 Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model before we begin permit me to offer a few notes First this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on a CMI Persons wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website Persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate You are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves Both zoom participants and persons watching on a CMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website Using the novice agenda platform and finally each vote tonight will be taken by roll call We will begin this evening with the FY 24 budget hearing if there is anyone here or on Zoom who would like to make a comment regarding the FY 24 budget. You can raise your hand here in the space or on zoom Mystic in this checking. All right seeing none. I will close our FY 24 budget hearing The next item on our agenda is public comment Before we call our first speaker. I have a few ground rules for members of the public who wish to address the committee There will be 20 minutes of public comment depending on the number of people who sign up time allotments may be reduced But will not exceed three minutes each I will let the speaker know when they have 30 seconds left If the number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 20 minutes The number of speakers may be capped and will be invited to speak based on the timestamp of their email to mystic in The school committee respectfully requests participants of the public to utilize their camera if possible while speaking and To adhere to the public comment policy BEDH that requires participants to provide their name and address Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations and programs as concerned them But in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel Nor against any member of the school community Except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as the operational leader of Arlington public schools The public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than superintendent Additionally, the committee will not hear anything that might identify and or infringe upon a student's privacy by name or incident We have one person signed up for a public comment this evening. Ms. Hall Good evening. My name is Julie Hall and I live at 189 Jason Street. Can you hear me? In Massachusetts sexual education is not required and I applaud APS for teaching the great body shop and grades K through 5 in past years I Believe all children should understand their bodies and receive age appropriate sexual education in order to become healthy and informed adults Recently as in yesterday I filed an official objection to the new curriculum that is being taught by PE teachers on Gender identity to grades for this month And potentially lower grades next year It's not age appropriate nor is it based on scientific data I'm fully aware that your goal is to teach in a manner that is inclusive to all students and I support this goal Unfortunately the lessons in human growth and development no longer focus on the specific changes of the female and male body The proctor and gamble video always changing and growing up co-ed puberty education Was removed from 118 23 curriculum slides because it used the terms male and female Instead boy and girl body changes are grouped together I'm sorry instead boy and girl body changes are Grouped together on one slide the great body shop stated that a female's hips will widen and females may experience puberty one to two years before males Factual statements like this will no longer be taught in this manner According to Landon Callahan desi consultant for safe schools their terms boy and girl should not be spoken during the presentation and should be replaced with person with a vulva person with a vagina and person with a penis I Think most children or parents will find it ridiculous for the words boy and girl to be forbidden My understanding is that mr. Callahan has a degree in media communications, but not in education or curriculum design APS has adopted the national sex education standard second edition 2020 which does not align with the great body shot Reference on page 50 of the elementary handbook. I have reviewed the great body shop And it offered to fifth graders in the spring of 2021 There's no traces of it in the new human growth and development curriculum in my opinion According to sex ed for social change Massachusetts does not require sex education, but instead allows local school boards To make such decisions if a community decides implement sex education General law of Massachusetts chapter 71 380 requires that standards be developed with the guidance of community stakeholders including parents and at least one physician I'm disappointed with the manner in which his education material has been revised and As you reconsider the material that is currently being taught in grade four and possibly to lower grades next year Thank you for your time on this matter Our next item on the agenda AHS student representatives to the school committee All right, I mean the sports seasons have been Winding down the winter sports. The hockey team is like destroying it. They're doing amazing. There's a game tonight. I believe But most other sports they're like our internments are in like the final championships. I believe wrestling did well um School events we there's a junior and senior spring fling going on in a few weeks and I'm excited for that. I think a lot of the school is it's a nice like precursor to prom and Problems have been announced things are being planned. Everything is going well Thank you very much The next item on our agenda is an athletic department presentation. Mr. Bowler Do you want to say anything? I can't be I'm going to pull up your sides And you can sort of signal to me when you want me to advance Well one second You're first. I want you know, thank you for letting me come speak here today And you know, thank you, you know for everyone here that made it possible to you know have no athletic fees this year I think it's been huge for our Students and of the families of Allenton, you know, it's unbelievable and thank you I know it's a lot of hard work went into it and you know our students and our parents really do appreciate it. So thank you So I'm just go to the next slide. I'm I just kind of did a comparison, you know We're we had we're from fall 21 to fall 22 22, you know, we were up, you know 42 more students played sports this season. We had well over 520 kids trial for sports this year Girls volleyball and football and had the biggest jumps in the fall season from 51 to 67 53 to 65 In the fall it didn't change any of non-cut sports all our non-cut sports was still cut sports even with some no user fees And those were across country field hockey football and girls swimming The cut sports for the fall were cheering golf boys soccer girls soccer and girls volleyball And I don't see for the fall. I don't see, you know That, you know any cuts coming in the non-cut sports in the past if we've had more people do cross country We've been fortunate enough to add another coach. So I don't think any In the fall no no cut sport will become a cut sport because of user fees In the winter, you know again another big jump up, you know from 357 last year to 391 this year, you know wrestling went from 24 students to 44 Which the huge jump they you know, they finished second in the section of this year won the middle sex league title for the fifth straight season undefeated in the Liberty League You know coach Cummings does a great job and you know the huge jump in sports And they're very thankful for having no athletic fees and it will never be a cut sport It might be something where we look into adding another coach to help out with wrestling But you know they'll wrestling will always, you know maintain it be not be non-cut sport Also alpine skiing went from 17 students to 31 students Which was a great jump, you know, they had four kids compete make it to the state The state meets this week, which was outstanding You know, it's a huge jump as a you know programs only been here for a few years and it's just growing and growing The non-cut sports for the winter where Alpine ski indoor track winter chair boy swimming and wrestling Cut sports, you know basketball gymnastics and hockey and I don't see any of that, you know changing I said like I said, I think we could just add more coaches if we got more students to attend So basically we had you know so far this year we had 692 students participate in one of the two seasons 173 competed in both which is about 45 percent of our students and that hasn't included this the spring So I think we're gonna be well over 50 percent of our student bodies. We're playing athletics The non-cut sports for last spring are gonna be the same this year out to attract lacrosse softball boys volleyball The cut sports baseball boys tennis and girls tennis So we've had a lot of success so far this fall and winter you had seven teams You know went middle sex league liberty or freedom division champions boys cross-country girls cross-country boys soccer girls swimming Boys basketball boys ice hockey and wrestling, you know ten teams qualified for the state tournament Boys cross-country girls cross-country chair boys soccer girls soccer field hockey boys basketball boys ice hockey Which is playing right now girls ice hockey had a big win yesterday and playing on Sunday and wrestling and seven teams had you know students compete at the state level in The MIA Alpine ski boys and girls swim and boys and girls outdoor track in gymnastics head and students compete In the state meets so you know so far it's been a great year and You know sign up for the spring we have right now over 250 kids signed up for the spring. I was two weeks left in sign up So I think we'll get up to probably 400 students for the spring as well So I think so, you know, thank you again for you know, they're not having athletic fees It's been I think a huge for our programs and for our students, you know, letting them play multiple sports I think it's you know, a lot of kids, you know might play one sport but having no user fees I think we're gonna in the future will have kids playing two three multiple sports because you know I think it's just great for them to be with their with their student body and Competing for like tonight school. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Heiner? I'm sure you're doing it already, but there is communication between the Coaches and the teachers to make sure the students are keeping up with their academics as well. Yep. Yeah Yeah, but we I talk like I look at the grades and You know, there's all you know academic eligibility that you know, we definitely work on with If the students have an issue, you know, we had our Dean's meetings We'll talk about it I'll bring it to the coach of the tension and we never will stop a kid from you know Kids are allowed to miss practice if they if they're getting extra help in school if they need anything, you know That's that that's the priority and you know, you know, we definitely work with students because I didn't mean that as a criticism I think you're doing a heck of a job. Thank you. Thank you. Just want everyone else to know that Thank you Okay, I really really pleased that Participation is up With the elimination of fees I sort of have a hypothesis that some of those kids are Kids who might be sort of interested in the sport, but may not feel they're good enough To go into it if there is that expense involved But if you offer a free shot without having a user fee attached to it, they might be more Willing to take a chance on it. Does that make sense? I mean, I think I think What was like the non-cut sports, I think like Because we never have them pay the fee until like they make the roster so in the past So I think I think having the non-cut sports have been huge because you know I think some students won't try out for sports if the you know, it's a nervous about getting cut where we have You know every season we have multiple opportunities for them to play a sport and be on a team as long as as long as they You know, they show up every day and work hard, you know They can be part of an athletic team every single season at Arlington high school Yeah, I think it's really important to build the community and I love the way that Kids in Arlington can move safe from football in the fall to theater in the spring. It's just a lot of groups mingling across what normally would be Provides and high schools. Oh, yeah. No, I think I think, you know, like I grew up here and You know I graduated 1993 and I mean every every student, you know played multiple sports back then I think it you know, it started to get away with keep people specializing in a sport But I think you know with having no user fees I think we're gonna be bringing back, you know kids playing to you know, two season three seasons Which I think you know, it's great. You know, I think specializing in sports is as good as well but I think playing in different Different sports is gonna prepare you better in life and it'll pay better in the sport. You want, you know, you know The sport that may be your top sport because you know, every time you step on a field or a court There's different Experiences you can you can you're gonna get and you can bring that back to every sport and also in your life as well That's a support structure. You have a group that's caring for you during the day. Yeah, thank you Thank you for the report. I'm really just so thrilled to see the numbers increase And I'm hoping that we even get bigger and better numbers next year. Yeah, I think we were adding Nordic ski another another sport There'll be a non-cut sport for the winter. So I think it's yeah, it's great. Thank you. Mr. Thielman Thanks for the report John Mike question Could you sort of share with the public how you're managing? The field use in the spring and in the fall given the construction. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely challenging, you know, we have you know The one turf field so it's I mean the coaches are doing a great great job And they'll continue for the next couple years to do it. I'm like, you know Especially in the fall like, you know, sometimes football will be on half the field with with boys soccer and then girls soccer on half the field with Field hockey and it's you know, they just do a good job, you know working together You know, we try to give you know each team different, you know times when they're on the turf by themselves But you know, we want we also don't want kids to be here till 10 o'clock at night So, uh, you know, I think we're working the best we can, you know, it's the one turf field. We have an Ellington And then, you know, we also use some of the other field than Ellington as well But I think it's you know, it just shows I mean the coaches are doing a great job being able to you know organize their practice for half a field full field and You know and the kids that very understanding that you know, this is how it is right now And then once you know, once it's all done, it's gonna be it's gonna be awesome But you know in the spring will be the same way like, you know, stop the spring until like last week I thought we were teams would be on the field, you know, March, you know, March 20th But now it will be you know, baseball softball will be like in the gym slash using the turf with you know Track and girls across boys across So I mean they they just do a great job You know, the coaches, you know working with each other and creating a you know structure with the kids know the practice schedule way in advance, but You know limited space that we have right now, you know get to get their job done Thanks Mr. Cardin Thank you. So thanks for adding alpine key and creating the other non-cut opportunities As we look forward, you know, we're a larger high school and with the increased demand for sport without the fees the Besides unified sports the other sport. We don't have is rugby. Yeah, and then there's been talk of adding boys field hockey Do we have any thoughts about either of those in the future? Yeah I mean Boy like field hockey for boys we Something we definitely can look look at like this this past year. We had two boys on the on the field hockey team But it's definitely something if we have the interest To create a team and rugby I definitely can look into maybe send a survey out Haven't had anyone come to me and ask about rugby yet, but it means definitely I can send a survey out to students to see if they do A middle school group Doing rugby and yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I can send a survey out to see who would be interested in In hip-styling rugby team. I know Belmont has a very successful rugby team, but it's so I can definitely Talk to them as well to see how they they started their program. Great. Thanks. It's Morgan Can you speak a little bit to the the assistant athletic director position that was added and like what that's meant for your Department and your position and the people that you support. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so rich is rich is doing a great job rich You know, he you know, he does a lot with transportation, you know, he was you know In transportation helping with registration covering games at night weekends You know You know getting stuff ready for banquets for honestly letters You know just kind of he does a little bit of everything You know that they did the old admin assistant used to do plus like covering games, you know, you know You know on different sports watching watching coaches, you know He had the background in coaching at the college level junior college level In private school level so he just been he's been great You know, he was he was an athletic director at high school in Vermont for five years So it's it's really like a partnership between me and him That it's been great where I can you know bounce backs information on him questions and You know, it's just been great where he can cover games at night and You know, we can alternate or both be at events You know, because I think we would get we get a lot of great crowd support So having multiple people at events has been been huge That's great And I guess just my other piece of feedback would just be to continue to sort of build out and work on that athletics Website it seems to live on Google so it doesn't I don't I don't know where how it like I mean I'm sure it's linked to like but I don't know if you have more ability to just you know Keep it updated with you know sharing about sports that are are no-cut sports I get questions from parents all the time like oh is my kid gonna get cut from cross country and like The answer is like usually not and I you know, I appreciate that it would be hard to be like Like for swimming for example, if you had 50 kids come out for swimming Kids would get cut because there's just only so many, you know, water molecules But I think you know as much information as as you can provide We'll only you know give people the information they have to feel comfortable, you know signing up. So thank you so much Dr. Allison ampy Thank you Thank you for the presentation I don't know if you're aware, but there's a warrant article on this year's town meeting for this year's town meeting that asks for a moratorium on the building of new turf fields and I won't I know we don't have our new ones our New turf fields won't be ready for another what year and a half or something But it was wondering if you could speak to how things will be with them versus without them Yeah, I mean having the having the turf fields will be Be huge because we you know, we have to you know in the in the in the fall You know varsity games are on the turf that you know freshman and JB games are you know at different? It's the one like fields by pond So we've had to cancel a lot of those games just because the fields wet can't unplayable where Once we have the fields back here, you know, we can have you know all our sub-varsity teams will be able if it rains We can we can put them on the turf here And so we basically they'll get to play more games as well It's in in the in the spring to like baseball and softball, you know Basically a lot of times they'll be there in the gym the first two weeks of practice where it's really hard to Do your tryouts for baseball and softball in a gym And so now with the turf fields, I mean they're gonna be day one that you know, they'll be out there on the turf You know, and it will definitely give us an advantage over most of the teams in our league I mean most most of them don't have turf besides Winchester and like Watertown for their baseball and softball fields So I think we'll just give more it'll give more opportunity for kids to you know play every day and basically You know Depending, you know, what's the field with the weather if the town closing fields when the weather is bad You know in with you know be able to play longer at night as well Thanks, that's really helpful. We may want we may ask through the superintendent For some information for you from you for a town meeting depending on how things go But that that's really helpful for us. Thank you. Thank you I know you want to get to that game Can you just share a little bit about what factors lead to a sport being a non-cut sport versus a cut sport? I heard you saying you could add Coaches, why can't you add coaches for some of the cut sports or I you know swimming? There's not enough lanes in a pool. Yeah, it's like it's like So basketball you can have you can you can have like at the most 15 kids on your roster So like so JV a varsity can have 15 JV 15 and freshman 15 So like if we wanted to go more than that We'd probably try to have to add another team where you know most you know in the league this does like a You know a varsity a varsity level of JV and freshman. We'd have to be looking for other other other games Which would be difficult So like it's basically this roster limits. I think hockey there's a certain amount of kids that can be on each team Boys and girls soccer you can only have so many on a team where you know We have we have three levels of that So like we have to be adding another team and trying to find them like games would be difficult Compared to like cross-country indoor track Even like like field like field hockey right now we have we have two levels So if we get a lot of kids sign up we can add a freshman team or a JVB team So that's why that's a non-cut sport So I mean but if we had 80 kids trial field hockey then that could be a cut sport But I mean I that wouldn't happen anytime soon Thank you. No, that's helpful information This Morgan mentioned families are asking. Yeah, we're sports. I'm just knowing why some aren't Yeah, if you're doing a survey could you also add cricket to the list because I see that being played on fields in our Okay. Yeah, I can definitely do that. Yeah, cricket. Yep. I think also Am I ever thinking about pickleball too? I think that's another thing that could come down the road Dr. I just want to say thank you for all the work that you do all of our leaders put in a lot of hours But I can find John down by the fields on a Friday evening Like every week, so I know how much care and time you put in I'm glad you have the assistant director to help you build out some of that capacity as our teams expand And it has been really wonderful. We know that when kids are connected to an extracurricular It connects them better to school and they perform better academically and the hard work you and your team put in Contributes to that along with all the other extracurriculars we offer. So thank you Thank you Manotomy preschool Dr. How manano if you want to Welcome monotomy. It's my understanding that they have not done us a presentation to the school committee before so I'm so excited They're here to tell you about the amazing programming that they do I'm gonna pull up your sides and when you want me to advance if I don't automatically just give me a note Hold on a second struggling with my slides So thank you, dr. Holman for inviting us to speak tonight for those that don't know me I'm dry slanger on the orange hundred coordinator and with me today are three members of our instructional leadership team I'm Carrie Siminoe the lead teacher and lay them nightly social worker here in person with me and on Zoom over there is C for auntie one of our integrated preschool teachers We are really excited to tell you about monotomy preschool Tonight we're gonna talk about Our priorities and our key initiatives and tell you about Go ahead. Yep monotomy preschool is where the district's youngest learners go to learn grow and laugh and We currently we have well now we have 98 students both with and without disabilities I'm in our classroom programs and additionally we have about 27 students coming in for weekly related services Academically we use evidence-based curriculums At monotomy we're using a pre-reading curriculum called lively letters as well as a writing curriculum Which is learn for success and mathematics is building blocks and our social emotional lessons are from second step Yeah in 2017 we were invited By desi to participate in the pyramid a model which is a voluntary initiative There are about 37 districts across Massachusetts using the pyramid model The parent model is a positive behavior intervention support framework geared towards early childhood to promote social emotional competence and young children The pyramid model practices are evidence-based and researched to be effective with all human beings both with and without disabilities I don't know Liz if you can click on the hyperlink or not which one the pyramid model one Just to show that like the pyramid I guess So looking at the pyramid it's similar to the MTSS pyramid where the base of the pyramid includes support for every child And within the within the pyramid framework this looks like creating supportive responsive relationships among adults And children to promote healthy social emotional development And then also talk continuing with the base of the pyramid. Can you go back to the slides? Continuing with the base of the pyramid we support all of our students By we've created program-wide expectations, which are we are kind we are safe and we are engaged and Under these broad categories we define what kind safe and engaged look like in all settings of our preschool on the slide You'll see an example of our classroom expectations But we have similar posters throughout the building in classrooms that break down behavior expectations for recess The hallway the bathroom, etc And these expectations are continuously taught in classrooms and promote positive behaviors throughout our program And then you don't need to go back to the hyperlink but thinking about the pyramid the second tier of the pyramid focuses on teaching Social skills directly to students who require additional support This could come into play for students who social emotional skills are not progressing with the implementation of the base supports And this looks like could be small social skill groups that a later our social worker does or direct teaching of skills by our classroom teachers And then the top of the pyramid includes even more individualized behavior supports or special education evaluation if needed and Beyond the use of the pyramid model to support our students. We also support our families by offering a parent workshop We're about to start our fourth session of the eight-week parent workshop series called positive solutions for parents This workshop aligns with the pyramid model and is developed by the Center on social emotional foundations for early learning It's designed to help parents and caregivers Promote their child's social emotional development and to better understand young children's challenging behaviors Go ahead and change the slide So through our newly created instructional leadership team We looked at how our priorities fit within the Arlington public schools vision of belonging growth joy and empowerment You can go ahead and switch it So we prioritize belonging Diversity and inclusion and knowing the importance of building relationships with students and the importance of students Feeling as though they belong and are being able to see themselves in classrooms this this year We're taking a close look at our classroom libraries and we want to increase the number of diverse books we have We're also we also know that just by adding books to the libraries. It's not enough Therefore, we're examining our curriculum pacing guide and our curriculums and making sure that our classroom themes and lessons support all learners Go ahead and then We also prioritize the use of the principles for For design for universal design for learning throughout our program For example, all students have access to low-tech alternative communication devices to help students increase and grow their language as We watch our children Grow throughout the year We prioritize working with our elementary partners to ensure that the transition to kindergarten go smoothly for not just the students but for their families and We'll continue to provide ongoing professional learning for paraprofessionals teachers and related service providers We'll also utilize our internal and external pyramid model coaches to work with classroom teams around inclusion and equity and to ensure that the pyramid model practices are being implemented and Of course, it is preschool. So joy is a priority. Go ahead. Let's We prioritize joyful learning We have the honor of being the first entry into Arlington public schools for many families Our panorama school climate results are above 90% favorable in the fall and through a grant We've been able to add a music teacher weekly and thanks to doc doctor Homan Mr. Mason and the cabinet and the school committee. We were able to add an art teacher to our program this past year So thank you very much for that Um, you can switch it. We're also underway Currently providing professional development for our classroom teams Including learning sessions for our paraprofessionals and coaching by our internal and external pyramid model coaches Beyond our pyramid model trainings I've mentioned that we're going to diversify our classroom libraries and hope by the end of the year to redesign the pacing guide for the next School year. We're also really excited and preparing our return to the high school Excited about that and We continue to continue our work around diversity and equity We're going to work with Margaret Cretel Thomas so she can help us create on PD geared towards early childhood And finally, I'd really like to think take the opportunity to thank dr. Homan Alison Elmer Michael Mason and members of the cabinet and this committee for supporting the proposed budget And helping us decrease the salary differential between our integrated teaching assistants and specialized support personnel Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. You can this one And if you can tell is a Q and a Thank you very much Questions or comments from the committee. Mr. Carden. I'm really glad to see you present here It's under the proud graduate of monotony and I mean he joined I think maybe a year or two after APS took over the preschool and so you've come such a long way back from then when it was just sort of Two classrooms and three and you were adding classrooms left and right and now you have some structure And you're doing professional development I'm happy. I'm thrilled to see the art teacher and the music teacher. Those are all great developments and you've kept the staff Yes Thank you This Morgan Can you talk a little bit about how you find those? 27 kiddos who come in for related services I had one of those like a number of years ago and but I always think of myself as being sort of like on the Aggressive end of the spectrum. So I probably was like he turned three and I don't think he can talk well enough and we're here You know, but how do you find like I appreciate, you know, how you would bring in? Sort of preschool kids, but then there's there are also these kids who aren't going to qualify to go to monotony But they're still they still do need services and the more that can be done before they get to kindergarten The better right and better for all of us for for pre-k through 12. So how like how I mean Some of them come from early intervention. Yeah, obviously, that's a you know, that's a warm handoff Right, but what about kids who weren't in early and like how do we find those we find them? Well, sometimes through pediatricians where they're pediatricians might ask the parents to call the school We also do screenings throughout the year and we advertise the screenings with the private preschools in in Arlington and beyond We advertise the screenings within Arlington, but we also get phone calls from parents They seem we that their preschools might tell them to speak with the school the public schools So we have we get referrals from Preschools all over and not just Arlington parents have their kids in preschools in Lexington and Cambridge and Lots of different places. So that's how that's another way that we get referrals. What about kids who aren't in preschool? Of our child's mind obligation. So we have to publicly post Every year that any resident of Arlington age three and above If you suspect that your child has a disability So that's available through we post it in the newspaper and as she said we share those postings with pediatricians office We share them with the private preschools and home daycares And again, it's also listed on our websites. So that's considered our child's fine Responsibility and that's for all students ages three and up for residents of Arlington I'm sure we're meeting our like minimum obligations. I'm just wondering like, you know, I mean, yeah Because they're they're probably out there, right? Because that we find them when they come to kindergarten. So That's not that's I you know, I think as we You know as as we think about a welcome center and and all those, you know, kind of pieces that are like Feel like they're really coming together within the district as as a whole I I'm confident that all of you will advocate for the needs of of your students and if So I'm excited for us to be able to add to that if you don't mind Also a part of the the Arlington family access community, which is Arlington Wuburn, Burlington, and so they provide free groups and social opportunities to children From birth to five years old that are not in any sort of educational structured setting and through that, you know continued collaboration and cooperation we get Referrals for kids who may come into group a weekly group Things like that where they're not in a structured preschool setting So continuing those relationships with say head start who do see kids and from when they're Toddler years going to preschool Frostering those relationships and community Collaborations we are getting referrals from other places not just the preschool setting. That's great. Thank you Our related service providers also have Just a little time available to go into the public private preschools And so they go in whenever there's a question about something As long as we have parent permission, of course, but they can go and work with the staff in the private preschools around town To help them identify these children also and to help educate them Their respective fields whether it be social work or Ptot speech and language those kinds of things our staff has also in the past offered Workshops for these private programs for the teachers in the teaching staff in these private programs to educate them on the up-and-coming Practices that we use within their respective fields Mr. Schlickman Just as an early childhood elementary person in principle People I talked to who've experienced your program are just really really happy with it And I think it's one of these crown jewels of the system. I'm looking forward to You're moving to the new facility and over on Milbrook Drive and Hope it all goes well for you Thank you very much for coming and sharing all of this I think it's really important for the committee and the community to hear about all the important work that you are doing for our youngest APS students, so thank you Yeah, this is I love visiting monotony. It's one of my favorite places to go I am and I'm amused by the fact that by the time I move into we move into our new offices I will not have a preschooler anymore and like almost that exact moment And if I did I would just be so happy to send my own little ones to monotony because it is a caring loving place And instruction is top-notch every time I visit, so thank you for everything that you do We deeply appreciate you and nice job And please come visit us any time. We love to have visitors Thank you Thank you Next we have our k-12 mathematics update with mr. Coleman Who is on zoom? Yes Miss Diggins, I think mr. Coleman. I think you're on mute and I'm gonna ask miss Diggins if she can make the Oh, okay Perfect, so we'll be talking about both math and computer science. I'll be efficient with the time Just let me know. Are we ready to go? Yeah, we went just wait one second. Thank you This will work, okay, we're okay. Yep Okay I probably look better as a smaller little box anyways, so Thanks for for giving me some time for tonight. I appreciate the chance to be remote juggling the the schedules my two kids And just everything has been a little bit tough. So this has been I appreciate this. It's great great flexibility. So First off just to start thanks for the support throughout all the years You know over the past two years, we haven't asked for a whole lot But what we've been doing in the department how we've been shifting and changing has really been helpful So from from myself and a lot of the teachers all the teachers really in the department I really appreciate all the support that we've been given so Next slide, please Over the past two years last year and also this year I've been lucky to be part of the the team that was developing the new vision and mission statement And I'll talk a little about but as well that the team that was developing the strategic plan And for me being part of this was super helpful One that allowed me to really be on the ground for Advocating what we were seeing in the math the computer science department and ensuring some of those messages ensuring some of those ideas were part of the the mission And what it also did was it allowed me to understand where we were going While this was happening and bring some of those ideas back into the department, which was fantastic So this is honestly something that at this point The math department the computer science department, they're well versed in this they they understand Like I have seen over the past year and a half a movement away from The general rundown of the pandemic to a staff that's really picking it up And the one aspect and this is going to come up repeatedly throughout this The teacher leadership the engagement What the teachers are are willing to to do and be part of right now has been awesome Like they really are embracing the idea of all learners They are embracing it not only for their students, but themselves. They're just active participants throughout the whole District and I'm really appreciative of that. So throughout this presentation I'm going to be from some kudos to some teachers who've really gone above and beyond so I'll be part of this as well Next slide, please so I'm displaying this being part of the strategic planning team again was really advantageous to me These three aspects of priority one are our aspects that are guiding principles guiding goals guiding work for what we're going to be doing So as this presentation is going through Just be aware of the fact that a lot of it is going to tie back to these In terms of organization It might be a little bit different than the way in which I've presented before About department goals and things like that a lot of our work might be embedded within school improvement plans, which is great It's just organized a little bit differently But I just wanted to kind of throw this out here because a lot of this while I'm talking I'm going to be tying it back to either 1.1 1.2 or 1.3 All of our work right now and over the next couple of years We're already Aligning it with these three parts of it. So it's been Great again, I you know dr. Holman. I appreciate being given the opportunity to be part of these teams. It's really allowed me to be Put in a position where leaving the department. This is much more ingrained in what we're doing already So thank you next slide. So the next couple slides the way I've organized this presentation I'm going to start out with just general updates things that are tied to some prior goals things that are tied to New additions funding things like that I'm going to switch and pivot to where we might be going next and I wanted to end off the presentation with the focus on computer science That's an area that I think we have to have a little bit more focus on over the next couple of years And then we'll have a time for questions and answers at the end So I'm going to go through a quick little updates for each of the grade bands and then go from there So elementary update just real fast 1.1 is About high quality instruction. So that tier one instruction ensuring that we have Good robust instruction at the elementary level. The coaches are are flying. They're doing a great job. The math coaches I've been so appreciative of their engagement with the individual coaching cycles with teachers their new Work with the district's pd this past year the elementary coaching team offer professional development They're currently offering something on what we're calling strength space professional strength space teaching and mathematics we did A session on problem solving in the beginning and then we also did a k through 12 session On an idea called building thinking classrooms Which is about developing student voice and student agency and they were so instrumental in the implementation all of that A lot of the coaches have taken a new sense of leadership in the ace block Which has been fantastic for us and for this year as we're shifting around aspects of the mentoring program A lot of the coaches have really taken Ownership over working with first and second-year teachers and ensuring they have a lot of good support A lot of the kind of formal observations that i've done this year have been One-on-one coaching meetings. They'll wish these coaching cycles with new teachers And i've been really impressed with the quality of the work To dovetail that to help out with these ace blocks Our commitment kind of getting back to the the data collection the data bank Expanding what we're thinking about in terms of data looking at student work Thinking about different types of protocols using more observations In some cases we've been doing a little videotaping and then sitting down and Talking through some of those lessons and then what we've implemented this year more widespread has been Some assessments almost screeners that are 4k through 2 and that's been helpful in our ace blocks And also in thinking about how we might support some of those students in tier 2 and 2 3 Which brings us to the next slide Thank you. So here over the past couple of years this kind of connects to you some funding sources We've been shifting the The profile of our math interventionist fully elementary level We've been moving away from a paraprofessional model for each school Towards a fully licensed teacher that has experience We have some reasons for doing this We want to shift towards something that Embraces both push in and pull out We don't want all of our services always to be pulled out So we're really trying to ensure that the interventionist that we're working with they have experience in the classroom They can go in there and they can support the teacher. They can co-teach. They could Work with small little groups inside of the the classes. It's working out well for us In some instances even in the support that we're doing what we're Framing it as is pre-teaching And again for some of our folks that are newly hired interventionists They have that teaching background in terms of whole classes. So it's giving us a lot more flexibility Right now we do have two professional Staff at pierce and at stratton and one of the requests is to shift them. Next slide, please Gibbs, um, I think I say this every single year when I was looking back at all the prior presentations Every year we're shifting around what we're doing for computer science and we're still shifting We've been around that 38 to 45 percent of students at Gibbs. I'm sorry at all mess who are opting for our elective Gibbs is still mandatory. We're probably around 98 percent just in terms of service delivery Things like that, but it's been fantastic The work that we've been able to accomplish this year has been a great shift For our six through eight math teachers This is year two of our implementation of a curriculum that is Supported by desmos. It is a variation of illustrative mathematics curriculum With much more dynamic features within desmos We've had a lot of success with that One of the Aspects of the work for seventh and eighth grade teachers in particular has been thinking about how we can bring more collaborative aspects to This tech forward platform In our math intervention program, this is going to come up in a little bit as well We've been playing around different ways in which we can Support students who are struggling. We're pushing in much more with our EL classes The concept of pre-teaching that I discussed a minute ago in the elementary That was actually born out of our middle school work from a couple of years ago. We still have that happening And across the board This has been a message for the past few years. How do we improve representation in our courses? And what we're seeing is some pretty good dividends with Where students are in all of our courses, which has been great. Next slide, please Mr. Cole, and I just want to sort of give you a time check you hear about halfway through the the time that's us Yep, I'll be good Thank you. So high school we have a sci math course that's Now brought in over the past few years. We've seen an increase of students who have limited or interrupted Formal education. So we've had to restructure that work is great I alluded to a little while ago the idea of building thinking classrooms. This idea is Originating somewhat out of the middle school and high school as well We have a lot of our teachers who are reframing restructuring what's happening in their class with this idea and more revisions in the CS This year we offered a cyber security class through supa Syracuse university project advance which allows students to earn college credit and then right now we're actually Piloting trying out. We wanted a course that was a little bit more open something that was I don't want to say student driven but almost that it's called community projects in CS So one of our CS teachers is running it and it's it's been going great. They're doing some neat stuff in there Next slide. All right next year Elementary we really want to continue with the work we're doing. We want to complete the elementary intervention team So some of the budget asks are shifting over the power professional staff folks moving their professional And then another area and this is connected to the idea of the ilt of building based Supports, we are really interested. We are looking forward from the math department port of view Ways in which we can collaborate with our coaches our interventionist support staffs This is something that is important to me. I I love teams I love folks that collaborate and work across Multiple disciplines and think about how we solve problems together. So that's going to be something we'll be pushing for as well like Gibbs We have some shifts all four of these items go together We have some things that we're looking forward to over the next couple of years An area that I think is is pretty important for us and this kind of connects to this idea of shifting around math support We haven't changed a lot of our structures in grades six through eight in the past few years And we're probably at the point right now where we have to start to think How do we shift some of those structures to improve that representation and improve our supports for all students? So The budget asks in terms of shifting things around we're looking for a six through eight math coach We've been working with the teachers and they're they're on board like it's it's something that they're looking for We do want to keep shifting around what we're doing you with our math support program thinking about How do we actually support some of our more struggling learners? But how do we create more environments where this idea of Allowing more access to rigorous courses is there. So this is going to be dovetailed and I know I think it may have been November 15th when mr. Ranger had presented all all of you We had a goal on oms's books that for the 24 25 What we're interested in is is how would we pilot? How do we think about potentially creating a heterogeneous class? That's based on what we have right now. So what we're doing in terms of thinking ahead is Putting in a math coach thinking about differentiation thinking about adding some rigor for all students Shifting around that math support. Can we use some of that work next year to help us be Create that spring board for 24 25 where we can restructure that math that seventh grade experience We don't have any plans right now for eighth grade and it all honestly will probably stay as math eight and out for one But we are interested in those structural changes The other part of it as well and this kind of goes with the whole entire middle school experience The bypassing program has been around now for nine years And I think next year it's the appropriate time for us to sit down reflect and think about across the board for the district Is that the best mechanism? Is that the best lever? Is this actually a program that we'd want to persist? So for me when i'm thinking about next year That differentiation the meeting needs of all students Increasing a little bit of rigor and thinking about and talking about some structural changes is where we want to be for For the middle school next slide, please Um Staying type of thing for the high school in terms of some of the changes The push that's going to be more at the high school is going to be interdisciplinary or cross department Work, so we've been in good discussions with the new art director leo. He's awesome We're thinking about Creating a shared staff. There are some computer science classes that in all honesty could be art classes So we're trying to think about how we would partner together as a computer science and art department We want to know how does that look with with science? How does that look with? Even cynics a lot of these crossovers are there Um, another thing that we're really looking to do for next year. I put a question mark for this one But uh for a long time. We had the math there project This was something that was a great integral part of what we were doing for our freshman sophomores and juniors Uh, we haven't done it since 2020 due to the pandemic. We prioritized other work So I think that's going to be something that we're going to look to bring back for next year as well next slide All right, this is going to be super fast Um, actually you can go ahead to the next slide as well One more. Okay. Thank you. We partnered with uh, mit last year and also this year This idea of representation and access and opportunity is very important to us We We don't do a well great enough job of that in the math and computer science realm I'm focusing on cs because that's a little bit worse off for us than the math part right now And there's also another reason There's a good chance There's going to be a legislator put out there where a computer science class is going to be mandatory for graduation Maybe in three or four years. This is something that for me, you know as the director I'm trying to understand and make sure that computer science is much more integral to part of the overall district Um, and the the experience of the students So participating in this space project has been awesome It's given us a professional learning community with other districts Facilitated by a researcher at mit where what we're doing is looking at issues of access and opportunity and representation And how do you build capacity for your staff? The other part of it that I think is wonderful is the crossover with our counselors department In order to be part of this grant We needed some guidance counselors to be part of it last year was caren boshler this year We have caren boshler not really that connection has been fantastic for us in terms of Building understanding for those folks who actually work with those students on the ground floor And it also allows us to just advertise and and just better get that message out there, which has been fantastic. Next slide, please Because of this work also we've done a lot of outreach These have been some of our goals and action items that we created as part of this project So a big thing that we did for this year is actually reaching out to some of those Affinity groups and other groups that could give us good feedback and good advice. So we've been surveying our own students Clayton jones one of the teachers. I really want to give kudos to he's been meeting with different affinity groups He's been really trying to to work with students and listen to what they're interested in I have some of the takeaways in a minute, but it's one of those things where That outreach that understanding for us is invaluable to to move forward, which is great Next slide All right, this I'm going to go real fast This right here is a really good estimate if I were to think about race, ethnicity I'm doing a little hand waving with some of this. This is a pretty good estimate of percentages for our students Been true for the past couple of years roughly Next slide This was last year. We had 154 students in computer science You could see at the bottom the distribution was okay not not Great, but I think it was pretty close to what our our overall representation is The next slide shows something keep the 154 in mind. This is this year with 212 students This is on our minds because our department this computer science department is growing fast Very very fast I don't know if all of you remember but in 2013 2014 we had zero students It has basically been growing quicker than I can keep up with even the budget asks for this year pertaining to computer science So right now we're seeing increase. It's great even for the percentages of different racial and ethnicity is improving But let's go to the next slide What's one more place What is worsening for us Is that when we look at this at a gender point of view Right now it still is a male dominated field We were improving prior to the pandemic and we have been worsening since And this is in spite of the fact that For our ap math classes. There's a higher percentage of young women in them than men So we have this field. We have this these sets of courses that right now Racial ethnicity we're doing an okay job. We have a lot of work But our outreach for young women is is pretty much a need and this is kind of Puzzling to us our theory of action was in building those middle school classes Which actually are representative. We had hoped that it would have yielded better results for the high school and so far it hasn't Um, all right. I think that's probably about okay, but what we're left with do I think we can skip through I just want to make sure I'm giving everyone a chance to Um to ask some questions Um, so what do we what do we have? Thank you no problem Questions or comments from the committee And sorry, I'm just trying to throw a lot at you in 12 minutes. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate that and We had the slides and we're able to look at them ahead of time. So good I did ask dr. Holman for 24 minutes. I thought a math and CS thing might warrant like two, but And I and I And I asked For it to be a little shorter because I want us to have a chance to have a conversation. So yeah, and that's great Great. So, um, thank you for all of this. I think it's helpful. Um, the the I've been always the one who asks about the gender distribution at oddison. Um, so I'm super excited that it's just right here I mean this I know this is at an hs I'm really excited that it's here in the slide and and that we can talk about it I guess I'm curious what, you know, what kind of outreach are you doing? Are there, um, for students who identify as being Female they're clearly underrepresented like with a capital U Comparatively, right? And so I'm curious like how how like how do you how do you do that? And I think that you know, the difference is I think it's important, right? Is that the oddison to when you elect to take computer science for most students They're not opting out of something Generally, because of how the schedule works, right? But in order to take computer science at at a hs You're you're you're picking it as your elective, right? And so you're you're choosing to not take any of this other like range of great choices to right? So they are structured a little differently So the I'll I'll start with the complicated answer and then try not to get it too much into the weeds You're exactly right about the electives Uh, one of the obstacles has been when you go into 93, there's one spot for an elective Structurally a lot of those electives have always been year long A few years ago, um We had tried to create a half year elective for cs It didn't work because there's nothing else to complement it with at the freshman level So I am psyched I am so happy that leo is now kind of broached into this idea for the art department of half year electives Because in reality if that's going to work next year what we're looking to do I even I have a meeting with a few teachers about this on on friday of next week But how might we be able to structure some of our cs classes to be intro classes half year for that freshman year? Because in reality if we might start to soften up some of those Um, those those other parameters if we can maybe get some more young women in freshman year for a half year Maybe that helps the other thing and this was kind of an interesting one. This was one of the takeaways from the survey Clayton had gone and met with those affinity groups a lot of students Who weren't enrolling in the cs classes? Were scared by the names of the classes So even one of the bigger takeaways that we had was can we just make some of them sound a little more friendly? Or make it so that they're a little bit more appealing I don't know if that's going to be a curel But that's such a simple solution that we've already started to talk about changing some of the names Just to make it a little bit more appealing But yeah, so right now Not for next year, but the following year Can we semesterize some of those freshman classes to get young women inside of them? And the other one is Maybe shifting some of the names around and the continued outreach is going to be part of it as well You know, it's it's it's such a simple move by us Something that we should have done more of in the past quite honestly And now that we are getting a little bit of a rhythm and we've created some surveys I think that'll be a little bit better for us to get some feedback Great. Yeah, and I hope that you know to the I mean, I think part of it too as somebody who has like is is To the if there are opportunities to offer courses to students who identify as female where they're not in a 75-23 Split somehow, you know, like it would be really nice to be in a class that's closer to 50-50 And it might if you can create some of those To give opportunities to students to not be so in the minority They may talk to their friends and there may be more interest. So thank you I really I I I know that this is something that you and I have talked about for years and you've always been so Candid and and open to talking about it and thinking about it. And I've just I've always really been grateful for that So thank you Thank you Matt this gender disparity. Is it reflected in the college level and the real world? It was 50 years ago when my wife started there were no computer classes at the high school level People that decided to go into computers where either math majors or music majors the logic people Is there a relationship On the gender. Yeah Yeah, I mean this our numbers pretty much match the national average Which is that three to one that three to one field And unfortunately, fortunately, I don't know how you want to frame it We're no different and that bothers me because I think we should be different Uh, I don't know if that makes sense. No, I you know, it's I agree with you That disparity I I can't speak to the interim but for 50 years My wife who was still she kept up with it. She's current in Software and writing software and stuff like that, but there's still is that bias. I don't know where it exists Yeah in in All transparency though That is something that I would see like that feeling of how was just described a little while ago Maybe cohorting some of the young women together to feel like they're not so separate That's one of the the bigger issues we have overall with a lot of our marginalized students though You know even for some of our students who identify as black they they May not go into an ap math class because they'd prefer to go into a class with their friends And that part of it has been true for us for a while And that's why that that sense of a belonging that that idea when I talk to the teachers this year about course selection I tried to change the words. I was using intentionally and I told them this We're not just informing our students about the classes they're taking We want to make sure we're actively inviting them and making sure that they understand that these classes are their classrooms because we're not Overall that culture our school we haven't done a good enough job with that just yet So it's one of those things when we're thinking about these classes and students are taking classes Because they want to be with other students. They feel more comfortable with um That to me is like this weird cultural roadblock that you probably have to talk about and work through Thank you Mr. Cardin, uh, thank you, mr. Coleman. Um, so I'm looking forward to the strategic initiative around mtss particularly at the middle school at the at the autism level because as you mentioned, um you know math support there is You know, it's it's it's struggled a little bit. You did you did update a few A couple years ago to make it pre-teaching I'm not sure that that has it wasn't successful for my daughter But I'm not sure in general that that was um I don't know what we're how we're looking at to measure whether that change was successful or not, but I I do I'd love to see more a more rigorous approach to Looking at how we support Our struggling math learners at the middle school level where they really fall out And that is connected to the seventh grade class because we don't want to make it worse So I look forward to seeing that conversation next year. Thanks Yeah Thank you Dr. Allison ampy Thank you. Uh, thank you for the presentation. Mr. Coleman. It was great. Um, I appreciate hearing the information about the gender disparity in computer science So I'm not going to ask about that, but I like caring about it Uh, but I was wondering what is pre-teaching Um, when you're Good question So, you know for the middle school the way it looks I should say this this was born out of some work We did with the education development center in wallpam So when we were working with them probably about four or five years ago, this is just before the pandemic It was this idea of creating a secondary curriculum map So if you have your core essential standards your narrative that you've gone through every year You're creating that secondary map that actually echoes a lot of the core essential standards So a lot of the times interventions are reactive You know, you might see a student who is struggling with x and then you pull them out of something and you try to fix x And then you send them all along the way But math is kind of weird in the sense that Let's say a student's in eighth grade and they're doing and they're working on linear equations That linear equations if they're struggling You may not want to intervene right away because maybe when they get to solving linear equations systems of linear equations later that prerequisite skill might be needed So the math intervention program is going to instead of being reactive to what they were struggling with Being thoughtful about where there's opportunities to learn And when you're about to go into your next unit You're sitting there and giving a double dose of maybe those skills To make it so that students can access the class that we had content in tier one So in theory and we you know, I am sorry that maybe it's not working in all cases But in theory for a lot of students it gives them a different sense of confidence This idea of belonging and voice and agency To me it feels a lot better if I could put a student in a position of going into their core class And being able to answer a question because they feel confident But if they've already worked on maybe some of those ideas two to three weeks beforehand and they've been building up that that skill set They're engaged differently. They're not they're not separate because they're they're struggling So the pre-teaching is a little bit It's it's flipping that model a little bit of how we think about intervention It's one of the reasons why we get math support as a full year So that way, you know, if we have these students that you know, sometimes there are other issues than just the math ability There might be confidence issues or Or something else We want to be able to kind of always be forward thinking and put in some of those students in a position to do that Now full disclosure the pandemic muddied everything So this is something that we're finally getting back to, you know, we're doing a little bit better job for this year But to me that model feels better. It feels like it's it's not reactive and it's not Thinking about what their deficits are. It's thinking about how they could build from those opportunities to learn to keep them in a class Thank you Mr. Zaman I'm mad. Thanks very much for the presentation. It's always well thought out and we appreciate that my question As the you talked about the 200 and some odd students in computer science classes. What what is that? Like what is that doing for our space can space is that causing space constraints and could you speak to that? Yeah, no, we're we're okay, you know, so computer science Luckily enough to shift it over the past few years Where you know desktops some of these other parameters that may have been an issue three four years ago They're not there anymore We could order macbooks for everything So we have our stem lab at the high school, which is beautiful and I should say just to give it's due That space attracts kids, you know, just opening up the new stem wing has increased our enrollment I I know I always say this but there's 1531 students ish in the high school right now and we have 1774 students enrolled in a math or computer science class Like kids want to be we're at 116 percent enrollment kids want to be in that wing They want to be in these classes. So what we're doing actually is for our other CS teachers They just have the classrooms that are adjoining that are right next to the stem lab So that way if there are resources in the stem lab folks can go back and forth There's just a little bit more of a community that's being built. So we're not lacking for space The first five weeks of next year there might be a little bit of a challenge, but we'll we'll work with that Well, we set it up so you can but hopefully Yeah We'll be good. We'll figure it out. Okay. Good Mr. Schlickman Yeah, I just want to go back to something that we've remarked on earlier in the year When I saw the MCAS scores for math in this district The lowest growth score was 55 in the in the fourth grade The rest of the growth scores by grade level were 60 60 64 71 in seventh grade which is Just off the charts 63 and 62 Because this is a Mean of the means those numbers are Much more dramatically high than you think of just by taking a look at the normal distribution of Of scores you're talking about the Middle score and distribution for us compared to the middle school for the state and the this is Simply spectacular and I think that particularly as we're going through the middle schools This shows a lot of effort and a lot of movement in this district And that the quality of instruction and support tier one has been Really good coming out of the pandemic and I just wanted to put that on the table and commend All the math teachers out there and the support people and the coaches for what we're doing That that has allowed students to grow I appreciate that. I am lucky to work With so many phenomenal professional educators And you know the one thing I will say is and I think I always allude to this and say this each year I know we're not perfect But I can confidently say that for myself and the folks that I work with We're always looking to improve like we are analytic driven We're always we are always trying to think about ways in which we could do things differently And your support the school committee support the budgetary support has allowed us to grow and change So from from my point of view, thank you as well Thank you Thank you. I just want to make a comment You may or may not know that I teach it in another district and We started the same curriculum in elementary school that you Have been using and so I've been going to a lot of professional development and the videos that they show us are of Stratton classrooms. So it just shows How um, how engaged and how much professional development The staff here in Arlington are Receiving and that it is being shared across the state with other districts. So I appreciate the work that you Have done to support that as well Turk Turk being right down the road is a great partnership Quickly say that I very much enjoy working with mr. Coleman and all of his team That I will echo the results from last year speak for themselves Um and really show how excellent some of the adjustments in curriculum and programming that we've made Throughout the pandemic have been but also that I the coaching model that mr. Coleman has set up at the elementary school level It's also a model for the district and for other districts And so thank you so much for all of the work that you've been doing It's really exciting to see computer science expanding so much at the high school And I know that we'll get a handle on making sure that our young women are just as engaged with all of that programming as we can um, so Well done Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all have a great night. And thank you for the flexibility for being Remote I and my kids appreciate Take care Next we have uh, ahs heterogeneous grouping initiative update. Dr. Janger So, thank you all for having me. Um, we have deb perry the English language arts curriculum leader lurking somewhere in the back on zoom and um, as well as nicole edson who's been serving as the uh lead teacher in court helping coordinate the Common planning times and professional development work With the heterogeneous group I um Just came from uh I just had to give a shout out. I just came from um, the massachusetts music educators association Conference where our magical choir was performing. They were selected as one of three ensembles to perform in a blind audition for the entire group and um I was one of The first people on my feed for the standing ovation. They got it was really an amazing An amazing presentation and it was fun because all the other music educators from our length and were Behind me, you know tapping along and getting all excited about every one of the performers And then the next group was an eighth grade rock band that all of us old people were all jumping up and down for But it was really an amazing presentation. So a big shout out to our magical Choral and chorus as well as a mara walker their um presenter All right, so I probably don't have I've used up half of my time Um, so I will jump to this um So I think this is the fourth or fifth presentation I've made to the school committee in one kind or another This year So I'm I tried to keep this presentation short to really just be focusing on current information And then talking a little bit more about where we're going to go next And some of these statements will come a little bit as a question because I think some guidance From the school committee since you've taken such an interest on the process And the direction this goes about some of the timing of how we're going to want to look at this in the future Um So if you go to the first slide, I'm going to talk Um briefly about participation Because there have been changes in the middle of the year Primarily about uh great outcomes for semester one And then a little bit about what we're going to be doing in the spring that next part and then we have um Miss perry and miss edson here to talk a little bit about the teacher's experience and feedback on that So jumping first participation So at the middle of the year if you'll remember as part of the heterogeneous grouping We were allowing students to make a decision to change levels um And we were very pleased Um that the pattern seemed to go sort of where we would hope it would go Um and in a way that we would hope it would go which is the 12 students switched into honors And uh four students switched into a and so the students had conversations with their teachers made a thoughtful change And I think made a change that overall Is better for them. So that was a net of eight students moving up Which increases the number of students by a little over two percent Taking honors. So if you look at the table We go from Rounding off 66 percent to 68 percent But about a two percent increase in the number of students. I did not break that down again By race and ethnicity since the numbers were so small I didn't want to call up particular students when we wrap this all up at the end The next the last presentation we'll do we'll just look at the overall participation for the whole year Um, and so that's just a picture of the same thing Um, just pointing out dr. Homan had asked me to switch around the order So if you get confused looking if you toggle between this and the last presentation They go in opposite directions now Um, but so that is the two comparison years 2020 and 2022 And then that's the first Quarter and then the full semester and then the second semester participation rate going up over the year So then switching down to the next This is a quick breakdown of grades overall And I focus primarily on grades overall Here in the slides you can see a little more detail in the charts In part because the grades by level are a little confusing because we've moved Somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 percent of the class Into a different level So if you look at grades overall what you see is again consistent with what we found In the first quarter That grades overall have increased slightly Or remain the same Grades by level interestingly have a little bit less clear of a pattern because they actually At both levels have gone down a tiny bit And the reason at both levels they've gone down a tiny bit But the overall goes up is because what you're doing is taking out of curriculum a A lot of students who would have been getting a's and b's You're moving them into the honors level where they may slightly pull down the average But their grades did not go down Their grades are the same because otherwise the overall average wouldn't go up Does that make sense? I managed to confuse myself at one point in the doing of those slides And the really good news is that you see that same pattern Across every demographic group And in particular the african-american students has a real positive impact Because there's a significant increase as we remember from The first quarter in participation rates And the grades that students are getting in honors are actually significantly higher And then if you go to it by gender Again you see the same pattern That the grades overall are the same or higher in spite of the fact that 18 percent more students are doing honors work So then where do we go with that? So that's sort of our performance data And grades are great. They are a main measure of student learning and effective participation But grades are also problematic The question that we have to have is looking under the hood Does this represent higher level discourse? Does this represent deeper learning? Does this represent engagement and belonging on the parts of the students? And so going forward in the spring we'll be doing the classroom Panorama survey Our plan is to do the panorama survey in grades 9 and 10 Because we want to be able to have comparison data Next year these students who are in ninth grade heterogeneous Are going to go to 10th grade So it would be nice to see whether their experience is different from this year's 10th grade And in addition if we make changes in the year after next We would like to be able to compare to a two-year To see whether the climate, the culture, the rigorous experience Has changed in those classes We plan to do a parent survey to get similar information We'll model that on the panorama questions So we're asking comparable information And then we'll be looking at end-of-year grades Which we won't have till June So my next presentation to the school committee should have Oh, you jumped ahead Sorry Should have information on the first two bullet points We'll not have information on the third bullet point And then we're going to look as well The teachers have been collecting through their common planning Information on what they're seeing in the common assessments What they're seeing in terms of discourse in class And so we'll do a more coherent summary of that For you in our next presentation And now I will hand the microphone over to Ms. Itzen and Ms. Perry Do you guys are muted? Do you want me to start or? I think you're muted Yes, who's start? Okay, so Hi everyone, thank you for having me here I just have a couple of notes, a couple things to speak on In terms of the common planning time What we are planning to do here for the March retreat And then moving forward into the summer So in our common planning time Currently the way that it's working right now I mean most of semester one common planning time Was used to debrief how the pilot was going And to make sure that we are aligning our differentiation practices Between the levels and how our assignments were looking Reporting to make sure that we were differentiating And that we were meeting the needs of all students And how we were doing that in our individual classes The common planning time is split meaning There are four teachers just because of the way that the schedule is There are four teachers who meet during one block And there are four teachers that meet during another block So we tend to use the PLC Obviously we have our common planning time But then when we all come together in our PLC That's when we'll talk and kind of compare notes And things that we've been doing in common planning time We do have a common collaborative Google doc Where we keep notes for each common planning period Like there's a D block group and then the E block group So we can each look at each other's notes And then use the PLC time to share out What we've been working on in the common planning time And we'll work from there about what our goals are in the PLC And what we need to be working on each time In terms of the March retreat Which we're doing next week actually March 8th We the first thing or some of our objectives The first objective is to think about the adjustments For next year based on the pilot structure for year two What we need to change or what's going to stay the same We're also going to be working on Grade calibration specifically with writing So essentially we'll be looking at student samples And grade norming as well as thinking about what we're seeing About the quality of student work and the consistency across each class From there, what generally tends to happen out of those conversations A lot of times we'll start reevaluating Or reexamining the scope and sequence of our writing skills And really thinking about what happens when in the year And why we choose to do it that way And make sure that it's working And make sure that it's working I mean this is something we've done in the past But really making sure that it's working In this structure as well with the heterogeneous grouping And then we'll be aligning our skills throughout the year For the school year 2023-2024 and beyond And then also from there planning what we need to do in the summer So kind of once we've had that six hour day Next week we'll be able to see what we really need to work on Over the summer and what we need to get through I think the only thing that I will add to what Nicole said is that There's a lot of interest in meeting next week to talk about writing And talk about norming our writing a little bit more It's probably the biggest topic of interest on the part of the teachers Everyone I've talked to is very enthusiastic About the heterogeneous grouping from the teacher's perspective And I think having a chance to have a full day next week To work through some questions that we have And then be able to sort of practice what we have come up with For the remaining weeks of the school year Will really be a great opportunity And then we'll be able to take a couple of days in the summer To continue whatever work it is that we feel we need to do So we feel like we're in pretty good shape If you have any questions I think you can ask us now I was going to wrap up one thing before we jump to questions So one of the questions that we're going to have for this conversation Or that we'll hope will get feedback through you To Dr. Homan Is just timing and some of the process So if you think about this is a two-year pilot And but decisions about structural changes for 24-25 Need to be something that we have some idea of By December or January of next year If anything represents structural changes in the student handbook Not the student handbook I'm sorry The program of studies So my thinking was that we would present about The belonging engagement and learning information at the next meeting And that we would gather up the final data At the summer in the summer in June Teachers would reflect about that at the retreat We would present in that in the fall And then we would reconvene in sort of the September to November period Another study group to have a conversation about kind of what are the implications What have we learned? What are the implications both in English and in other departments? What have we learned from this and what if any impacts are there So I think that it's going to be helpful for us To get some sense right because this we've learned many things Right You know the one simple thing I think we've appeared to be learning and seeing Is a heterogeneously grouped English nine Works well to give kids a rich experience More flexible access to their colleagues larger levels of inclusion and involvement If that gets expanded it could get expanded horizontally in ninth grade It could get expanded into tenth grade It could change other classes at other places There's a lot of ways in which we could take that lesson It's also taught us other things and there's conversations going on parallel to that Around ways in which you support diverse groups of students And classes ways in which you look at your experience even in leveled classes And making sure that you're being more equitable about the experience of students in level 8 classes Versus level 8 classes So some of the work for example that I was just talking with Caitlyn Moran about In history about how they're aligning their curriculum They're not necessarily talking about you know in some of those classes doing heterogeneous grouping Right away or anytime soon, but they are really looking at are the students having access to high level discourse in those classes So I think some of how we guide that conversation so it doesn't get infinitely large Would also be really helpful to us That's me. Thank you Thank you Questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Cardis So it's a small number of students. I know you can't speak In too much detail, but I'm curious about the four students that did switch down Is there any consensus? Is there any sort of trend that it was grades or A lack of motivation or is there any any trends from from emerging from that So the guidance that we gave to the students for whether or not they might want to switch Was parallel to the guidance we've given folks about level changes for next year So our recommendation was if you're getting an a or b you're not struggling with the work And you're not having difficulty with attendance You should probably continue on at the level if you're getting an a not struggling with the work and not struggling with attendance At level a you should probably do age So for the most part those four students were students who were Experiencing one of those three issues. They weren't getting an a or b. So they weren't meeting standard Um, or they were struggling a little bit with the workload Great. Thank you Mr. Schluckman, do you anticipate any changes major or minor for next year? um I we haven't had a lot of the conversation But I mean it's a pilot so the plan is not to do major right the structure is supposed to stay in place For two years from me. So we learned from it. So a lot of it is going to be adjustments in terms of grouping How the teachers work together? You know Most of it is sort of structurally worked pretty well So I don't know that we would change much of anything Yeah, I know that as you're going through a pilot you're going to look at this and say I wish we would have done a or b and maybe tweaking the schedule or moving a few things around Is a possibility I'm sure it's early in the process. You don't have to make those decisions right in The beginning of March, but certainly as you're planning out your master schedule for next year That's just sort of the question that I have in my back As we build the master schedule We would love for the common planning time to accommodate all eight teachers but Going into the fall of this year. We're going to be short classrooms for five weeks And so likely that schedule and flexibility is not going to be available to us Okay That was just sort of my point of curiosity. I'm glad to hear the largely positive results of the program Thank you Dr. Allison ampy Thank you. Um, thank you for the presentation. Dr. Janger I had a couple questions thinking back to When we were talking about piloting last year and the concerns that I heard from parents at that point and first I was wondering how parents And I'm asking about parents especially because we were really hearing more from parents and students How parents are feeling whether the heterogeneous honors classes is being taught at the same level as the previous homogenous honors And I understand you haven't done a survey yet, but Is there anything that speaks to You already hearing complaints or or um So anecdote. Yeah, sorry go ahead No, that that's that's all I was gonna say. So anecdotally Um I have not had a single complaint about ninth grade english this year. Um So I think that speaks to that the parents who are currently in ninth grade english would not be able to compare To previous years if we asked them, but we will ask them sort of about The questions that we will ask the students on the panorama survey And the questions that we'll ask the parents will have to do just with You know, whether or not you're learning a lot whether or not the teachers are Whether or not you're feeling rigorous whether or not you're engaged And if you remember from last year we did pretty well on Learning a lot being respected Feeling like the teachers were expert, but not as well on students are engaged So I'm learning a lot. It's good work, but I may not necessarily love doing it So we're hoping that those things improve or are at least steady The one conversation I did have with some parents at the parent coffee at a small group of freshmen parents come one day and And they had concerns about heterogeneous grouping, but not in english 9 Um was the conversation that I had with them Okay, um So there would be some parents who would know right the parents who have more than one child And this is their second child Then the other question that I had was Whether the differentiated work for honors is the students are finding it really meaningful engaging and challenging And I'm going to throw that one to Nicole Sure, I mean we haven't had any student complaints or we haven't had any parent complaints to to echo what Matthew was saying I know that we did Teachers didn't Surveys in their own classroom kind of asking those types of questions You know, how are you feeling about the work? Do you feel like it's meaningful? Do you feel like it's engaging to you and um, we we haven't heard any issues in terms of It's either level complaining about it Or saying that it wasn't challenging or too challenging or so I think we can kind of revisit that another thing we can think about is how students do When they enter into 10th grade, you know, do we see anything different with how they're um How successful they are when they enter 10th grade from the heterogeneous grouping And that's a great conversation that we can have with 10th grade teachers Next year 9th and 10th grade Let's talk about Yeah, that'll be very interesting. Okay. Thank you Question. It may not be to dr. Janger, but more to dr. Holman One of the things we had talked about when we agreed to the two-year pilot was some work to be done around the messaging from the middle school to students about selecting honors for curriculum a and anecdotally, it feels like there's still some confusion about What course is not necessarily in English? I think because they get supported even once they're in that that class in ninth grade, but I guess my question is what kind of of work has been done so far Around that messaging with supporting the middle schools So I will to some extent. I would need brian Manager here to help answer that I know you've been in contact with brian And so can speak to some of the messaging that we've had because we have eliminated the teacher recommendation as a component of the process of selecting and Dr. Janger and mr. Manager tried to align some of the messaging they're giving around how to go about selecting which level And I know that the elimination of the teacher recommendation Is a challenge in some cases Because you might want the teacher to weigh in and you might want some guidance And in those cases on a singleton basis, we're more than I know teachers are more than Happy to provide some guidance to the student. We just don't want that Recommendation if a student is feeling like they might want to strive for a more challenge to discourage them from doing so Or if a student feels like they have an idea of what they might want to do for that to interrupt What their own sense of their ability to have challenges So we've introduced changes in response to a lot of feedback that we got and it's an adjustment because families are used to Us doing that in a particular way and hearing certain messaging around this I don't know if you want to add anything Dr. Janger Yeah, I mean so The guidance that was given to all of the eighth grade parents and to all the eighth grade teachers Is the same as I actually just described, right? Which is that if you are currently getting an a Or I can't remember exactly. It was a little different for eighth grade, but an a or b In the general ed class That and you're not struggling with your workload and you're not having difficulty attending school That it's perfectly reasonable to plan to go on to honors And if you are not right experiencing either of those then you would probably want to consider curriculum a in the classes where that's offered Um, I will say Mr. McCarthy did the presentation this year to all the classes or there's a zoom presentation where he goes through the process With all the students and the teachers are all there for that Um, mr. Merringer and we came up with that together We workshopped the language so eighth graders would understand it and eighth grade teachers would understand it Um, and then mr. McCarthy and I did a presentation in The beginning of february to any eighth grade parent who attended um, I will say actually I felt like there were fewer questions and less nervousness there's always nervousness, right? You're an eighth grade parent Kids going into high school. It's the big leagues You're not really sure what that experience is going to be like. You don't want to get it wrong But it felt like there was actually less this seemed much more cut and dried Then my teacher said I should do it, but really should I do it? We're like, there's these three things if you're doing them It's good because part of it is it's not it's not there's a fear, right? Of you know, this is big it's honors and it's like this is honors. It's okay if you're doing If you've been doing okay, and you're not struggling you're going to be fine um, and so I think that um I think there's still still nervousness. I think, you know, maybe we should I mean, we're now halfway through so it might be too late. Um, but I think maybe doing a little Screencastify so that everybody had, you know, the voice of me or mr. McCarthy Talking through those things that they could go back to might be really helpful to make sure they were hearing the same thing Yeah, thank you. I think that that sounds helpful and I guess I'm thinking in terms of um You know collecting information for next next year in making decisions Maybe somehow collecting feedback on current eighth graders next year's ninth graders experience in Selecting a course Which what they chose and how how that felt for them outside of english, you know, I think My understanding is the goal of this pilot is that Some people would like this to expand to other content areas and so thinking about What experience students are having In english where they didn't need to make a choice or they made a choice in a different way Then they're making my choice for other content areas and how that experience has been Can I speak to that just quick? I I had I have I have a good Right So I can say that our experience the the sort of mechanics of it this year was super clean There were no weird pop-ups. No like no funny business, which was smart classes left out But other than that we're good. Just smart classes left out. Okay But like but but I mean, you know in terms of like things popping up saying you need a recommendation for this class Or and and we've had I've had all those experiences when I've been doing it in the past You do still pick your and this would be some feedback was that you do still have to pick between English honors or curriculum a like last week Which that's still that is noted in the description that we asked them for that in part so we can make sure When we're doing this was part of the plan We want to make sure that when we are doing the the classes are a class selection So we didn't inadvertently push there's a little bit of sort of pre like once you make that decision Are you then more committed to that? I mean, you know like you pick the blue car and then you want like I don't know I've always had that I I appreciate why we're doing it But there's definitely like a commitment piece that happens in like February that I feel like could really change by September But I think the idea of having I I couldn't go to the ninth grade here And I think it was actually during our school committee meeting I think having a message that's really clear that that can be pointed to because sometimes the messaging from the individual classrooms at odyssey is Different But if there can be a point that's like well, this is what the high school is saying This is what was said at the parent night. This is the this is the message about, you know, how to consider this I think could be really helpful for people and and Sort of reassuring but our experience was that it was You know, it was fairly straightforward, which was great So thank you for all the efforts because I I know that power school is a tricky tricky tool and it was it was very clean Mr. Thielman Thank you very much the presentation. It's always helpful. Mike it would be helpful I don't know who this question is directed to but maybe the committee maybe matt maybe the superintendent is It would be helpful for us to have a criteria By which we're going to evaluate the success of the program to inform A decision will make about continually or are extending it rather more Levels in the correct in the curriculum So I don't really because what i'm not clear on is Like what's the standard by which we're going to make a decision? I think Before we try to answer that we did set out parameters of what we thought success would be and what some of those metrics would be Which some of which are some of the things that we're already presenting on Tied to participation tied to representative participation In honors level classes and access to those Some of the the parameters are things we haven't measured yet like we haven't done the survey at the spring survey yet That's another metric we had said would measure the success We to the point that dr. Janger made a minute ago Won't have some of the academic indicators back until after we have to make a decision about what weather and how To do any expansion on this pilot But those data are also very important the percentage of students who pass exceed expectations on them cast in grade 10 who were part of this Program Is going to be a major metric for consideration as we move forward Even if we're not going to have it before we need to make some determinations about how to move forward next year So those are things that I know are part of it. I think one of the things we should probably Revisit after we do this next round of data collection and reporting out Is take a look at some of those metrics in early next year Say here are some of the changes we are considering Or might want to put in front of the committee ahead of us doing budget conversations Here are the support mechanisms or resources that have to be in place the common planning time has been a game changer I know I've heard from the english teachers and from miss parry and from dr. Janger So if if we do any additional work, we have resources we're going to have to dedicate And here are the measurements that we're using to say this is Here are the parts of it that are successful here are the parts of it that might be less so So I don't want us to Nail down any of those besides say we've named some And if there are additional metrics that People feel are going to be valuable and be nice to hear what those are And we can come back with more detail on that in a future presentation That's what I think would be sort of a good curriculum committee discussion I mean are we I guess the so we would be would we be voting on an expansion Prior to approving the budget next year. So this would be sort of like a december january vote I think any expansion impacts the budget because of the resources required right So I mean you brought that up when you were talking about considerations we need to make When I mean this to be perfectly honest hasn't been particularly costly, right? It was about Apportioning resources that we have right so scheduling means we preference that it pushes other things So it hasn't been particularly costly The costs were things like capping class sizes, right? But the class sizes that we capped them at were In the capsite the class sizes we generally Aimed for so I don't think that most of our issue will be much in the way of cost Because we absorb that as we always do professional development. We just did it around this But it will be you will be having to vote on it when you vote in the program of studies Which will be december january You know, so we usually bring it to you in january, but we start planning it in december so Um, we need to know we're sort of moving in a direction if we're going to put something into the program of studies Yeah, that's a good timeline to be aware of because if we're going to vote in the program of studies in december It means you vote in january, but I write in december. I'm sorry. We vote in january. It means that Changes to the curriculum should be discussed by the committee probably starting in august You know august in the august september and the subcommittees So I think there needs I'm just saying that it would be very helpful To the committee. I think just speaking as one member if there was a plan put in place For when we're going to receive information when we're expected to make a decision So there's a timeline for our decision making process because it includes the curriculum committee Going through the the information the full board the full committee voting on it that sort of thing So I don't know I just want to be aware of the time I will also point out that we made a decision to do this pilot in april Post-budget considerations But had in mind that this was a conversation that was ongoing when we built that budget so that it could absorb Any associated professional development costs or costs to stipend teachers for the summertime or And so that the schedule and staffing allocated for the high school could absorb the lower class sizes and the common planning time So that the structural adjustments are resources. I mean human time resources are Important too in time and doing that common planning time with multiple disciplinary areas puts more of a strain on a schedule So we'd have to think about what the model for that looks like And whether we wanted to do any other structural adjustments to make The embedding of that common planning time easier and less costly if we were to do it in another disciplinary area in addition So that's modeling we'd want to do when we do the budget But it doesn't necessarily mean you'd have to make a decision about whether to expand in that model Head of the budget just means we have to make sure the resources are available All right. Well, I don't want to I think it would be good to do backward design from the point of school committee decision To to you know, whatever that beginning of that process That's what I would say pick the date when we're going to make a decision And then work with the committee leadership to figure out what needs to happen between Point a and point b. Yeah, but like we don't even have a I mean, but I mean, I'm concerned that my concern Is that we'll get to a point where we just have to make a decision and we haven't had a good process beforehand That's what i'm trying to say So, yeah I agree. Um, I think that was part of the question We don't have to we don't have to right, but it feels like a proposal is coming. So I just want to talk about Hey my turn Um, I just wanted to point out that we don't have we can make a decision that we are going to expand heterogeneous courses into other subjects or things, but we don't have to implement it the next year We may Decide I mean because of all these things that are being discussed We may choose to have a year of Setting the stage for implementation and then You know, we do two years of the trial go. Okay, it's going well at the end of this We want to expand it to I don't know man social story, whatever but Not have the expansion happen that next year haven't happened the year after so Mr. Crain Yes, so I mean, I think I think what you presented about presenting the data as you get it will be helpful, right? And then I think as an administrative team as the data is coming in Particularly over the summer that's where you start having those conversations. Are we ready to move? Immediately the next year or as Kersi said do we want to pause collect more data? And wait till the end of the year and then make that decision and implement it You know, I'm a little bit more slowly so but I think what you proposed as far as presenting the data as you get it would be helpful Dr. Dangan so um This is helpful. That was a question. This is you're answering the question that I was asked at the end there What I what I think might work I'm going to phrase this as a statement, but it's a question um Is With our instructional leadership team and the curriculum leader group the conversations we're having right now in the spring And over the summer have a lot to do with the direction that the departments are looking at going So I think coming back in either august or september We sort of some rough direction of you know, if if the world language if the modern world history Department is saying You know over the next three years. This is what we want to do with curriculum and it's not heterogeneous grouping Then that may not be the direction we want to go even if we think it might be a good idea eventually So I think getting some feedback from those groups About the way what they see is be their direction Getting some feedback from the english department about what they see is being their direction and then Sort of giving that to you as a rough Framework of where we the conversation we want to have And then that would allow us to have I think because I think we want to have whatever the The things we're looking at are You know because we like I said we could go everywhere, but whatever the things we're potentially looking at are We then I think want to have another round In order to feel comfortable of conversation with the community Right, we don't want to be that like the english 9 teachers decided English teachers decided we should do this in english 10, but we didn't ask anybody We didn't collect data. I'm sort of the larger community response to that so that then I think we could in September, October November be having Some study on the side so in November Sort of parallel to budget where as that all converges We're giving you an idea of kind of where we would we're thinking where we want to go And then we can decide on what kind of a long timeline is The one thing that worries me is that we're sitting here talking about this like it's a possible deficit As opposed to it's a possible advantage I want to be in a point where if we're looking in at this program and saying this is good for kids Kids are doing better Kids who would not have done honors are doing honors and going on and do honors in 10th grade after they've gone through this program I don't want to slow walk this if this is good for kids. I want to do the right thing for kids So I would hope that as we walk into september and october and talk about what we're going to be doing for the 24 25 school year That if the conclusion is that this is good for kids The question should not be well do we can keep on doing this the question should be Okay, now that we've learned this how else can we take what we learned in the plight elsewhere in the school? Thank you. Dr. Danger for your presentation We talk about this all the time nice job. Thank you for being here and hanging in Thank you to the english teachers as well. Thank you. Thank you. Nicole who's here and everyone else who's been doing the work They've been they I just want to say they have done A really remarkable job when you go into those classes. There's really great stuff happening. Thank you Thank you All right Next we have a discussion and possible vote on a appraisal of property at zero lot apple t industry So mr. Thielman as the chair of the facilities committee. Can you yes? I can share a little bit of Mr. Himes on To discuss with us if there are questions or you want him to oh is he on oh great Okay, so the facility subcommittee has met A couple of times over the past few months and had a number of meetings and we had a discussion about a lot on at zero located at zero Appleton street or look at it on apple to the street and This piece of property is owned by the arlington public schools. We believe It's not being used by the school district at all And the next step and the greek church has an interest in it And the next step is for an appraisal to take place. And so the school committee has to take a vote to Authorize an appraisal and then once we authorize the appraisal. I believe Doug this goes to town meeting. Is that is that correct? There's an additional step, but yes, that's correct Okay And so the motion before the school committee moved that the school committee approved and direct the survey and appraisal of a portion Of the person known as zero lot appleton street believed to be owned by the arlington public schools As a portion of the addison medical middle school campus And so we That's what we would be doing So moved second And so So we have a motion by mr. Cardin seconded by mr. Hayner Mr. Steyland, do you want to say more? No, I don't really want to say more Mr. Hyam is here to answer questions that people have and I think he's the best horse of it. Yeah Mr. Slickman I'm troubled by this Uh, we've got no documentation I want to see a map. I want to see what we're voting on. I want to understand what What what's going on here? And as I pulled up the gis map for the for the uh, for the area I can't figure out what's going on Absent that in a good reason for moving forward I want to be convinced before I cast an affirmative vote on this I mean the thing the other thing that worries me is when we've engaged in school building Projects with the state one of the things that they ask for is the Acreage of the property that we own On that parcel and if we're going to be reducing that by any amount And doing this publicly through a voted town meeting I think this can also have an issue with any kind of renovations. We might be doing the future Mr. Heiner I guess I guess this goes to mr. Hyam. Do we definitely know it belongs to the alexon's school Mr. Chairman man. Yes I'm sorry, madam chair This subject comes up to us because the Greek church did a comprehensive title search on their problems Based on that title search While there are what appears to be some potential errors and some deeds it does Appear that there's a high level of confidence That there is a small portion of a parcel It is very very unlikely to be the size of a bill of a lot That is essentially across the street from the oddest in school And if you guys have the ability to see on the screen, I do have a map that I could Provide for mr. Schlickman that has some markings that might provide some clarity of the situation I understand his concerns well, but yes, mr. Heiner we we have a fairly high degree of confidence one of the things that would happen during the appraisal Is we would complete our own title search And have the property surveyed to get more exact dimensions Dr. Allison ampy Thanks So I'm on facilities and I've sat through a couple of the meetings where we discussed this and just to make it clear Part of the reason we're suggesting going to appraisal and that's all we that's all facilities was suggesting Was because the Map is unclear Exactly where the boundaries of the land are and part of the appraisal will consist of conducting a survey So we'll actually know what chunk of the land is The piece that we're talking about is the little wooded area That's the corner of acting as it turns down the hill next to oddison That's on the left It At least at facilities we did not Make any sort of Decision or recommendation that then we would consider selling or not first. We want to just see the appraisal We want to see what's the land what's it worth? and we actually asked for whether as mr. Heim goes through Figuring this out whether you know is the land worth more because it might complete a plot or something and he's going to Put that out to the people doing the appraisal um I'm sorry that you folks didn't get Maps or whatever in In novice but The maps as I said aren't super helpful because they don't actually tell you where They're they're ambiguous as to where the lines are so The appraisal was really the next step um, and that's why we brought it forward to the committee and There was no intent To then go on to town meeting the first thing was getting the appraisal and then we will make a decision so Mr. Heiner that decision you just mentioned will that be Left to the school committee to go to town meeting with it Mr. Heim Thank you, madam chair Mr. Heiner what I would recommend is if the school committee was inclined to have the property appraisal insert Is to have an appraisal survey Then to come back to the school committee with an idea of its value Which you could keep in confidence discuss an executive session Determine what the conditions of a sale might be if there are any that you'd like to have and depending on its value At that point you would be deciding whether or not to put it out for an RFP or It has to be put out for an RFP if it's worth over 35,000 dollars It does not have to be but still can be it's worth under that amount Only after the school committee, uh, recommended Um Disposition of the parcel would it then go on a town warrant or be discussed at town meet? Thank you Mr. Theoman, yeah, I mean, I think this is a pretty straightforward vote It's a it's a it's a it's a process step to get an appraisal To give us information so that we can make some decisions. That's all it is And so I urge us to vote for it move forward so um, oh, yeah, so just to be clear The motion is to approve and direct for a survey and appraisal of the parcel Not to sell it not to Get rid of it to get information to just get more information, right? Okay, so we have a motion by mr. Cardin seconded by mr. Heyner Roll call vote mr. Heyner. Yes mr. Cardin. Yes. Yes, morgan Yeah, sorry Mr. Schlegman. No, mr. Theoman. Yes Dr. Allison ampey Yes, and I vote yes, that's six in favor and one opposed All right So I put here just as a placeholder of my proposed budget updates and discussion in case Anyone on the committee or dr. Heyman or mr. Mason wanted to share anything Different from what was shared with your presentation Um, it will be on the agenda at our next meeting to vote to approve the budget So just this is our opportunity to have a conversation Um, I'll share quickly a couple of adjustments and then I know we met in budget subcommittee earlier this week So I don't know if dr. Allison ampey has anything to add or mr. Mason We are making a couple slight adjustments to what's listed in esser versus what's listed on the general fund moving the director of community communications and family engagement onto the general fund and the Sort of community transition liaison support person onto the esser grant And there are I'll talk about this a little bit more my update, but the projections are shifting a little bit We're trying to make sure that we have supportive section sizes across the schools And thinking about space also at the schools and where we actually have room to have sections Particularly at thompson, which is tight. So that's impacting a little bit of the enrollment projections as enrollments are coming in Which has an impact of course on our needs with regards to the Reserve positions, but those will all factor into the final Document which we're making revisions to based on some feedback that we got a budget subcommittee. Do you have anything to add? Okay, and I don't know if dr. Allison ampey wants to add anything I don't have anything to add. We mainly went through the budget document this past week Just trying to clarify questions In terms of sub in the numbers that had That maybe hadn't been entered correctly by the corresponding holder of that budget but I don't we didn't I don't have anything else that we needed that Thank you Superintendent's update dr. Holman. I have a short update one slide for you this evening I'd like to remind everyone and I will be reminding everyone Soon that the strategic plan is open for public comment. We have received several comments from community members We're using that to make adjustments to the documents which are live And that will be open through the end of next week And then we will be working on creating a final document of the strategic plan for approval by the committee at the end of This month We are kicking off hiring season the pictures you see here are of members of our cabinet team and also our superintendent interns At the harvard education expo earlier this month. We've been attending Um various hiring fairs to attract candidates and let them know how awesome arlington is And we're looking forward to a really productive and exciting hiring season Social worker week appreciation week is next week. We want to say thank you to all of our incredible Aps social workers will be celebrating them throughout the week in various ways And encourage families to let their school social workers know how much they are appreciated In their support of our students mental health. It's been a rough few years They've been providing a lot of services to our students and we're very grateful for everything that they do for our schools and our kids When it comes to administrator hiring, we have a couple of we're going to have several searches Because we have a couple of positions that are part of the fy 24 budget We and we know when anticipate that we might have a few more come up But we know right now that we have interim director of sel K-12 and counseling k-8 that we're going to need to make a permanent decision around as well as bishop principle I met with members of the bishop community yesterday All of the teachers and staff at the school during their early release time And attended a bishop pto meeting that was exceptionally well attended by families there To talk to them about their hopes for the future of the bishop's permanent leadership And we'll be making some determinations based on feedback I received from those meetings. I have a little bit more outreach to do to make sure I reach sort of all the corners of that community to get their thoughts So i'm looking forward to announcing what the plan is for that very soon You have enrollment Both the current enrollments as well as a projection sheet in your materials and moving forward from here probably through the summer I'll be providing you with that projection sheet or rolling it over into the next year's reports the projection sheet is pulling current enrollments and Putting them in the next year grade So it's assuming that all the students who are in the current grade matriculate forward except for kindergarten The kindergarten column is showing you the current k Approved enrollments So it's the number of students in kindergarten who have gone all the way through the registration process and they're fully enrolled It's not necessarily everybody who started the registration process and is still working on getting all their documentation in We've done the first round of buffer zone assignments And in the first round everybody received their first choice And as we move forward if we have to do small adjustments here and there we can we can do that but right now the sections Are balanced but small so there's not really any need to not be providing people their first choice and then we also aligned this year the timing on the opening of enrollment for afterschool care programs to be after the Submission of those initial buffer zone decisions so that families would know where they were going to be so that they could sign up And didn't need to double register for afterschool care So all of that is going quite well. We're keeping a close eye on Sections you'll note that the elementary sections in the projection sheet show us going down two sections from next year I'm confident. We will need those sections That's just a question of exactly where and I want to wait for some more data to come in before we make determinations about that I'm happy to take any questions Okay consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk Are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number two three one nine four In the amount of seven hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred sixty two dollars and sixty nine cents dated february 22nd 2023 School committee meeting minutes february 9th 2023 Second We have a motion by mr. Heiner seconded by mr. Schlickman roll call vote mr. Heiner Mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Morgan. Yes, mr. Schlickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes dr. Allison ampe Yes, and I vote yes, that's unanimous subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget dr. Allison ampe We met as I mentioned already last week and discuss heard this week and went over the budget For next year Thank you community relations mr. Heiner nothing to report Curriculum instruction assessment and accountability miss morgan We scheduled a meeting this week on March 27th 27, yes, we did march 27 345 p.m Thank you for all of your adherence to the doodle poll. So the intention of this meeting Oh, we're coming back here before then never mind. Okay carry on Facility is mr. Thielman We met on february 13th. We talked about The property we just uh Are going up to an assessment of and then we also Taught we also got a report on different progress taking place in the district on improvements in the or addressing issues in the facilities and By and large is good progress in the minutes summarize at all Michael is that a good way to describe it? policies and procedures mr. Schlickman High school building committee mr. Thielman we meet on tuesday Superintendant evaluation mr. Cardin no report These are reports announcements So I want to make clear to the community and remind the committee that our next meeting on march 16th Will be at the metco headquarters. Um, it will begin at 6 30 Ms. Diggins is working on transportation for anyone who is interested Um, and it will not be available on zoom, but it will be broadcast on acmi. So Community members here in arlington can watch the meeting future agenda items Well, we get an email reminder About the meeting. Yes. I'm super excited about it, but I I yes, this diggins, and I will make sure that I just feel like i'm gonna be here Because we've had zoom uh community members have been able to come and uh speak to the committee At the beginning of the meeting we won't have that available Is there any If they want to come to metco headquarters, they are well that is an open public meeting the location just happens to be They are welcome to send us an email or come to our march 30th meeting. Thank you. All right. Um Executive session, so I will entertain a motion to enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions and preparation 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 specifically the superintendent So We have a motion by mr. Heyner Seconded by mr. Cardin roll call vote mr. Heyner. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Morgan mr. Schluckman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr Allison ampie And I vote yes, and we will not be returning to open session at the end of this meeting