the data that we're getting from it, it's an adaptive test. So if a student starts the test and they're doing really, really well, then the questions get harder. If the student starts the test and they're having difficulty then the questions will get a little bit easier. So you can test and get a really good snapshot of a student in a much shorter amount of time. But we wanna make sure that it is going to get us the kind of information that is helpful to improve instruction because if it's not, then it doesn't make any difference if it costs 10 cents. If it does, then it's worth the investment. Good, thanks. Dr. Asanabbi. I had two questions. First, these pilots, will we get to hear the results of them sometime later in the year or maybe early next year? Yeah, I would say sometime in the middle of the spring because we need to do two or three testing cycles so we won't have those results until sometime in the springtime. The one thing I, oh, go ahead, sir. Yes. I was gonna loop back to the question I had at the start which was if I understood correctly, Dr. Cheson said that we didn't, the teachers don't get the results of the questions. They don't get what's called item analysis so they don't find out how their students did on a specific question. However, they do, for example, for literacy, they get to find out where their students stood on, a group of questions that would be regarding an informational text, a group of questions that would be on literary analysis and a group of questions that would be on vocabulary. That's the closest thing we're gonna get towards. I guess, I just got my child's part thing in the mail today so I just glanced at it. But it had results for questions which were released. I mean, it had the answer that she had put which was not the correct answer on some of them. Is that the science test? No. Maybe it was actually. I was gonna say, science is an information. I was like, I didn't see that. I was gonna say. Yeah, no. Okay, never mind, my mistake. Dr. Buddy. Well, we're doing the iReady, which is an adaptive test. One of the things that I've come to understand is that the new MCAS 2.0 will not be adaptive. It's gonna be a fixed form test. So what we still want to do the iReady in terms of having another touch point for just seeing what the progress students are making, particularly the students that we are, we really wanted to monitor. Do we have any more information about MCAS 2.0 in terms of whether it be timed or? It's untimely. It's gonna be untimely. We know that. Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, I think, any more questions, comments? And so, superintendent's report. All right. Number of things. And some of them are very much related to each other. Let me start with, these were put in an order before we, thinking about and which makes more sense to be talked about. As you know, October 19th is the day of the special town meeting. And while the capacity to borrow money for a Thompson edition was approved in June, we still have to go before town meeting and ask for appropriation. Now, what we decided at the School Enrollment Task Force last year was to make that decision this year after looking at enrollment at Thompson. And basically, it really came down to a one litmus test. What was the projection for the enrollment this year? And would we meet that expectation or would we not or exceeded? And that the enrollment projection I think was 448 and we have exceeded it 465. So, I mean, that alone was the information the School Enrollment Task Force wanted to know in order to make their recommendation that we go ahead with the Thompson edition. When you look into the Dr. McKibben's August forecast, which is just using our summer numbers and you look out the next 10 years or more, in fact, it's a 15 year projection. Now, Thompson for the foreseeable future are going to have kindergarten class sizes around 80 or more. And that's going to be for kindergartens. So, as that group of four keeps moving through the school we're going to need additional classrooms. Right now, our fifth grade, there is two and so, and the last year's was two. So as that two moves out and four moves in, you can see what the effect is going to be. So, that is going, the recommendation had been to meet at the School Enrollment Task Force to go forward with the Thompson edition. They have endorsed that recommendation, which will be presented by Mr. Chapellein at the 19th meeting. Another warrant article that was put in as a placeholder was the warrant article for modulars at Audison next year. And we've discussed some of my reasoning and actually it's not even just my reasoning, it was the reasoning of the administrators and other people at Audison in terms of what to do next year. Clearly, the school is tight, very tight. And where they really see it at Audison is in the corridors, in the cafeteria. This particular summer, or I should move back up even a little further, the school committee supported adding half cluster to Audison this year. So we're gonna have three full clusters and a half cluster at each level. So we had to do a lot of construction this summer to make this work. And there were a lot of people that had to move, programs move, it was actually quite significant amount of moving that occurred at the school in order to be able to accommodate the increased enrollment this year. So the bottom line of this is that while we know that it's still going to be tight next year and we're expecting other 40 students dispersed over the three grades, it didn't make sense to add modulars next year. Doesn't mean that Audison couldn't use modulars but it would be only for one year. If we were not looking at Gibbs, this next year would be the beginning of starting to add modular classrooms until we had eight or 10 modulars at Audison over the next couple of years to deal with enrollment growth. But the feeling of administration was that given all the work that went into the summer to make sure it would work in terms of space with very high utilization, some rooms are utilized 100% of the day. I don't think any of them are pretty much under 85%, which is an MSBA requirement in their projections. So at any rate, we're using high utilization. We did a massive amount of construction. A schedule was created that actually worked quite well this fall. And an additional issue about next year is that if any modulars we put on the upper parking lot would reduce parking. And that is a big problem. As we've increased the number of staff in there to meet enrollment growth, the crunch for parking has only gotten worse. So if we put even a modular up there, we'd probably reduce a modular or two. We'd probably reduce the parking by half. So there was a lot of reasons why the decision was made to not go forward, including one other. And that is when you put a modular out of school, we saw this at Thompson. It takes a lot of time on the part of administration. It would take a lot of time just in terms of physically having it all work. But then it would mean you have to move people into the modular and would have this domino effect in the rest of the school. They would rather put the time and energy into planning for Gibbs rather than adjusting the schedule and everything one more time for one year. So I wanted to say this because I think a lot of people are confused, because in fact I've had some parents say, well, you said that we really need a lot of modulus next year. We didn't need eight or 10 next year, but we certainly could have used two or four, depending on how you did the programming. But we made a decision as a town to go forward with Gibbs, and I think that in the interest of cost and all these other reasons I've given, we will adjust next year, make it work, and put our time and energy into all the planning for Gibbs. And so that article will have no action on it at town meeting. I don't know if anybody wants to comment or go on before I. Yes, Mr. Dillon. The articles at town meeting and the impact of schools are just. Two and. Thompson and Thompson. Just Thompson and Thompson. Thompson and Thompson and that's it. The last article has to do with marijuana dispensaries in terms of how many feet away from school they can be. It hasn't really. This also a zoning article that may dominate for two nights. I'm aware of that. But I thought it was just a school idea, but the school committee's not involved in any other. No. No. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's it. That's right. Yes. With regard to Hardy, the need for extra space and things of that nature. There was some talk at the enrollment task force meeting. We didn't, there was no decision and there wasn't much talk. But to take action, how the space needs there are going to happen next September, am I correct? We need one more classroom next year. So in order to get that, unless somebody magically finds something, we're going to have to go to the town for some money or take it out of our own coffers. How do you see, I mean, you put down in your report, it needs more study, but we're in a time crunch to have everything in place for September next year. That's all I'm concerned about. The principal and I have a plan A and a plan B to deal with the one classroom for next year. But beyond that, we have to have modulars classrooms there. And I would recommend as soon as possible, we start talking about it enrollment task force. Right. Could you tell us a plan about what, when things would need to be studied, when, you know, we need to go to a meeting for various things? I think that we would need to begin the planning this year, for sure, because it's just the way the calendar works. The director of facilities and I have been looking at ways that, what would be the best thing to do in terms of acquiring modulars? But the lead time on that, you know, we would probably want to be going out, looking for modulars next fall. So you just keep backing these things up. And then there's the issue of cost. Perhaps what we might want to do is by Springtown meeting, being able to make a request for that. So we need to really be serious about it right now, because the warrant's going to be published in two months. Right. And it's closed in. I mean, the time crunch is real short. So, I mean. We'll put a placeholder in. Well, not only that, but we need, we've done a good job getting the enrollment task force on board for everything our request. So it did. Dr. Allison Ampey. Can we shift any of the modulars that are at Stratton anywhere once they're done? That's possible. We've always thought about that as a possibility. It's whatever the cost would be. It's possible to do that. Yes. I'm just thinking then there's no headway for building them or. But it's not clear that that's the most cost-effective way to do it. No, I'm just saying it gets rid of some of the time, some of the. At least they're built. You still got to build them up and attach them and all that. But at least they're here. They just have to move them. Well, we still need the money. And the money aspect is that part of the timeline. Okay, so clarification. There is a discussion about modulars only, not necessarily building under Hardy. We'll do the discussion has to happen this year to potentially put on the spring ballot for town meeting. Well, one of the, yes. One of the issues with Hardy is that you know there's not much space there. And you could be in a situation with Hardy just like we are at Thompson where you have modular classrooms, but you also want to have construction going. So the placement of those modulars will be important. And frankly, the number, because it's just not that much space. So it's not as simple or straightforward as one might think it would be. So is there, can you tell us a timing about whether we're going to look at the idea of building permanently? I mean, those decisions are far away, but is there sort of a timeline for when we'll be exploring that issue? Well, if you had a chance to take a look at the August McKibbin numbers, there is a leveling off much faster at Hardy in terms of numbers, assuming. Mugar doesn't get built. You've got it. Yes. And we don't even really know the impact of that either. And when it would hit. So that's something that the town manager is going to be looking at and coming back to the school and women task force to talk more about. But there are a lot of ifs at Hardy that are a little bit more nuanced than they were, say, at Thompson. Okay. But I think the important message for particularly parents who are hearing this tonight, that it is definitely on our radar screen. We are definitely going to study it and make plans to make this work for the school. What I've heard from parents is I think they just want to know that it's being studied, even though they understand that the decisions may not be made yet. But that we have explored various plans and have an idea of. Mr. Carton. Yeah, I thought I heard at the meeting that one of the next steps would be to draft the RFP with the facilities department to do that study. It's been done. And just to see, because there's so many options. One is, as you mentioned, is to stratton. Certainly the issue of whether Thompson would be moved. But then there's also another option whether another company would give us a better price. And then there's the option of should we buy it and then transport it from Florida or Georgia here and then have it installed with yet a separate company. So the news is that they're assuming the task force of the next meeting improves moving ahead with the study than either us or the finance committee or somebody will fund a study to more outline, more better outline the possible solutions for hard. Yes, I think we're going to need study. We certainly, HMFH gave us a fairly good roadmap of options there. But if in fact we go out, then for years and assuming that Hardy needs four classrooms per grade, then we're going to need three classrooms. What's the best way to put three classrooms on that building? All right. I think we did the update. Enrollment numbers. We don't have a new. You don't have a new one yet. But I will get that to you as soon as we're able to get that. It's, we're now past October one. So whatever the number of snapshot was, those are all being looked at right now, but I will get you the latest one. From what I understand from just a conversation with our data people that really hasn't changed that much, minor changes, but the overall is that we are approaching 5,500. And as you know, specifically on September 22nd, we had 5,467 students. That is represents a 4% increase over last year. I think we're going to be at 4%. For sure. It's actually 4.1%. Dr. McKibbin had us at 4.5%. So I think some of this, but I'll be able to tell you better the next time we meet where we stand. All right. And then timeline for Gibbs. Right now it's not much to report. The architects are working on the design. I'm certainly thinking about what the schedule would be separate and apart from the physical building. What are we going to be doing for all the other parts of it in terms of what's the curriculum, how is it going to be scheduled, busing issues, personnel issues. There's a lot of things that are going to go into this. And one of the things that we're actually going to talk about tomorrow at an admin meeting is talk a little bit about timelines in terms of what we need to move forward with different committees and so forth. And we're going to have a parent advisory committee. But right now there's no need for one because there's no decisions or feedback to be had. So I think that we'll be reaching out to people probably in the next month or two to put that kind of committee together. That'll be helpful during the next phase of the project. Mr. Carton. So I'm surprised at the number of people that asked me. So what's going on with the games? What's been decided? I mean, there's been a few communications, inviting people to that meeting and things like that. But there are even some teachers that are saying, oh, it's not opening until 2019. And so there seems to be a lot of confusion about what's going on. So at some point, maybe when you open this new committee up, if there was just a very short clear, the plan is to do this. We're hoping to open it fall 2018, barring any construction issues. It'll be for sixth grade. The committees will be working on programming it. A very clear short communication might help clear up some of the confusion that still seems to be around. OK, that's good advice. One of the things the committee should know, because I think the public would like to know too, is that there are a lot of, as you know, there's been a lot of discussion about Gibbs tenants. And one of the things that I have been meeting with those tenants and working with their director facilities to how we're going to accommodate their programs next summer in our schools. And so we're, and in fact today I had a meeting about this very topic with our new director of recreation, because we house right now two programs that Gibbs for the recreation department, one of which is a significant money raise, let's just say revenue. Revenue, right, exactly right. Strong revenue source for the park and recs, which is an enterprise system. So it's very important that they have this income. So we're working on that. Dr. Allison, I'd be fine. I just wanted to be sure that we're also thinking about, as we go forward with the Gibbs, about the needs of our populations, which are going to have more difficulty with the multiple transitions. And working that into planning, especially if it involves things like, do the spaces need to be similar in both Onneson and Gibbs? Anything that would affect the physical space that would be being built in at this point? Those are the kids that I'm the most concerned about as we go forward with this plan. I think you're right. We've done more work on transitions, but clearly we need to do more when you have such a short time in one building. People have been talking about that. But then there's talking about understanding how to do something about it. And then it's getting down to, what does that can look like? And that's what the work will be. For sure. Mr. Heiner. For those that are interested in the community about the construction aspect of the Gibbs that invite them to the Permanent Town Building Committee meetings, it's a standard item on the agenda. And it's in detail of the current aspect of the construction. They're very good about that. And it's an open meeting. Anyone is welcome to come. That's the construction aspect. Mr. Cole is the chair. And he defers immediately any educational questions, sends them right up to Dr. Bode. Dr. Bode, do you want to talk about the two meetings that were held, one with teachers and one with parents, about Gibbs visioning? We had two Gibbs visioning meetings, one with teachers and one with parents. Both were well attended. It was a voluntary meeting for teachers. And we had about 35 to 40 teachers attend, all grade levels, in fact. And then also the same thing for parents. Both sessions were facilitated by the educational planner who has been working with Fine Gold. In fact, he works with other districts and probably will work with us as we move forward with the high school as well. His name is David Steven. So we have summary notes from both of those meetings. And both of them are now on the website. I know that for sure the teacher one is. And I'm almost positive we put the parent one on this week. We have a, under facilities, we have, I'm pretty sure we did, because we just got the summary. We're going to create a dedicated site to Gibbs under facilities as we will also with the high school project. I think it's going to be, in fact, with the high school, it's going to be really important to do that. And I will encourage people to even, I think we'll even have some kind of a newsletter type of part with that. But that's yet to get in a little head of ourselves on that one. Yeah, I just urge that we have a sort of a clear quick link or button that we can go into and get a sense of what's happening with Gibbs and what's happening at the high school. You know what I can do. And this might actually help with the parents who talked to Mr. Cardin. And that is maybe send out an email to all parents of the elementary schools to that middle school too. And tell them, remind them when we're planning to open Gibbs and give them the link to this information. I'll do that. And Karen's going to help me remember to do that. Have you ever, and I think, I mean, Mr. Cardin's sort of point about having some sort of timelines, say, January through May, we're doing this kind of thing. And I know that's still being worked out. But I think for both the high school and for Gibbs, it'd be really helpful. And it could be with a caveat saying it's vague. It's not vague, but obviously subject to circumstances. But then people can sort of follow along. Oh, it's January. We're probably in this kind of stage. And then alert them where the site is. Any documents we get is just going to go right on there. And then, of course, there's also the School Enrollment Task Force. And if you've ever gone on that, you're going to. It's just a list of things. It's just so many documents that the committee's had to consider over the last year. Well, changing from buildings, I just have two quick things. One is I want to acknowledge this joint press release that went out late this afternoon from Chief Ryan and myself. Basically, alerting parents that about the clowns that are the nationwide, yes, the clowns. Yes, they've been finding that there has been clowns that have been luring kids into woods or into, and just feeling like they're praying on children. We haven't had any incidents around here. We haven't heard anything. But the fact that it is something that's been growing and talking about in social media and it's all across the country, we did get an alert this morning. And then, as we thought about it during the course of the day, decided to do a joint press release, which was sent to all parents, media, and to all staff. So basically, the issue is that if anybody sees clowns, they're called the police. Now, that may be problematic when you get to Halloween. Inappropriate stuff. Inappropriate scary. Except I know tons of kids who want to do Halloween to dress up. No, I don't want to make light of it. But it's unfortunate that these things had to be said. But you're absolutely right. It's really the inappropriate of anything that just doesn't look right. It's better to be safe on this than not. So that's why we decided to put out joint press release. And then one other. Dr. Anthony has a quick. I had heard of some students who were very concerned, I mean, to the point where they were fearful and staying up late at night, would it be appropriate for them to see their guidance counselor or just to get some help? Yes. Or OK. If a student has fear about this or anything, and they should definitely talk to the social worker in their school or the guidance counselor. OK. The guidance counselor could get them out. Yes. And at the middle school, all of our guidance counselors are school adjustment counselors. Thank you. I also just want to take this opportunity to remind people that we have a save a date for the AYCC Gala event again this year. It's going to be on Thursday, November 17th at 7 p.m. Now that is a school committee meeting. Talk about that. Yeah. Excuse me, I've got to say, with all our concerns about not hitting certain things, I think we've managed to have almost an event every single school committee meeting. This wasn't the schools this time. We need a time-wide calendar that people take serious. There's a school for that. And the guest speaker is David Axelrod. Oh, wow. OK, so we do want to raise this question about whether we want to shift our school committee meeting at that point because we also have a conflict with the high school conferences, which is a conflict potentially for some parents, but also for parking. And so we do want to bring. I'm not sure what the appropriate time to bring that up is, but. Probably under liaison reports. Liaison reports. Future agenda. OK, let's bring it up then. Great, awesome. All right, that's my report. OK, great, thank you. So now we are on to consent agenda. Autims listed with the asterisks are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests. In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant for approval, warrant number 17047 dated 922 2016. Total warrant amount 777,970 and 64 cents. Approval of minutes. ASC, regular minutes, September 22, 2016. Approval of AHS trip, AHS foreign exchange trip to be determined. Originally, this is the point that Mr. Hanard brought up. Originally approved 1022, 2015. The clarification on that is that we are approving each trip each year, even though maybe the first trip was approved in a previous period. Approval of AHS trip, Cape Town, South Africa, February 16, to 28, 2017. Approval of AHS trip, London and Inverins, April 13, 2017. Approval of AHS trip, Poland and Prague, June of 2017. So moved. We probably have an abstention, right? Yes, in 20 seconds I've got to take the question up. So yeah, so let's take out the minutes. You don't need to be present to vote the minutes. To approve minutes? But on the minutes side, just want to note there's a slight correction that I forwarded to Ms. Fitzgerald on the minutes, so that I'd like to ask that they be approved as corrected. Are we pulling it out from the consent agenda though, or are we just keeping it in there? No, I think it's just the minor error. Right, OK, so that there is a, as amended, the minutes as amended. Oh, we can vote if there's one other. I didn't realize that we could. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. OK, so all those in favor? Aye. I opposed? Abstentions? OK, it's unanimous for me to. OK, so the next item, just want to tell you what's going on here. Ms. Fitzgerald's idea was to actually have maybe a standing item for policy to review. She said it's much easier to sort in Novus if she can just sort it, rather than having to figure out where the policy is hidden. She can just pull it out and sort it by that. So even though today we have no policy to review, it's not a bad thing to sort of have it on. It may be sort of always here, right? And then you can just pull it up, and some days you won't have anything, and some days you will. Yes, Ms. Rayner? Just for clarification going forward. So in the subcommittee meeting of policy procedures, if we bring forward something for first review, I tell you when it will show up there. Thank you. OK, good. Yes, Dr. Nelsen. Can I suggest we write none if there weren't any? Yeah, I think there was an expectation that there was going to be something, and then we found out later on that there wasn't anything. But OK, so we'll just keep it as a standing item and write none or write something. Yeah, sounds good. OK, subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements, budget, Dr. Al-Samman? Budget, we'll be sending out a doodle and hopes to meet in the next few weeks. OK. Community relations, Ms. Darks? Same. OK, doodle, hope to meet. Doodle went out. OK, district accountability curriculum instruction and assessment, Mr. Schluchman? Yeah, we did discuss the superintendent evaluation, which we then forwarded to the full committee. OK. OK. Facilities, Mr. Thielman? No report. OK. Policies and procedures, Mr. Heiner? We met on October 6th, discuss procedures to address our policy on recent audit. Heard from members on priority of policies that we were looking at during the year. Our next meetings will be October 20th and November 9th. OK. School enrollment task force, we've gotten some report. But is there anything else you want to add? Anybody else want to add for the enrollment task force? OK. The next school in our target is Hardy. Yes. Warrant committee, Mr. Heiner? Everyone got paid again. OK. Liaison reports? Yes, Mr. Heiner? CPAC had a coffee at Thompson on September 27th. The minister card wasn't able to attend, so we asked me to go. Parents got a chance to meet the special education staff. Dr. Alma was excellent, and her staff were all to be commended, did a great job. Parents were very positive, especially the new parents. They felt not only welcome by CPAC and the staff, but their questions were answered. They were very happy. If I may just continue. OPEC had a coffee at Audison to meet the principal and what OPEC does for the new parents. Dallin, PTO met on October 4th. Sorry, which committee? Pardon me? Oh, townwide. Yes. No, Dallin, PTO. Oh, Dallin, yes, sorry. I was not able to stay too long, but she had concern on question number two and why they should vote no. Stratton PTO met on October 11th, talked on question two. Parents discussed year and adaptations because of the modular units on the different programs that the PTO does, and they passed the budget. And I'm sorry I was not able to attend the Permanent Sound Building Committee on October 4th. Any other liaison and committee reports? Let's see. I attended the Arlington Youth Health Safety Coalition meeting, what did we talk about? Mostly we talked, mostly it was internal discussion about the coalition. And we had some team building stuff and did a lot of that stuff. The woman who is head of it, whose name is absolutely I know her face. Ivy LaPlante. Ivy, yes, is engaged and broke her collarbone. So she was not at the meeting. No, not at all. No, she plays some pretty aggressive sport and ran into somebody and broke her collarbone. But I think that was after she got engaged. So that was the news that I came back from that with. Anything else? And I urged people last time, but people weren't here, that if you are a liaison to either a PTO or another organization, town, and you have not yet made contact with them to sort of reach out and make sure. And my general feeling is that they don't necessarily want you at every committee meeting, but they would like to see you and have an opportunity to interact with you and liaison with you. Oh, I do have one other thing. Actually, I am going to be working with the library. They're offering a Girls Who Code offering this year. And I believe that there are still spots open. So it's meant the goal of the organization is to close the gender gap in technology by incentivizing girls to come and really build a group of people that they can relate to in technology. And it's really exciting. They've grown year over year over year. When I went to Morgan's graduation, actually, the founder spoke at her graduation. And I was so moved that I looked up where I could do it. And then it turned out that the Arlington library was looking for facilitators. And so I, along with two other people, so we have three facilitators, which is great. And we had a really great open house. And I'm just really excited that I think it's going to be a really great offering. And I hope that we can kind of get the word out. So if people there for girls grades 6 to 12, and it meets every Wednesday from 3.30 to 5.30 at the library, it's free. You don't have to have a computer. They have computers that kids can have. If you give me the information, I will ask principals to get it out in their newsletter. Oh, cool. I will send you that. I've seen the information in several different places. Oh, good. Yeah, so it's definitely been on my radar. Excellent. Yeah, great. Mr. Heiner? Announcements? Yeah, so we're done with that. So yes, announcements. Mr. Heiner. Massachusetts partner for diversity, NPDE, and had an education con for class Friday. It was outstanding. You know something's really good if you sit there listening for five and a half hours, and the time just takes off. I would like to publicly commend Dr. Bodie. She was one of the speakers. It was excellent. And a heavy commendation to Rob. He was one of the coordinators for the program. I guess he was a little discouraged with the amount of people that came, but the speakers were fantastic. They were. It was just a wonderful time. And if they are offered again, I would recommend any member of the committee. Great. Other announcements? OK. So future agenda items, Mr. Heiner? I would like to see a financial report at the next meeting. I understand part of the thing, but we'll be at a point with two months into the year. And I would like to recommend to the committee that we might not need them on a monthly basis, or even a weekly quarterly unless something big comes up, but a detailed one. So I'm requesting it. I would love to be able to provide that as the next meeting, but I probably could at the following. The person we have hired to complete the state report, either finish today or we'll finish next Thursday. And then she said she would work on that. OK. Just putting it on your radar. Believe me, that one is on my radar. So other future agenda items? Yes, Mr. Cardin? I was hoping we can get a more detailed report on the AHS building process. There's sort of a checklist of things that we were supposed to do in this phase. And it would be nice to get a list of what we've submitted, what we still have to submit, and what's left to complete this stage. Sure. Yep. OK, so let's quickly discuss, then, the calendar issue. So as I said, we have the parking issue, because there will be high school conferences at night. The issue is on Thursday, the 17th of November. So that's an issue that couldn't be solved by maybe putting out cones or some other issue. But it also is the AYCC Gala. And I know that lots of members of both the community and our committee like to go to that. And so do we want to entertain shifting that meeting? And just to talk to a calendar, we have a meeting the week before, because of the short time period, because of Thanksgiving. So we probably, for example, wouldn't want to have it on the 15th, because it would be only days since the previous meeting. We might want to entertain having it early the next week. What do people think? Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving weekend. It's tough. Yeah, Mr. Heiner. I know we're going to have it on the 17th. Is it the members amiable to the 16th? Yes. I'm fine with the 16th. 16th is a Wednesday. That's fine for me. That's the vision 2020 on education. Oh, it is, right. I was like, I have something down the calendar. I was trying to figure out what it was. It is. It's the. It won't work. That won't work. You're right. How about 15th? Well, the 15th. So again, we could. It is from the last time. Right, so we have it on the 10th. We already have a meeting on the 10th. So you don't think that the Monday, the 21st, for example, would be the time that we could do something? No. No. No. Oh, because you are out. We traditionally, I don't know what the plan is going to be this year, but we traditionally take the week before Thanksgiving off. We do. But we have a special issue. No, no, no. Personally, you know, travel on that week. Yeah, right, right, yeah. OK. What about December 1st? December 1st. So that ends up giving us three in a row. And then we're going to have three weeks in a row, but it being down boom. We can pretend it's November 31st. Well. Why don't we just see how far we get on the 10th? OK. Right, actually. We get down on the 10th of November. So try to shove everything into the 10th. We talked about possibly having a. The problem is that this is getting into the timeline when we're going to be having principals coming in and giving us their budget requests and things. And they have to be scheduled ahead of time. So we have to make a decision. So either we eliminate a meeting or we move it or something, but we need to make a decision. Do we have a timeline of how many, you know, what do you want for principal presentations? It's usually taken two nights, splitting this, you know, elementary and secondary plus department. Why don't we get a report from the budget committee on what the time has to happen and what it has to happen. And then we can make a decision. Well, we have a budget calendar. So, I mean, we have that's what we're going to do next. So let's see. We did talk tonight at an earlier meeting about the superintendent valuation may not take us long. So we could maybe shove more things into the early November meeting. But we might just as a warning, we might make it a much longer meeting than normal. Because we do have sort of expectations of things that we're trying to get happen in November. So, yeah, Mr. Heiner. Why don't we wait for the budget calendar and that aspect of it there to make a decision? OK. If we do the first, we have one on the first, the eighth, and the 15th. Right, that's a lot. That's a lot of asking about the budget calendar. Laura and I are at a conference that night. On the first. On the first. On the first. We can do all sorts of things if you have no idea. That's what we do. That would be dangerous. We do not have a meeting on the 15th. We schedule for the 15th and that's the 26th. Yeah, but we've got. We did all sorts of things when we weren't home. Oh yeah, we have two nights. So two nights and December works. I mean, so I'm saying you don't need to wait for the budget calendar. Right, but if we added a third one instead of the 17th of November. In other words, put the, but that isn't going to work because Dr. Modi just said. I think the question is, can we get through the things we want to get through in November in one meeting? And my point is. Yeah. Budget's not the constraint here. Budget's not too strange. Budget's okay. Right. Budget's okay because it will use the December meeting. So let's just cancel the meeting. So, okay, well, let's, so what I think is potentially we could do is that we could just have an extra long meeting on that first meeting if needed. But, you know, I don't want to just, I don't want to not consider something that we would normally consider in November. Potentially we can fit everything into that first meeting and cancel that other meeting potentially. But we'll get a better sense soon. Okay. Okay, so let's leave it at that. Okay, so we have executive session now, right? So do I, I'm confused about, do I read this first? And then we vote. Okay, excellent. Okay. Thank you. Bye. And thank you to our student rep. I hope we see you again or your colleagues. Executive session to conduct strategy sessions and preparations for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. We need to approve the MOA for two additional AEA stipends at OMS and vote to point prove the following executive session minutes, September 22nd, 2016. Okay, so we're gonna do a roll call to go into, oh no, we need a motion first. A motion from Mr. Schliffman, seconded by Mr. Heiner to go into executive committee. We'll start to the roll call. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Yes. Ms. Darjean Ampey. Yes. Mr. Schliffman. Yes. Yes. Are we coming out? We are not coming out, right? We don't have to vote the MOA. Do we need to vote the MOA afterwards? Yeah, I mean it's... So we need to come out. We need to just take. Okay, okay. Okay, so we will be coming out of executive session. Just for the purpose of the vote. Just for the purpose of the vote, it sounds like. Okay, great. Okay. Okay, so we need to vote on two items. One. We need to vote on one item. Sorry about that. We don't need to vote and release the minutes. No. Okay, we need to vote on the agreement between the Arlington Education Association and the Arlington School Committee. Move to accept the memorandum of agreement with regarding the stipends at Autism Middle School for Spanish and Latin. Yes. Okay. Second. Okay, second by Mr. Schliffman. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion to adjourn. Motion... Second. Okay. Motion to adjourn. Seconded by Mr. Thielen. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, great.