 Welcome to this meeting of Thursday, May 25th of the regular, of a regular schedule school committee meeting. I'm Kirstie Allison Yipi, the chair. I ran up the stairs, which is why I'm like, unable to breathe, and we have public comment first. I know that we have some people here for public comment. Let me find my blurb to read. Oh, that's good. That's not the right one. Okay, just a moment. Sorry about this, folks. A little music in the meantime. Thank you very much for that. Good timing to you up the band. Sorry about that. Yeah, but that's not exactly right, so. Okay, I'd like to review sections of our policy, DEDH, which governs public comment. During the public comment segment of regular school committee meetings, individuals or group representatives may address the committee on items of school business. The length of public participation shall normally be no more than 20 minutes, but may be extended by the chair. Speakers must identify themselves by name and address, and will be allowed up to three minutes to present their material. The chair may reduce the speaking time if needed, and or may permit extension of this time. Improper conduct and remarks, including use of obscenity or abuse of language will not be tolerated. Defamatory or abuse of remarks are always out of order. If a speaker persists in improper conduct or remarks, chair may terminate that individual's privilege of address. All remarks will be addressed through the chairperson of the meeting. Speakers may offer such object criticism of the school operations and programs as concern 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 the Arlington Public Schools. Under most circumstances, administrative channels are the proper means for disposition of legitimate complaints involving staff members. The public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than the superintendent. And I don't have this written down, but I also want to note that we don't respond to public comment. We just hear and we may bring it up later or at another meeting. So thank you very much. Given all that, our first public speaker is Molly Blowgillis. My name is Molly Blowgillis, 20 Alpine Street, mom to two LGBTQ kids, one of whom is transgender. I've presented to you many times in the context of our work together to make our schools safer, more inclusive, and more welcoming for LGBTQI plus students. No one can do this work alone and do it well. It requires collaboration, optimism, and generosity. For my part, that approach is highly intentional. It is because as a mom of a trans child, I cannot think too far into the future, not in today's political climate. No one knows what the future holds. No one more so than trans and non-binary human beings and those who love them. Last week alone, Texas approved a bill that prohibits 30,000 trans children from receiving health care that is vital to their very being. Flora ratified the largest slate of anti-LGBTQ bills in one session in its history. Children receiving gender-affirming care there could legally be removed from their homes. The ADL reported that hate crimes rose in Massachusetts by 33% last year and had the second highest rate of white supremacist propaganda in the U.S. with LGBTQ plus events targeted throughout our state. The news is painful and terrifying. And as a parent of two LGBTQ kids, I have to do what I can to balance it out in my head and my heart, and I do that through volunteer work here in my community. I need to create an environment that looks and feels very different from what is happening in other parts of our country. I have to believe that that is possible. Because if I can't create safety and belonging for kids here in Arlington in a community that I value and love, what does that mean for the future? I honestly can't bear to think about it. I will say only this in reference to the challenge that was withdrawn. Modern inclusive health and wellness curriculum is critical to safety, inclusion, and belonging for all students. Curriculum that is truly inclusive of all genders and identities is this district's strategic vision in action. And without action, that vision is words on paper. Intolerance is on the rise and Arlington is not immune. It's our shared responsibility to show our students how to lead, by example, especially during challenging times. That includes speaking out against bias and inequity and providing clarity around moments, actions, and words that could be misconstrued as such. To me, it also means talking to each other more, creating the human connection that holds us together. In moments when I find it difficult to rise to the occasion, I look no further than to our trans and non-binary children who demonstrate bravery and courage every day by just trying to be, by just trying to exist. I want a need to end on an optimistic note. This weekend, my family attended a play group for trans and non-binary children. It was a beautiful sunny day. Watching the kids run, jump, play, and laugh together, I thought to myself, there is no greater privilege than living among the magical. Children are the best of humanity. They are what is possible. We only have to allow them to be, to be themselves fully in every possible way. It is our privilege and our responsibility together to enable, protect, and celebrate that magic, that being. Thank you. Thank you. Bisla Rose. Hi, my name's Bisla Rose. I live at 26 Park Avenue Extension. Thanks for having me this evening. I have three children at Pierce in first, fourth, and fifth grade. And I'm here to support the new curriculum in the health and wellness lessons in our elementary classrooms and ask you to continue to advocate for our LGBTQ plus students. I know you're all aware of the statistics as they relate to our LGBTQ youth in this town and the disproportionate risks they face of bullying and self-harm. Arlington's kids are cognizant of both the national narrative and local politics. When we do not loudly and proudly advocate for them, they notice. I asked my fifth grader what she thought about the new health lessons that explicitly teach about gender diversity and here's what she said. I can think of five kids at my school who would not feel included if we didn't learn about trans and non-binary genders. Those kids might not want to come to school if they don't feel like people care about them. Our 10-year-olds can identify the importance of this work for their friends and for themselves. We should listen to them and make sure that all of our kids see themselves in the learning that happens in our schools. Teachers in this district are constantly working to build empathy, acceptance, and respect in their classrooms. And this curriculum offers us another opportunity to both stand with our friends in the LGBT community and to make all of our children better, more thoughtful, and more educated humans. I ask you to please be loud about our values as a district and as a community. Our kids are telling us it's important. Let's listen to them. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to acknowledge the A.E.A. Representative who is not C. Feronte. Ms. Juliana Keyes. And next we have our A.H.S. Representative who I also hope is not misnamed. Amy Cholaru? Cholari. Thank you. Do you want to present what you have? Yeah. This week has been a pretty sad week for A.H.S. because it was the last week with our seniors. So each day they dropped a different class and tomorrow is their very last day with graduation next week. So that's kind of been the mentality around this week. We've had a lot more outdoor events recently, EcoFest, and then the Pride Palooza, and Scooper Mania were all last weekend. Everyone really, really enjoyed those, and we're looking forward to having more coming in June and then next fall. And our many sports teams made it to the playoffs this year. I think Boy's Volleyball for the first time in like nine years or something. So we're very proud of them. Thank you very much. Next we have the Summer Programming Report with Dr. McNeil and Ms. Elmer. Do you want it there or bring it on? It seemed unnecessary, but I guess I'll go in there. I didn't think you'd come, so I'll go in there. I don't think so. Okay, so this is our report for Summer Programming. These will be the various extended learning programs that are offered during the summer. The first one is our Title I Extended Summer Learning Program. And you'll see, I mean many of the structures are still in place. The things that we've updated are just the dates, the number of students that will be attending because that changes from year to year. And what I would like to just highlight is the selection process that we utilize in order to identify those students who will participate in this program. And so it's offered to students currently receiving services as well as others that are recommended by teachers, students who receive intervention during the school year, so naturally they have teacher recommendation and students not eligible for ESY who have benefit from additional targeted math or reading support. And so the targeted instruction will be reading in kindergarten through fourth grade and math kindergarten through fifth grade. So that's the ELA and the math program, which is the Title I Extended Summer Program. And so this is just the programs based broken down. You'll see there that you have the instructional team, the different teachers who have volunteered to teach in this program. And this is the literacy part of it. And you'll see the number of students who are enrolled. We are offering both in-person and remote. I want to highlight that because we wanna make sure that we're making sure it's accessible to all students. And then you'll see down at the bottom the focus of instruction. You go to the next slide. This is our math Title I program. You can click on the summer benchmarks, which will identify the various skills that will be reinforced through the instruction. And then at the top you'll see the enrollment. Again, this is being offered in-person and remote. And you'll see the names of the teachers and the coordinator. Next slide, sorry. This is our ELA, English Learner Education Program. That services grades first through 12th grade. On this first slide, you'll see this is for elementary. You can read the description of the program. And then you can look at the number of students that are enrolled, the participants, and then the dates. Then we keep going. And this is the middle school program for our English learners. It's gonna be held at Addison Middle School. The elementary one will be held at Bishop. And you'll see the participants and the dates. The MOOCs is the massive open online courses, which is coordinated through a teacher. And a teacher agrees to facilitate this. And this allows for students to attend or receive instruction from teachers that not necessarily, they can pretty much develop their own course. And this provides them an opportunity to be flexible in what that topic will be. The next one is the high school summer programming. This is the credit recovery. You can read there about the selection process. It's gonna be in person. You can see the different potential. And enrollment is based upon students in danger of failing. Some students will pass for the year and will not require credit recovery. So I'm not sure that I'm not, we're not sure that these numbers are the way that they're stated here in the slide is that's gonna be the actual numbers. And you can see the different subjects that are offered for credit recovery. And you can read about the goal. So the students will be able to complete their course materials within the support of in class time and to be able to continue on their planned course of study towards graduation. So the goal is to have those students graduate. And then you have the Play-Doh. These are online courses, a variety of courses offered across all disciplines. Also for credit recovery, students meet in person or with the teacher once a week. Again, you can see the courses and the enrollment. And again, the goal is to have students achieve their credit recovery, that we achieve the credits and then finalize their graduation requirements or achieve their graduation requirements. I'm gonna pass it over to Allison to talk about the ESY program. So just as a brief refresher, extended school year is a specialized service. Students are individually found eligible through their special ed education team that determination is made annually for the student. And the goal of ESY is to prevent substantial regression in already required skills or for skills that may require extensive recruitment in the fall. We all know some students lose some skills over the summer, but, and it takes a period of time when we all return to school, but for a student who is receiving special ed services, if that period of recruitment would be greater than it would a typical peer than they may be eligible for extended school year. As we have done in the past, the programs are located at the Bononavie Preschool, which will still be over at the Parmenter School this summer, the Pierce Elementary School, where rising kindergartners from Monotomy will also attend, the Gibbs School, and then the high school. And again, you see our numbers are relatively consistent as they've been in previous years. And our ESY coordinators this year will remain Joy Schlinger, who is our preschool director, Annalisa Abdel-Nor, who did it last year. And this year, Amanda Donahue, who is a team chairperson at the high school will also be assisting with the K through 12th grade program. I just want to be clear, because I know this question comes up every year around the scheduling. Unlike the other programs, they are not set where a student gets assigned to the three day Title I program that runs from nine to 12. Each student is individually scheduled based on their services. So a student may receive 30 minutes twice a week of reading and one session of speech. So those all have to be individually scheduled, which is why the schedules aren't set in stone like they are with the other programs. We are working this year, we're in a better position for staffing than we have been in the last few years, where we have most of our professional staff hired. We are still looking for TA positions. And once those staff are hired, we can then start to make the groupings. And ideally, those schedules will go out to the families in early June. So I don't know if anyone has any questions. Yeah, any questions? Any questions? Who's next? Dr. McNeil, can you just share a little bit about how the literacy Title I support in the summer has changed based on the selection of a new literacy program, the work that teachers are doing in the district around adjusting their literacy teaching practices to align more with the science of reading? So most of the intervention we use, so that hasn't changed much because we use Orton Gillingham and Wilson for interventions and we still focus within the summer. We have been traditionally on those discrete skills that students will need. So that's always been focused on phonemic awareness and phonics, so they're getting those structured literacy routines within the Title I program, the literacy, the extended learning program. So that's not gonna change going forward. We're gonna continue to utilize those structured literacy routines to provide intervention. And that has been the case in the previous summer as well. Yes, yes. Okay, thank you. Anyone up, Mr. Carden? The high school credit recovery program, not the play-to-one, the other one, is that new or do you know when we started offering that? So this is something that we have been offering the whole time. I mean, I can check in with Dr. Janger to make sure I'm correct. I think the difference this year is that the program is being open to students outside of AHS. I can speak to this slightly too, because I spoke with Dr. Janger about this. So it's a little bit misleading and the number of students, so it says 10 students there. That's about how many students we would want to open it to. That would be what a full section would look like for credit recovery. We have offered credit recovery in the past. We don't have that many students who actually need credit recovery based on the current status of students' credits right now, and it's kind of hard to teach a class of two or three kids in the summer, which is part of where the proposal to open this up to middle-sex league communities came from for tuition in, but this is a brand new proposal, so I want to qualify that. We haven't figured out exactly what the mechanism would be for collecting those tuition, but we would set up a fund to collect that in and use those dollars to offset the quality of the programming and I wanted to make sure that that was shared with all of you before we made any final decisions about it. It would make for easier teaching of the course if we had more kids in some of those credit recovery classes. Okay, thanks. I mean, I feel like as recently as my son started, which would be five years ago, we were sending kids to Somerville or other places for credit recovery, so I don't know. I can ask. That has not changed. We've offered credit recovery every year. That I've... To other places. Oh, to other places? No, no, no, we didn't, I mean... We didn't offer it. We either did Play-Doh or you had to go to another town. Oh, okay, all right, well... I'm glad we're offering it. Whenever it started, I'm glad we're offering it. Anyone else? Right, because, okay, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I remember it being, at least being presented last year and maybe the year before that, so I think it's... I can't think of a time since I've been in the district where we have not offered credit recovery during the summer and we've had these limited selections of English. We've also had science, but yes, since I've been in the district, I think that we've offered credit recovery since I've been here and that's been the past six years. I don't know, this is a bit of conjecture, but I would imagine that there would have been times when we couldn't offer a class because we had so little low enrollment in it and might have told a student that we weren't gonna offer it and they might need to go somewhere else. This would enable us to make sure that we can offer a wider slate because we would have more enrollments if we take folks in from other communities. Yeah, that's the new part, offering the $600 tuition-based from people from other, from the middle sex league. Okay, any other questions, comments? No, okay, thank you very much. Next, we have the first read on the district goals. Dr. Humley. One second, we'll pull them up. I'm just going to share the document. I don't have slides with these goals. We can just reference the document that they are on. These were reviewed in CIA subcommittee. They are pulled directly from the milestones in the strategic plan and for each of the initiatives. So there are 12 goals aligned with the strategic priorities and the initiatives in the strategic plan. We, the outcomes for each year and by year are also included in the strategic plan. And if there's a desire to add any more information about our plans for next year and outcomes for next year to this document, I'm happy to include that or take any comments. Does anyone have any comments? I don't see any, I actually have comments. So I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend CIA so maybe that's why everyone else has already spoken but I was just wondering about converting them a bit more towards the smart goal format. Partly because I'm looking at it with an eye as chair that what I'd like to be able to do is sit down and go, okay, we have this reporter, this thing coming at this point so I can put it in a meeting going forward. So we know when things are gonna be done during the year but I haven't had a chance to talk it over so I don't know. Okay, I don't have a response right this minute. I think I would have a question about, smart goal doesn't, I wouldn't necessarily associate with a timeline but I could think about how to do that. Well, that's what the T part is, right? Sure. But it's more just what are we getting and when are we getting it is kind of what I was wondering about. Okay, so we can talk about it more online. Okay, anything else? No? Other than that I thought they looked very nice and it's great how they just come right from the plan. Thanks so much, easier. Next is the after school programming report, Mr. Mason. Good evening everyone. Good evening school committee members and those that are here. All right, they'll be presenting to you after school program report which includes an overview of school year 2022 and 2023 overview and then a kind of a preview or a projection of 2023, 2024 and include financial summary. And Novus, the presentation would have been updated to include more recent figures on the financial report. There were some figures that were not disclosed. So the first line is this current school year, current enrollment and where we've ended off with our wait list self-reported by each of the vendors that are licensed spaces in our building for after school programming and the overall enrollment was 630 students for this year or currently not was but is. And 94 students overall that they believe are still identified themselves as on the wait list but many of the vendors say that the families have found other options. It's not that they're not getting the services, they're just not getting the services in the schools under their programs. If you go to the next slide, that is the preview for the upcoming year and based on the current enrollments. And what you'll see is that most of the schools are what they've actually have enrolled for next year has at least increased except for the Bishop which is showing the decrease currently of nine students but they and they have a wait list of 14. And you'll see that overall all schools enrollments or anticipated enrollments in terms of what's actually enrolled and what's on the wait list for students have overall increased except for the Dallin School which is actually seeing 10 overall students currently seeing less. And so sometimes just thinking about the challenges their challenges are very similar to what our challenges have been. It's been around recruitment is not necessarily that space is not available is just that they cannot recruit enough individuals to be able to support the enrollment and or the desired days that families want. If they go to this slide, this is for internal onton after school program and our by school, the enrollments in the wait list for this year. And so, you know, overall are over our over time. Thank you very much. I thought about it for a second. I said, oh, that was quick. I guess we're really trying to get out on time. The audience has had enough. Yes, thank you. No, no, no, no. Thank you. That tells me to speed things up. So, so the overall enrollment and for our current our internal after school program is 427 students across all of the schools and the wait list was ended around 133. And similar to what I just spoke about the challenges for our internal program is not necessarily space per se. I mean, space is always a challenge, but it was stable staffing. And we've increased salaries this year to try to make it more competitive to attract more staff to support the program. And I think there's still some challenges and work to be done in that area. But overall, you know, 133 is the wait list for what we dealt with this year. So if you go to the next slide, which is for our upcoming year enrollment, overall the enrollment is 457 that we've actually able to enroll for the upcoming year, which is about 30 students higher. So all the schools are seeing an increase. This seems to be a less of a demand at Pierce if you look at, if you consider that the wait list is lower. But overall, all the programs are able to accommodate more students. Go to the next slide. So this slide compares to the actual tuition costs on a per day basis for the programs. Now, this is estimates, I would say, because it's a little challenging. The one program that's challenging that does not do it by day is the Bishop. So that price could be off by a little bit, meaning it could be slightly undervalued, actually maybe a little bit higher than what's shown here. And, but you'll see that all the other programs are within $5 of each other. And then if you go to the next slide, it's the upcoming tuition for the upcoming school year by day. And you'll see that the Arlington afterschool program is gonna remain the same cost, but then so isn't the Dallon program that's by an outside vendor. But all the others are gonna increase between $2 to $3 to cover their increase of costs. And then if you go to the last slide over, it just gives you an overview of all the finances for the three vendor programs and then Arlington public schools internal program is to the right to note that there is a higher director salary obviously for the Arlington school, internal Arlington public school program, but that program oversees four different sites. I'm sorry, five different sites. And so I would just keep that in mind to note and obviously those prices is a larger cost, but it seemed like a very efficient program considering all of the other, when you compare the total cost to all the schools. I'll give it to the chair. Oh, I'm sorry. One more slide. Steps, that's next Michael. Yes, what's next? So we will continue to focus on trying to find opportunities, provide more spaces for the programs. That's always been the challenge in trying to incentivize even possibility of getting more teachers on board in terms of giving up some of their spaces. And then of course, last year, I think it's the same thing. We need help, get more staff. So please let your friends know if anyone has any interest, looking for a job. And we do intend this year to do a market analysis on the rental costs. It seems as though we might be under the market in terms of what we're charging at base, in terms of what we charge outside vendors and including the discount that we charge our long-term rentals, which include the vendors that run for afterschool programs. So I just wanted to put that out there. And then I'm gonna- You want me to speak to BeforeCare? Yes, I want to go to Dr. Holman. So we had some success at Pierce. We learned a lot and actually have between 50 and 60 kids showing up in the mornings, which is great because it means that they're having some time to socialize, connect with their peers and more students are eating breakfast. So given that success, but the fact that we also have very low enrollment from the seven o'clock to 730 hour in the tuition bearing part of the BeforeCare program. And even after cutting some of the tuition for that down considerably to try to alleviate some of the concerns around it, we still have to incentivize the staffing pretty significantly in order to get people to be there that early in the morning. And it's just not, it's not paying for itself. So we're likely going to stop the seven to 730 BeforeCare programming time, but keep 730 and actually do sort of a relaunch and reexamination of the programming from 730 to 8 o'clock around breakfast to try to incentivize more families to come. One of the things that's great about the breakfast program is it provides our students who spend some time on the bus commuting from Boston in the morning with some breakfast time and some being at school and social time in the morning. We love it when their peers are also there with them to participate in some of that. So we would really like to see that resource more utilized, particularly by families who have an early schedule and need to get to work a little sooner. And so we're going to be taking a look at that and using peers, like I said, as a model of success and seeing what we can do to increase participation in 730 to 8 o'clock breakfast programming that will be of no cost to families. So we'll look forward to updating you on that next year. Great, thank you. Any questions? Mr. Cardin? So with our own afterschool program is like at Thompson in particular, is the constraint rooms or staff? It's staff, more so, but there's been challenges around some schools like such the bracket, for example, you have multiple programs going into one building. It's challenging to identify space when you're having multiple programs in the building. So you have the immersion program and then you have the bracket afterschool program, which is the vendor. And then you have also community ed also doing programs, which is not reported here. Some of their programming has enrollment that overlap with the different programs in the building, but as well as other students that may not be placed in those afterschool programs as well. So I know we had planned to have conversations with principals and with Todd or with the individual programs depending on the schools. Have those happened or when are those happening? So we did that with every single school last year, took a lot of resources and time to talk about space considerations and what our expectations were. And we didn't do a round of that this year, which isn't to say that Michael meets with Todd frequently with the afterschool program directors. We established some good relationships doing that last year. And the expectations have continued to see an increase in enrollment and capacity from this year's numbers to next year's numbers. So while we haven't done a round of that this year, we could revisit that and do another round of it next year. Yeah, I mean, one of the rationales, I mean, for taking over the Pierce program, for example, we thought that our programs would have bigger capacity, right? And it's looking like our programs are smaller than the private programs at Dallin in particular. So I'd still like to see us boost capacity. I don't know what that's going to take, but I think we need to make more effort to boost capacity, particularly in our own run programs because we have direct control over that. And then again, looking at our own programs, there seems to be an imbalance between Pierce and Thompson. At Pierce, we have seats to cover a much greater share of the school that's much smaller school than at Thompson. So that doesn't seem equitable. So again, if it's just a staffing constraint, then I know you can't just shift one person and voila, move seats. And you can't move seats because you've already accepted people. But as you are able to hire more staff, it probably should go to Thompson first because that's the school that's most underserved, statistically speaking. Thanks. Mr. Schluckman? Two questions. Number one, when we look at the wait lists, I know that there are people who put their names on multiple wait lists. Have we, are we able to call out duplicates from wait lists that are across different schools? Do we know if these are unique people or is this, could this be reflecting? I wanna, I would answer to say, I'm pretty sure that these are unique individuals except I can't speak to the Bracket School because the Bracket School has multiple programs. But many of the times, the families aren't rolling to the program at that particular school because there's no, there's not, there's no transportation being provided to after school to another school. Okay. Are we, are, are parents teaching assistants in any instances being employed in the after school programs? Yes, there are. I think we did, we did actually at some schools shift schedules to allow power professionals to come in around midday, right around lunchtime to do some lunch coverage and then do, help the instructional portion and then they would switch. Well, I know in my past life that they would do that as an extra job, so to speak. But there was, there was, there's some concern around, so one of the challenges that we were trying to address when we were shifting the use of the power professionals to do that was some of the roles that were in the after school program, that's Arlington's, employees were getting to a point where they were getting status of benefit eligible. And the concern was how to keep the cost affordable. I mean the program affordable for the families and so we felt that it was effective to be able to cost share between the, you know, how do we leverage them during an instructional day and then as well be able to use the same staff and have the, you know, see the children see the same staff in the after school program and share the healthcare costs. But if the teaching assistant is a full time employee from start of school to the end of school and they're doing this as an add on is over time, they should already be eligible for benefits because they're a full time employee, right? I would have to look at how many staff were in that, but could you speak to that? Well I think the after school program, if they only work in the after school program they're still eligible for benefits because they're like 25, 26 hours a week and that is over the threshold for benefit eligibility. In some cases they've shifted the schedules where they work basically eight to four, they kind of will start in the after school program and leave, you know, do like one class in the after school and then leave because they've been here since eight o'clock in the morning, so we've adjusted it that way so we are also mindful of the overtime expenses. In a past life, I mean, I had all my powers were clamoring for the after school jobs as an additional salary, I was just wondering if there was some sort of a barrier that we have maybe in our contractor in terms of practice that might be getting in the way of offering some of the younger, more energetic folks the opportunity to work longer hours for additional money. I mean there's different pay rates for one thing so, you know, we were abiding by the unit D contract for the paraprofessional positions. Some people also have after school positions and we sort of have to straddle different pay rates for those positions, yeah. Mr. Steele. Planser, should I put two if you want? You. Use, that's fine. Policy KFD asked for the availability of surplus space within the district to accommodate the needs of families across an extended day services. So, I'm curious to know what's the surplus space available? Like how many, is there any calculation of how many classrooms we aren't using that we could use? Is there any data on that? Classroom space is not the challenge. We have plenty of that and we've been clear that the building is a town building and it's for services like these to take place throughout the day. Some challenges are custodial timing because we want to make sure that if the kids are in those rooms that they have time to be cleaned afterwards. Another challenge is shared large spaces. So, all of the programs want access to the larger shared spaces because you can have more groups in that space at any given time. I think Mr. Cardin raises a really good point that we've been able to accommodate more families in some of our vendor programs than we are in our own program and that we need to look into that and that space shouldn't be the issue that prevents us from doing that if we're able to fit 170 students a gallon. I know that staffing and pay rates could be something that we need to look into to determine whether or not that's part of the challenge associated with staffing and also practices around how we roster and then staff versus staff and then roster. Okay. So, it, there should be enough space, would there be enough space to accommodate 200 more students in the district or whatever the number is? If you add up the, whatever the. So, if you look at the wait list. I'm talking about both the vendor and our program. If you add up that's like, it's about 220 if you add up both. Where? At Bracket? No. Where are you looking? No, you're talking about all the wait list. All the wait list across the whole thing. Vendor and. It matters more to look at by school. Okay. Because if you look at any one school, like if you look at the Hardy program and you take the wait list plus the enrolled for next year, that's 170. If we fit 170 in the one program that's at Dallin, then it's reasonable to expect we could fit 170 at the Hardy. If it's, you know, at Thompson, you have 125 plus 65. That's, whether or not we have the room to accommodate that entire wait list, is something we'd have to look into at the space at Thompson because we run a lot of ACE programming. Out of Thompson they use, for example, the multipurpose room. And so, you know, what the actual space capacity of Thompson would be would be a good question to ask because they're the ones with the highest level of both enrolled and wait listed families. I mean, I think when we wrote the policy, the idea was to ensure that the district was maximizing space and that space wasn't an excuse to the extent reasonable. Obviously, there are issues with janitorial services. I understand that, but that was sort of the idea that we were going to try to use every possible space. There are stressors placed on teachers too. I'm aware, I'm aware of that. But we, when we had that debate, the resolution was. Yeah. I would say that if I could add that this year, we, I mean, so there's multiple programs obviously trying to tap similar spaces. But I think we, what you don't see in this report, which is what you're kind of alluding to to what the surplus spaces are because we did do some negotiating between the programs this year and increasing actually our Arlington community education access to the spaces as well, which before they only were able to offer certain programs at certain buildings. And now for the most part, most programs that they offer is pretty at parity at all those elementary schools. All right, thank you. I have two questions. One is, is there any? So I know that there are families who are enrolled in particularly the Arlington afterschool programs but don't have all the days that they want our need. Is there any like way to parse out how we're doing, like how many, sort of how you like, there are families that are enrolled and on the wait list as far as I understand. And I keep you to that. Oh, I'm sorry. So I'm asking about the families who are enrolled but also on the wait list, cause they're not, they want four days a week and they're only getting two or something like that. If there's a sense of how prevalent that issue is or if I'm just hearing about the ones that are. Yeah. In terms of the numbers here, I can't give you a clear answer in terms of how each program is calculating that in terms of their wait list. I think that's, it's worth a look and maybe looking at it as like almost like a full-time equivalent student, right? Yeah. Each day is 0.2 and maybe this year I'll try to work on that with the programs to try to find a consistent manner in terms of what they're reporting. So then we can say, this is what students are not, like what families are not getting every single day and these are the students that are not getting placed at all. And it's sort of related to that. I know that some families in that position are using both Arlington afterschool, so I know the most about what's happening at Pierce. And we have three different buses who come to Pierce to go to Fidelity House, Boys and Girls Club and ready set kids. And I realized that that would be much harder data for us to track, but do you, how do you think about that demand? So I think there's a conversation that does need to be had in the future. I'm gonna try to gather all the afterschool program vendors together. I haven't done that for quite a bit, but what I will say is through this reporting process, some of the afterschool program vendors have talked to external vendors like the Fidelity House. And there's actually the concern that if we increase the capacity of the program in our schools, that some of these other programs may go out of business because they don't get enough students to enroll in those programs. And so, I mean, there's a balance that being played here. That's one of the vendors kind of reported to me about some of the conversations that's been had. Well, in that context, I would just, maybe I don't know if there's survey to be done of families. Those programs, some of them tend to be a lot more expensive because of the transportation needs. And then also for families, if your kid is in school on one side of town and you live on one side of town, and there would be a strong preference to be at the neighborhood school over the privately run program. So I, of course, don't want anybody to have to go out of business, but I know people driving through all the way across town at 530 to get their kids instead of walking two blocks. So. Absolutely, I understand. Any more, any more questions? I have an answer to Mr. Cardin's question. Because I do not want to leave anybody wanting for information. So what I did was I sent a text to Dr. Janger and he replied in order to give me those details about when the credit recovery was offered. So Play-Doh has been in existence about since eight years ago. And then since COVID we've been offering in-person credit recovery. Right. It's a great accomplishment that we should be celebrating. Right. So I just want to make sure that I clarified that because I left that answer kind of up in the air. Great, thank you. Actually I want to go back to the after-school programming. So I guess when we're thinking about days or people like Ms. Gibbelson was talking about about people not having spots, I think the demand is not consistent across days also. So that's a question is what's peak demand and how much of that are we able to satisfy? And by we, I mean actually everything in town because I realize it can be difficult for the programs to kind of add staff, have different amounts of staff during the week. So anything else? Pass. Next we have the superintendents report. Bye. We have so many things to celebrate happening right now. So I'm going to walk through a few of them. At staff appreciation last week we said congratulations to our retirees and several staff members who have given many years of service to the Arlington Public Schools and who have achieved professional status. If you bear with me for a moment I'd like to celebrate our retirees by name. Marie Bassett is a former admin assistant at OMS retired earlier this year. Kim Brennan, a teaching assistant in Minotomy Preschool. Pam Byrne, administrative assistant at Audison Middle School. Karen Sinar, food services at Arlington High School. Marianne Condon, an occupational therapist at Stratton. Amy Duke, ACE teacher at Audison Middle School. Cliff Fallis, custodian at Audison Middle School. Janet McGuire, special education teacher at Audison Middle School. David Moore, an art teacher at Arlington High School. Carolyn Simmons, an administrative assistant at Arlington High School. Kim Walls, a reading specialist at Arlington High School. Anne Stephanie Zerjikoff, our wonderful principal at Brackett Elementary School, are all retiring this year and we wish them many, many congratulations and hope that they have a relaxing and fulfilling retirement. Audison Day welcomed some student choice workshops, a student panel, and some outdoor activities and was great fun. I really enjoyed doing a panel on leadership and I think Dr. McNeil and Mr. Spiegel also led a workshop on leadership, right? Yeah, so. Dr. McNeil led. I don't know if our participative content. But it was a lot of fun to hang out with the students for that entire morning. We had our first annual Arlington Public Schools Pride celebration, which welcomed hundreds of community members to the front lawn of Arlington High School for activities, food and connection. I know that many of you were able to stop by and enjoy the beautiful day and it was a wonderful first annual celebration. I enjoy first annual celebrations because it means you're always planning on doing it next year. The Thompson students, this week we're learning about Indian culture and building social-emotional expression skills through Indian dance workshops. It was a lot of fun to join a first grade class in some of those workshops. It's also pictured there. And our students are enjoying all kinds of field trips these days. They're going to visit their future schools if they're transitioning to a new grade level next year. Visiting museums, going to all sorts of outdoor destinations and pictured are our Metco program students who earlier this week enjoyed a day of hiking in New Hampshire on a gorgeous day. And I hear it was quite a hike that they were sore the next day because they hiked to the top of a mountain. So it's been a lot of fun lately. We're enjoying being together and going on trips together and celebrating everyone who's moving on to new adventures and we wish them well. Speaking of people moving to new adventures, we have a lot of administrative hiring searches that are rolling right now. So and a lot of announcements that have been issued. So as I've mentioned before, we have Bishop and Brackett principal in place. We recently announced that Wesley Etienne Pierre will serve as our director of communications and family engagement. That Scott O'Brien will serve as the assistant director of high school counseling. That Mowgli Olander who was interim this year will be our permanent director of SEL and counseling. And that Jose Farias who has worked in the business office previously will be promoted to assistant director of finance in the business office. So congratulations to all of them and welcome to the team. We have a few ongoing hiring searches right now. Stratton is still not on this list, but it is happening. We have, I will make sure it's on there in Novus for you, sorry. We kicked off on Wednesday and we will be interviewing candidates next week. We'll plan on doing finalists the following week with an announcement at the end of that week. The initial round includes I think 16 and actually 18 members on that particular hiring committee. And the final round will include school visits, forums with families, students and administrators and finalists tasks and interviews with the central office team. We will do the same for the Hardy principal search that is posted right now. It will be posted for two weeks and we're working on putting the committee together. Director of research data and accountability search is completed with an announcement coming very soon and we're working on the searches at Bishop and Brackett Elementary School for assistant principals with an announcement on that coming as soon as those decisions have been made and your enrollments are in your materials. Take any questions? Great. Any questions? No questions. Moving on. Where are we? So next is the update on the APS strategic plan and this is Dr. Homan and Mr. Cardin. I didn't put this agenda item on. I'm sorry, yeah. No, no, no. Okay, so I had asked to have it put on because I wanted to be sure that everyone had access and saw the... Doing about that. Yeah, if you could just pull up the cost summary just so that the rest of the committee knows the cost summary work that's been done and that will be presented to the finance committee next week. And I didn't want us to be presenting it out without you folks seeing it first. Mr. Cardin, would you wanna talk through it real quick? Sure. So you've seen the bottom line numbers which are, you can scroll down to the bottom, which are the one million in the upcoming fiscal year, 3.1 million, then 1.76 and three. So what happened was as the strategic plan was being finalized, we were also at the same time talking with the Long Range Planning Committee about a new five-year plan for an override and it was all coming together at the same time. So Mr. Mason and Dr. Holman did a lot of work in putting together estimates of costs even though things were still being finalized. So we went back and refined some of those estimates. We obviously left the annual amounts the same but we were more clear about this amount for this initiative in each year. And so that's set out in this more detailed view which we will present to the Finance Committee next week. So the numbers all tie out and there's a little bit more detail here in the, I think we called it items column about what that spending is related to. And that's also in the strategic plan if you go back to that big document, this is just a summary. Any questions, comments about it? You're all welcome to join us. We meet with the Finance Committee at 730 at the Community Safety Building on Wednesday to give them a chance for us to present the strategic plan and for them to ask questions about what's being funded and why we're asking all this and why we feel we need an override for the town to pay for everything. So, okay, great. Next we have a Metco resolution which is from Mr. Flint. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. When we went to visit Metco in March, the discussion was as they were preparing for their lobbying day that their funding is totally by the whim of the legislature. In other words, it's all subject to appropriation. Other school funding has a formulaic approach instead so that there's a baseline of funding that they can expect but the Metco folks expressed the desire to have some more stable funding so that they didn't have to spend quite as much time lobbying and advocating to very least stay in one place. So in that discussion, we talked about presenting a resolution to MASC to support MCAS in their quest for a stable, reliable funding source and so I'm presenting to the committee this resolution and if you vote this tonight, we will forward it to MASC for the Delegate Assembly to consider. So I move adoption of the resolution. Okay. Second. Any questions or comments about the resolution? I just wanna say thank you to Mr. Slickman for putting this together. I think it's really important that the Metco program has the stability of the funding that they need in order to support their students and support the programs. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. No further questions? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, that's a unanimous vote. Thank you. So do you need, will you send it in? I will send it in to MASC. Okay. Yeah. I'm a usual suspect, no. Okay. Next, we have policy and procedures. Okay. Policy and procedures has met a couple of times and we finally hashed out where we think we need to be in terms of the policy surrounding curriculum and general complaints. So we have a series of policies. Now, as you recall back at the first meeting in April, we had a moratorium on file IJ-R because it wasn't doing what we wanted to do. That moratorium expires tonight so that if we do nothing tonight, IJ-R comes back and that's not the desire to subcommittee. What we desire to do and we propose to do is to take some of the language regarding the parent complaints and questioning of curriculum and other items in the district and merge that into file KE, the public complaints policy. You'll note in Novus there are two different versions. One version contains a one word addition by Ms. Morgan just to make a request that the staff member receiving a request respond to it promptly. So I would recommend the file KE with Ms. Morgan's proposed change. Now, for all of the other policies with the exception of KE and the deletion of IJ-R, we can do this very comfortably first read and it's not gonna impact anything if we do the second read on those policies at the next meeting, but because the moratorium on IJ-R expires tonight, we would either need to do one of two things would be to continue the suspension of IJ-R for another three weeks to the next meeting or to vote to suspend the rules to move IJ-R, the deletion of IJ-R and the changes to KE to a second reading tonight. Mr. Thielman. I'm not the chair, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Thielman. I think we should just do the extension of the suspension and then do everything at once. So it's clear to the community of what we're doing. I thought about it, you talked to me about it beforehand. I needed to process it. So I move extension of. Suspension of the rules. To extend? No, just suspend the rules and move. You make the motion, I'll say. Okay. I'll make the motion to suspend the rules to move policy KE No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're just moving. Oh, you want to move the moratorium? Just the more the. Oh, you want to extend the moratorium? Yeah, I have more terms of strong where I just extend the suspension. Okay. I was going to use the word suspension but I want to extend the suspension of policy IJ-R until our next meeting. Okay. That's what I was going to suggest. Either way, it works for me. Yeah. Okay. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. So. I'll speak to her briefly. But so the committee has, as Mr. Schlickman said, the committee has come up with a new plan. The new plan is to eliminate this policy and come up with something that Dr. Allison Ampe and all of us worked on and came to an agreement on. And so by extending this until the next meeting, we can, the public can see all these policies and then we can talk about it more fully at the next meeting and explain what they're all about. Generally, what they're about is there's a, they give the public a chance to voice concerns about curriculum and resources and then they give a mechanism by which the school committee can take an action and listen to concerns about curriculum and resources. That's really it. So it answers, it allows a dialogue as it was expressed earlier and it allows a process by which we can resolve it by vote. That's it. Any further discussion of the move to, to continue this suspension until next meeting of IJR? Seeing none. Okay. All those in favor of continuing the IJR suspension? Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? So that's unanimous. So IJR continues to be suspended until our next meeting which is June 15th. There are a couple of other things to deal with. EEE is a minor change which is a clarification of the use of the policy pertaining to public hearings just to make it clear this policy only applies to policies mandated, public hearings mandated by the state. If we're doing our own informal hearing, we use our own regular rules. So I move adoption of BEE. Second. Any further comments about BEE? Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so that's unanimous. And so now BEE has been revised and adopted. And I just want to make note of IGD that we ran that through first reading in April. But we didn't put it on for second read tonight. That will be in the package of second readings for the meeting of June 15th. And that concludes the report on the policies. I just want to add one thing is that IGD since we talked about it a month ago, just as a recollection that includes language, the superintendent added specifying when we would vote on curriculum. Yeah, it's a very thoughtful policy. And I think it aligns with what we've been doing in the past, but it just puts in writing a good practice that we've actually been doing. Okay, anything more on the policies? That's it. Seeing none. We move on to job descriptions. And I didn't actually put initials on these. I can do it. Okay, process. So we have three job descriptions. One is a family liaison job description when we had budget conversations. This just for reminder is a position that is in the ESSER grant for this year. It is assigned to the Gibbs School. It was offset in the general fund budget, not in the ESSER budget, but in general fund by elimination of a 0.5 clerical role. And it was originally talked about as a transition support, which it is going to do. It's in the job description that it will do a lot of that work. But it is the start and initial trial of us having some family liaison support at some of our schools, particularly those that most need it, like the sixth grade school that has a lot of in and out happening. The service, oh, this was reviewed at CIAA and moved forward for the full committee's consideration. Service desk manager was as a reconfiguration of roles in the IT department to oversee some of the folks who are user facing and give them some management support on the service desk. It is budget neutral? Yes. Correct, yes. And was reviewed in budget subcommittee and moved forward for the committee's consideration and this grant program manager is specific to overseeing a large grant that is tied to mental health initiatives and professional development being offered to our teachers. It is fully funded by that grant, it was reviewed in CIAA subcommittee and is being moved forward for the full committee's consideration. Do I have a motion to approve the job descriptions as presented? So moved. Second. Any discussion of any of the job descriptions? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so those all pass unanimously. Next we have the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted in one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which case the, in which event the item will be considered as normal sequence, warrant number 23266, dated 5, 16, 23, $786,671 and six cents in the draft of a regular school committee meeting minutes May 11th, 2020. So it's 2022, but I think you mean 2023. So do we have a motion? So moved. All in. Oops, that's right, thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Next we have subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget, Mr. Cardin. Did we meet since last time? Yeah, we must have met since last meeting. Yes, we met, we went over the job description. We, the fees, are those not on the agenda for tonight? No, we don't have the fees. We forgot the fees. Sorry, so we approved the fees which will come before us at our next meeting and we went over the summary that we just saw and the slides that we're developing for our meeting with finance committee next week. I expect to squeeze in one more budget meeting before the end of the year to talk about maybe providing a little bit more evidence around some of the needs that we have budget-wise and also talking about whatever else we need to before the end of the year, that probably the budget transfers. Okay, and we also voted to approve the copiers. Oh, right, the copiers, yes, but that's not also, is that coming, does that need to be approved now? Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Sure. Mr. Mason will present about the copier. Yes, yes, and Novus, you'll see that there's an attachment and just explaining the outline of costs. We chose three vendors on state contracts, solicited quotes from the three contracts. I'm from three vendors and Rico, we've had established partnership for them for a double-digit amount of years at this point. They were the lowest, but we're seeing that our machines are lasting longer and it is more cost-effective if we are doing a longer term lease. And so in the state of Massachusetts, Chapter 30B requires the school committee to vote to approve any contract that we would award to a vendor that goes beyond three years. So this is why this is being, hopefully, that the school committee would move to approve the award of the contract to Rico for a 48-month term. So moved. Second. Any comments? My recollection is that we approve this. We did, yes, sorry, we recommend approval. So we did discuss it. Okay. At length. Any, no, that wasn't, okay. So I don't see any comments, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? No, so that passes. Next we have community relations. Thank you. We met on Tuesday evening to discuss the MBTA community's working group who had reached out to Dr. Homan to join a meeting that they are having and she had asked us to give her some feedback on just how, I'm not gonna give a good background on what all of this is, but essentially the MBTA community's working group is working on a zoning by-law that they would propose to town meeting to meet compliance requirements for multifamily housing. And so Dr. Homan was just asking us for feedback around how that might impact the schools in terms of enrollment and buffer zones and where it might, where in town might be a good place for it, how it might support workforce housing. So we had a good discussion and we gave Dr. Homan some input and she will take that to the meeting and report back to us. We also talked about the school committee chat schedule for the 23-24 school year. There is some data about attendance over the last two years in Novus. And so we, and it was just Jeff and I, I should say, for Laura couldn't make it. We talked about modifying the format a little bit and reducing the schedule and there is a draft also in Novus for you to look over. So it would be fewer meetings. It was suggested that we include a cabinet team member predetermined at each of the meetings and then have some focus topics to discuss in an effort to get higher attendance, have questions answered in a more efficient way and always reminding the community members that if they feel like they need to talk to a school committee member without administration there are other opportunities to do that. We felt like it would be a healthier discussion that way. So please do just look at the draft and if you have feedback on it, let us know if we need to have another subcommittee meeting before the end of the year. And I think those are updates. Thank you. Curriculum up, Ms. Moore. Before we leave community relations, we had a school committee chat last Saturday. Ms. Giddelson and myself did it. We had a couple of parents. The focus was on English learners and the biggest question we had, I'll write up the results. I didn't bring my computer with me tonight, but the biggest question that was out there was the formation of an LPAC and folks were wondering, we're excited about that and wondering when we're gonna get that off the ground. So communication from the school department to the community about the possible formation of the LPAC would be a positive thing. Okay. Next we have curriculum instruction accountability, assessment accountability. Ms. Morgan was unable to attend today, but is anyone else on the committee and is there anything else that was discussed? Sure. So we went over the goals. We went over the position descriptions. We had an update on HGI from Dr. Janger. He's coming in June, I think, to the full committee, so there's really nothing to discuss about that. I think that was it, right? Okay, great. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Phil. No report this week. Policy and procedures, you've already gone? Anything more? No, we've talked about it. Okay. High school building committee. We meet on June 6th. We're taking a two or a phase two on June 13th. I'll talk about, see if we can add members of the school committee too, because it's just, yeah. That would be a wonderful thing, you know? Okay. I don't know if I can make it. You can't make? I don't know if I can. I'm on the track. All right. Okay, we use some reports. Plenty of hard hats, so I think we'll figure it out. Any liaison reports? Going once, going twice? Nope. Announcements, twice? Nope. Future agenda items. Oh, here we've got to take it. What's next? Ms. Gilson and I are working on a resolution related to affirming the LGBTQIA plus community. And I really hope to have this for tonight and it didn't work out. So I will be bringing that to the next meeting. Okay. And Mr. Shulkin? So it turns out that there's this private way right around the corner from the Thompson School, Regis Road, it used to be a plethora of potholes. Somebody paved it. And now we've got people speeding down the street and they're, Regis Road, it is adjacent to the northwest corner of the city. Of the Thompson campus. And there are no traffic control devices there. There's no stop signs, no nothing. And now people are speeding out of Regis Road across Everett Street. And one of our parents and a five year old almost got hit by one of these cars while traveling on a bicycle. The parent complained on Facebook, which is where you go to complain about stuff. And I pointed the parents to the select board who has the responsibility for placing stop signs and other such devices around. But because it's right adjacent to our property, I'd like to get traffic safety at the Thompson School as a general topic. And the Regis Road corner with Everett Street to be specific on our next agenda. Hopefully the select board in the interim will take up the mantle and move to put a sign there. But I think that I'd like to have that on the agenda for the next meeting. Okay. I'm trying to think of who would take this on. I'll be Michael. Okay, okay. So I'll put you down for it. Do you have any questions you need clarified about this? No, if I do, I'll reach out to Mr. Slickman. Yeah. Okay. Anyone else have any more agenda items? No? I'm gonna find out about the, just mark your calendar, it was June 13th at four o'clock. Okay. It's five people. June 13th at five o'clock. Yeah, when we toured, it was one we didn't run amok, you know? No, no, no, I don't think, I think it's, yeah. Okay. At four o'clock, yeah. June 13th. Does anyone want to move to adjourn? I move to adjourn. I get it. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, we are adjourned.