 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. If you're watching this at home, do not adjust your dial. You are seeing what you are seeing. We are the school committee. We have taken over the selectmen's chambers. The coup d'etat is successful. We are now running the town. Now who wants to be on the parking committee? I do. Okay. No way. We can only have one volunteer, so maybe that wasn't such a good idea. So back to school committee business. You want to be the committee itself? The committee. Good. Can you write comments on my street, please? Thank you. We start off with some sad news. It's with sadness that I inform you of the passing of Jack Burns. Jack was the husband of an Arlington Public Schools, her entire employee, Ann Burns, who we all interacted with from 1976 to 2005. The father of former Arlington School Committee member Denise Burns, who served with us from 2007 to 2010. And the father of Claire Roberts, current town of Arlington Human Resource Assistant. So we will have a moment of silence in the memory of Jack Burns. Thank you very much. First Order of Business is a recognition of Victoria Rose, the Thompson Administrative Assistant. With much joy, I pass the baton to Superintendent Bode. Yes, thank you very much. We're here this evening to honor Vicki Rose. And I'm actually going to pass the microphone over to Siobhan Foley, who is not only a teacher in the third grade at Thompson, knows Vicki very well, but also is the vice president of the Arlington Educator Association. So, Siobhan Foley. So it is with great honor that I am here to present this to Vicki Rose. I have said, I have been quiet saying this before, that Vicki is the heart and soul of Thompson School. Vicki started as a parent for children in the Thompson Schools with her husband, Brian. And she started from there reaching out to the families all around our school. She then became a parent liaison contact. That was the position that Vicki held when I was hired there 16 years ago, 17 years ago. And then Vicki, and through that contact, Vicki was able to do many different things such as a seconds market using the, so the unsold produce from the farmer's market would be given to needy families. She always knew the families who needed the most help, always. When Vicki was hired as our secretary, that never stopped. She still continued to always reach out to all of the parents in our community who need her help. And in that process, she has also been a co-founder of the Arlington Eats program, which has been widely successful. She continues to find new ways all the time to help those families. If you ask her any question about any of those families, Vicki can tell you where they are, how they're doing. Where the kids are that were in my class so many years ago and how they're doing. She's just still that heart and soul on top of doing an incredibly busy secretary job manning all of those now doors that we have and answering the phone and everything else that she's required to do. I can't say enough, and Vicki getting the award for unsung hero from the state legislature was just phenomenal, but just not even enough for everything that she has done for us. So, Vicki, thank you. Thank you. And I could not add anything more other than say she is just really an amazing, remarkable woman. Well, I've had the privilege of knowing for a long time, and every, this award is so well deserved. And you have our undying gratitude. Thank you, Vicki. Thank you. We now have public participation. We have one member of the public who has signed up, Alex Moissan. Alex. So my name is Alexi Moissan, I'm the Office Manager for LARP Adventure Program. We are an after-school enrichment organization in Arlington that serves 60 students ages 11 to 18 using a multidisciplinary theater curriculum. And we are one of the sub-leaders of the Arlington Center for the Arts. So I'm sure you'll have plenty to hear today about why Arlington Center for the Arts is important, but I just wanted to share a personal story from our organization. Two years ago, we were no longer able to continue working at the artist in middle school, and we had to find a new home for our organization. And we spent a summer looking everywhere for a new place to host our 60 students in Arlington. And we were about to give up that hope. There was the possibility our program would no longer be able to continue. And the person that came out of the blue and saved us was the Arlington Center for the Arts. For so many artists, they provide a home where none other exists. It's an invaluable part of Arlington. I don't see mimics in any other town that I work with, and it would be truly a shame if that opportunity was lost to the students and wider Arlington community. So please, please, please, as you consider all the important decisions you have to make, consider that. Thank you. Okay, we now have 30 minutes allotted in the agenda for a conversation with the Gibbs tenants. We are asking for representatives of the Gibbs tenants to make their presentation. Brief presentations are better because this is our one opportunity as a board to then come back and ask you questions and talk to you. Because one of the limits in our ability to discuss and make a decision is because of the open meeting law, every conversation we have with each other must be in an open forum such as this. So it will be a restrictive environment. This is a formal meeting of the school committee, and people will be asked to make a presentation after the four presentations are done with. Members of the committee will be asked to ask questions or make comments based on what they hear to the people who have made a presentation. That will be the limit of the discussion so that the people who are on the agenda here will be the representatives of the four organizations here tonight. And I appreciate your patience for that. The first one up, we're going to go through all four and then we'll come up and let the board go and ask questions. First one is Marion Racaponi, Executive Director of Learn to Grow. Marion, welcome. Good evening. My name is Marion Racapi, Executive Director of Learn to Grow. Almost 30 years ago, I founded our early childhood school, Learn to Grow, located at the Gibbs, where we prepare children for entry into our public schools. I grew up and went to school here in Arlington. I've been an educator all my life. What I have to say is crucially important because it concerns many children here in Arlington. The school committee is faced with the problem of growing enrollment of children attending our school's grades K through 12. It is vital to also understand that the same growing enrollment problem exists for children attending schools like ours ages one to six. Our school Learn to Grow with 100 children and a wait list of 50 more is comprised of families with both parents working. Closing our school will have devastating impact on them. It's important to note that the majority of our children are from East Arlington and rely on us in our location at the Gibbs. Many have either one car or no car or rely on public transportation. There are no options for us to move in East Arlington, none. I have searched for years for additional space. Please do not think of us as tenants. We are long term integrated community organizations at the Gibbs that provide Arlington family's vital needed services. Any proposal to change and eliminate our services will only be an attempt to solve one problem. But in turn creates another one for our Arlington families. Almost 30 years ago the leaders in town were very thoughtful as to how to use the Gibbs. They recognize that the organizations that would use the Gibbs must integrate and provide crucial services to both our children and adults in our community. Learn to Grow is the only national association of education of young children accredited school in Arlington. We have educated thousands of Arlington children and have become central to Arlington's early childhood community as a premier educator of young children. Our reputation within the community is reflected in many ways from our enrollment in our school to graduates of our school coming back to work as teachers. Educators and parents know that our strong preschool programs are crucial for children as we prepare them to enter into public school. Learn to grow is needed in this community. The program is an important partner to our Arlington schools as our highly experienced administration and teachers work closely with the Arlington public schools preparing children academically socially for grade school including children that are in need of special education services. Each year we prepare 90 to 100 Arlington children entering into Arlington public schools representing more than 80 families. For those of you with children that went to preschool imagine that being taken away. Imagine me having to tell our hardworking teachers also all into residence that they're out of a job. Many whom have worked at Learn to Grow for over 25 years. In addition our school contributes to the community with free workshops for parents and children local events for the community collaboration with the Arlington recreation department and joint events and outreach to our local food pantry and spending time with our senior citizens. We assist local Arlington residents by permitting them to participate in our school as part of their college curriculum. Additionally we work with Harvard University to conduct research and language studies. I'd like to leave you with this very important thought. All of us at the Gibbs serve hundreds if not thousands of children and adults in our community each year. Let me repeat that all of us at the Gibbs serve hundreds if not thousands of children and adults in our community each year. Displacing us is not much different than closing one of our current nine public schools. We would not even think of it not just because it's our collective responsibility to care for and educate our children but because it would also cause unthinkable disruptions to the families we all serve. As a community we have an equal responsibility for children ages one to six as we do for children six to 18. I know it is crucial for all of us to work together to find the best solution for our children here in Arlington but together we need to find a solution for all our Arlington children. We're an important connected partner to our Arlington schools. My staff and I are ready to help and look forward to working with all areas of town government to resolve this challenge. I have two of my Arlington parents who would also like to be heard as part of my allotted time. Thank you. My name is Edith one and my husband and I live in East Arlington and we have a daughter who is two years old who's currently in the toddler program at Learn to Grow and will be starting preschool in December. For the record please identify with your address please. Oh I live in Marathon Street. Okay. And I believe that places in the Thompson School District on our end of Marathon Street. And tonight I just wanted to share my perspective as a parent of a toddler who is in a preschool will soon be starting a preschool program and will also be entering the public schools in a few years. And I recognize that there are some space issues. But what I wanted to bring up is the fact that while there were several options presented several weeks ago at the school committee meeting that I attended it didn't seem like any of them really addressed all the needs of the public school system and many of the options seemed like they would address some of the needs but also place at great risk the early education programs that are currently in the Gibbs. I know that in addition to Learn to Grow there are also programs at the Leslie Ellis School and the town I believe also runs a program that takes place in the gymnasium. When my husband and I were looking at childcare options there was only one that worked for our commutes. We both work in Cambridge that were close enough to our house who would take my daughter when she was one year old and that one place was Learn to Grow and we were fortunate that we got off the wait list and that's not always the case. We have neighbors down the street who wanted to send their daughter to learn to grow but they couldn't get off the wait list. So just as there is a need in future years to serve children from kindergarten on up there is a need currently right now to preserve childcare options in East Arlington. So my concern is that we haven't as a community explored all the possible options to make sure we have the proper facilities for our older children while also preserving the facilities we need for our younger children. And these are the same students who will be entering kindergarten in a few years. And my hope is that we can talk and generate more ideas so that we can come to a solution that serves everyone as opposed to coming up with a solution that we devise quickly but maybe may not meet all of our needs. So if I can be helpful in any way I'd be happy to continue to talk to anyone further about those about generating new options and working together as a town. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Thank you. My name is Megan Pinzano and I'm the mom of a preschool student who's currently enrolled at Learn to Grow located in the Gibbs Building. My husband and I both work full time and we rely on this program as Edith was just referring to to make the many aspects of our family's life possible. I live also at Alton Street in Arlington just for the record. We're home owners on Alton Street near Arlington Center and we selected Learn to Grow both for the strong educational base it would provide to our son as well as for its specific geographic location within walking distance from home and directly in the center of the neighborhoods that feed into the Thompson Elementary School where our son will eventually be a student. We saw the location of our son's preschool as a critical community building catalyst for our family allowing our son to develop a strong group of local neighborhood friends that he could track through the Arlington School system with as well as enabling our family to share roots with other families likewise balancing professional and parental priorities in our incredible town of Arlington. I'm an architect a practicing designer and a design critic of architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design where I teach architecture studio as both an architect and as a member of the Arlington community with a child already in the early stages of his preparatory elementary school education and Learn to Grow. I'm concerned with a number of aspects consistent across all of the space planning schemes proposed at the school committee meeting held on September 24th. First that the Gibbs Building and older and relatively small building with significant square footage limitations in its current form was required in the space planning of three of four proposals without greatly impacting the capacity challenges of the school system at large. Second that all schemes limited the scope of producing additional educational space critical in our school system to modular buildings in either multi-year temporary or permanent service for the creation of classroom spaces to meet the projected student populations. An expensive proposition for modulars that through their longevity as they're proposed in any of the schemes would require superior finishing to make them truly functional spaces in New England throughout the duration of the school year which would include additional installation more permanent and durable building enclosure materials among other costly details. Lastly and most troubling to me from last meeting was the absence of any option that proposed the expansion of core shared spaces in the schools inclusive of cafeterias gymnasiums auditorium spaces in libraries spaces extremely critical to meeting the functional and educational needs of any school location for any students at any grade level modular classrooms modulars as they're proposed at classroom spaces only. But what about these core communal spaces as well. So I ask where are other space planning options for the expansion of the schools in our system that would meet the projected capacity needs of both classrooms as well as these core communal spaces. Renovation proposals that permanently expand the footprint of existing buildings both classroom and core spaces on site is but one of these. And I ask that we please investigate these options that would focus on providing both classroom and core space growth on school sites which would allow the many programs currently located in the Gibbs building to remain in that space critically located in the core of the communities that they serve. Thank you. Is the time note were 10 minutes into the agenda item. Linda Schumer may ask that you not hold up banners or demonstrate in the chambers. Thank you very much. Linda Schumer you're on. Hi thanks. So I'm Linda Schumer the executive director of the Arlington Center for the arts. Twenty seven years ago when the Gibbs building went off line the town made a deliberate and strategic decision to allocate some of that space to be developed into an art center. The town believed that investment in the arts would pay off in economic development new business rising property values and a cultural vibrancy that would make people want to live in Arlington. Since that time ACA has been both a foundation and a catalyst for the cultural life and creative economy in Arlington. The last time we met at the last town meeting in town hall I spoke about the hundreds the thousands of creative kids and families that ACA serves with its programs. Some of them are here tonight. These programs are life changing sometimes life saving and I know I know you believe in the quality and importance of these programs. Some of you have children involved in these programs. I can only appreciate how challenging this is for for you. It's been suggested to me that maybe the schools could partner with the art center maybe could provide some space within the schools to try to find a place to find some creative space sharing solutions. But what I really want to share with you today is that the art center is not just a program or a series of programs that could be run inside somebody else's space. The Arlington Center for the Arts is in fact pretty much a 24-7 operation and having that dedicated space and the dedicated facilities is critical. ACA's artist studios provide 16 working artists with their livelihoods. These are full-time photographers, painters, musicians. Some of them are here tonight. ACA's galleries provide 200 or more local artists a year with an opportunity to show and sell their work. Some of them are here tonight. Space like this exhibition space, studio space is shrinking all over the area. It's harder and harder to get this kind of space. ACA's classrooms provide, in addition to the programs that we do for kids and teens, opportunities for hundreds of adults a year both to learn and to teach. That's an important part of what we do and ACA's theater space provides a place for our communities, community's musicians and performers. Last year we had more than 150 performances in that theater of local bands, theater groups and workshops and classes right here in our own community. And of course the Arlington Center for the Arts is a critical place for our community's creative kids and teens and there's a lovely group of them here tonight. This is, these people, this organization is the manifestation of that vision of Arlington's community planners 30 years ago. A cultural institution that provides opportunities to experience the joys of creativity and to be a spark to the local creative economy. I've had a lot of people come up to me in the last two months and say, don't worry, we're going to find you a place, there's got to be a, there's got to be a solution, there's got to be a place, but I am worried and these, these people are worried. I know that we want to believe there's a way to do this somehow, find another place for the Arts Center to recreate the programs somewhere else. But I look around, that space is not to be found. There is no comparable facility that could provide the kind of the resources that we do in running the kids camp in the Artist Studios, the theater and all of these other activities. And I think about the history of Belmont. Some of you may remember the Kendall Center for the Arts in Belmont. It was an arts center very much like ACA, a retired school building, Artist Studios, gallery, classes. It burned down in April of 1999. The town found temporary quarters to some of those people in programs and said, we'll figure it out. We'll find another place for that organization to be. 16 years later, it's never happened. That place is not going to come back to life. It's over. And I just can't imagine that Arlington is going to let, can let that happen to the Arlington Center for the Arts. We have way too much to lose. It's not that easy to create an art center. This one has taken 30 years to come into being. So I know this is a critical, important moment for Arlington to figure out what to do. We are committed to providing a top-notch education to our kids. We share that. Everyone in this room shares that. We're also committed to having a town with an active cultural life for these very kids and families who are moving into town. For me, what I believe is that in the case of both of those goals, the best solution is to leave ACA and our, and our neighboring tenants in this 100-year old aging school building and find a better, newer, more educationally sound solution for Arlington's kids. And as Marianne said, we all stand ready to work with the school committee to find a better solution for all of the constituencies in Arlington. Thank you. Gina Jones from the Kelleher Center. No, I am not. Gina Jones. My name is Ellen Dalton, and I serve as the Senior Vice President for Elliott Community Human Services, which oversees the Kelleher Center. And I'm here to talk with you tonight. The Kelleher Center has been located at the Gibbs School for over 25 years. Many of the folks that attend the Kelleher Center have been attending for 25 years. We serve men and women with developmental intellectual disabilities and women with brain injury. These are folks that come mostly from the Arlington community. They've spent most of their adult life participating at the Kelleher Center. Activities both involved with employment training, employment support, daily living skills, skill building, and a number of therapies, physical therapy, art therapy, music therapy, occupational therapy. So it has a very rich core of services that these folks are totally dependent upon. But it's more than a day program. It's a safe haven. It's where they spend their days among friends, receiving the care and the support they deserve and need. Without this center, without the Kelleher Center, many of these folks will be left sitting at home, sitting in a chair watching TV, or even worse, wandering the streets. This gives real meaning to their lives and to their days. And we are committed to continuing to provide these essential services. We're part of the fabric of the Arlington community. Our folks, our staff, we shop, we eat, we work, we volunteer in Arlington. We have folks that deliver meals on wheels. We have people that volunteer at the Salvation Army. They work at Stop and Shop. They're at Walgreens. They're throughout the Arlington community and feel very much connected to all that goes on within the community. I think, you know, Elliott contributes to the economy. We provide jobs. We deliver essential services and we participate in the daily life of Arlington. Our footprint, Elliott's footprint, extends beyond just the Kelleher Center. We run group homes. We have a number of individuals who are living in the community that we provide support to. And we do some office work in the community. So Elliott has a number of people, staff and individuals who live within Arlington. And Kelleher is really a mainstay for the quality of their lives. You know, I know that the town has been so generous in leasing the space to Kelleher for the past 25 years. We really do appreciate it. It's affordable space. We're a non-profit. And as most people know, human services is not particularly well-funded. The disenfranchised population does not always receive all that is needed to give them the quality of life that they deserve. I guess our concern is if we can't be at the Gibbs School, where will we go? I mean, we just don't have the financial means to maneuver in the real-estate market these days. The bigger problem is that to take 100 adults with developmental disabilities who appear different and ask another community to open their arms and welcome us will be next to impossible. I'm sorry to say that Nimby, not in my backyard, is alive and well. Arlington has been amazing and wonderful and welcoming. And we truly appreciate that and know that we wouldn't find this in many other communities. So if we do lose the space, we don't know the future of the Kelleher Center. There will be 100 disadvantaged and disabled people who will have to figure out how to structure their days. And I think that will mean for a lot of people there will be nothing sitting and waiting for the time to pass. And there are no other centers like Kelleher in the Arlington area or within a radius. If by chance some of them can move to other services, that's great, but they do not do well with change. Our folks really need the safety and security and the routine that the Kelleher Center provides them. So I guess what we are asking tonight is that you think long and hard about your decision. It has huge, huge implications for more than 100 of your community members who have struggled all their lives. This is their safe haven and the future of Kelleher Center. Thank you very much. I'm very impressed with you. Thank you. You are Ted Wilson. Am I the last? Yeah. Ted Wilson is the Executive Director of Schools for Children. Thank you. There you go. He took half of my speech. So we operate the Lesley Ellis School out of the Gibbs, the Dearborn Academy out of the Crosby School and another program in the Central School. We also have many employees, many of them work in Arlington. We contribute to the economy. You know, and I was trying to think of what I was going to say tonight and I'm not going to talk about Lesley Ellis because you already know about Lesley Ellis and all that sort of stuff. I tried to put myself in the position of a school committee member. I was one once upon a time when I was a younger man. And my belief is that you value everything that we are doing in the Gibbs right now. I don't think there's any doubt that we are all valuing the service and what have you that's being provided. So my sense is that you won't be making decisions based on how good we are as much as I might want you to do that. But you've also indicated that you're very open to receiving community input. And I take that at face value and believe that there are additional options that need to be expressed. So I'd like to use my last couple minutes just to share one of them and make a couple requests. I am a career educator. I like to think I have a good feel for what you're struggling with. I'm also committed to supporting schools and doing what's best for every child. So I just want to propose one more option for you to consider on the list. It's not on the list provided by the architects, but it's one that's based on what I think is the current project most likely to get outside funding. And that's the high school. I know that's still a work in progress, but it feels to me like that's at least one that's in the channels and has a chance. And to me that project holds the key to addressing many of the enrollment issues you're facing. And it could very well have a funding stream to support it. And what I look at is rather than try to create a pedagogy to justify forming a single grade school because I think that's what you end up doing is creating pedagogy around a need. I'd like to suggest that you look hard at the idea of having an 8-12 high school, restructured high school. That single decision, as I look at the numbers, would immediately address the long term projected overcrowding at the audison, which seems to be the primary reason to consider repurposing the 87-year-old Gibbs. The pedagogical approach for serving students in the 8-12 grades in one facility is more tested and legitimate than the alternatives which have been proposed in my opinion. I submit that option should be put through the same analysis that the other options have received to see how it stacks up. That's my one great idea. I have two requests. Paul, the chair stated at the last meeting that the community is going to form a broad task force to work through this very complicated issue. We would request to be kept informed of the composition of that task force and its meeting schedule so that we can fully participate in the discussions to be held. Even better, if we could somehow have a position on that task force. We represent a very important part of the Arlington community. I think we could bring value to that discussion. The second thing that I would request is if by the end of December, I'm putting that date out, I don't know what your timeline is, but giving us a projected timeline, showing us the decision points and which town body is responsible for making those because we know that this is a community effort. There's going to be this staging of meetings. It would really help us to know what that's going to look like and how that's going to play out. Obviously, whether you end up deciding to solve Arlington's enrollment surge by modifying the renovation plans for the high school and purchasing or leasing state-of-the-art prefabricated buildings, notice I didn't say modulars, or by taking back and repurposing the 87-year-old Gibbs, each of the tenants remains committed to seeking stable and permanent homes in Arlington. We're part of this community. We believe in its vision to be a diverse and exciting place to live and work. And we really appreciate you putting us on the list tonight and listening. So thank you. Thank you very much. The only people who really haven't had a chance to converse about this, certainly not publicly, are the members of this committee. So at this point, I'm going to go around to the members of the committee and allow them to discuss what they're thinking and ask any questions of anybody who is presented tonight or to the superintendent or to anyone else they might care to direct a question to. And I'll start with Ms. Starks. All right. Thanks, Paul. I just want to make sure that everyone here knows how much we support everything that goes on in the Gibbs and that this is not an us versus them. And we certainly are not looking to evict or shut down anyone. As a matter of fact, it's not even really just our decision. If you were at the meeting two weeks ago, you saw over 250 people showed up. And what I read from that meeting and what everybody said and what I think the decision that has to be made and what I want you to understand and I really appreciate that everyone is here tonight is that this is not just our decision. This is going to be a townwide decision and that I hope that you continue to make your voices heard not just with us but with every single group that is going to be part of this decision and that is going to include the town manager, the people who normally sit in these seats, the board of selectmen, the finance committee and the permanent town building committee because no matter what decision we may think we want to make, we don't have any money. The people with the money have to help us make this decision. Now I am personally my family has benefited from so many of the programs at the Gibbs. I remember when Tot Stop was there. So there is no way that we are looking to do anything that is just like get those people out, put our school kids in. That is not what we're looking to do and I really want to make sure that you understand that we are not in any way looking to do that. That this is a decision that is going to be made by the community. We hear you, I have my button. I am with you. I think that we are all with you. I just want to make sure that you understand that we are all working on this. I know this is a hard decision. I don't want to evict anyone from anyone's home. I know that's what it feels like, but I do want you to know that we are working on this and that we want to work with you. We are not working against you. I really want to make sure that people understand that and I really appreciate that everyone came out. I know that you probably all don't generally come to meetings, you know, on Thursday nights like us. So please make sure your voices are heard. Make sure your stories are told to everyone. Not just us because we are simply a part of this decision. Okay. And we are also going to weigh in on things and help make that decision, but it's not going to be our decision alone. I just really want to make sure you understand that this is something that we're going to try to do with everyone. And I agree, Ted, that I want to make sure that people in the Gibbs community, in the current Gibbs tenants are on that committee that everyone in town knows what the timeline is and what the decision points are. And that everyone who wants to be a part of that helps make those decisions. Okay. I agree. I want to see a thriving artistic community in this town. I don't think anyone wants to see that go away. We all just are feeling this, you know, I feel like we're in this box and now the box is getting so full and we're just not really sure where to go. All right. And I really appreciate everyone coming out and telling us all this stuff. This is great information. I just want to make sure that it gets to everyone else. Right. All those other people who are involved in the process. So thank you. Dr. Seuss. No, you were nodding at me. Oh, no, no. Cindy, that was beautiful. And I just want to add capital planning is also a very, very, very crucial committee to talk to and keep informed of. And they're very much going to be a strong part of this process. I just want to reiterate that we do not want to make this decision in a closed room. And I think the meetings that we've had so far, I think are indicative of that. We very much want to look for ways to involve the community. And we're actually trying to think of different ways to do that. And if people have ideas in that front, we'd love to hear them. Jeff. Mr. Thielman. You can call me Jeff. I can, but in the formal meeting at WALT. So all three of my children have been in programs at the ACA. And I had a tour today with all tenants. And everybody showed up from the different places. So thanks very much for that. You know, one thing that's struck me over the past few weeks as this conversation has started has been that I couldn't see myself supporting a decision to take the Gibbs back to be an elementary school or a sixth grade or an eighth grade or whatever until there was a real concrete solid plan for the tenants of that facility. And so, you know, that's just where I stand. I would want to see a really concrete, tangible, clear, detailed plan. You know, the Arlington Center for the Arts has 150 performances a year on the stage. And so someone floated the idea of maybe those 150 performances could be distributed around the district at different schools. I've run a school before and I can't imagine having 150 performances at my school just to accommodate another group an outside group. So I don't know, I think there's a lot of planning and discussion that has to take place. I want to see a concrete plan for the tenants before any decision is made. And the question that keeps coming back to me is did the decision that we made to put the modular classrooms on the strat in school make it more likely than not that we're going to have to take back the Gibbs? No. No, not at all. Not at all. Okay. That's good to hear because that email is, I got an email about that. So I wanted to clear that up. Okay, good. So I think it's important to understand that we're, you know, this is one option. I think we have to be creative. I like what Ted said. I also think this is a community that has some resources and I'd like to see us look at a lot of different options including, you know, looking at the possibility of building another school because the town's gotten big enough to do that or the enrollment of the student population has gotten big enough to start at least having that conversation. So thank you. I want my title. First off, I'd like to state that I support everything that's been said prior to this. We also have a space problem at the elementary level as well as the middle school level. Eighth grade is something that has been already talked about. It's not, I want us to measure 10 times before we even consider cutting. I have asked the chair to make a regular agenda item for enrollment and space going forward until things are worked out. We need to get all the information before we make any kind of a decision. I agree with that. We, Allington, if we got a billion dollars given to us, that would not solve our problems. Spaces just as much as money going down. The high school, it's limited to what we're going to get from the state. God willing, we'll find out in December that we're on the list. At that point, it opens up some decisions. So that might give a little idea of the timeline. Once we know we're on the list for MSBA list for the high school, we'll know that sometime in December. And that starts a feasibility study if we're fortunate enough to get that. I don't have the answer for any of this. It's going to take all of us. I agree with Miss Starks and everyone else here. This has to be a community effort. The programs that you folks are involved in are part of the community. The community won't be Allington without you folks. That's a fact of life. I've been involved with Kelliher in the background, special needs for... My sister-in-law is 50 years old. My first experience with Kelliher, I think she was six and the program and stuff like that. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. I can't be as eloquent as Miss Starks, but I also feel strongly that we need a place for the arts and for all the other groups which are in the Gibbs Center. And I'm like, that's been well said here. I'm not going to go into that further. I just, what I did want to go into is just to reiterate that there's only one reason why we even consider or even put it as a possible one of many options, looking at this. And that is that the schools are bursting at the seams. You, parents and Thompson, know this. There's people in the fifth grade who have classes, are in classes of 30 because there are no other classrooms to put the children in. There's no other room. The hearty is not far behind. And that's going, that's happening in a lot of places in Arlington. The middle school is similarly bursting. I just finished having an eighth grader graduate last year. So I'm familiar with it. She had times when they couldn't have the health class in gym because there was no classroom that they could go have their class in. They're that tight and the building is not real amiable to easy expansion. So we're not looking at this because we're just going to do this because it's a whim or it's the easy thing. It's because we're really faced with very hard choices. And we need to look at all of the options and then decide as a community which one works best. And I'm not saying that we should use the Gibbs or not. I'm saying that we have to be able to look at everything and think about it. And if we're too scared and too early take something off the table that doesn't do anyone a favor. It doesn't do our children who are in the schools a favor. So yes, it's scary to think about. Yes, we need to think about what the fates are of all the organizations. But we need to be able to talk about things. And I hope we find a different solution. But I'm going to want to talk about all the solutions. So bear with us as we go through this process. Any other members wish to speak? Then I'll exercise the chair's prerogative to be the last to speak. I support the comments of all of my colleagues who are a wonderfully thoughtful group of people. I got off the school committee voluntarily in 2007. I didn't run for reelection and when there was a vacancy because somebody went to the dark side they got elected the board of selectmen. I came back and ran for reelection a couple of times just because it is such an honor and privilege to serve with these people. They are just the finest group of public servants I've ever seen. And we are now facing one of the most difficult decisions we're going to have to make because there's a lot of moving parts and yes in a town government such as ours there are lots of moving parts and we will do everything we can to keep everybody informed of all the moving parts and places where decisions will be made including town meeting. And if you are not town meeting members and wish to become a town meeting member and have a vote on the floor of town meeting for any financial decisions that are being made towards this. The town clerk's office is on the other side of this hallway. You go down there you obtain your nominating papers you get the ten signatures of people in your precinct you get on the ballot you join town meeting. How many people in here are town meeting members? I know Mr. Paluso is we've got a couple and I thank you for your service. It's important that people who care about the schools and care about the arts are also people who are making decisions on the floor of town meeting. It's a big part of this. There are a lot of constraints that we have in Arlington. One is the total lack of vacant land. It makes it more of a challenge. If there were empty big empty parcels around we could be thinking more about expanding out to another location and moving programs. Cost is a factor and some we might come up with an idea that would be a more expensive option than would be normally considered. And by that I want to point to the city of Barnstable. If you've ever been to Barnstable high school they have a wonderful performing arts center. We've driven down there to hear performances and they use municipal money. They call themselves a town but they're really a city. They use city money to go and add on to what the state was willing to fund for a high school in order to include a performing arts center within that facility. And it's a wonderful thing. And one thing that breaks my heart every time I go see a musical at Arlington high school is just how awful that facility is for any kind of performing arts. Our kids deserve better our community deserves better and one of the goals of this high school rebuild in this duct tape high school that we have with no elevator which is why we're here is to have a performing arts area in a stage and an auditorium is worthy of the beautiful wonderful programming that our students put forth every year. They deserve that kind of an experience. So how do we add to that? Maybe we add some arts functions there. It doesn't solve all the problems but everything has to be on the table. Every idea has got to be out there. We've got to consider how do we meet the needs of our children who are in our K-12 system as well as the needs of the community because arts are vital to K-12 education and arts are vital to the survival of the community. And if I don't say it I'm in trouble going home because my wife is a classically trained pianist and she teaches music at UMass Dartmouth. So it is what it is. We are with you and we want to find a great solution that preserves these valuable programs and meets the space needs of the children in our school system that is also something that is affordable and the residents of the town are willing to pay for. So those are the constraints that we have and the more you are able to convince your friends and neighbors that this is something worth having and worth paying for the better solution we can come up with which is why I am so glad you're here. So glad you were here last time. So glad you have decided to become engaged in this process and willing to present your ideas to us and no matter what it is I kidded with Mr. Paluzzo that we're not going to build a new school in the swamp over in East Arlington but any idea might generate the next idea no matter how silly. So silly ideas, good ideas whatever it is let's get them all on the table because we want your programs. We need to meet the needs of our kids. We want this to be an even better town in the future. So that's that's where we're at. Thank you for coming. We are going to the rest of our business meeting which was going to start with a discussion of MCAS results. Mr. Chairman. Yes. Just like I just like to make a whole lot. I just like to mention the clerk's office is open right now. If you want to go down and take out papers I don't think you can pull back. Can you? Can you pull papers yet for town meeting? I don't think so. No, you can't. You're right. There's a date. Maybe a little too early. It's February or something. Yeah. Yeah. Each of the organizations presented some informational packets for the committee. Can I? Okay. Thank you. Give them to Karen. Karen. And she will make sure we get them. Thank you. If you want to stay for the MCAS presentation please do we No. It's going to be so smart. We'll take about a couple of minutes recess just to allow people to leave. Is there some place we can put all these ideas like all the crazy ideas like is there can we start like a Google Doc or something? These are from the church. I don't want to change or something like that. I don't know. We should find. We should just just throw up. Now we're deliberating and we should deliberate within the context of the meeting where everybody can hear us. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. I don't use Chrome. No. I suppose to because our schools the AC might work. I don't know how to get rid of these things that open up. Yeah. What work? You can't what doesn't work? I'm like, well make it work. I know there's all these great things back from but I don't know how you said. I'm still doing five. I've gone to fire. Yeah. We're going to do some of that stuff but Firefox is the only one that works for me. I just haven't gone to Chrome. I'm sure Chrome will because I do Chrome sometimes it will work. I do Chrome on my PC but my Mac doesn't like it. Yeah. Firefox seems to work okay. Firefox is more Mac friendly. Yeah. Once we get to MUNIS I have to go through Internet Explorer. Yeah. I have no idea how to do it. Yeah. And I don't have no I know you had to get into the selection. Kevin Brealy will be passing up the questions on this call. Okay. Fellow Selecman here. Our next order of business Dr. Cheson will present a brief analysis on our parking and traffic issues. Before I start I want to just give you a brief introduction about how this is a very different metric this year. Last year 500,000 students took the MCAS this year only 200,000 students took the MCAS and that is because districts had the option to choose to take park or to take MCAS. And they were able to self select at least through their school committees. And so the reasons why someone might self select to take MCAS versus park are as varied as the school districts. However many of the metrics that we have used in the past compares ourselves to the state in terms of things as simple as the percentage of advance or the percentage of proficient advance but also something like SGP, the student growth percentile which compares students against their cohort of students that have scored about in the same area. But that cohort has significantly changed. So Mr. Hatch. I was just going to say 10th grade hasn't changed though has it? Because every one of the students- 10th grade has not changed. That's correct. So the figures for the- They have no choice. They have no choice. Right. I just want to be clear on that. Sure. Thank you. So but the vast majority of the numbers that we would normally present are not here. Accountability which we normally would present levels where the school would be level one, two or three. Now is not going to be available until December. And the park results by district have just begun to come out and the individual student results are not out yet. So you're going to see a much more shortened- much shortened presentation than you would normally see. And many of the metrics that I would like to present to you I don't have and even the ones I have are a little bit questionable. I would say or different than they've been in the past. Not quite so much questionable. But we are going to talk a little bit about the district results in ELA and then math, science, and then talk a little bit about the plans for 2015, 2016. And we make those decisions primarily on the results that we get. And when we get to there, I want to touch on our emphasis on data and to really point out to the committee the change that we were able to make in the school calendar this year where elementary has a Tuesday and what that means to it. Let me just say as a caveat because I play with the stuff for a living. You're absolutely right. And the frustrating thing for me is that we don't have accountability scores. And a lot of what we do in terms of looking at this in law is very much comparing the state results. Because this is sort of my specialty, there's about eight of us in the state who do meet regularly with the data geeks at DESI. And one of the things that we found out was that statistically, the differences between the Park schools and the MCAS schools were very insignificant. They peered out. So there weren't any real differences, urban, rural, ethnically, economically. Oh, you mean the schools that chose Park and the school that chose? So that a lot of the comparisons we'd be worried about going into it, you have a smaller end by half. So it makes it a little less stable. But there isn't really a significant difference between the populations of the cohorts that were Park and MCAS. The demographics of the population. And in fact, past performance on MCAS. Because they've gone for that because they need to weight this in order for the accountability to line up evenly. Because if one cohort is different than the other, you're not able to make the comparisons without making some sort of an adjustment. So I think that having looked through your presentation, I think you've been thoughtful and conservative. But I think that these are valid and important points to consider. And I thank you for that. So go ahead. So here we have, we start off looking at the student growth percentile by grade in English language arts and math. As the committee will remember, one of the school goals is to have an SGP in all subject areas for all grades to be 50 or better. And as we look at our results from this year with the exception of grade 10 ELA, which is just slightly below. And one could make an argument about whether that's statistically significant. Certainly you could do a Z test and take a look. But we are equal to or better than the goal that we set for ourselves. And then when we look at those breakdowns by school, so we look at elementary school SGP. Again, for fourth grade and fifth grade, because we have to have something to compare it to so we don't have anything to compare third grade to. You'll see, again, some numbers in red. And while those are things that we're looking at, I also want to point out the numbers. I think this is good. Some numbers that are really higher over the 50. And so one of the things that we're taking a look at is the schools that we'll be doing on Tuesday afternoons, the schools that have exceptional growth. What did those teachers do? I'm actually meeting with the two teachers that are involved in this at the Thompson School and the principal next week to talk about what are the things that they did in their classroom that they believe might have contributed to this exceptional growth and can those things be replicated across other schools? So this is the overall district performance in ELA. Normally, we would also have a state percentage A&P, a CPI and medium SGP. Again, I'm being very conservative as that because the full results are not out yet. But as you look over time, we're pretty much where we've been in terms of the percent of students advanced and proficient. And our SGP, again, across all grade levels for ELA, is meeting the 50 target. If we look at our percentage at each performance level over time, again, we see a slight increase in the students that advanced and pretty much the same number of students at warning and failing. When we look at the scoring advanced district versus state, now, we've always looked at this again. The end has significantly changed. And so we're only looking at a portion of the state. But if you look at that, that the average at grades 3 is normally 15%. Last year, we were pretty close to that. If we look at the average at fourth grade is 15%. We were a little higher than that last year and then right on the money for grades 5. When we look at grade 6, again, the average was 16%. We were a little higher than that last year. Right equal to our average for grade 7 and a little bit higher than the average at grade 8. And finally, when we look at grade 10, where we do have all students across the state taking the MCAS test, the difference between the state is exactly equal to what our percentage has been in the past. And if the committee would remember, last year we did an analysis. We compared ourselves against other school districts. Since many of the, or at least half of the other school districts that we normally compare ourselves to took part. We'll have to wait until those results come back. But if you remember from last year, we looked at almost all the school districts that we compare ourselves to and we saw that they also were sort of plateaued in their performance improvement and we see the same thing happening again this year. So if I look at performance again by grade level and again what we look at is proficient in advance because that's the target that gives us points towards our level, our accountability level. You'll see that the, we consistently have about the same width. But so that means that we're about the same distance between the state for proficient in advance when we compare ourselves. The same thing again, you know, for grade four you might see a couple percentage points up or down. But when we really look at the slope of the distance between the two lines, it's pretty much the same. And again, even though we went down, the state went down, so this pretty much the same shape in grade five, in grade six, grade seven, grade eight, and grade 10. And this is where, because of the competency requirement for graduation where we see almost all students across the state scoring pretty high. In addition, not only do students have to get a 240, but if they don't receive a 240, but they actually pass the test, they're still, we're required to put together a performance plan to show how they would be continuing to work towards proficient for the remaining years in high school. Again, this just tracks our percentage of students scoring advanced over the long haul. So let's talk about the analysis of what we see at the elementary level. One of the things that we've seen is a real improvement in content scores and in construct scores or mechanic scores at the elementary level in certain schools. And again, as I said, we're going to go into those schools and really talk to those teachers and find out what that they did in the classroom. What we really need to start doing is also seeing the same kinds of improvement in reading. We have, as you're aware, we have adopted the Lucy Calkins Writing Program several years ago for writing. We have a very robust program as we get into that. But now we're trying to have the same clearly articulated program for reading. We have certain programs that we use for reading but what exactly those units look like? Daily lesson plans or weekly lesson plans for teachers are not currently available. We're not currently available before this school year. We spent a lot of time this summer taking a look at that and we will continue to take a look at that. You've heard about the lab program and writing and we think that that's beginning to have an effect. We have expanded that program for this year and the middle school grades six through eight, the training that they've had in Lucy Calkins is really starting to take effect. So looking, going on to mathematics. Again, we look at first our advanced proficient percentage and as you see it's pretty much stable to where it was last year if we look across the entire district. And again if we look at what our SGP target of 50 we're exceeding that. If we look at our difference in our different performance levels over time we have seen an increase in the students that are scoring at the advanced level. We have a very kind of what we call stubborn or resistant population and that doesn't mean that they're being difficult. It just means that that's a population that's very difficult to see an increase. And I'll talk in a minute about how we're going to try to address that this year. Again, when we look at grade levels we pretty much see the same level of just the same distance the difference between the state and our scores of proficient at advanced at grade three. We actually saw a widening of that at grade four. We're seeing pretty much the same there's a little bit of an increase of the state at grade five. Grade six is pretty much the same. Grade seven we saw some improvement in the difference between the state and the district some improvement from the state and grade eight. And again we're seeing significant continued significant difference in math. So what's the important things that I want you to know about math this year? We had 36 total students in grades three through five that scored morning which is the lowest level at all schools only 36 students out of all our elementary school students. We think that's pretty significant and of those 81% of those students were scoring in the 216 to 218 level which means that they're very close to the bandwidth for needs improvement. There were no students in the low warning in the very low scoring of the of warning. All our elementary school students that were in warning were within three questions of scoring needs improvement and that's pretty significant. We have an area of focus for PD for grades three through five is the connection to high needs students and that's what we saw at the beginning that 6% that almost are consistently scoring warning. Now they're moving up through the warning levels so that the same 6% is there but instead of them being at the bottom of morning they're moving to the top of warning and so the professional development that we're going to focus on this year is working with the math coaches the classroom teacher and the special education teachers and the ELL teachers for those high needs students to really make sure that they're getting a double dose so that's what's happening and pull out and what's happening in the classroom build upon one another. The growth of content knowledge for high needs students at the middle school is growing so significantly that students who were low warning are still able to access content which is at grade level so what this means is in the past the students would come out of the middle school and if they were I'm sorry out of the elementary school and if they were high needs going into into middle school those teachers were not able to teach 6 grade math content they were having to teach 5th grade or upper 4th grade math content for where to start we've seen such improvement in them in the elementary schools that this year the 6 grade high needs teachers are able to begin to teach 6th grade content and we're going to take that even to a more granularity by looking at what part of 6 grade they're working at and how much of 6 grade they get through and the number of 6 students recommended for math support and 6 grade is decreasing even though as we well know the number of students at the middle of the students that have chosen in 8th grade to actually decline math support this year because they feel confident enough to do their math curriculum without that and we're going to track the success of those students and moving on to science and technology again we see that we almost consistently have the difference between us and the state be about the same sometimes this goes up a little bit down a little bit but pretty much about the same of the same thing at grade 8 if you remember science is only offered in 5 8 and 10 and then again in grade 10 the difference is pretty much the same one of the things I do want to call to your attention to particularly at grades 8 and grades 5 our difference our improvement or our difference better than the state is more significant in science than in almost any other subject area as you have heard the committee has heard earlier we have last year I believe that we have a science and technology program at the middle school that was picked as one of the exemplars for the state and the percent of students scoring in advance at the high school has increased and the focus on math and ELA at the elementary may have resulted in what we consider to be a fairly static performance in science there's only so many hours during the school day and we're really focusing on trying to get those ELA and math achievement up and so we are we may have as a result gotten some static performance in science so we want to look at our subgroups groups and our high need students you'll see the percent that are reaching proficiency the light blue line is the high need students is the non high need students and the white is the all students now one of the things that we notice here is that even though there's some variation here there's much more significant difference between the high need students and the non high need students in the earlier grades then there is when we get to high school so basically when we look at students and even when we look at DRA scores we find that when which is our reading scores we find that when students get to fifth grade the vast majority of the students start to make the benchmark the problem with that is it takes us the third fourth and fifth grade level to get them to the benchmark and then when they get into high and when they get into middle school the same thing it takes us six seven and eighth grade to get them to the benchmark so we're addressing our our efforts to try to get them to the benchmark sooner because what happens particularly at the elementary school is that students will be reading meeting the reading benchmark for the vast majority of them by the time they get to fifth grade but they spent third fourth and fifth grade working towards that benchmark as opposed to using reading skills to learning content so we want to make sure that we can try to get students to benchmark sooner again when we look at math we see that again there's a difference you know um in the um high between the high needs and the uh but yet less of a difference when they get up to the um 10th grade level so what lies ahead for us um thanks to the committee support we were able to change the elementary schedule and we have much more regular schedule for data meetings uh data team meetings and again that's a has allowed us to really look at what is tracking to our ELA scores is it right our writing scores or is it our reading scores if our writing scores are helping us to gain improvement which schools are gaining the improvement and to really working with those schools to replicate what they're doing at other schools we have been including maps science attendance and discipline data and review by the teams um we have a wider review of common assessment data the curriculum directors are really focusing on this year and we'll be coming back to the committee in each subject area to show you the different measures because mcast is just one measure and mcast in many ways does not measure all the things that we want for our children it doesn't measure their ability to problem solve what we call non-regular problems it doesn't measure their ability to work collaboratively um there are many things that we have as goals for our students that are not measured by the mcast and we're gonna start presenting to those to you on a regular basis we've had as we've said we have a significant increase in time for teachers to work together and also teachers of different disciplines so the regular classroom teacher and the ELL teacher the regular classroom teacher and the sped teacher and we're already starting to get some traction from that we have a development of a district wide curriculum team that we'll meet for the first time next week where we have representatives from each grade level in math science and ELA to start really talking about where we can get those two furs across the curriculum because the elementary school day is not getting any longer and the elementary teachers are having to cover more we've talked about the expansion of the lab program and writing we've expanded our PD in math and grades K through 3 particularly in kindergarten which was implementing tools in the mind as you know and we haven't been able to work with them as much in math over the last couple of years and we're really focusing on that and FOSS is our full option science system and that is a science hands-on inquiry-based science curriculum that's much more online with the next generation science standards we're implementing one of those units at each of the grade levels this year and we'll be expanding that next year okay Drs Mr. Thielman so I had a question on slide 4 Laura so it had elementary SGP by school there were several school there were several grades and well if you had you had 4th and 5th grade SGP so there are there are several schools that I'm going I'll get there that are below 50 so what that slide right there yeah so what you know what happened and what are you doing for example Thompson 4th grade 38 ELA 31.5 well if this is 82.5 and this is 38 yeah I'm meeting with those teachers to ask a lot of questions I think it would be reasonable to say spent a lot of time on ELA maybe not as much time on math yeah okay but I don't want to accuse anybody or not accuse but I don't want to make a conjecture until I meet with those so you haven't done sort of the a deep dive yet in those numbers on a specific ones no on again on this one I happen to know that they spent a lot of time on math based on their math results from the previous year yeah I'm guessing that that has something to do with that Brackett is a very high-performing school and at times you will start to see a plateauing and so you don't see the same level of growth again remember these numbers are based on a cohort that's not exactly the same as the cohort it was last year because it's a comparison of students to a cohort of students but some of those students may have taken Park so they may not be in this cohort anymore as a matter of fact one of the problems that we found is that I ran reports from the state from two different places and got different SGP numbers because then n was different um so but the SGP just to clarify is fourth grade to fifth grade they're and then third to fourth it's yeah it's against a cohort of students across the state that scored about the same as them over a period of time yeah and and where their growth looks and comparison to that if that cohort changes then the numbers slightly could be slightly off okay and the other question I have is just a general question on work we're expecting a decision on Park at some point in the next November in the month right so could you just sort of lay out for the community that what you know what's at stake and what all that might mean so people have a sense of that um well the committee saw a communication plan um a PD plan and um a schedule a possible schedule for a draft schedule for Park if the if the state Board of Education does choose to go with that um I think that's probably a coin toss at this point um but we have that in place and as soon as that decision would be made if the decision to go with Park was made we would roll we have those plans all in place and we would just we would roll them out and if this well we don't know what we don't know what the votes going to be the Board of Education and if the vote is to stay the course with MCAS we're we're prepared to do that so we're ready either way yes that's where I want to clarify thank you Dr. Seuss um yeah I just have a question about slide seven so that was um and we saw this one yeah we just we saw some analysis of a similar slide and on math where we know that only 6% are warning and you told us a little bit about what that meant and how they weren't quite as low as they used to be and I was just wondering do we have sort of a similar analysis going on with ELA? um it's it's about the same where students are moving into the high areas of warning um again this is what we call a resistant population yeah that's actually a little bit less than that mm-hmm just eyeball on it okay uh Mr. Heiner um on the slides that you uh use for the math on profession uh grade level of proficiency in advance I pulled the numbers that you did and consistently there's been a drop from sixth grade to seventh grade and then an uptick to eighth grade with one exception this has been an issue we've been talking about almost every single year it's dropped a little bit I understand but we've talked about programs we've talked about uh we've got a new math person and I I should have prefaced all this I want to commend you and everyone else that's done this it's great work and stuff but I'm still concerned with this this drop and then uptick again from sixth down to seventh and up to eighth again so well that's also actually um across the state um the same thing happens in um in ELA um that students um especially if school districts that don't have solid writing programs will sometimes see a drop in their scores in fourth grade and then go back up in fifth grade um so I'm not saying that that's acceptable what I'm saying is that we have this is only our third year on the math curriculum so we only had two years worth of the math curriculum um and uh I feel like we're continuing to make progress but not perhaps not as quickly as we would like this this to happen yep all the way up to 2015 yeah with one exception uh it's a steady patent mm-hmm you and your staff have done a lot of work in it but there's still an issue there yep and that one particularly and I would agree that that's still the same thing as here it's still it's something that's very difficult to change but we're not accepting that and we're continuing to work on it uh all the park results will we'll do another presentation because we'll have the accountability results in December okay um and second um I'm now I'd like to look at the last few slides on 40 and um in science yes no it's the um high needs versus non-high needs way at the end of the presentation mm-hmm so my question is what is students in our district that's a good question and how much if that you know because I'm thinking you're thinking about what are they running but if we have a whole bunch of students coming in we haven't taught them before but they can still have a a gross score calculated I think because if they were in Massachusetts prior to coming to us yeah and so I'm you're asking for the turnover yes how many high-need students are new going in and out or just coming into the district later in their career going going in and out I mean just having some idea because we're you know some of the numbers that we're looking at we didn't actually teach them the last year right so correct I'll have to that's going to take some doing but I don't have any questions at this time I look at the yeah I have a different view the seventh grade you know the thing is that some years some tests are harder than others and on the ELA side the fourth grade ELA test is statistically the hardest hardest yes because you can you can actually track it by looking at the growth scores because of this year our seventh grade math growth score was 54 which is a very strong growth score so you know we've had movement I don't know that it's raising the level of concern in my mind I think that this year's set of scores just on the outset are very strong and I'm very grateful for the teachers of Arlington who've worked hard in terms of providing good solid education to children not teaching to test but because good instruction yields reasonable results I think that we have a lot to be proud of thank you and I would like to jump on that for one second I had a conversation with the math director about that today and that's why I think it's so important for us to come in and present some other metrics to you because we do not teach the test as a matter of fact we cut out really felt like we were not getting an impact from it the after-school MCAS program and put that work during the day but really work at trying to get children to be able to persevere to solve non-regular problems and we really feel that with that over time we will get better results plus we will get students that have other skills that will serve them better in life I think I saw Mr. Heiner's hand wave I was just looking at the phenomenal scores at the 10th grade is that the incentive to graduate? There is also probably a widely accepted view that that's probably one of the least rigorous tests because it's based on standards that many students have surpassed by the 10th grade Those that don't pass it as the remedial programs they just take another math course or do they they have two more years to graduate actually the vast majority of our students take four years of math whether they pass the MCAS or not that's something that we've seen a significant increase in over the last three years since Mr. Coleman took over as math director and since we began to expand our offerings to students but the students are required to continue to take math classes until such time as they demonstrate proficiency Arlington is a very systematic exam great thank you thank you very much Mr. Spiegel you're on for a diversity report thank you thank you the report should be it's on the agenda yeah the reports on the the reports on the agenda is in Nova so okay I think that's fine Ms. Fitzgerald's gonna put it up and move over a little I don't have it do you want me to it's on Nova's you want me to link to my oh I can get it over here got me to just I can put my laptop on there do you want it we'll do this look at it it's on the agenda it's on the agenda thank you thank you so the report from this year what it shows is the number of previous hires that we've retained from 2015 the time period that this covers is October 1st 2014 through September 30th 2015 so a lot of the bulk of the new hires were new hires for this school year but there were quite a few who were hired between October 1st and the end of the school year and some for summer employment as well the new hires include and the previous hires also community education teachers Arlington after school teachers so and as well as our regular classroom teachers and teaching assistants and all professional staff in the district what this shows is at the beginning of as of October 1 2014 we retained the previous hires in each category Asian black Hispanic Native American white and then the numbers of new hires that we added after October 1 2014 till September 30th 2015 in the various categories Asian black Hispanic Native American white and not self-identified one thing to explain the number of new hires seems large overall because that does include all the new substitutes we have made a concerted effort Miss Foley may see that there's still some days where there's not enough substitutes in the schools and we are still working on that but we are trying to bring in new subs continuously through the school year that is one area that we're addressing and so there's a lot of turnover and churn in the substitutes we've all that also includes a lot of community education or teaching assistance staff I think overall the report shows we've we have I think met the goal as defined by the school committee's goals in terms of diversity hiring and going above the baseline from last year because if you go um let me scroll down the total staff the total staff in each category is higher but so I mean overall I think we met the goal as outlined by the school committee's goals however I think we still have a lot of work to do among the the goal to diversify our teaching staff the staff that is in front of students on a daily basis in the schools um we've done a little bit we've done some good for that I think um one program that I think has done very well is the Arlington I've been able to attract a more diverse workforce um which helps me a lot there's a lot of students in our district who take advantage of those programs um we have in our professional staff um been able to hire some new new staff this year um in the in our data department and one of our new directors of social studies is an Asian man we have done we have had some some good hires they're great people they're great hires and um they do meet the goal of diversifying we do still have some work to do I think especially in the classroom teaching role we do not have the diversity of staff that we would like and we're still working on that and it's an ongoing goal to increase that um teaching assistance staff um we did lose some staff who we didn't retain this year because of various reasons they went back to school or went to other jobs um teaching assistance we still have an issue with retaining teaching assistance and what part of that is our salary part of it is the nature of the position tends to be a starting point there's several reasons for that um but we you know we stress this as a goal to the principals and the hiring administrators continuously throughout the year to um to work and I can the other thing I'll note and it's not an excuse but this is a statewide issue in terms of having difficulty expanding the diversity of the teaching on a daily basis the city of Boston Boston public schools has had some well publicized um articles in in the globe that they're having difficulty because they've had a lot of teachers retire and they haven't been able to replace them and so we're competing with the city of Boston and Cambridge and and other suburban districts and it's it's a challenge but we continue to work and improve uh okay down the list Ms. Starks um one question I have um I was just doing some quick percentage math um is I think that what a really good goal would be would be at try to at least meet or have the same percentage on staff as we have students um and so one question I have is do we have to meet to kind of see it that way I mean I realize so we do have those numbers I don't have them in the slide but if we could get those my interest is trying to see if we can at least try to line those up a little bit sure so if we have those if you could share them sometimes Dr. Allison Amby um that we went from a from a total of 66 people of diverse backgrounds in 2014 to a total of 79 in 2015 which is a substantial increase and that's even though we increased our total staff also we still the percentage went from 5.4 percent up to 5.8 percent um both of those are nice jumps and I recognize it's in the face of large competition for hiring and stuff so thank you Thank you Dr. Seuss Yeah I was actually also going to point out the percentage jump which is small but it's progress and we commend you for that um we recognize that this is a very difficult problem of our policy goals and I think that we're doing that Mr. Heyner uh you mentioned uh hiring substitutes are they employees of the district? Substitutes are employees of the district because okay we're no longer using ASOP we are using ASOP but that their employees in that they get a paycheck from us they are on our payroll they get a W2 or at the end um but they are they are temporary there are sort of per diem as needed employees okay then let me just add this if I was a substitute I'm going through the ASOP system am I correct? Yes not okay well you come there's substitutes are hired through my office I meet with all the substitutes or Kelly Piggit in my office will meet with new substitutes people who are interested in substitute teaching in our district we're interviewing the ASOP system and then they can take jobs through that system they don't collect unemployment during the summer they do not collect unemployment during the summer if we give them a reasonable assurance that they have a job as a substitute in the next school year thank you Mr. Keelman so I want to commend the district for the increase in the number of people of color that have been hired and the other in high school and in college to think about a career in education to the extent to which we can get involved in addressing the pipeline question we can help solve the problem over the long term it is a pipeline question and I think the schools of education are well aware of that and they're doing taking steps to try to address that situation as well any other members hearing none thank you very much next item is the superintendent's evaluation the question has come up is exactly what the procedure and what the role of various sub committees are with regard to the superintendent's evaluation as we prepare to meet our obligation one of my frustrations is that the state has failed to give us accountability data in a timely manner and that's one of the things that we count on about the evaluation superintendent yet there are certainly regulations that we need to follow to align with the statewide educator evaluation protocol so right now I'm going to open this up I know a couple of members want to talk on this so I'm going to open it up to the board to engage in a conversation about our next steps and where we're going to go with the you know who would like to go first Mr. Thielman thank you I haven't raised my hand yet but good good we got to get it started somehow okay great so first of all I just want to make sure we're clear on the timeline when are we to complete the evaluation get it to the chair what's the deadline to get something to you Paul do you have the policy of Mr. Heiner the what we tried to get together and agree with last year is that we would be submitting our virtual evaluations to the chair by the second meeting in October okay but if I may yeah go ahead so let me I agree with the chair that one of the elements because we moved normally an evaluation would be done at the end of a school year this committee wanted the accountability data and things of that nature available to us that's why we moved it to November now that as the chair said normally we don't know where we're going to go with that so here's I just want to make this this is a point I was thinking about the other day is this is the little history on this process we years and years ago we amended the curriculum instruction and assessment committee to be the curriculum instruction assessment and accountability committee and specifically the regulation whatever they changed the desi change its rules and so when desi change its rules we set up a specific set superintendent evaluation subcommittee to make sure that we were in compliance and the thinking I think which was a good decision and I think the thinking behind that decision was at some point that subcommittee would go away in November December January February and come up with a plan be clear on directing the superintendent about what evidence we needed be clear on timelines so that when we got to the fall we could we had a plan in place so what I think what's happened here is that we forgot about kind of shifting the best thing we can do at this point because this is due next week the next meeting rather in two weeks these are our sentiments on the superintendent's performance are due next week or two weeks from now the best thing we can do is charge the curriculum instruction assessment subcommittee with getting a plan in place for next year I think at this point and I think that the superintendent we're in compliance we're in compliance with the best of our capacity with state regulation Mr. Hainer I would agree with that 100% the one thing that's most important is the suggested months of that planning the initial planning I would hold to that I agree I think that's very important just for the superintendent to know what we're expecting in performance and I would just add specific dates about the year for checking that's all I agree I don't even know if the evaluation subcommittee I was surprised I thought the evaluation committee was going to end a year ago last June and for some reason we kept it going again I agree with you 100% so do we need a motion what do we do I saw I didn't you can make a motion to dissolve the superintendent evaluation subcommittee and move the work back to CIAA so moved second CIAA curriculum instruction assessment and accountability we have a motion by Mr. Thielman second by Mr. Heiner on the motion any debate or discussion hearing none it's time for a vote all in favor say aye opposed unanimous vote six nothing the evaluations by the policy by the next meeting Mr. Heiner I would I have something to report do you want me to wait to the committee doesn't exist anymore to report you can report out anyway I'll report out because you're reporting history even though we abolished the committee things happen we can talk about it fine I'll wait until then you want me to do it now we're on the topic one of the things we did this year slightly different is we set up a survey for administrative staff a lot of bumps in it I apologize for that Mr. Good did a phenomenal job doing it I have it I'm this is not for public consumption I'm just reporting that it is available when we deal with it then it will become a public document I have it a paper form but I also have it electronically I've shared it with a couple of members already electronically those that want it either way I'll compare it it is 49 questions there were 35 people initially were invited to participate they had to drop one because one of the invitees was resigned so out of 34 potential 21 responded at my request I asked Mr. Good to extend it one more week to everyone and sent out a reminder and he got several more people this will be available to you in either form just let me know by the end of the night I definitely would like I think we all should get it I mean you want whether it's paper paper electronic either way we'll give it out after the meeting which will be available at the next it will be publicly available attached to the superintendent's evaluation at the next meeting Dr. Allison Ampe by the way was very kind to go and download the evidence and arrange them in folders so that if any member of the committee wants to just pass the thumb drive over to them and you can stick it in your computer and work with it that way Dr. Allison Ampe just to be clear all I was doing was organizing I haven't changed anything except to make it easier to find what goes where so what do we do when we're looking at the evidence for the goals we have questions about it either we feel we don't understand how it applies or we think it doesn't if there's questions where we feel there's more substance needed what do we do you certainly have the option of inquiring back to the superintendent or the assistant superintendent who's also qualified to answer those questions because the data is standard district data that I'm sure the assistant superintendent can answer if there are personnel issues that are a little more technical the HR director would be able to respond to you you can also extend queries to the chair should I extend all okay I'm not saying I have them this is I'm doing this in case anyone here has them do we all extend all inquiries to the chair or do we go straight you know the thing is if it and then my other question really is that no you should communicate individually on your concerns and if there is something that the person you query from deems important for the whole committee to see like if there was an error in some of the data or there was a technical thing and they communicate and they'd be creating a public document so you know there is a certain amount amount of discretion in terms of the level of questioning that you're going through how do I fill out the form question is obviously mundane and not worthy of communication to the rest of the committee but if you run into something and you're looking at some piece of data which would impact the rest of the committee's ability to do the evaluation I would ask that that be communicated back to the full committee and to Karen Fitzgerald so that the public document is preserved Mr. Heiner I think technical issues things that are wrong errors and things like that I have no problem with that but this data is data in support of a goal for the Evaluate the superintendent I'm not trying to dump it all on the superintendent or anything but I would be adverse to someone else making a judgment about what I feel is an important piece of data so I mean specific data and stuff like that if I clarification if I don't feel that it's appropriate or whatever I feel a responsibility to go to the superintendent and not to other people even though one of the pieces of data was this presentation tonight to achieve a goal although Dr. Chesson presented it Dr. Bode put it in as a piece of evidence if I have a question about that I feel it's important she may direct me to Dr. Chesson but I think it's my responsibility to go to her first if I have questions about things of that nature seems to me the only thing that I would point out is that you know factual information there's a lot of things that are non-controversial or non-interpretive so that if you're asking say how many kids were in the seventh grade whatever that's tied to that I have no problem with that spread anywhere else and don't forget if you as a member feel it's something that the rest of the board should see you have the ability to forward it to our administrative secretary who will then forward the rest of the committee so everybody be it staff members or individual committee members who uncover something or see something that should be brought to the attention of the rest of the committee can pass it through Karen Fitzgerald so it gets back to the rest of us we want this to be an open transparent process because the most important one of the most important things we do is evaluate the superintendent and that by law needs to be a public process and by law the documents attached to it and supporting it and everything we write and present at the next meeting Mr. Heyner excuse me we're not presenting at the next meeting we're giving it to you by that time it's in November and then presenting doing the final presentation in November so you're giving it to me in the next meeting but you know if the presentation it becomes a public document I'm running the meeting losing track of my time any other evaluation hearing none next item on the agenda is just go ahead I'm sorry the format we're supposed to use we have that do we have that do we have that Karen have we distributed the evaluation tool to the members let's do that I assume it's the same it's the same as last year but let's make sure that the member gets an email to them so they can submit thank you because that would be an electronic document we'd want to manipulate because I want electronic documents from everyone anything else no hearing none policy BEDB agenda for format preparation and dissemination well the chair got a little reactive on Tuesday and Mr. Hayner said can we put something on the agenda I said yes then I went back and read the policy and it wasn't too late and I went back to Mr. Hayner and said I'm sorry we can put this on the agenda because I I'm thinking that the notice for meetings is longer and probably should be at least in my way of mind I was about to throw a fit because we didn't have financial reports my fault but I think that there's a valid point so I went out of the M.A.S.A. listserv and anyone can go back on there and look at what the responses are and did a quick poll of what the lead time is for agenda items being finalized and published either on paper distributed as packet items or posted electronically in the in a device such as Novus that we're using and the other thing that's going about is that when we originally set up the policy we were unsure of the software we were using and we took a conservative approach that we would open the support documentation to the public at the time of the meeting the select men do it at the time of the formal distribution which would be a couple of days earlier having seen the way the product works I think that we might want to revisit that as well so for all those reasons I think that having a meeting on a Thursday getting stuff on a Tuesday night which is the 48 hours that are required under the policy is tough for us to really thoughtfully digest some of the material that we have and I'd like to improve our transparency and get the information out to the public earlier because now that we are a little more familiar with using the tool that at that public distribution point let the public see what we're looking at and what we're thinking about so I'd like to ask the policies and procedures committee to take a look at policy BEDB agenda format preparation dissemination and come back Dr. Allison Ampe Mr. Pierce has asked me to stand in for policies since he was unable to be here for night so as such I accept and we'll do that Mr. Heyner I agree with the chair and everything I took no offense from the chair I didn't hear anything in your tone what I what I think I heard is that as far as documentation that's coming even if there's an agenda item and unless it's an emergency thing if it isn't provided it doesn't show up at that meeting I mean and that I appreciate everyone having to work very hard and getting things in time and stuff but as the chair said when did we get it in a timely manner we have a chance to digest it and we're far more efficient and that shows when I first came on the board it was no meetings were half hours and I think that's because of the efficiency that we've established among ourselves and with the support of the administration and everything so I would I'm I'm going to suggest that to the policy committee when they go forward thank you I think one of the successes of this committee is that we operate under no surprise this rule and that we don't put things on the table and it gives everybody an equal shot at it and and I think the community has got a right to see what we're thinking about as well before we talk about it so these are important things and I I thank the committee for supporting that and I hope that the policies and procedures committee will look at this and make some adjustments and the other conversation I think we have a presentation in here we have a presentation yes that is a power point the last item is a power point but we'll forge ahead without it it's fun good evening thank you for having me I would like to say that the good news is that we're tracking pretty much in the same place we were last month it's very early in fiscal 16 to be drawing deep conclusions but so far so good as far as FY 15 we came in remarkably close to exactly on budget which was a little surprising to me as well it turned out that we had encumbrances in lines that over the years that we've been tracking expenses very closely we make a point at the beginning of the fiscal year to encumber the entire amount we think we're going to need for the fiscal year and items such as cleaning supplies for custodians custodial contracts energy gas electricity the big ticket items that we're always going to pay no matter what happens and so we encumber the amount and then we pat it a little bit particularly my staff is eager to make sure we never run short and so in fact we didn't run short we ran right on and I thought we were going to be a little short so it worked out very well oh yeah there it is yay oh thank you for bringing it back so do I click it this way yep yep click it yep the one on the top is the point point at the thing we don't get the whole thing yeah okay yeah it does yeah it's a PDF so just scroll down oh scroll down alright so additionally to coming in pretty much on budget for FY15 we were able to return the $200,000 we promised to the town that to be set aside in the next town meeting into a stabilization fund for future special education needs so it's important to remember that when you look at the final expenses that $200,000 is not included in our expense amount because we haven't actually spent the money so it came out of reserves and has gone to the other go down to the end of the PDF it should give you the size thing on the screen hit the minus hit the minus hit the minus right there one more there you go there we go yep can you go ahead so there isn't anything extremely exciting to report special education continues to be about 30% of budget teacher staffing continues to grow modestly it's gone from 47% in FY11 to 53% in the budget of FY16 teaching assistants have been more ripply but they're going up and they're now since 11 of 4.2% of budget and if you could scroll to the charts this first chart shows regular education and special education spending in total dollar amounts the next slide I think is very interesting special ed is again in blue but as you see the percentage of total budget has remained remarkably steady over this period of time and I think that speaks I think it speaks very well for our management of things you know we're undergoing a period of growth and yet our sped is holding very steady if you looked at the backup numbers for FY15 you'll notice that I did the year over year percentage growth for special education and that we experienced only 1% growth we were essentially flat and I'd like to commend our special ed director and I expect you know we've already started discussions I expect that there's going to be significant requests you know basically to keep pace with our enrollment growth okay doctor Allison amp is this including out of district tuition and there's one more if you if you would thank you sorry torturing you and this just shows teachers teaching assistants and other expenses so you can see back in 11 other expenses are consistent numbers it's not like that suddenly there was health insurance in or out or anything like that this is an apples to apples comparison so we're shifting more money into teaching services of various kinds and I think that's an interesting trend it certainly speaks to our administrative efficiency as well that we're getting it done so are there questions about either 16 or 15 or anything else I will Mr. Dean when Kathleen Lockyer was the superintendent for special education and about reducing TAs yes we did do that there you can see the pinch and that year it was decided that rather than having anywhere from six to nine teaching assistants at a school we'd reduce the teaching assistants to two inclusion TAs and we would add a second special ed teacher to contemplating the need for additional special ed teachers at the school now whether that can result in reducing teaching assistants as the need grows the cost effective fast solution is to add teaching assistants but once it reaches a certain point it's pennywise and pound foolish we want to be thinking about licensed professionals and I think we're reaching that point again so it wouldn't surprise me if this goes on for a long time it's going to go up and then fatter and fatter and then a skinny spell so I just want to understand was there a shift in strategy TAs that was very specific clearly a couple years ago and now we've built up the TAs again to keep pace with enrollment growth and IEP demands I was just going to say that a lot of what you're seeing is that a lot of classes and a lot of classes where the sizes were so big that we really wanted to make sure there was another set of eyes in there so that could be the reason why because our class has gotten big as the enrollment scrunch is pushing them in. Thank you. Mr. Heiner unusual on the FY expense report which year 15 okay 15 so last year which view of 16 of the of the FY 15 expense report so this year well that's FY 16 I'm I FY 15 expense report I'm sorry it's the one I clicked on the no it's always difficult when you're discussing multiple fiscal years okay every one of the exhibits that were given to us as 15 on yes 15 expense report I'm pretty sure this is the it's probably 16 it says 16 when it's labeled but it says as of a 15 date because it's the fall I know the title on our novice title on novice is FY 15 expense report 10 6 2015 let's go to 16 your 16 and see 16 when you open the door oh it does okay thank you it does say okay I'm looking at it and I'm not okay not okay so it's the general fund budget tracking report on page four there's only three lines on this report there's only three pages on this report there's 15 pages okay so that's on which view are you looking at are you looking at it by org object or project however you no the one I have is actual line item numbers okay that's by or that's by cost center line 68 item number 6866 legal services specialty 6866 okay so you're looking at it by program 6866 I've only been doing this for four years page four of 15 in the FY 15 reports okay I'm with you I see it now legal services $150,000 that's the budget yes that's the FY 16 budget not the actuals okay down just a bit 6905 I think two or three lines down yep it says school committee legal services school committee $252,000 okay if you go to page seven line 83102 mm-hmm it says legal services $300,000 okay what's going on there it's going to get even more because on page 15 the exact same 83102 is $450,000 page 15 page 15 well page 15 is special ed only because page 15 is special ed only I understand we have so the 150 that I first gave you the 6866 said legal services for special ed it was 150 yes 83102 says legal services 150 on page 15 so you just said that's sped back there mm-hmm okay but the exact same line on him 83102 added a $300,000 because it's a combination of both special ed and general ed okay but it doesn't add up to the general ed but the $9.05 is $252,000 $6.905 trying to cover you Shabon sorry $6.905 trying to sign over the top school so Diane you always keep working out but the numbers just didn't I'm sorry I'm finding it very difficult to stay with you okay it would have been helpful if you couldn't email me ahead of time I just found it tonight just look I'm having a hard time following you just want to say for the public I had done some email with Diane on a quick service straightened me right out all right so yeah I don't I don't know what's going on in 6.905 okay I don't know what's going on there I suspect oh yep I do know what's going on there what's going on there is you're seeing the combination but legal settlements appears on a different object so it's you're looking at three different cuts of the data it would make it easier for me I don't know about the rest of the committee if we had a straight item line item that said total legal expenses budgeted and then break down for SPED settlement or whatever you want to do it because it was just difficult in my head and you just answered 552 well there are three pools of money for legal there's a pool of money for special ed legal there's a pool of money for general ed legal and there's a pool of money for legal settlements that could be used for either okay and that would be a total legal expenses budgeted right and they're depending on the view and general ed legal and the settlement line is 98 I'm quoting from fallible memory here okay we'll talk talk off camera thank you thank you chair hearing none thank you superintendent's report you're sitting all nice and comfy in the back chair of honor Bob is there any chance you could black the light spotlight it's very powerful I have a few things this evening first of all I want to start out by recognizing Laura Cheson she was invited this year to present at the CIO summit conference in Chicago last week to talk about our technology program vision and this was a conference that was sponsored by the journal of technology and learning so I want to congratulate her it's an honor for Arlington that one of our one of our administrators has been asked to come and present and I'm going to ask her if she would just talk for a second or two or maybe longer than that about what were the the main messages you were giving the the nice part about the conference for us is that we recognized for something that we talked about last year and that we don't put in technology for technology's sake that we developed an educational vision and instructional foci and that we made choices around technology that would help us to support that when I got to the conference I knew that's why they had asked me to come and speak on a panel on moving initiatives forward but I was really struck by my two days it was a very long two days it was actually a working session of 50 CIO's chief information officers and assistant superintendents and superintendents from around the country there were folks there from Michigan and Illinois, Texas, California, New York several other people from Massachusetts and so you work from about 8 o'clock in the morning to 9 30 each night for two days in working groups and it became apparent to me that we actually had more philosophy than many other school districts and there were many school districts there that were all about the technology and the technical aspects of it and so it was it was quite different it was we got a lot of positive feedback from the work that we're doing in Arlington there were a number of districts that asked to contact us to talk to us to me at further length speak to our success all right anyway we're glad that you went and represented us and I think that's the important message too and I think it's important as we increasingly spend large amounts of money to say that we're doing it very carefully strategically whenever we begin a particular new initiative for example the sixth grade this year is now a one to one grade we began with a pilot and so there's there's steps of looking at where we're going before we sort of just jump in and supply a lot of devices without having any plan for them so I commend Laura for your work on this I want to touch base on the enrollment you received the enrollment report I cannot say these are official numbers I'm going to get the official numbers for you but where we stand right now a lot of fluctuation is that we are about 2% over what our numbers were last year and the fluctuation that's occurring if you've looked at these reports all month is our two people who are two people who are working with data making sure that there are that students obviously that are registered are represented in power school but almost equally important that students are represent are withdrawn from power school as well so those numbers are as accurate as they can possibly be so in that process there's been a lot of you know one week it looks like we have a 3% growth then it goes down 2.5 it's been bouncing all over and so I'll give you the final numbers once I have those but 2% actually on a population of over 5,000 when we say we're going to have 1,000 students in 10 years it would be based on doing exactly that growing at about 2% every year so what we're seeing is real at least right now and of course as you know from the this is a big problem and we've spent a lot of time already this evening on it but I think that it's worth saying that it is a problem that we can't put our heads in the sand about and we have to find a solution that we all can agree is the best for Arlington and I'm confident that we will the other thing I want to mention which I did in the newsletter this week said Arlington is experiencing just like a lot of communities in Massachusetts but perhaps even a little bit more so the opiate crisis and it is a significant issue I think one of the things that's been a problem over the years with this is sort of the stigma and the shame that has gone on with people not wanting to admit to an addiction which has contributed I think to a lot of the overdose we have an incredible police and fire department in this town and I truly mean that a number of people are alive today because of their quick action and they're planning about having Narcan available and responding so quickly in times of crisis and they're also being very proactive the police department is being very proactive in once they have identified perhaps an individual who may be in high risk of educating their family about Narcan and also providing it so we have a very proactive police department and we also have which is somewhat unique in Arlington a coalition of all of the all of the all of the human services part including the public schools that is represented on the coalition for substance abuse which is now a new director being Ivy LaPlante this coalition which has members of the school committee select men virtually every group in town is a member of is represented that has some some aspect of service in this community is sponsoring a forum on October 13 and that is going to be here in town hall from 6.30 to 8.30 focusing on identifying community solutions in Arlington and we have our attorney general more Healy coming to be the keynote speaker on this so it's again October 13 here at town hall from 6.30 to 8.30 couple more things Laura would you like mention something about the power school portal we're removing that yes I know that many parents and even school committee members have expressed frustration with the fact that if you have multiple students in the district you have to have multiple power school logons and passwords over the next two weeks we'll be putting in the new upgrade to power school a single logon and a single sign on for parents who have multiple students in the district parents will get a email or letter from their child school that will talk about how to do that and will give you all kinds of directions it's pretty straightforward but you will have a single sign on so we're looking forward to that one of my frustrations is my computer won't save it like remembering this thing will that change? so you can't it won't save your password on it so you have to constantly go back I'm not sure but I will check into that and I will let you know a quick Stratton update last night we had a we hosted a parent meeting at Stratton and thank Mr. Hainer for attending as well which are architect actually what the status of the plan is looking at modulars and answering a lot of questions I was taking notes because there were a number of very good suggestions that were offered by parents so think about we're going to be simultaneously as we work through the details of all of the modular classrooms and the challenges those present just in terms of the topography of the site what we also need to be planning for a lot of detail and we have lists we have parent advisory groups and we will be ready when school opens next year but between now and then there's going to be a significant amount of planning right down to even the moves and how the cafeteria space is used and you know the kinds of coverings that will go on there's just the detail is significant I will say that probably it might pale in comparison to the detail that's required when you move schools it's at various sites having gone through that experienced ones I want to report on the flag situation Mr. Heiner brought to my attention the fact that we have a number of our flag poles at the schools which are not illuminated and under the guidelines flags should only be should only remain on the pole 24 hours if there is illumination so our director facilities Ruthie Bennett has been looking into this and it's been interesting that there's a variety of reasons for the poles which are not lit one of a couple in one case I think the lights are just broken in a couple of other cases the lights were turned off because of complaints from neighbors about the lights shining in their homes so one of the one of the strategies that facilities has is looking at and they already have done it at one pole is to actually put the light going down and it's a solar powered battery operated alternative and so this is we're in the process of going the direction of making sure that all of our poles are lit it's not going to happen in the next couple of days it's going to take a little bit of time particularly if these battery powered lights are going to be mounted on the flag poles in which there's an issue of illumination in the neighborhood but I expect that that will it will not take a long time I can't give you exact timeline when it will be complete but I'll certainly report out when it is in the meantime flags that I think there were two schools that were afraid and those flags are being replaced and I think all of our flags will be in very good shape and I know there's a policy on this evening and I'll say right now that I fully supported I think that it's definitely something that the school department can't and the facilities department because we work hand and hand on that it's this kind of work as we move into this new era of a joint facilities department is something where we do have to work very collaboratively and we are so I'll give you an update when we have all of them and also we have a poll still that needs to be replaced at the high school which our legal department has been working on because there was a mouth that poll was I think it was a manufacturing defect in them but our legal department is working on getting that poll replaced I don't have a timeline when it's going to happen but it's certainly going to happen this year you also had in novus the information from edco lab in case we belong to two of these collaboratives and I can talk about this more at another time but I just wanted you to be aware and the community to be aware that in the spirit of trying to be collaborative our collaboratives are looking at whether there's any kind of financial programmatic advantages to doing some kind of greater collaboration all the way up to the possible merger so it's the analysis of that is beyond what I think a board a finance committee of those boards can handle so all the boards have agreed to split the cost of having a consultant hired to provide us some thoughts about all that and we have a timeline of this year so I don't think I'll be really reporting back on that much before later in the spring when we have more information excuse me do we have a figure of how much we will be contributing lab each of the collaboratives will contribute 15,000 up to 15,000 the RFPs have been sent out and I don't know where the bids have come in do we have to vote do we have to vote that or is that discretionary from the superintendent it's not discretion for the superintendent it's the boards of the collaboratives of which I'm a representative we're being assessed for 15,000 am I correct did I misunderstand it well not the school this school committee individually no it's a total of 15,000 for the I misunderstood I'm sorry it comes out of the budgets of the different collaboratives thank you any other questions regarding the superintendent's report Mr. Thielman so we have the the enrollment data is that October 1 data or is this the date on what you have is October 5 okay so it's so I don't have I don't have what is called these are the official October 1 numbers but I will get that for you okay because there's there's there is a discrepancy between our current numbers and what Dr. McKibbin projected in his analysis by about 143 well the answer is yes and no this these numbers here represent K to 12 Dr. McKibbins was preschool to 12 okay so add another what your district and our district yes he looked simply at the buildings he did and he included because the preschool is part of our lives in our high school so you would add a roughly 60 students to this number in order to compare apples to apples so he came at 5 3 9 9 so he added 60 that would put 5 3 oh 6 yeah they don't so you know would be good to have the next meeting yes we can do that next week to show to show how they match up yes I would could you do that yes we can do that two weeks from now how do we compare to McKibbins numbers Dr. McKibbins numbers Dr. Allison these numbers don't include out of district do they these numbers do not come out of district either now these are building numbers these are building numbers yes don't do it on the flight just just get us the report please because it would be good to know just for clarification we have two schools that have illumination on those flags the light goes straight up it's designed just to do that that's at Thompson and at Pierce and this is a collaboration to put the power in for the other schools because most of them have lights it's just that they're either broken or they were turned off because of neighborhood complaints if the if the light is designed right it goes straight up it does not disperse and if the one at Thompson I wasn't even sure if it was on until I got on top of it and as soon as you get on top of it it goes straight up and it hits the flag the way it's supposed so one of the things I was struck by the enrollment numbers is how much retention we had from fifth grade to sixth grade so we have a 97% retention rate and I'm wondering if you think meaning that in last year's fifth grade was 520 sorry 424 and this year's sixth grade is 410 and I'm wondering if you think that is a momentary aberration or of course we don't know or if you have any any information okay I mean we don't of course we don't entirely know what's going on with trends we don't know generally when how I think about when I go from fifth grade to sixth grade enrollment generally it's been in the neighborhood of a number of kids roughly about 40 30 to 40 kids right and that's pretty much how we've been looking at this year is much higher than we thought it might be and so the retention level was higher now maybe on the other hand Ms. Johnson's projections based on the mathematical formula and Dr. McKibbins predicted a much higher kindergarten number than we're seeing because the birth cohort I think for that for this particular group was something like 560 if I remember it was very high and we were looking we were taking what was low but our usual retention retention from that birth cohort to kindergarten is in that 84, 85 percent so we thought for sure we were going to have a class over 500 as well but that did not happen on the other hand one of the things Dr. McKibbin has said is the real indicator you've got to watch is not so much kindergarten for first grade and first grade did go up this year another sort of a surprise to me was that when you actually take the number of students there actually was more there was a greater number of students well it just keeps changing from week to week but there were a lot more students entering the high school than we would have expected this year so there's always some surprises and it's not a perfect science actually one of things I was wondering is whether that reflects sort of the desirability of Arlington high schools as compared to sort of the neighboring areas that there might be sort of move-ins that we're seeing greater people moving in when we when we saw our registrations this summer they were not the new people coming to Arlington were not just elementary parents we were seeing it across the board and it was evidenced out by the increase we have at the high school I have obviously we're sitting in the select meeting room because we've done the coup d'etat and we're we've taken over yes what about the elevator so the reason why we're here actually is the lack of an elevator and so you have an update on that we have not had word as to whether the part has been machined and ready to ship they haven't they've been we don't know these are comfy chairs they might be here I think you will excuse me I'm sorry I think you're going to be here the next when Mr. Pierce comes back you're going to be around the corner well we're going to have to I think we're going to have to have another another off site meeting the next meeting for sure what we have to November 12th the following month so there might be a chance we'll be back in the school committee room by then it's very hard to say one thing it is very hard on our custodians I can imagine IT and it's been very hard because even though it's just bringing up paper the upside is MSBA had to climb the stairs didn't they yes they did Dr. Allison Ampe how are our students handling it our students are handling it fine we have one student in the wheelchair and they they have a plan between every class and how that wheelchair gets moved up and downstairs it's carried ouch ouch right so in every respect it's hard to have only one elevator and I certainly in any kind of plan for a school this size we have to have two elevators at least two elevators just even just to have them on the two ends of the building MSBA as you know visited and the day after they were here on that stormy day where we had Deluge we had a fire drill at the high school fortunately between the raindrops a little bit because water had gotten into the walls and tripped the fire alarm that though that also happened well actually the water power happened I think Bishop yeah but then Audison also had a fire drill and they were out in the rain in the heavy rain but I did let MSBA know about about that that they just they missed the event and that we have a significant line I am in our budget for duct tape yes we do okay anything else questions on the superintendent's report hearing none we are now to the consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which the event the item will be considered in its normal sequence approval of warrant one six zero four eight dated September 24th 2015 total warrant amount three hundred fourteen thousand one hundred twenty five dollars and sixty five cents approval of minutes approval of draft school committee regular minutes dated September 24th 2015 approval of job description field monitor supervisor without an objection moved by Mr. Heiner seconded by Ms. Starks all in favor aye. Opposed? That is a unanimous vote subcommittee in liaison reports policies and procedures Dr. Allison Ampe okay so acting is in lieu of Mr. Pierce who's chair policy met on I don't know in the end of like the 28th and September we discussed a few different we discussed the bullying policy and the physical restraint policy we've been updated as required by the legislature but Ms. Bouvier is going to check if there's any mandates that need to be addressed we discussed JB which is looking at the kindergarten age we've done some research we're going to do some more we'll talk about that later and we talked about some others but the main one that we talked about was the flag policy which Bill Mr. Heiner brought to us after making some minor changes we voted to bring this to the full school committee for first read so that's what you have in your packet and I actually don't remember what what or did he assign it JT JT okay so it would be policy JT it discusses having budgets for sufficient funds to replace to ensure that there's an appropriate condition for each school in the district that how the flags will be displayed what kind of flags will be done and how other things regarding whether if they're put up and down by students and so we're putting this out here for first read we heard from the superintendent one thing we were waiting on as a committee was there was anything that the superintendent had to bring that would shake the policy like we can't get the flags up and down so they all have to be up but I didn't really hear any unsurmountable problems so we present this to you for first read any questions or comments on policy JICG tobacco or JT the flag Mr. Thielman on the current one neither one has state regulation references in it and I'm sure that there are state at least regulations that specifically address schools being tobacco free we've added the other categories as a result of that presentation I just ask okay so we'll keep both of those back thank you the other questions or comments only you first reads JT Mr. Thielman any question I have about that the Allinkan School Committee shall provide in its annual budget sufficient funds to maintain a flag that is in appropriate condition for each school in the district I mean I think I'm always wary of putting in a policy we shall maintain because it's if it's the policy we just have to follow it and the district has to find the money so it's definitely sort of a memo because there's really don't think I don't think there's anywhere in the policies that I can recall where we say we shall have sufficient funds in the budget to do X as you stated it meets the criteria thank you I'll bring that back and just and JIB needed references yeah anything else no that's it okay with that first reading anything else from policies and procedures budget Dr. Allison Anthony I'm with my budget hand on budget will be meeting in the next couple weeks I will send out a doodle we need to come up with a budget calendar thank you thank you facilities Cindy Starks alright well seems to be the talk of the day so my having had the meeting on the 24th I feel like we need to move forward but I'm not really sure how to move forward because as I said tonight I don't think this is just our decision I mean I think we can drive it because we're the ones with the problem and we need to kind of come up with or at least help get a solution but you know I don't I mean I don't know who to involve I don't know who to I mean I don't feel like as the facilities subcommittee that that is the right it's too small it's too whatever to kind of move this forward I feel like we need to include if nothing else the other members of those committees in the town you know even if it's not even if the next meeting doesn't necessarily include like a lot of public participation we at least are meeting with the town manager and the you know you know all the building people and the money people and try to figure out how we want to move this forward I mean I do agree that we need to understand you know probably from the superintendent what the timeline is you know I feel like we need a lot more thought on a lot more possibilities I really want to have some kind of brainstorming session we put any wacky and crazy and whatever idea out there and try to get our heads around what you know what we're thinking and then and then but I just so as as the I feel like as the facilities you know chair I felt like I should have more but I feel like every time I try to come up with a plan I feel like is it even my place to have a decision so I'm kind of coming to this meeting you know kind of asking all of you kind of what do you think how do we think we should move this forward and kind of you know I'm willing to take direction and kind of take input as to how we should kind of proceed let me let me say this is that we dance around two domains here we're talking about a facilities issue in the pool of community relations in going out to the community making our case gathering support soliciting opinions developing maybe a website or some other format where people can where we can aggregate select suggestions and talk about possibilities so that my idea on doing this is to arrange some sort of a joint responsibility between facilities and community relations and seeing it's probably more of a community relations issue with community relations sort of being in the lead of this to come up with some sort of a process for collecting suggestions, opinions, thoughts, ideas and pushing information the information that folks have asked for out to the community I'll ask Dr. Seuss to speak on this first and I'll go to Mr. Hanger. So yeah, so I see there's sort of two things that we need to do and they need not be the same committee. So one is sort of a working group that has to include ten manager, capital planning, school committee so forth. We're nitty gritty stuff like how do we get the money is dealt with. There's also a secondary thing that's very appropriate for community relations which is outreach to the community, engagement with the community, soliciting ideas, publicizing ideas and luckily the chair, the facilities committee is also on the community relations committee so that's how good is that. So I think those are two separate things although I encourage people to go to both sort of types of meetings. We do have a community relations that deals too late to people to talk about ideas and that certainly was going to be one of the agenda items on it. I mean, yeah, I think a website, a public forum where that's sort of an open it, you know, gather in small groups, come together just to solicit ideas, engage the community would be the right kind of approach to take at this point. Is November second field too late to sort of come up with those ideas or I'll ask for the committee. Mr. Hanger. I agree with Ms. Starks that this is something that has to be a broad community thing. We said that tonight, each one of us in one way or another. I think the template for that was that community meeting that we had on the 24th of September. We don't need to have every member of the school committee. We have basic policy committees in this town, the school committee and the select but it's important to engage the other committees, finance and capital planning and stuff like that. I would suggest that through either the chair or Ms. Starks, an invitation go out and invite one member of what materials that are needed or at least start that with these committees and then open it up. Just I'm not suggesting not listening to the community. I think that's most important because you're not going to pass anything with our community involvement and engagement but I think it's important that a small core group initially started and expand from that. So that's my opinion. I think it's important for us to get a sense of what the deadlines are in this whole process. So when do we have to make a decision that impacts the tenants of the Gibbs facility by contract by our lease agreement and then you know what are what are the timelines for and what are the decision points and so I would I think an efficient way to do this is to ask the committee to kind of give us a memo on here are the decision points here are the deadlines and then once we get that memo which I think you could probably do I mean you're doing it so we can get it in two weeks once we get that then we can figure out which committees need to meet and no matter what we do once we get the memo that tells us what the decision points are and the deadlines are you know what are the decisions we have to Dr. Allison Ampey I have questions that I would love facilities to field there's things that when I start thinking about trying to make a decision like this their information that I'd like to have and I'll send them to you but it's things like what's the impact of two small very per course base and how do the different schools how are they set up you know maybe the Otison cafeteria can only handle a thousand kids for cafeteria sorry Otison cafeteria can only handle a thousand kids but the gyms can handle 1200 you know we need to know where these spots are what do modulars look like how do they function how do they age and what's you know what's the timelines for this because for many of these decisions we're not just spending money now we're we're encumbering our future members to spend money later and I'd like to have some idea of when those chunks of money are going to be coming due I'm not saying you can answer all of these things but some of I feel like that's a great way to do it is to start asking the higher level questions and then make the decisions as we move forward yeah so that's so I was going to send you those and I've got more but it's stuff like that that I think you know these are things where I'm going do I go this way or do I go that way and I need to know this sort of thing and maybe other people have other ideas but that's you start so I think I think what I'm hearing is that if I can I think that what we probably need is a facility subcommittee meeting that maybe invite the town manager and we can talk about timelines and we can talk about some of these higher level questions and start getting a picture of the questions we want answered as well as what our timeline is especially given the enrollment numbers aren't quite as bad as we thought we don't know yet we're waiting for that report so all of that kind of moving parts so I feel like maybe something actually around November or you know but within a week or two you know of that and then and that that will help us in the planning part and that I agree that community it also allows community relations to go off and do community relations stuff which is gather that input and help kind of figure out all of the stuff that people are saying help kind of you know pull that together as well Mr. Thielman Yeah I agree with that I think set the meeting and that also gives a deadline for a report from the superintendent and the town manager and then we can look at the timelines and the decision points because as Laurie Cole said you know one decision one decision that you make creates eliminates other options so the other thing that I want to say is that I'm all in favor of getting the town involved in the process but at the and I'm I don't know I haven't seen a memo on the process yet a task force could be a good thing but at the end of the day it's an educational decision so it's a school committee decision it's a school committee vote and I just want to put that out there it's ultimately this board's responsibility we have to get the money from the right people we do we can't make a decision to just go build a school so there is a process that the school committee drives yes to get the capital planning committee the town meeting the town manager the board of selection we've been through where there's a process we drive to get those folks on board with a vote for funding so we will and that's could happen it should happen again might happen again depending on what our options are I'm going to take these out of order do community relations then go back okay quick question oh you can go first I have another question on facilities oh no actually I just had a comment that I think these conversations can go on in parallel so that right so that we don't have to wait for one to get the other exactly and I agree that really helps free it up because I think that's right I'm still I was wondering if we can get an update on the facilities okay that community relations oh so we haven't met since the last meeting but we have one schedule that's very hard to schedule November 2 so in which we will discuss a little bit of the survey result from last year I just want to present a report to the committee certainly all this stuff about how we're going to reach out to the community about the changes happening and that's probably that's our big agenda okay district accountability curriculum instruction and assessment we'll meet some time after the superintendent's evaluation process is complete for this year okay executive session minute review subcommittee one person has met his obligations still waiting for the other two I am ashamed I'm one of the other two Mr. Pierce and our chair oh good so that wasn't okay no it wasn't you not your fault I would have who would have pinged me I know I would have told you thank you special study group on superintendent evaluation is gone away warrant committee Mr. Heyner the war warrants have been signed and I would ask at one time we had announcements from the committee we're going to go to that as soon as we're done with the warrant committee it got signed and everybody got paid as far as I know excellent now announcements at all Mr. Heyner just want to commend the superintendent and the architects that were up at Stratton in their presentation the other night there were quite a few questions by the parents several of them redesigned wanted different things to happen and I commend the architects how they answered it clearly and up front and the safety of the people and I I stayed for the liaison and I stayed afterwards and there was no continued discussion so I think they were very satisfied from what they heard they're going to continue to be active but it went well thank you I just wanted to let people know that I know that Thompson we've been in it for a while but we're almost done with the video we made a video about rebuilding the Thompson we started it almost a year before we or the you know once it had been voted I know a lot of people here were actually in the video because I've been editing it and voicing over all the stuff but we're getting down to the point where I don't know I'm thinking maybe the end of the year but I'm pretty excited about it so I'm pretty excited that we did it we interviewed a bunch of people about it and it was really kind of trying to get the call kind of give everybody kind of an inside view and you know the emotion as well as the process and so I'm pretty excited about it so when it comes out I'll let everybody know but it's getting close a new career no anyone else under announcements or other such assorted stuff okay we are now to the point to conduct strategy sessions in preparation I think we do no yes no I don't think so no we do not need an executive session anybody so I guess Ms. Starks just moved to a junior seconded by Dr. Seuss all in favor aye opposed we're done awesome