 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Allington School Committee on Thursday, December 2nd, 2021. I'm Bill Hain of the chair. But maybe to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda present and can hear me. When I call in a please respond the affirmative this accident. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. In the affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Here. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Dr. Holman. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Mason. Yes. Mr. Elmer. Yes. AEA representatives. Ms. Higgins. Liz can't make it tonight, but I'm here. Okay. Ms. Fernandez. I'm here. And the student representative Megan comedy. Yes. Thank you. Tonight's meeting of the Allington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with an act signed into law on June 16th, 2021. That extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. Governor's order, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website. This meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely for so long. So long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. And permit me to offer a few notes. First, the 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. Participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish they wish to participate you are asked to provide your full name and in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment. Those persons are not required to identify themselves. Participants and persons watching on a CMI can follow the posted agenda materials, also found on the town website using the novice agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call members of the public who wish to address the committee. It will be a 30 minute minutes of public comment, depending on the number of people who sign up time The number of speakers may be reduced, but will not be exceed three minutes each. If the number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 30 minutes the number of speakers will be capped, and will be invited to speak based on the time stamp of their email to Ms. Diggins, the school committee respectfully request 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 the name and address. The speakers may offer such objective criticism of the school operations and programs as concerned them, but in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel are against any member of the school committee, except for the school committee or the superintendent. Excuse me the school community, except for the school committee or the superintendent in the capacity of the operation as the operational leader of the Eileen's public schools. The committee will not hear anything that might identify or infringe upon a student's privacy by name or incident. If you would like to sign up to speak please email e diggins at Eileen's and K 12 dot m a dot us by 12 noon on the date of the meeting. No one signed up within the allotted time so we will proceed to the next item on the agenda and that is the Eileen's and high school student representative this comedy do you have anything you'd like to share with us tonight. Yeah, so today at the high school was the first wellness workshop of the year which was an hour long block where students were able to participate in different workshops to help their wellness and then there'll be two more of those, following in the month and then as well the student council is holding a spirit week for the students at the end of December, which will more information come out about that in the following week. Any members wish to ask this comedy any questions at this time. This comedy as long as you're present at the meeting, when we have any discussion, you're welcome to raise your hand and join us. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is a real approval of an international trip. Mr. Zerk. Thank you. Yes. I'm sorry, can you hear me. Yes. Yeah, my internet was acting up what would you like to. Well, obviously that we've had two international trips canceled in the last two years one to two to believes. So 2020 we're supposed to go to believes with a group 2021 we're supposed to go to believes with a group. When we contacted the F about resurrecting the trip. They said they were not going to run any trips this spring, and they were going to wait till 2023. I, as many of you know retired three years ago. I haven't gotten too far away from Arlington public schools that I keep kind of coming back. So, I started these trips. This would be my fourth trip so I started the trips. I think 2016 was our first one, and did not want to see them die when I left and so I asked Jen Murnick science teacher and she would take them over if I helped her kind of transition to being the group leader and organizing things so I promise that I would help her, at least with the first trip. I was supposed to be the last year. So now we're on to 2023. If, like I said has has postponed everything to 2023. And so that's where we stand at this point. It's basically the same trip that we did. I guess three years ago now and that we apply for two years ago, and was canceled in 2020. So, I'm just for clarification, Dr. Harmon. Do you want to come in on this or so I just wanted to provide a little additional context though Mr Zerk certainly provided a little bit of it's my understanding that this is a trip that has been previously approved by the school committee but considering the fact that we've just gone through a pandemic are still in a pandemic and haven't rediscussed trips like this one, since that happened that it was important for us to bring this back to the committee for re approval, and further consideration before we were to move forward with having folks sign up they have already had an information session is what I understand about this trip and it was well attended and there are lots of families who have indicated that they would be interested in going on the trip, including enough interest that there would be a waitlist so I just wanted to share that I don't know if Mr Zerk you have more information with regards to numbers but yeah no we did we did jump the gun a little bit on the advertising and we were actually I was a bit skeptical, given that the trip would be 17 months away. April break of 2023 and I but if told us that they were getting a lot of interest from other schools for this kind of timeline. So we did decide we did have an informational meeting we had 100 families on a zoom, and we opened it up to 30 spots, and we said when the meeting ended, we would put up the link to EF that they could go ahead and sign up. And within 15 minutes, those 30 spots were gone. So, he says something for the for the demand for trips like this, and sort of the pent up demand with parents and kids to travel again. So we haven't yet we have an extensive wait list. You have a date for the trip as yet. It's it's April break of 2023 I can I have the dates here. Well, that whatever the whatever the April break I think it's April 13 for the 19th. Do any members of the committee wish to. Any questions saying Mr card. I just kind of move approval of the trip. Discussion. Okay. For the purpose of discussion is there a second. I'm sorry. Yes. Okay, any further discussion. This time. Seeing none. Call roll call. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Miss accident. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. This Morgan. No. And I vote yes. It's a six one vote. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the approval of a budget request elementary and secondary. Miss Fernandez. You want to carry the torch. Yes. Thank you. For giving us this opportunity to share with you. Our budget priorities for the 2022-2023 school year. Usually we come to you with a list of positions that we think should be added. We have a shorter list this year than usual, which is not to suggest we don't need more staff, particularly in special education. So we'd like to give them the opportunity to reach their conclusions before we're suggesting specific solutions. But we also recognize that we have many open positions right now and doing what we can from a budgetary standpoint to fill them should be the priority. In terms of those positions that we are going to request, we believe that we need a full-time team chair at monotony preschool. The needs of the preschool students and the accompanying meetings and paperwork have increased to the point where the team chair should be its own full-time position rather than shared with the other leadership positions, the other leadership roles at preschool. We also believe that more counselors are needed at the secondary level. Our counselors have shouldered the burden of the pandemic more than anyone. And at this point, they're stretched in. Some of the main concerns are an increase in early applications to colleges and universities that have swamped the high school counselors in the fall. The increase in mental health surveying and screening requires follow-up appointments with the students who flag as a concern. The increase in the proactively scheduled groups for things like executive functioning, anxiety, depression, and grief are reducing the time available for the one-on-one student visits. And the increase in student crises kind of pull times for the job duties. So one student in crisis can take multiple counselors for much of the day. We want to be clear that this is not about the number of students per counselor, which is under contractual limits, but rather the additional work that's been added to their needs over the past few years. And that's it for new positions. However, we do need to fill the open positions that we have. And to do that, we strongly believe that the bulk of any budgetary increase should be used to raise salaries. Inflation for the year is running over 5%, whereas most Arlington educators saw a cost of living increase around 2% this year. That feels like a pay cut when you're paying the bills. Most of our teachers have worked longer hours than ever over the past 20 months, only to have less money left at the end of the month than they did last year. Our professionals currently start at $16.10 per hour. Local fast food restaurants, McDonald's are advertising starting salaries of $17. So high schoolers after school jobs should not be earning more money than our talented dedicated support staff. We are losing paraprofessionals to these higher paying jobs. The minimum hourly living wage for Arlington, as calculated by MIT, is $19.55 an hour. And we need to get our payers up to that level. So we need to get our payers up to that level. So we need to get our payers up to that level. The next door in Somerville, paraprofessionals start at $25,000 a year. So why would any potential TA or substitute take a job here when a mile down the road, they can earn significantly more. We know that employers everywhere are hiring, so we need to raise wages if we hope to compete for candidates. For years, the draw of public jobs is that the salaries might be lower than the private sector, and we need to make sure that they remain staff. Unfortunately, that's no longer true. Our insurance is state controlled, and private employees now have 12 paid weeks of family and medical leave, which public employees are blocked from accessing. At this time, we believe that salary increases need to be a key budget priority. We need the increase not only to recognize the hard work our staff is putting in every day, but simply to keep up with inflation and rising salaries and other fields around the state. And we no longer have to strengthen the benefits to make up for it. Thank you. Any of the members wish to ask any questions. Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, thank you. I was listening very attentively to your description of the need for counselors. But in terms of the tasks. You were describing a lot of that. To my ear. Sounds like show social workers. Have you thought. Yeah. So we're using the word counselors sort of as an umbrella term. And, you know, especially at the middle school level, it's a little bit. Fuzzy like what's a social worker and what's a school counselor. We use a lot of our staff. In multiple ways. So just sort of an as an umbrella term. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Is there anyone else. I have on the agenda. It says approval. Do we need to take a vote? Or is just, we just take getting input from them. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fernandez. And please pass on to the. To your group. Our appreciation of all the work that they're doing. And more so in the past couple of years. Thank you. Dr. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to Jenna and the A. A and say that we've been. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to Jenna and the A. A and say that we've been doing a lot of listening to. Leadership about. Asks both through the school improvement plans and over the last few days. In some budget meetings. And I've heard echoes of a lot of what you just said. And so it just demonstrates that, you know, we're aligned and we're seeing some of the same needs that all of you are. So thank you. This morning. And I guess I would also ask Dr. Homan if you could, I don't know. I don't know what you can share with your team directly. I don't know what you can share with your team directly from. Ms. Fernandez and the AA, but I think, you know, in the past, these. The AA has presented after so like that elementary principles in our old like school format, the elementary principles presented and then the AA would present. And then we would do that for the secondary and the high school as well. And I think that that was sort of a powerful. Way to structure that. And we, we've lost that a little bit in the past. So, you know, I hope that you can share, you know, directly with those teams. You know, specifically what, what they've shared tonight. So thank you. We'll absolutely do that. And in the opposite direction. So the list that we have that we're going to provide to all of you, we'll have all of the asks, including the AA asks will be shared with the administration as well as with the AA so that everybody can see what everyone has requested. Thank you all. So the next thing on the agenda is the Islington high school, school improvement plan. Dr. Good evening, everyone. I am excited to introduce Dr. Janger who's going to pull up his slides. And while he does that, I will just say a quick thank you to the high school administration for the successful launch of a. School year in person at the high school in a complex year when we're dealing with all sorts of construction challenges right alongside. Planning for what's to come in phase two. We're excited about that. We're looking forward to a forum to talk to families about what that's going to look like. And Dr. Janger is here to share some of the priorities of the high school this year. So take it away. Dr. Thank you. So I'm going to just share the slides. Let's make sure that those come up. So you should see a picture of our soon to be fabulous new building. Is that how folks are seeing. Yes. Big screen now. All right. So. That's not going there you go. So I'm going to go following the same format that I think the other presentations have followed. I'll talk a little bit about just the high school this year. Some sort of major wins, some challenges that we're dealing with and then the priorities. I have five priority areas in the school improvement plan. And so given about 10, 15 minutes to present, I'll only spend a couple of minutes on each of those. Each of those warrants their own presentation and most of them. Have past presentations and future presentations. Still plan. So I'll be relatively quick as I go through each of them. And hopefully kind of characterize where they are going. So one of the things before I jump forward to the screen. That's out of order. One of the things that I think is really important to think about this year is that if I was going to really talk about the actual implicit school improvement plan, the building project and returning from the pandemic are really our primary focuses this year. So the improvement efforts, the projects that we're talking about here come in the context of that being our really heavy lift. And, you know, well over 90% of our efforts. So the first thing I want to talk about. Is our current enrollment, right? So we have 1487 students as of yet a couple of days ago. Last year we had 1411 and every year we're going up by somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 100 students. It's gotten a little bit harder to predict with the pandemic, because our retention lines are different. Our patterns are different. We've gone up an enormous number of students since the beginning of the year. We have students coming in now, which is not a usual pattern. But as you can see, we're dealing with those growing fans. The building project and the growing fans of the school drive a lot of our budget ask. Although we then use those pieces of growth to meet a lot of our programmatic needs. So big, big improvements. And I think they're really important. Is to just think about what we did last year. Last year we maintained a safe and supportive school environment throughout the challenges of the pandemic. We made a wide range of changes in our instructional format. And we made multiple changes in the course of the year. We went to remote. We brought in students for reverse field trips. We brought in students for what we call shifts. And then we brought everybody back full time. We semesterized classes. We went to 80 minute block classes. And we actually reduced the amount of instructional time. All of those things. And we did that. And we did that. Really surprisingly to us, we're really pleased to say. Ended up resulting in constant levels of attendance. Improvements and grades overall. Students teachers reporting that they were meeting the standards. And the evidence on our standardized measures of student learning is that that is in fact the case that our students made a usual year of growth. And we did that in the context of targeting support. For a wide range of student needs. We didn't just do it instructionally. We, one of the things that I'm really proud about that I think was lost in a lot of the conversations about heterogeneous in person and remote learning was the other supports we put in place. We created an in person academy so that students who were not successful could come into school full time. We had about 200 students coming into the school every day of the year. We got technology out to students. We built relationships with students by calling them and reaching out to them going by their houses, dropping off what they needed throughout the year to make it maintain those relationships. And we focused a lot on providing mental health support. And all of that happened in the context of project. The building project, right? So that this building is now going up in front with minimal impact on the instructional process. So we're going to focus the building go about the upfront, but issues around ventilation and heat, which continued to be an ongoing effort. And now we coded, you know, we have to move very quickly. If there's a ventilation issue, that's not something that can wait a couple of days. The class has to shut down immediately in order to fix the ventilation. So just one fact I will share with you. And I could make a presentation, some other point about achievement data, but attendance is really the canary in the coal mine. And one of the things that we always tracked this last year was making sure that we were very quickly responding to students who are not attending. And you can see in spite of all of the difficulties of remote learning, our attendance actually was up slightly last year. And that's a huge achievement. And I just wanted to stop for a second before I go on to challenges because that was a team effort. And it was a team effort of our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, our staff, our interpreters, our custodians who have been working double time to keep this place together. Our administrative assistants and other staff, our professionals. And I didn't write my whole list down, so I'm sure I let someone out, but all of the staff really working together. So what do we see as we go forward? So in spite of the good news about attendance, the good news about kids staying connected to school and school, we see rising levels of social emotional distress. We see right now this year, about a 90% increase in referrals to our student support team. Now some of that is because of our bigger effort to early intervene, to identify students early in the process, but clearly some of that as a result of rising levels of distress on the part of students. And that comes from a lot of things. If you look at the YRBS, some groups of students report that that's because of the high levels of social emotional distress. So we see a lot of things like racial justice, or the political environment, or simple stresses about student achievement. And so there are all things that we need to keep working on. We continue to see disproportionality of outcomes for traditionally underserved demographic groups. So race, special education, ELL, all of those are real concerns, even though we see rising performance and we see discipline patterns that are getting better. We still see the disproportionality. And again, I'll never stop saying it until we're out of here. The impacts of the aging facility are pretty consistent. And this year, in addition to that, we're going to have the construction shift to this now and later on in the year. And right now, teachers are working very hard on top of everything else to plan for moves and classroom moves. They're going to have to happen just over a week, essentially for them a weekend or a vacation week in the middle of the year. So I think that's why we're going to be doing that. And that's why we're going to be doing that. And I think that those things are real things that are stressing the program. So our priorities. So I listed five. I think we were only supposed to list three, but I think it's important because these are things we're going to be doing anyway. To talk about all of them. The first is the heterogeneous grouping initiative. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. That's a process. It's not a decision. And that process is something we're going to spend. We're going to work on equity review. That's what's been happening across most of the departments. We're on texts and relationships and voice. And then equity in school culture. There's our ongoing work with collaborative problem solving. Some of this is actually just returning to the tris training levels. And we had pre pandemic because we was at a break in our training process. And some of that is continuing to try to improve that practice in classrooms. And then we've done a ton of work starting and building on the same project that we did last year. On student affinity and bias groups. And then of course we have the building project. So let me just talk first about the heterogeneous. Grouping initiative. So we made a presentation to the school committee earlier this year. It was laying out what we looked at what we were looking at as a process. And to get feedback on the process. That we wanted to go through. To look at how our leveling practices. We had a lot of opportunities for students. To engage in higher level learning. So we had had a good experience with heterogeneous grouping. But that's not something to be oversold. That was heterogeneous groupings, semesterized classes, 80 minute blocks, remote learning. There was an awful lot going on. Nonetheless, we had to good experience. Around that for the teachers. And some feedback from the students that was positive. About that experience. We had looked at the research. And that's something we really want to look at because again, we see real disproportionality of outcomes. Plus we see just a smaller number of students having access to the high level learning. So the plan and we shifted this based on feedback from the back school committee meeting. Is to start a study group. And the idea is to do research. On and look at the evidence and look at feedback. And so there will be some evidence gathering. And so we are going to be able to do a study group. And so there will be some research done by the group. Examinations and research done by the group. This group will be a representative group. Now it's hard to do a representative study group. We want as much participation of different groups and different perspectives, but at the same time, if a group gets over about 20 or 25 folks, you're not able to actually have conversations and work together collectively. So we're, we have about 50 folks. We're going to be able to make a list of the groups that we can. We'll invite those folks. And then we'll probably pull from the waiting list when folks are not able to make the dates. One question that has been asked in some emails. And so I'll just address a gear. Is why we didn't send the volunteer questioning. How to elementary parents. Right now we are looking at changes that are going to affect kids. You know, that are currently going into high school. We're not going to be able to represent for middle school and high school level parents. We're going to be experiencing whatever pilot we do. Elementary perspectives, because if you look at the distribution of parents, they're well, elementary parents are well represented in that group. So we'll make sure those perspectives are there, but elementary students are not going to be experiencing whatever we're doing until. Three or four or five years down the pipe. And so it's really, I think to represent. In the last few years, I think we've seen that in the last six or seven years. We've seen that in the last six or seven years. We've seen that in the last six or seven years. And so we've seen that in the last six or seven years. And so we've seen that in the last six or seven years. When we were in high school, we were in middle school. People were about to have that experience. We feel like we can reach all of those perspectives. So we plan about eight 90 minute meetings between now and March. We're moving quickly to try to pull that together. And we expect to go through a process of community education and feedback. But we're not going to be able to interact or. We don't want to get into social mainstream classes. I'm trying to be specific there. It is possible that we take a different direction in terms of how we're piloting more, you know, inclusion and leveling practices in a different way. But at the moment, that's sort of the model that we've been looking at. So I think. We want to be clear that it's a discussion around how that might work. So curriculum equity review. have been reviewing their curriculum in order to make course level revisions to increase the diversity of perspectives, equity and opportunity. So in part, they're looking at texts, content, curricula, and in part, they're looking at educational practices and ways that they include work for students. Each department is slightly different. In English, it includes choosing different essential questions, choosing different anchor texts, choosing different supplementary texts, and shifting the focus of the 9th and 11th grade classes. In history, it means pulling different perspectives and different materials while covering the periods of American history or world history that are covered in the classes. In math, it has to do with looking at practices, actually seven through 12, in terms of our tracking practices and the way we organize our sequencing in science. Again, each department is slightly different. What are we looking for? So it's not gonna be easy in sort of a numerical way to see immediate change. And many of the things that we're trying to measure are very difficult to measure, but we expect to assess student experience and engagement in the classes. Many of the classes have already pulled together end of course, it's end of semester feedback forms. We'll be looking at evidence and improvements and diversity of perspectives. Other, sorry, other evidence of those might be the Panorama Survey, but that is a school wide thing is unlikely to necessarily move the needle when something changes in their English class. And we'll be looking at impacts on student achievement and effective classes. Again, it's over determined, there's lots of things that may cause student achievement to go up or down, but we will be interested to see whether in classes, when they've implemented this new material, they're getting different outcomes in terms of grades. Collaborative problem solving. So I'll be the shortest on this because you've heard me present on this for three years. Collaborative problem solving is an approach to working with students around challenging behavior. And challenging behavior is whenever a student is not meeting our expectations. A lot of the emphasis is on disruptive behavior and discipline, but it also has to do with things like coming late to class or disengaging with them programming. So this year we're gonna be, we have to train all of our new staff from this year and last year that's a fair number of folks. At the same time, we're doing faculty refreshers. We're working on coaching with classroom teachers and the curriculum leaders are also going through introductory training because they actually have not had the full tier one training. Classroom teachers, you can coach them a leadership. That's myself and the administrative team are working with a consultant to look at our actual policies and practices to see how we can make them more consistent with what we're trying to do. And the basic idea of collaborative problem solving is that you focus on building skills and relationships with students in order to help them succeed rather than on punitive discipline. Sort of you, if you do this, this will happen. And the philosophy there is kids succeed if they can versus what a lot of disciplinary practice is which is kids succeed if they want to. So rather than making them want to we help them be able to. The student affinity and anti-bias group leadership gets only a couple of bullets but it's been one of the most rewarding things that I've worked on in the last year. Following the death of George Floyd and the social reckoning that went on in the country we led a lot of conversations with students. There was protests by alumni members of our Black Student Union and demands and expectations. All of that over a period of time led to us forming a collaborative group that we call the Anti-Racism Working Group. It also led to us giving more support to our affinity groups. So affinity groups are groups where students come together to discuss sort of shared interests or shared background. So that would be called the Black Student Union the Asian American Coalition, the Young Feminist Alliance, the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Those are different affinity groups. So we've now formed this year a leadership group of those students and we're working together to promote and coordinate leadership and programming amongst those students. And the reason for this is because if we're going to change school culture and student culture around bias and diversity it needs to come from the students. They can really push us and they can also reach their peers. The students are all right now working on creating a leadership retreat where they're going to look at their own identity and get educated on how to do this work effectively. They're running programming for other students when they're supporting us and doing those sorts of things. So our goals would be to see increased membership in those groups to promote successful projects and hopefully to create positive impacts again on those measures of school climate and culture. And then of course we have the building project. If you really want to hear about the building project come to the forum on December 15th at 7pm we're going to be talking primarily about the plans for the phase one move. So we are about to move from the old building into the first phase of the new building while keeping about half of the old building still in operation. So just for a quick perspective what that means is that very soon I think December 13th or 15th mid December we're going to be moving the media center and the cafeteria. So those are going to begin to move in December and when we come back in January the cafeteria will be located in the blue gym with overflow to the pit and the media center will be located in old hall. As you can imagine that puts some space pressure on because we move some large spaces but when we then make the move in February we'll be moving all of the steam classes into the new building. And so there's a whole lot of pieces to that we'll be talking about that in the December forum and then again in a January forum in addition we'll be sharing that with the students at presentations and advisor. So that's what it looks like when you come to the front door but every day you come back and it's a little bit better I've walked around and there are rooms that are actually looking finished at this point which is very exciting. So just for a sense of where we're going to end up if you're trying to get an overview when we move to phase two the occupied space of the building will be the gray buildings. So if you look you see the steam wing in front. So it's to the right there on the bottom is all the science, technology, visual arts and math classes to the left is the performing arts wing. And then if you look right there there's a little stem that connects that's going to be the connector that goes into Fusco and then students going to down south through the links into the back of the building. We have plans for managing traffic and student activities around that and we'll certainly go over that with folks. There's an FAQ, there will be sheets and we will go over that to make sure everybody knows what it is we can do. So resources again as I said at the beginning the biggest area obviously every year is the cost of staffing and we expect an increase of about 50 students. If you're going to keep class size constant around 20 and if you're going to keep staffing and other support functions equal we've always worked off a multiplier of 1.7. So that would require entail a need for roughly 4.2 FTE. Where would we spend that FTE? We're expecting we agree that we need a new counselor. We're at 1500 students essentially the recommendation of Massachusetts Association of School Counselors is that caseloads being 250 our counselors are there now. And so we would like to add an additional counselor which will then take us to the build size for the project which is going to be in about three years which is 1,750. And that will help us to lower that given that support referrals are up 90% we think that bringing people below the maximum is really important. And we're also looking at support of 1.5. So Dr. Homan and the team and I'm sure she'll present more detail on that but classroom teachers in order to create sections for that. We expect supply costs to go up they already are this year. So we would like our supply costs to keep pace with the inflation and those costs. And we're going to need support for professional development and teacher responsibilities advisors for the programs that we're talking about support for professional development for collaborative solving problem solving and that sort of work. So I think that's it for me. The members of the committee anyone wish to say anything at this time? Mr. Codden. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Janger and to the school improvement the school council on drafting the school improvement plan. It's very comprehensive and glad to see they continue to work on the CPS because that's been a good long-term initiative and that's very helpful in the school climate and very helpful with the school climate as far as we can tell. Just two quick things. So on the slide on the budget numbers is new and I'm sure you'll be sitting down with Mr. Mason and going over it but our official enrollment model actually only projects an increase of 10 students. Your exiting class is pretty large and the entering eighth grade class that Audison is kind of small at 436. So let's take another look at those numbers to see how much additional staffing really is needed for enrollment purposes that is as you build your budget. And then we'll have an opportunity at our CIA meeting which we hope to schedule later in the month to talk more about the heterogeneous initiative but I mean, based on some feedback I've gotten from the community about the email that went out, you know, what you've said here is good. I think we need to have a true study group that does look at the research and determines, you know, what is our objectives? What is the problem we're trying to solve? What does the research really show about high school level tracking versus lower level tracking? And take a sort of look at the research and come to their own conclusions rather than relying on the conclusions that I know a lot of our staff has already made. So hopefully as we go forward, we'll see that as part of the process. Thank you. Or anyone else? This is Morgan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. Thank you, Dr. Jinger and to your team. It was a really readable sip and I appreciate the context that you built around it. And I also appreciate that right now we're not debating the plans around any of these pieces, be it collaborative problem solving or heterogeneous groupings. I do, you know, my feedback on the sip as a whole, you know, when I look at it and I look at the initiatives and I think about that, you know, that move in February of about half of your building and the, did just the amount of work that's gonna take to happen and what's gonna be needed for the students to feel comfortable, for the staff who many of them are gonna be moving and then entering into a period which I think a lot of us believe is gonna be the most disruptive part of this project, right? It's all gonna be great when they're in that beautiful space. For some of the day, but there's gonna be demolition, it's going to be an incredibly disruptive time on that site is my, from looking at the planning and I'm sure that you guys will do everything you can to mitigate that. When I look at the timing for the heterogeneous groupings and I look at the calendar and it's December 2nd and the group hasn't come together yet and then there's, you know, a holiday period and then there's this enormous undertaking in February which is frankly the largest, you know the largest sort of maneuvering of personnel and students that Arlington has ever seen, right? This is the largest construction project. I have no doubt that the administration and the staff at the high school can walk in Chugam at the same time but this seems like a lot of walking and a lot of chewing that's all gonna be happening right on top of each other. So that's my feedback on the SIP. It looks like a lot to me to get done in a really short amount of time. So, you know, that's, I'm trying to keep my comments just to the document that's in front of us. So, but thank you for the presentation and we look forward to hearing more on all of these things. Mr. Schlegman. Thank you very much. Thank you for the thoughtful presentation. Yeah, I don't think we allow chewing gum in school but this is a very, very challenging group of things. And I think that this is thoughtful and put together makes perfect sense to me. So I'll move acceptance of the SIP. Is there a second at this time? I'll allow more discussion after a second. Okay, Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Dr. Jinger, thank you for your presentation and for your SIP. It was very thorough, yet concise in terms of slides. I appreciate that. And I guess the one thing I hear what Ms. Morgan and Mr. Cardin are saying and kind of what they're suggesting. And I just, as we go through this, I wanna be sure that somehow we're capturing the incredible enthusiasm we heard from our staff about the heterogeneous classes because to me, it was remarkable. And that I understand we can look at studies and everything, but the fact that the teachers were so much in favor of it and the many positive things that they had to say about this, I just, especially if we, the longer we delay it, the further we are from when we actually had sort of our natural experiment. And I just don't want us to lose track of that because I, to me, that was one of the most compelling things for this concept. So that is basically my questions right now. Thank you. Or I guess it's not even a question, it's a comment. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. So thanks very much. This was a very concise, well-presented SIP. Very easy to read and follow. And I appreciate that. And I am obviously grateful to the whole school administration for all the work that Dr. Janger and his team are doing as we prepare for the transition to the new building. So regarding the heterogeneous class discussion, the thing I want to, a couple of things I want to point out is that I think we have to be, or the district leadership has to be extraordinarily careful about the process. The rollout has been, it's been a lot of commentary out there. And if this were a campaign to try to win votes, there would be coaching given to the group running the campaign because the rollout's been a little rough. So I think you got to be mindful at all times of the process. I am concerned about a process in which we do all of this, both the school committee and the public, by Zoom conversations to the extent we can, in person, seeing each other. I haven't seen many members of the school district, department heads in face-to-face meetings in a long time. And if we're going to be making a decision this significant, I think we have to find a way to meet in person. I've asked about this before. I've made this point before, I'm going to make it again. The second thing, I would be careful about relying on a lot of the data from last year. For some students, it was a great year. And Dr. Jenga, you pointed out some successes from last year. I think, well, you should. But there were also students who didn't have a great last year. And so hearing comments about relying on that year for data to inform this discussion is hurtful to some people. I think we, and you have to acknowledge that for some people it was painful last year, that has to be acknowledged. I think as we go about this process, which is an important one, and a good discussion to have, and not a discussion we should shy away from any way, shape, or form, we should have this discussion about heterogeneous classes. Absolutely a good discussion to take on. We have to be clear, the district leadership has to be clear on what the outcomes will be by which we are measured. Some of us, myself, I have experience in a private school in which we had heterogeneous classes, all students in honors classes. We were honest about how we had to improve our practice. We were honest about the weaknesses in our practice. We were honest about that. We didn't shy away from admitting how we had weaknesses in our practice. We were straightforward about that. And we also set some standards and benchmarks by which we measured ourselves. And those standards and benchmarks were student performance and the academic levels to which students rose. So I guess I'm looking for that as this process is revealed and is developed. And those are the points I wanna make. It's gotta be a good process. I think it has to be in-person meetings. And I'm gonna insist on that somehow, someway, because this dialogue by Zoom is not a healthy one and it's not a good one for something as important as this topic. That's all I have to say. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Mr. Filman. Ms. Sexton, do you have anything you'd like to add? Sure, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. I wanted to, I really appreciated the sort of maintenance of this CPS initiative in the SIP in the terms of taking things that are going well and continuing with them and not feeling like one needed to add on or expand to new things but maintaining an initiative that's been working really well. So I appreciated the re-emphasis of that and bringing that back. And similarly with the affinity groups and the student groups and taking something that was started by me, but also for the benefit of students and continuing to grow that. So I appreciate both of those things. I, thinking about this heterogeneous grouping that we've all been talking about, I think I, you know, I agree, I'm sorry. I wanna make sure that teachers' voices continue to be a part of this conversation and that while, you know, we can, I agree that last year was not a year we can use as representative of how it might go in a more typical year. I do think that the teacher's experience with the content, with the materials that they're teaching probably will be carried over in some ways. And so there are components of that that I wanna make sure that are maintained. And the other thing that this discussion makes me think about is, you know, in so many ways, change is so hard. And so trying something new or different makes people sort of get anxious and nervous about what might, what happened, might what might happen for their students or because what's going on right now feels like it's working but it's not necessarily working for everybody. And so Dr. Janger, I appreciate the way that you're trying to create this group that's going to be diverse and representative of all voices. And I hope that that really does come to fruition when you create those groups because I think that's gonna be another important piece. So thank you. Thank you. Several members have said it. I will say it again. Thank you, Dr. Janger. Please pass on to the entire staff, our appreciation for the SIP, all the work they've done this year and all the work they've done the past year. Thank you very much. Can I say one word and- Go ahead. So first, thank you all for your comments. I think I agree with every single one of them. So I think, you know, because I actually think what folks are saying is not inconsistent, we need to have a process, right? We need to have a process that is inclusive and transparent. The first thing we need to do in that group is set norms, talk with people about to making sure that our process in that group is meeting the right things. Then we have to set goals and figure out where it is we're going, so we need to go through that process. I appreciated what Ms. Morgan said, because I took that as permission to take as much time as we need to. In case we don't necessarily get to a perfect presentation or proposal on mark, we will take the time we need to do this right. But I think that's the most important thing. Our goal is to maintain and increase student access and achievement in high level curriculum for all students to give all students as much of an opportunity as possible to participate in that and to be successful in that. And that's going to be our goal. And then as Jeff said, we need to figure out, I'm sorry, Ms. Steven said, we need to figure out how to measure that. And I think we know how to measure those sorts of things when we'll do that. So we need to take the time to do it right. And at the same time, we need to build on, you know, opportunities and strengths. So it'll be a trade-off, but this will be a process. I think in our rush to sort of present some very rough information to say this is where we are. I think a lot of people got the impression that we were like making a decision and ramming it down people's throats. And so really, I think you have to realize that that comes from enthusiasm and a desire to be transparent. We're showing you our raw data as we look at it ourselves. And that we will go through that process. So thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Dr. Holman, you want the last word? I'll only say thank you to Dr. Janger and the team for their reflective approach to thinking through some really challenging issues this past year and a half. And all in the midst of a very exciting building project, we cannot wait to get into the new wing. So. Thank you. Next item, Policy BEDL, Land Acknowledgement. First read, Mr. Schlichman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On April 26, 2021, the town meeting voted 222 to 1 to encourage all town entities to celebrate and recognize the heritage of people's indigenous to Massachusetts through the use of land acknowledgement. So we developed a policy that we think will be workable for us that makes us an important part of our work. The policy would call for us requiring the land acknowledgement at our organizational meeting, at our first meeting in October, and as part of graduation. And that we certainly would encourage it to be used at other times as well. So that's how the policy reads. It's been reviewed and tweaked by town council. And I hope it's adopted at our next meeting. Any members wish to add any questions at this time? Comments. Thank you, Mr. Schlichman. The next item is Policy KFD Amendment. First read, Mr. Schlichman. So the Community Relations Committee presented us a proposed change for KFD and we discussed it. There was a sense from the policy subcommittee that we wanted to maintain some sort of a financial accountability for the after school programs as they are receiving discounted space from the district. And I think that we owe the public who are participating in the after school program and paying the fees for the service to monitor this. So we've looked to revise the policy was our understanding that requiring a full financial disclosure to go to the school committee was really the hang up. So we're going to ask for an overview of finances that the superintendent would report to us and that as we do now provide to the district administration as part of their annual licensing process the financial statement and descriptive brochure. So we think this meets the desires to have a more streamlined process that requires only one set of reporting for the providers and gives us the information we need to be transparent in our operations. So we had a good discussion on this and I hope that at the next meeting the committee will adopt the amendments and move forward with this new policy. Dr. Rampe. I think the wrong version is in Novus. It was switched up this morning. Oh, I downloaded it yesterday. Okay, let me check. Sorry. The version that was in Novus was the one for our subcommittee meeting and not the one that was the outcome of the meeting. So it should be correct right now because I'm looking at it in Novus and I see the right policy. Yeah, I have to download things so I can't look at it. Okay, yeah, that looks better. Okay, that's all. Okay, so I move to approve. No, we don't have to do anything for further discussion. We're moving to release. Thank you. Thank you, I just one of the concerns from the conversation that we had and that I'm from my understanding from previous conversations before the pandemic was the need for the specificity between the director's salary and the teacher's salary. And so I guess I'm through the chair or getting more information about if it needs to specifically be the director's salary and the teacher's salary or if it can be something, salaries, expenses, revenues. If Mr. Schlickman, correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that the information will still be provided to the superintendent and the superintendent will provide us with a summary of the information. So the information will still be provided but it will not be done in a public meeting at the school committee in the hall. Is that right, Mr. Schlickman? Yeah, I'm listening to Ms. Ekston and perhaps she offered an amendment in two weeks to change this to all salaries just so it's not calling it out. I think that's what she's trying to do but I think that we've talked this out in subcommittee and it's important for us to be transparent in all the things we do. Anybody who's paid by this district down to the smallest vendor for an after school or adult ed program, that's voted by this committee and it's very transparent. You look at our vendor warrant and this thing is down to the last nickel. And I think that that level of specificity that we provide for everything we do needs to include the after school programs. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Just to speak also towards Ms. Ekston's question I think part of the feeling about the committee that the sub, on the half of the subcommittee was that we are providing a very substantial reduction in rental rates for the programs which are in the schools. And the idea that a fictitious program that I'm making up now had a director salary that was huge and maybe teacher salaries that are really small feels like an abuse of our good nature to provide the rentals at a reduced rate. And so the reason that we felt we needed to see these salaries is just to make sure that something like that isn't happening. We, in the summary as we discussed with the, in the summary of the program that the superintendent is to give us it doesn't have to have the numbers in the salaries. We've checked the salaries. We think that they're within a reasonable range and stuff. So to speak to your point about, I wasn't sure if when you say all salaries if you mean as a lump or individually. If it's a lump, to me that doesn't satisfy the type of oversight that we're trying to give. If it's individually then sure I'm happy with all salaries. So. Ms. Morgan. Or Mr. Thielman's how does he end up? But I will jump in quickly just as a member of the subcommittee and then perhaps Mr. Hainer you might want to call on now Mr. Thielman. But I will definitely give him his time. When we talked about this as well, Mr. Mason indicated that requesting this information would continue to be on the licensing application. And so it felt complicated for us to remove it from our policy as well. Because then it didn't ultimately line up with what he had told us they intended to ask for. And it seems like we want to make sure that our policy is supporting the information that they need to collect. This has historically been difficult information to get our hands on. And so enshrining it in policy while addressing the date issue which I do recognize was problematic but they had sort of two dates by which they needed to submit materials seemed pretty silly. So and then I agree with Dr. Elton Ampe around that. We have a certain obligation as stewards of these spaces and of these buildings. And again, the intention is not for Dr. Holman to present us with a publicly available chart with everybody's salary on it. Although we do certainly provide that for our employees but of our employees. So anyway, I'm fine with where this is right now. Thanks. Mr. Thielman. Yes, I had some questions. Thank you, Mr. Hannah. I guess for Mr. Mason, what do we require for licensing? And aren't these organizations also licensed by the state as well? And what is the state required? Do you have a sense of that? I cannot answer in terms of what their requirements are at the state level for the different governing bodies in that regard. But I can answer in terms of what we've required, which has been pretty minimal, but to say the least is we require certain standards for their employees, which they're required to do is for finger printing which is mandated by law. We've also required that they're gonna provide this service at a subsidized rate. It's not necessarily explicitly provided in the lease license agreement, license agreement. And an added to that is that the commitment that they're willing to commit to a particular period of time. Okay, but in terms of financial data that you request Mr. Mason, what do you normally request to license or to sign a lease with them? So we don't require it at the signing of the lease. We require it during the particular periods, but what we do request is their expenditures. And this is not at a summarized view, but we do request key figures such as director salaries and then just staff salaries, not itemized. And we summarize that. And we just look at it as benchmarks. Okay, I mean, I don't know all the details of the programs, but the people salaries differ and management, you know, the number of people in management in the organization differ based on all the other things they have to do. So it's not something you can look at lightly and react to quickly. It requires a lot more depth of thought to properly evaluate it. I would also say that, I mean, when you put them here and over, I'm looking at my screen, I'm sorry about that. An overview of finances for each program, you know, that's not a well-defined thing. Overview of finances means different things to different people. Are you gonna, if this, and I'm not trying to, you know, single you are, I'm just the other guy that would be implementing his policy. So like, are you gonna give them a template for the overview of finances? I mean, if I got that from a funder, I'd say, well, okay, what do you want in the overview? Yeah, so essentially, we send out a template that we ask them to fill out these questions, which basically spells out what level of their staff salaries that we have a specific line for the director salary in another expenditures. We don't ask for any backup or any certification of that. That's just a general small template that we ask them to fill out. We also ask for what they charge for the services. And so we have understanding and just ensure that they're posting all of this information except the financial expenditures, but what they are going to charge onto their websites and that is accessible so that we can post on our website. And isn't, I mean, you know, a good sign of an organization's financial health is it's an audited financial statement. I mean, you can take a look at an audited financial statement and you can see quite a bit of information in there. And so we are still going to require the audited financial statement. Is that still going to be our policy? I'm trying to just get familiar with the plan. So we are currently requesting for unaudited information and it's never been specified in the license agreement for audited documents. Are they required to be audited? It's not required in our license agreement. Okay, are these organizations ones that found 990 tax returns? I don't even know. I don't even know if they had a required line wouldn't know that. They are. Because I mean, through a 990, through an audited financial statement, you can learn quite a bit about the health of an organization, the salaries of leadership, that sort of thing. I mean, it's all right there. And then the 990 is a for me file with the IRS. So I don't know, I'm just seeing the policy. I saw it this morning when I looked at this thing. There may be ways to simplify it. I don't have an answer right now, but those are some thoughts, those are some questions. Thank you. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. I just wanted to point out that it's the superintendent who provides the summary and the overview of finances, not the programs. So the programs have delineated things down in paragraph five, but the superintendent is the one who's providing the overview. It's not, we're not just telling the programs to provide an overview of your finances. So that's all. Okay, thank you. That paragraph, okay, but says financial statements, there are financial statements, that's where I'm going. Okay. Well said. Ms. Morgan. I think the intention is just to make sure that these operations are financially solvent, right? I mean, we have some obligation to do that. One, because we're renting space to them and two, because they're taking care of our kids after school and so I think that's, I mean, if we can request a copy of a tax return that goes to Mr. Mason and Dr. Holman and that covers what they need to know, that does seem like a simple way to go about this. I don't think there, I think the intention in what we are asking the superintendent to report to us is vague such that we're ostensibly asking her to say, we've looked at these, they look viable. Like, you know, the organizations are financially viable. It looks, you know, the finances look to be appropriate. Just to clarify, I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be the first to answer, I'm sorry. In paragraph five, in other words, in paragraph five of this document, Mr. Mason, Dr. Holman can say to these folks, just send us your 990 and tax return at your 990 and your audited financial statements. You can have them and we'll look at those and include this in the report to the school committee. Is that accurate? That could be the outcome of paragraph five because you would get all the information that's in paragraph five in that document. I think the issue is, is that they have been resistant to having that information released publicly. We can, I mean, we could feel differently about that. There are school buildings, right? So, I mean, we could have, so, but that's the feedback. All right, okay. We have a proposed policy at this time. All right. Going forward, if it's approved by this committee at the next meeting, we'll give it a try. And if we don't get what we want, the superintendent I'm sure will let us know and we'll be back to us. We all said, thank you all. Moving on, monthly financial report, Mr. Mason. Good evening and school committee members. I'm sorry for getting the documents to you late this evening. I actually would like to request to have this pushed to the December 16th meeting so I can give you a chance to review for those who didn't see it and give you a chance to ask me any questions. They beat you up in the last one. They're not gonna, oh, here we go. Sorry, Len. Yeah, if I could just ask a quick question. Maybe Mr. Speaker would know. How many open positions do we currently have still? I don't have the exact number. I mean, I have to look at our postings and copy off guard there, but quite a few. We're definitely looking for teaching assistants and substitutes. We also are looking for Spanish teacher, a reading teacher. We're looking for some other positions that we're trying to find that are hard to find right now. What are we talking about? Are there any teaching assistants, 10, 30? Oh, not 30. I would say somewhere between 10 and 10 and 15, district wide and all in different buildings. And we could use substitutes right now. It's hard to get substitute coverage right now for us and any of our students. So my only comment, because it's time sensitive, is that we are now almost halfway through the school year with these positions unfilled. So we're building up some funding there. And maybe we need to look at using that funding to offer signing bonuses or special pay for those really hard to fill, hard to retain positions. Fernandez referred to earlier. And obviously that would take negotiation, but just as something for the administration to look at, given that we're so desperate right now. Thanks. Anyone else this time? Mr. Mason, do you have anything else for the forest this time? As well as you would have received the NDE report for fiscal 21 that would have been uploaded to NOVA's. I also presented this to the school committee, I mean, the budget subcommittee meeting at the budget subcommittee meeting a few days ago. But since this was provided to you late, I give you a chance to review and then ask questions. There may be questions due to some of the changes in spending over the, from the prior year. So I would welcome that at that time if you're okay with that. I also included a special education spending analysis with that memo, explaining how spending has changed over the years. There's been a discussion point in some of the other meetings that we've had about upcoming budgets. So it might be something that the committee members want to further review and ask any further questions, underlying questions about the data. I'll set to move one. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Superintendent's report, Dr. Holman. Okay, you should see my screen. I wanted to start by sharing where we are with regards to case rates and the pandemic in Arlington Public Schools. We are at around 14.2 per 100,000 cases in Arlington and the schools continue to track along with the community. We've seen some increasing cases throughout the schools this week. It's impacting both vaccinated individuals and our partially or unvaccinated students. Cases are discovered both when they're reported to us and when we discover them through pooled and follow-up testing on a relatively even basis. So we're discovering cases in pool testing and we're also having them reported to us over holidays. When I report cases, just a note to the community because I've received this question a few times. I'm counting it from everything that comes up until Monday morning and I'm counting it based on when the positive test was received. So we might find out about a test or a case on a Monday but that case was discovered by the family the previous Friday. I report it on the previous week because the case was identified the previous Friday. So the cases are counted based on at what point the administration or the schools receive notice that the case happened and when the actual positive test happened. So we haven't identified any clusters or instances of in-school spread or transmission. We're continuing to take a lot of extra precautions whenever necessary, whether that means pooling an entire class, doing an extra Binax test here and there, going ahead and doing test and stay even with vaccinated individuals where possible. But we are experiencing some strain on things like supplies which is something that we're going to keep a very close eye on. So far it hasn't impacted our ability to fully do pool testing with the entire school community but we also know that supply chain challenges are impacting every industry and that that's going to potentially be true of the testing industry as well. So far still so good. However, we would certainly like to see these numbers trend in the opposite direction and we would encourage families to take as many precautions as possible as we move into the holiday season. I also wanted to share that some good news that we've received $326,579 along with the town of Arlington for electric school buses and that includes charging stations. These will replace two older diesel buses in our fleet and we're very grateful for the partnership that we have had with the town to make sure that we can contribute to our efforts to be a greener community. We have launched our December culture and climate surveys and any of you who are parents with children in the Arlington public schools probably got an email inviting you to participate in the survey. So I hope you'll take yours before December 23rd. And we're really looking for maximum participation in these surveys this winter because this will inform the work we're going to do with strategic planning. It's also going to allow schools to get a head start on planning and school improvement for the following school year. We're going to spend time in January doing some digging into what we discover from Panorama at the school level and at the district level and we'll be ready to share results and findings from the surveys with the school committee and the community following our opportunity to do some analysis internally. We're also excited to be doing our second set of leadership instructional rounds this week and next week. We started out at Gibbs this week and we're doing Audison next week. So we're really zooming in on middle school this month. Administrators and a few teacher guests who joined us looked at embedded and explicit instruction in social and emotional learning and we'll do the same thing at the follow-up session at the Audison. And I want to thank two Gibbs teachers, Nina Martirana who is a PE teacher and Caitlin Russell who's a reading teacher. They facilitated a responsive classroom model advisory lesson for us at the Gibbs and it was fantastic. I also want to update you that we have an RFP up for vendors for our equity audit. We will actually be interviewing the folks who will be coming in to do the equity audit with us. We're interviewing whoever submits a proposal to do the equity audit. It's comprehensive. It's looking at everything from operations to hiring practices to instructional practices and it will sort of round out the curriculum audit that we had done earlier. We're anticipating that happening this spring. We're also in the process of submitting and finalizing a grant to the AEF for strategic planning process to include members of the community. I'm looking forward to visiting with AEF at their board meeting this month and talking about our proposal for this district improvement plan that I think will really allow us to set a vision for the post pandemic future of the Arlington Public Schools. And I'm really looking forward to this work. And finally, you have the enrollment report with not any major changes in it for this round meetings. And I'm happy to take any questions that the committee has. Ms. Bowman. Dr. Homan, do you have a brief update on the RFP for the designer for the Stratton Pierce and Bishop Playgrounds? I'm not sure where we are in development that RFP, Mr. Mason, do you know? Yes, actually the RFP is on the streets now for designers to actually put in proposals to become the chance to help design the playgrounds is the deadline for the bids or the proposals on December 6th. Thank you. Anyone else at this time? Thank you, Dr. Homan. Consent agenda, all items listed with an asterisk that are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. But we know a 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. Part number 2219, November 23rd, 2021. The amount of $777,204.28 cents. I have a motion to approve. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, roll call vote. Mr. Codden. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. I'm sorry, I just lost my internet connection. So I didn't hear anything. It's the approval of the warrant in the amount of $777,204.28. That was the only thing on the consent agenda. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Ekston. Yes. And I vote yes. Subcommittee liaison reports and announcement. Budget committee, Dr. Ampe. Hi. So budget met on the November 30th. We discussed the end of year report which you'll hear more about next week or next meeting. We heard an update on the SR3 information or stuff that's being gathered. And there are, sorry, I wrote notes and, oh, I can't read my own handwriting. We reviewed materials and data that we're going to be gathering over the next couple of months to be used towards formulating information for a long-range plan. And we also heard a lot on athletic fees. There's a desire to change the structure or to look at the changing the structure of the athletic fees to simplify it and to make it less of a barrier for students to participate in sports. The administration gave us some suggestions. We gave feedback and then they're going to come back later with their full proposal. So we don't have another meetings control at this point. Thank you. Community relations, Ms. Eckstin. Thank you. We'll be having a chat on December 11th at 11 a.m. Everyone is invited, but it's specifically for K through fifth grade and Dr. Allison Ampe and I will be there and the link will be emailed by Ms. Diggins and it's also on the APS calendar. Thank you. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Accountability, Mr. Cardin. We're looking to schedule a meeting later in the month, maybe the week of December 15th. We can find a time to discuss formative and mental health outcomes from early year screenings and also have an opportunity as a subcommittee to discuss both the heterogeneous initiatives at Audison and high school and whatever else comes up between now and then. Thank you. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. The committee met on November 22nd. We had two items on the agenda, the strat and school discussion that was a carryover from the discussion we heard and we heard the SIP from Dr. Hanna, the SIP presentation from Dr. Hanna. And then we also talked about playgrounds. Ms. Morgan carried out, followed up on one of the points that was discussed at that meeting. And it was a good discussion. I don't think, you know, I think Dr. Hanna outlined and Dr. Hulman outlined some of the steps the strat and school is gonna take this year to think about the rising enrollment and how that's put tremendous pressure on that building. Thank you. Facilities and procedures, Mr. Schlickman. You saw the fruit of our labors at our Monday meeting earlier in this meeting. We have draft minutes in novice. We do not have a plan for an additional meeting at this time. Thank you. Alleyton High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. We meet on Tuesday, December 7th at six o'clock. The project continues to go on schedule and as was reported earlier, we have forums coming up and we encourage the community to attend. Thank you. Are there any liaison reports at this time? Any announcements by members of the committee or the administration? Any future agenda items? Seeing none. The committee will be entering an executive session and not returning to an open meeting. Executive sessions are conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and on non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and on non-union in which a failed in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which you've held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. So-called load. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Seven zero. Thank you.