 Good evening. I'm calling to order the regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, December 1st, 2022. I'm Liz X in the chair Permit me to confirm that all remote members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me when I call your name Please respond in the affirmative. Miss Morgan Yes, mr. Mason Yes Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model before we begin permit me to offer a few notes First this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on a CMI Persons wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website Persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate You are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves Both zoom participants and persons watching on a CMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website Using the novice agenda platform and finally each vote tonight will be taken by roll call The first item on our agenda tonight is public comment We do not have anyone signed up for that and then our next item on the agenda is AHS student representatives to the school committee and my understanding is that they are not able to make it this evening either So we will move to our next item, which is a field trip approval for Arlington High School to New York City Dr. Janger I am present hi great welcome if you can just share briefly about The trip and then if any committee members have any questions for you Welcome Thank you. Thanks for hosting at hybrid So I can everybody hear me okay, yes Okay, so I I'm the advisor for the model United Nations Club at Arlington High School and My senior the senior members of the club so most of the students who have taken over leadership roles are Interested now kind of post-pandemic are interested in reviving a trip that we have done in the past Which is a trip to New York for a conference in New York City Sit at the York Hilton Yes, the speaker identified himself. I Thought he did Sorry Grant my name is Graham Demick. I'm a high school teacher I teach chemistry at the high school, but I'm also the advisor for the model United Nations Club. Okay. Thank you. Pardon me No problem. Thanks so much So that the trip is going to be in March and the students Who are attending they'll go they go to New York. There's a conference. It's hosted at the New York Midtown Hotel they have a chance to then do opening closing ceremonies at the actual UN building in the General Assembly of the UN building so It's a trip that that we've taken in the past, but obviously it's been on hiatus for a few years so They're hoping that we can Bring this back Can you remind us of the dates? I know we have it in our packet, but just other March 10th to March 13 Next year 2023. Thank you Dr. Janger, did you want to add anything? Questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Hainer I just through the chair asked that when you come back if possible Do some short presentation of what the students that were exposed to and everything? That sounds fantastic. Yeah, I'd love to do something like that. Thank you anybody else Somebody like to make a motion to approve the AHS model UN trip to New York City We have a motion by mr. Schlickman seconded by mr. Hainer any more discussion Roll call vote mr. Hainer. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Schlickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr. Allison Ampe Miss Morgan. Yes, and I vote yes, that's unanimous. The trip is approved. Thank you for coming and have a great time Thank you. Thank you so much for having me Okay Our next agenda item is the Gibbs school improvement plan But I'm Pierre Maxwell and any of your colleagues if you want to step up to the Table Welcome while they are getting settled folks. I have your slides up here So if you cue me, I will do my best to sort of stay on wherever you're at But if you cue me because I need to switch it Let me know. Can you see it? Okay from where you're sitting? Not really Their slides yeah up on the big screen that'll make it other other computer Liz Sorry Put their slides up on that one or shrink the zoo. There you go All right. That's a little better Thank you to the Gibbs team for being here our sixth grade school has a lot of excellent support and exciting things going on And I know you'll be hearing about some of that this evening. So whenever you all are ready. I will drive the slides Good evening everyone. Can you just make sure whoever speaking the mic is right in front of them? Yeah I am Madame Pierre Maxwell the principal at the Gibbs school and tonight we have a team To come to present Our school improvement plan to you and with me are I am Stephanie granted the assistant principal of the Gibbs school So before we go any further I really want to give a shout out to dr. Hoyo for being True partner to the Gibbs school. I know one of the goal of our superintendent is to see our Directors and principals work really Hand-on-hand on planning for the students and look in our Ilt department or school improvement everything we do in the school. So and Dr. Hoyo and I really Are trying to make this a reality and demonstrated and so she is a partner to the Gibbs school She's in everything that we do. She has a good sense of how we operating I've had at least two occasion Last school year and the school year that I had to be out of the building and dr. Hoyo was our admin on duty. She covers. She knows the children last year We had a teacher who unfortunately had to be home for a good while dr. Hoyo taught for almost three months. So she is really The way we would like to see all the partnership between the principals and the directors and So I wanted to say thank you publicly So tonight we'll have a chance to Talk about our wins after we enter just Gibbs school and some of the challenges and the priorities for the We will focus on the 20 to 23 school year. Although our school improvement plan is a three-year plan And so we'll expand on that a little bit and we'll give it give you a Sense of our key initiative and action step and some of the support and resources We will need to make that happen at the Gibbs school. So Give school again. It's no Stranger to everyone that we have a very unique school setup having the only Sixth grade in Arlington public school. It is a beautiful thing Our children really anyone who visited the school You either wish that you go back to sixth grade and be part of Gibbs school or really appreciate what we have in the school for the Children from curriculum perspective to extracurricular to after school to the Opportunities that the students have in that building. It is truly a unique experience an excellent experience I think for most of our students and also The fight that our school really our core values the teachers everyone Understand and appreciate putting social emotional learning at the center of what we do making sure that We understand part of the Gibbs schools Mission is to really helping those fifth graders coming into the middle years and give them some of those executive functional skills They need to help them transition and access learning and get to middle school and really have the best experience possible So that also being a one-year school also present its own challenges So which we will be discussing some of those challenges tonight But we are happy to say that as trial blazers The adults the children and the parents We are used to blazing new trails and that's what we try to do every year with every challenge that present itself to us So now we will talk a little bit about our wins From last school year in particular and our transition norming We're saying transition norming because as a school that has a signature of getting a new cohort every year While we are establishing Transition we understand that we need to pivot and we need to use the data of the incoming class every year to make sure whatever Procedures and practices we've established. They are in fact the best practices for the current students in coming So transition is fluid It doesn't it doesn't reflect in its entirety exactly the same thing every year But so hence the norming for transition last school year We brought back two very Important norms to the give school which was to visit the fifth graders at their Individual elementary school to answer their questions and give them a sense of what to expect When they transition to give school We also invited them to Gibbs to come to see the school and they attended advisory and they were Oshered around the school in a tour by current trailblazers and really they had a Phenomenal day coming to visit the school to have a sense something we could not do the year before and during the year of COVID so that was really fun to have the kids coming back to Gibbs to experience that and Mrs. Griner will discuss our trailblazers guide to Gibbs So we have a trailblazers guide to Gibbs some of you might know it as the insiders guide to Gibbs and This year what we did is we noticed in the past that we only had two weeks of The trailblazers guide to Gibbs which didn't give a lot of the families an opportunity to have flexibility for their schedule during the summer So this past year we held four weeks of insider guide to Gibbs or Trailblazers guide to Gibbs so that that gave the parents and guardians flexibility around their summer planning so that the goal Down the road is to make sure that we can hopefully get all the incoming trailblazers to Gibbs to attend this That gives them the overview of what six grades going to look like at Gibbs One of the other things we started this year is the first nine days at Gibbs And what that is is that gives us nine days in a row Where we use our advisory time and then it sprinkles out throughout the entire day Where we teach the students the kids the expectations of Gibbs and what that looks like is how can we help the students? Because coming from the elementary school they we all know the executive function skills really needs to be developed and to start that We use the first nine days to do that we work on Self-management social awareness relationship skills and responsibility around decision-making and And after the nine days what we hope for is that the students can learn the Expectations and learn how and why these expectations are put in place to make it a successful school yet for them as they enter into sixth grade This year on the eighth day. We did a team building activity We use teamwork out of actin that came to Gibbs and we had two different times We had two different groups one went to the field We use the Thompson field and they did some team building activities there That was facilitated by the teamwork staff because the goal was for the teachers to be able to do the team building Activities with the students and then the students would switch and they'd come back to Gibbs or the static Gibbs And we would do some team building other activities at Gibbs Obviously we had four hundred and something students which is a lot of trailblazers at once We had to pivot at the very end due to COVID and staffing from Teamworks And so what we did is we called on who do we need we called on the curriculum directors So shout out to the curriculum directors who came and spent whether the half-day or the full day at Gibbs Shout out to the district social emotional team that came out to help us and especially a shout out to Dr. Holman and the leadership team here that came out and spent time at Gibbs to help this day be successful And then the ninth day was the last day where the teachers did a little activity to culminate that at Gibbs Afterwards we have noticed That this has been extremely successful this year the kids have definitely settled in a little bit more and know the Expectations and so next year we're hoping to do the same thing and we'll be reaching out to anybody who wants to join us again next year so I will say that Can you pass can you pass the mic down? Sorry Thank you, I will say that having been there for the first nine days What I really enjoyed about it was that the staff were modeling the behaviors They wanted our students to have versus telling them. This is what you should be doing Giving them the rules and then kind of leaving them aside It was truly modeling what that behavior should be and I think that that is truly what helps young people learn Is actually being able to see that behavior and see those the adults modeling that behavior So the first nine days were great, and I really enjoyed the team building activities I thought that was I felt like I was part of the team which I think you are Well, you know, it's what we want, right? So I just wanted to add that. Thank you And I think I'm back So another Win that you know we had at the Gibbs was Looking at our both math and ELA score of MCAS scores We've noticed that our Asian multi-racial and white students have maintained their academic performance in MCAS to what was there pre-covid Um, Dr. Hoyo, I'm so I'm gonna interrupt you for just a minute I just want to let all of you know that you're about halfway through Okay presentation time, and I just know how many slides you have so Time check for you. Okay We're gonna move on but thank you all It will be we'll be here all week if you need us Principal marriage are just donated Objectives or do you want to talk about the challenges? Yeah in in the objectives. Yes, okay, so we'll move to the yes perfect. Okay, so The the gives it has three specific goal and the first one we do call it an instructional objective goal although it is more like Creating a foundation for us to have a reading goal for the school What we have noticed is that the last two years in particular the number of students with reading needs has intensified and We also noticed that many of the students who are receiving those reading needs They are embedded into their individualized plan Whereas originally having the reading teachers at Gibbs school was to provide some response to intervention It was to do some RTI which typically would be taking a child with a specific need in a specific standard or Understanding their lacking give them a three to six week of intensive support and then put them back into class Whereas now we have children who have a full class the entire year with that need So we are seeking to understand and get a better sense for what's happening at the elementary school What are the programs they are using how do a kids qualified to to receive reading support? And what can we do in collaboration? Not only to understand but also to plan for a better transition into Gibbs and also Anticipating a capacity building for our staff because the children are coming from seven different schools different needs so we want to make sure that we are fully prepared and able to Quickly place the students. We also Part of that also affect our schedule We last year we spend intentional time Creating our schedule from the standpoint of our students with the most needs So students with this with a disability student who are English language learners students will receive math or Reading a support. We put them at the center of creating the schedule and then build the schedule around it So this goal ultimately will get to looking at our students performance When we look at the MCAS data from 2019 and compare it to the 2022 result Our students at Gibbs school if you're looking at it globally have maintained But truly when you dive into the data our white students have maintained our Asian students and biracial children have done well But when you look at students with a disability students who are long-term English language learners African-American students Hispanic students. They have 10 in particular African-American students have Dip dive to the same level as the state Whereas our students in general outperform the state of Massachusetts The African-American children are the only group that have performed as low as the state So we want to look at meticulously what is happening How can we improve instruction at a tier one level and how to do a better job with tier two and tier three to? Isolate what could be the wood cause so we can make sure that our students not only outperform the state But within the school within the district they are all equally moving Substantially showing that growth. So that's what the goal number one is about Our second goal is in line with the strategic initiative of the district around equity and school culture We are looking to improve The culture and climate of the school when looking at the panorama data It shows that many of our staff and our children do not feel like they belong in school And so what we're really trying to do is to Create intentional activities that welcome all students so We started this work last year and we did see some improvement. So if you looked at our panorama data from the fall of last year And then you look at it from the spring You'll see that it did go up and that was through like I said intentional activities with students it was by actually talking to the students and Asking them what it is that they need and what they want and how will they feel like they belong And a lot of our work is done through the core values the understanding unified and unstoppable and We implement that throughout the school day. So it's it's not just done in isolation These are values that all of our teachers regardless of what content area they are in and all of our staff Incorporate into our students lives The other thing that we really want to work on is to increase the capacity of our teachers around identity and belonging and Around cultural competency so that we can then Take our what we've learned and take the the arts our staff and then be able to through our advisory system Work with our students and make them feel like they belong We're working with an outside consultant with dr. Hoyt And in collaboration with dr. McNeil We're going to try to get dr. Hoyt in for some professional development for the district as well as working with dr. Hoyt At Gibbs and at bracket. So I'll let you go next Is our management and operations goal This is a goal to hopefully with special ed programming Currently existing in the elementary schools. There are different programs in the elementary schools and We're the Gibbs school along with miss Benjamin miss Nolan our team chair We are working together to kind of create and identify and maintain some similar programming To ensure the effectiveness and continuing services as kids transition from the elementary schools We understand this is tricky We're a one-year school and this will change every year depending on the cohort that's coming into Gibbs So really what we wanted to do is to focus more on the transition planning to which we do have you know A very good transition planning process but to start it sooner to work with consulting with the elementary coordinators and the elementary staff You know really having staff go down and observe a little bit sooner of students having staff come to Gibbs and observe a little bit earlier as Well and really focusing like several months instead of just you know an intensive one month of March So we really want to work on improving that and we've actually started to improve that this year too to support this goal number three Definitely if you can think of when you have English language learner the whole concept of foot loading so we need to do a lot of that in being proactive and Understanding the data so looking at our students as early as third grade so then we can project what kind of Resource that needs to exist at Gibbs school not just in a space or physical space So for example do we have the staff with the right capacity to instruct or support that students? If we know in third grade these five trailblazers are upcoming and they're gonna have this need We don't have a staff currently who's well-versed into that need Then they can have two summers to be able to take the courses to enroll in whatever professional learning So we can be ready to transition the children We also need to be more aware of being part of those conversations not in fifth grade But in third and fourth grade so we know we understand the child because our learners who have disabilities It takes a little more than the first nine days to truly transition them effectively We really need to get to know them last year. We met with some parents over the summer We invite some trailblazers to come to see the building to visit There's a lot of things to be layered Not only from a student perspective, but also from a parent perspective because many parents don't understand That how we operate and there are some areas where we are drastically different than how elementary school operates So we've asked for a transitional coordinator to really help us Make sure that we are privy to all that information in a timely manner But also while we are in the elementary school in those conversations Our current staff are not leaving our students not receiving their services because they can't be in two places at once So these are some of the work we're looking at doing Fundamentally with this goal number three to really have a process that is super proactive Communication is better. So everyone really feel It's Like they belong we practice this too No, right, we want our our students our parents and our community members to feel like they belong as soon as they walk in That door on the first day of sixth grade not six weeks in once We've got a chance to know the students and be able to address their needs So it really is about the sense of belonging and making sure that All of our trailblazers Belong every single day. Thank you Staff to also work on the transition to the odyssey as well. So I'm a part of that as well Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Thank you very much Questions or comments from the committee. Mr. Heiner. I want to applaud you for what you just shared with us I was a former elementary teacher and it was a different world going into the middle school The parents and the students would get hit with immediate need to Change the IEP and everything and they were as soon as you can communicate that Fied on as you have to go with the parents. You'll have a good support across the board. Thank you for that Thank you. Anybody else. Mr. Slickman. First, I want to say that Dr. Hoyo You must have had a lot of fun down that school I mean the joy that comes out of that just emanates from you when you're talking about your experience down there You just must have had a really great time down there I think we've got a systemic issue on the School improvement plans. Now, I think that you're doing exactly the right thing I've read through this carefully. I've taken a look at what the perceived needs of your school are and Your actions are very thoughtful Now as this is a three-year plan The next step and what I'm going to expect to see next year is that if you're doing something to improve reading instruction The outcome isn't that the teachers did something the outcome is that Something measurable for the students happens and that part is not Articulated in the IEP and it's not your fault. I think the systemically we need to reorganize this thing so that it's clear what How the conversation we're having here, which is sort of the middle part of it the sandwich the good stuff of it relates to the top piece of bread, which is the the needs Analysis to the bottom piece of bread, which is the desired outcome for the student that relates to it So I see very clearly what your strategy is for addressing the needs that you have perceived But coming back next year Show me the data show me why you chose this Which which is as a school person is obvious to me I think knowing your school you doing exactly right thing and then some way to measure that the things we are doing are Having this impact on kids So that you're you're connecting all you're connecting all the dots. I really Love what I'm hearing from you I think there's such enthusiasm caring and compassion, and I think you're going in exactly the right direction but in terms of doing a school improvement plan Those those dots really need to be connected and I look forward to seeing that next year And mr. Schreitman you should know I named you a few times to the staff because I'm like mr. Schreitman It's gonna ask for that and so what we're already working on The reading teachers, and I have analyzed the data to do exactly what you suggest thing But we understood we had to kind of lay the foundation On the 14 we're gonna be looking at the fourth grade data With the entire staff in anticipation of receiving their data when they are coming in so we can see Where can we plan to make the growth? So you are correct? We're leading there and so We'll be showcasing that next time. This is a huge challenge because you've got one grade at a time And you've got oops diet coke flying all over the place You've got cohorts moving your school. So the only thing you can really do is Come up with some sort of a profile for Measuring progress within the cohort based on what they're doing in previous years So that when there is a drastically different cohort and your scores go up or down Does that reflect the previous cohort and so that you're really looking at change scores? But you're doing all the right things And and I and I think that Kids are fortunate to be able to to be trailblazers. Thank you Mr. Thielman, thank you. Thank you. Great presentation. Nice to see you all again in person My my question is and by the way, I think overall the the sips of getting better and better and better of a year So thank you for that My question has to do with a comment that was made Regarding objective one the instructional goal and the number of reading needs that you guys have seen Intensified and I'm wondering if you could just dive into the why You know why what's your theory and why the number of needs reading needs have intensified so much and do you have the resources to respond to Mike Mike, sorry, just the microphone Specifically special education But I would say just in general with COVID too because a lot of the students thinking about the critical time and especially students right now They're at sixth grade think about the time that COVID hit was the third grade reading time And that's when kids really start to begin to learn to actually take in or begin to read to learn as opposed to read to read the actual words That's not my area, but I do always want to talk about reading Sort of a You know from a systems perspective, I would say also Some of the work we've done in early and foundational literacy at the elementary level has been within the past three to four years And so we're really very closely monitoring third grade data right now because those are the students who have had Relatively consistent phonics instruction and science and have done this that was about when we started some of the science of reading work And doing a lot more training with teachers around what tiered reading instruction and regular screening should look like and include And we've now rolled out all of those tools at those levels. And so over the next several years the the hope would be that yes, we're Focusing on establishing intervention for students who may not have received that kind of tier one instruction And who may as a result require some intervention right now and do as much as we can to make that accelerating intervention and not Something that takes the place of high-quality tier one instruction And we're very optimistic you've seen some of the data from the elementary schools that what we're going to see in third Fourth fifth and then up into sixth eventually over the next several years will demonstrate that some of the work We're doing at tier one is having a significant positive impact on that Okay, thank you. Thank you Mr. Cardin, thank you first I want to thank you for continuing to use the trailblazers terminology Sometimes a new principal comes in and says, oh, that's a relic. I'm glad to see that consistency. I think it's good for the staff And I'm also also want to congratulate you on the first nine days initiative. I think that's a great addition And in the focus on transition norming And now that you have that established you can communicate that to families as an expectation This is what your kids are going to have the first nine days and so that'll be great and also I just wanted to mention that we did talk about the Special Education Programming at a CIA meeting recently, so I'm glad to see it focused on in the SIP as well. So thank you for that Anybody else Thank you all very much. We appreciate your presence All right next we have the odd us in school improvement plan So thank you for having us tonight here, it's good to be back in person I just wanted to introduce some members of the team. So this is Julia McEwen who is the assistant for Assistant principal for eighth grade Amy Benjamin who is up here as a special education Coordinator at the middle school level and I also wanted to acknowledge Michelle Crawford who could not be here, but is our new seventh grade assistant principal So we wanted to walk you through Tonight kind of our three areas that we're looking to have some improvement The first is student belonging. I'm sure it's a common theme We just heard from Gibbs as well and our idea here at the middle school level His kids are really searching for their identity and we really want them to have a sense of belonging and have a sense of Community at the odd us in we believe when kids have a greater sense of community and belonging They usually have better academic outcomes and they're more engaged. We also want to recognize that right now There's a teacher shortage throughout the nation and one of the things we want to make sure is our staff feels that they belong as well So I think in the next few years We're looking to recruit staff and also retain some of the excellent teachers that we have and we need a sense of Belonging at the odd us in and some make sure that we have a good strong culture so that people enjoy coming to work our second area that we're going to talk to has to do with the math program and Well, we're very happy with our math program You know the last MCAS scores that came out Which I don't think is to be all end all but was very good at the odd us in so we were happy with that But when we look at some subgroups, we think we can do better And so looking at the math program Especially when we look at some of the scores for our special education students or some of our students who identify Is either black or African-American? We think we can do better and we want to explore how we can do better The last area is the instructional leadership team, which is a K through 12 Initiative and we're hoping to get more voice and collaboration with the teachers and the staff that work daily with our Students so that we can come up with problems of practice that we can solve So those are really the three areas we'd like to highlight tonight. I'm gonna turn it over to Julia to talk a little bit about student belonging Hi everybody, thanks for having us So last year our panorama student survey posed the question overall How much do you feel you belong at your school and only 64% of our students responded favorably which for us is far too low So we're taking a couple of We're using a couple of strategies to address this We're doing extracurricular interest and identity based activities And we're also looking at embedded activities within the school day to increase a sense of belonging and connection that students feel with oddison For our embedded or sorry for our extracurricular interest and identity based activities We've increased the number of clubs and activities that are available to students some of our notable new Editions our student council a gardening club a newspaper club And ping-pong club, which is extremely well attended on the eighth grade third-floor hallway And then we've also increased our recruitment efforts and advertising around two of our very popular existing clubs our cross-country team Which this year had 40 participants in its second year of existence and also like did a lot better Against some of the teams, which was very exciting and our drama program as well Which has 80 students participating in its plays and musicals this year. It's a pretty popular experience the other piece that we are keenly aware of is students who are feeling excluded or disconnected from the community because of a Piece of their identity So what we're doing is we are offering optional opt-in extracurricular identity based activities or groups So we have a monthly BIPOC, which is black indigenous people of color identified people Coming together for an affinity group luncheon We also have an affinity group happening outside of school hours for students who identify as Jewish And so those are two things that we Want to make sure that we are expanding and looking to expand and also that are available to students who are feeling That sense of disconnection because of a piece of their identity The other thing that we're doing is we're embedding an advisory into our regular daily programming Once a month when we have our 120 early release days We are having our last block of the day be an advisory program Which has students in groups of 10 or 15, which is also their sort of daily homework groups Meeting with their teachers and the thrust of this is really tasks connecting and fun So we have a bunch of tasks that we have our students do throughout the year We have various surveys various activities that we sort of need them to do that are more about compliance or gathering data And then the other piece of this is really providing an opportunity for students to connect at a much smaller group level than their 90 to 100 percent learning communities and also to have fun So these are one of the things that's coming up in December is our door decorating activity for our December early release So those are just a few of the things we are doing to increase students feeling of belonging at oddison Excellent, so I want to go back to our second school improvement Plan, and I want to talk about math at the seventh grade level So just to let you know most of our students either take math 7a or math 7 math 7a is our more advanced math Traditionally, we've had about 60 percent of our students this year. We have 66 percent of our students who are math 7a We have 40 percent usually traditionally who take math 7 this year. It's about 33 percent There are nine units that they cover in math 7a. There are eight units that they cover in math 7 math 7 and math 7a cover the same eight units the Pythagorean theorem unit is the one unit that is the additional ninth unit that math 7a has in its curriculum and What we're trying to look at is the demographics right now If you look at most of our special education students They take math 7 and there's also Disapportionate for students that identify either black or African-American So if we have two-thirds of our students who take right now math 7a We have over two-thirds of our students who identify as black or African-American who are taking math 7 And so what we're trying to look at as a district is how can we change those numbers? And if we can do a better job for all and I will say I want to you know Point out that for Matt Coleman who is the curriculum director and for our teachers in seventh grade I think the math instruction is great And what we're looking to try to do is raise that instruction for everyone And we're looking what we're hoping to take the next couple years is to look at how we can provide excellent math instruction for everyone and So one of the things we'd like to do in taking our time is to be able to provide Parent forums to get feedback and we'd also like to explore other area schools that have heterogeneous math classes So if you look right now at other communities around the area whether that's conquered Whether that's Lexington whether that's Wellesley They all have a heterogeneous math classes at seventh grade because the curriculums are very similar And I think that's something we want to look at We also want to look at some of our math support teachers and how we may be able to use them more effectively So in total we feel like it's our responsibility to make sure everyone gets a great math Education and what we want to do is take our time to make sure that that happens our third goal this year has to do with the instructional leadership team and Over the last four or five years that I've had the privilege of being at the Odyssey Middle School Things that have succeeded have been collaborative efforts with the staff So I would point out that I think our civics program in eighth grade is great and that was really Denny Conklin who was the former Director of social studies and history really led a department to come up with the curriculum I think it's been very successful I look at the bridge program that we have at the middle school level in which we had Counselors and other teachers looking at other school systems to see how successful it could be I think that went well and this summer Julia led a Group of teachers to talk about how we should open up the school years and procedures and Protocols and I think we've been much more consistent with that and I think we've had a better start of school Unfortunately over the last few years with COVID and just the way schooling has been we've had to be sometimes taught down some of that has been for Reasons for the state and medical reasons But I really want to have a community at the Odyssey that really Encompasses a collaborative effort with the staff and look at problems of practice that they think needs to be addressed So I'm excited about this K through 12 ignition initiative. I'm really excited over some of the people we've had to volunteer I think they've got some great ideas of what to do as a school to make things better because at the end of the Day I think with any good organization what you don't want to do is stay static is that you want to constantly look for Improvement and I think Partnering with a lot of the talented teachers is gonna bet give better results for kids. So That's our presentation. We'd be more than happy to take any questions. Thank you Questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Slickman Again the note on Connecting the data, you know, the thing is when I took a look at your your goal of hitting what was it 70% for yeah I had to thumb back about five pages in the document to figure out where you were coming from and it made sense The the one thing I really have to say to you guys is That in looking at the state website now, I always check your MCAS data It looked like your lowest student growth percentile was fifty two 52 it was an SGP mean SGP of fifty two for low income on English language rights That's the lowest you're above the state average in growth on your lowest group and you and you've got growth numbers that go up into Your multi-race non-Hispanic Latino with a 70 so you've you've got amazing growth numbers. I Cannot Evaluate you on what students can do when you when they walk in the door What I can evaluate you on is the value added that you're provided and I just want to take this Opportunity to say that these numbers compared to the rest of the state is just some really dramatic value added And I think that the Odyssey community needs to be commended for that. It has been noticed And and I want to make sure that The teachers and everybody who worked to make this happen Understands that They've been seen they've been recognized. They've been appreciated and these are just indicators But you've got a large population of students in the school 884 Students were tested. So that's a good enough sample to show this consistent measure. So Thank you No, thank you And I think it goes to show you like Matt Coleman has done a great job with his math department And I think Deb Perry has done an excellent job with the English department And I think that our teachers really worked hard through the pandemic They put a lot of time and energy into making sure that the kids needs were met and so we're very fortunate to have a lot of talented teachers and We talked about belonging we really need to make sure that we can continue to recruit and retain those teachers and That that means a lot for us because at the end of the day It's the kids outputs that we're looking to make sure You know does very well and you know I think a lot of teachers put a lot of heart and energy into that and I think it paid off And I think it was a real credit to the staff that we have Mr. Cardin Thank you so In the in the SIP there are some dates on the heterogeneous initiative that are different than the slides With some of the work are having already occurred. Did that not occur? Yes, that that was typos I apologize for that that was wrong years last year we wanted to start some of this and it was just kind of You know get through the years all all hands on deck Our whole idea with the math program right now is like anything is to see if we can improve upon things and What we do realize is I think you know as was mentioned earlier the student growth numbers were good And I think for we did we did well and we're proud of that But I think all good organizations asked how can we even improve you don't rest on your laurels You try to figure out what you can do and so I apologize for some of those some of those Because you had mentioned it last year and you said you were gonna do some initial work And so it would be helpful to as you do some work It would be helpful to get updates at our curriculum subcommittee about that because it's an important issue I just want to note. I mean your gaps in ELA are similar to your gaps in math Yes, LA is heterogeneous and math is not so I don't think that's necessarily the cause of your gaps I'm certainly happy to entertain You know you're planning and your exploration of this, but I think your rationale that rationale is not does not ring true with me Yeah, I think I think we're trying to just investigate and one of the things that You know, I'm really happy working with Matt Coleman and I feel like he's got a great mind for a lot of math And how we can do better and he you know I met within the other day and I feel like I get a master class in mathematics About everything that's happening and so when he says ooh, can we try this and if we move around here? I'm like, yeah Let's give it a shot and investigate and I think you're constantly looking at how you can be better In everything and I agree. We might look at some things and say this is where we want to go and We might all of a sudden say, you know, maybe that's not where the evidence points us But we are you know gonna give things a shot and hopefully improve education Great. And the other note is that it's also mr. Coleman who came in and introduced that's the skip math program Right where six graders can skip to seventh grade math Which creates a different type of heterogeneous of homogeneous grouping, right? So You know, and he was very Passionate about that. Yeah, so I do want to make sure that whatever we're doing We're still challenging the people that aren't in that program Yeah, what one of the things that happens in this dives down deep into kind of the hole is That when you do have homogeneous math classes It does affect the makeup of other classes Because as one class is going on you have other students who are in different classes So if you look at the seventh grade like class sizes, you'll notice in seventh grade There's actually larger ranges than in eighth grade because there's more of a split In seventh grade than there is in eighth grade and I'm sure Julie could tell you that depending on the period She knows what math class is going on and that also affects other areas of education Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much Thank you for being here Can I just while they're leaving? Thank you so much for our middle school teams We really appreciate you you could not find two more dedicated Wonderful schools that teach our middle grade students than these and these leaders are very student-centered and very thorough in their work So very nice job teams. Thank you Next we're going to have the AEA budget proposals miss keys Welcome. Hi. Thank you. I'm joined tonight by Teresa Spangler who is one of our teaching assistants from anatomy preschool I've got it. I just I don't So I want to start by saying I think this is the weirdest budget I've ever put together and not just because it's a lot more formal than what we usually do but when we pulled people and said like What are our budget priorities? We did not get back a giant list of FTE's which I found really interesting So I want to walk through this with you and talk about kind of where we came from. I quickly outlined our process It's the same process we use every year Our building maps meet with staff late October early November. They say, you know, where do we need money to be spent in the next year? They come back. They share out, you know, we make big giant lists at our November board of directors meetings We kind of highlight things flag things I Should I put a picture of our list in there so you can see I think tissues for every classroom was one of my favorite ones this year And then we I email out to all of our school department administration and say like hey If you have anything that you know, you think is really vital Let me know and we'll try to see where our interests line up and then this year We actually did some pricing out of things. So Our overview is about a million just over a million dollars in operating expense increases To the best of my ability. I didn't get a chance to sit down with mr. Mason and calculate this all out But I base that on our current contracts and some internet research We have some capital improvements that we just want to touch on with you And then we'll finish up by talking about our big dreams. So our first request has to do with the preschool and We are proposing after a lot of work over the past couple of years that we shift the TAs at Minotomy preschool to become SSPs and This is something that has been a On the table for a while. It was in the district budget proposal last year. It was not able to be rolled out But monotomy preschool is essentially a supported learning center It exists under the special ed umbrella and all of our other supporting learning centers in the district are staffed by SSPs currently there is significant overlap in the work that the TAs and the SSPs are doing and When we tried to draw a line this year to resolve these issues it's really resulted in sort of an us and them atmosphere at the preschool and Has led to erosion of the working environment there What we feel is that students will benefit more if we have a more inclusive model where we don't have Certain people working with sub separate students and certain people working with the inclusive students but everybody able to work with everybody at the preschool and That's really why we are proposing this and I'm going to let Teresa talk a little bit more about that As Julie said I'm a TA at monotomy. I've been there for seven years now And I'm going to speak to the budget proposal to shift TAs to SSPs at monotomy As you know monotomy is a full-inclusion Multi-age preschool more than 50% of our students are on an IEP and these aren't single-service IEPs These are comprehensive multi-faceted plans that include multiple services and program placement Program placement beyond preschool only occurs when a child is placed in a sub separate classroom And also because classrooms are multi-age each class has a mix of three to five year olds So there's a wide breadth of need and disability in each class Developmental needs can range from 12 months to 60 months. It's it's large. It's a large span And as it stands now TAs are a vital part of the classroom team and it's a role we gladly take on We support our teachers with data collection for IEPs and We teach we we assistant teaching life skills daily help skills self-help and Striving to help children become more independent to open up that snack container To pull that paper towel down from the dispenser just these really basic skills We also assist with potty training bathroom training and changing diapers and We help implement and tweak positive behavior plans aimed at reducing challenging behaviors We assist with mobility skills and devices and we assist with curriculum Math handwriting lively letters social skills Preschools not milk and cookies anymore. It really is it and we help manage daily routines and We spend a lot of time filling the kids buckets with praise and positive reinforcement Because that's the way we operate at monotony TAs also take part in consultations with Related service providers OT speech PT and we learn from them to better serve our students and Have been trained to assist students that have iPad these Devices to help facilitate communication All of our TAs are working directly with students with high needs and complicated behavior profiles We've also been trained in CPI Crisis prevention intervention. We've been trained in CPR. We've been trained in first aid during the lockdown we took a 40 hour online course in registered behavior technician training We've also had pyramid model training Which is a desi program that we have at the preschool That's a framework for social-emotional learning if you ever spend time in our preschool you will see signs all over the place Speaking about what our expectations are at MPS And all of the staff speak the same language when addressing what our expectations are That's how much we're all on the same page at monotony Part of the pyramid model framework is a parent component I have been trained by our social worker to assist her in teaching a Parenting class. It's a seven-week course that Is called positive solutions for families and it's extremely helpful to the parents who Participate in this and we've taught it now for three years We're finishing up. We're in the middle of our session for this year and we hope to Just back to back to back to keep teaching this course throughout the rest of the school year On personal level we just like our jobs. We really do. I like playing with Play-Doh and building with blocks and Playing with Legos. I mean it's fun to sit on the rug and play It really is and that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be in interacting and and and just teaching children social skills through our interactions and We really enjoy working with other staff to see our students grow and learn The staff culture at monotony is really special and very rewarding We continually strive to learn more and do better during the pandemic years, we were all hands on deck and it only made us grow stronger together as Julie pointed out There's much overlap between the TA SSP duties at monotony and it's Unrealistic to think that a TA will not work with all students that are in their classrooms Especially as integration is a high priority When an integrated student exhibits challenging behaviors in my in the classroom I work in I'm unable to Intervene and assist because I haven't been trained in this child specific intervention plan due to my role as a TA I'm not to intervene That just goes against the grain of who we are at monotony I Want to assist and I have the training to assist properly It's also unfortunate because it doesn't serve the student well, and it doesn't serve All the students in the classroom. Well, it sends a very confusing message. Am I a trust adult to be trusted or not? It's confusing and It's also Unfortunate because it goes against the culture of monotony preschool. We're working together for the growth of our students is the norm It's the way we operate there Monotony is a unique school with a distinct program that stands alone in Arlington public schools It should be regarded as a supported learning center because of the population that we serve I Would also add that we should have a designated school committee liaison like all the other schools in the district do and I heard another speaker mention a K-12 K-12 initiative. What about preschool? Don't forget us. We're vital and we serve a really important population in this town And your staff there is well trained and eager to help I Asked that the committee recognized that the role of TAs that the role TAs are presently Filling is that of an SSP? We are specialized support professionals who should have the classification to match what our duties are more importantly Students will benefit from a more inclusive model where all staff work with all the students Thank you. I Have to follow that. I'm not nearly as persuasive on the rest So that was our biggest request from the Union Some of the other things that came up the most common request that came up is training for new paraprofessionals I was surprised when we surveyed our members. This was the number one thing people said We hire and lose a lot of employees because they're being thrust into situations. They're not prepared for we don't have a real strong Onboarding procedure for paraprofessionals. It is getting better, but it's still not what it could be So we're proposing some money We I priced out 35,000 I just figured hourly stipends that we could do some after-school trainings for new hires because there's they can't be done during the school day There's just no time Especially because many of these people are working with special ed so we can't really pull the special ed team to go train the new hire So for teachers to lead these trainings and for to pay people to attend trainings if they're going to be required for their jobs We also proposed some money to pay our newly hired paras for one additional workday So that they could come to an orientation day before the school year begins if they're hired over the summer We have a week for our unit a members. It is they are salaried So it is not a separate cost, but because our unit D members are Hourly we'd have to pay them for an additional workday, but I think that in the long run that would be really money well spent And then also that we could start I think expand the practice that I'm seeing in some places right now of a built-in shadow day for new Hires that they don't just get told like hey, you're the new grade 4 Ta you're gonna be in this room for this morning in this room for the afternoon have fun And that they actually get a chance to sort of shadow somebody for a day There's no financial cost. There is time and energy costs You know it's one more day that that room doesn't have a person in there But I think having a qualified person in there going forward after that would be well worthwhile So that was the biggest request from our teachers is like help our parra is get more training Our our other big request ELL support an Additional EL teacher at Pierce was a huge request And then inclusion support for secondary EL and that that kid that comes with options People said it would either be great to have a coach who could help teachers with modifications or to have paraprofessionals in the Beginner ELL classes to who could help on the fly So what we have right now is a increasing number of beginner EL's who are included in classrooms usually except for English At the secondary level and sometimes you have a really wide variety of languages in one classroom With no in-class support So adding we don't have parra is for EL right now But having an extra body in those classes who could sort of check in with people make sure they're doing You know, they're on task or if they have questions they can help them and the last thing is iPads for beginner EL's at the secondary level and the reason for that is because basically Google Translate is Fantastic when you can just hover over something and it translates it for you. That's really hard to do with a Chromebook So what we have is kids using their phones and we're trying to like don't use your phone during class Don't use your phone in the cafeteria, but that's literally how they're communicating. So The teachers have said could we get could we just get some iPads for the secondary beginner EL kids? Because then they could use this translation software. They could access more of the curriculum So those are our EL related requests and Then the big one is special ed support and this is We're going big here, and we're going something totally different. This has been bouncing around in union discussion groups for a while but The idea that if we had a district wide Evaluation support team, which would be adding a psychologist OTPT SLP and a social worker who could Not be assigned to a building but could support the entire district and could float support where needed So if one of our psychologists is slammed with Evaluations, it would be somebody else who could go there and help if we have like we had last year Like a maternity leave and we can't find someone to fill in or we have somebody who's going out on medical leave for a while We would have a backup person who could help that out It would allow the people who are building based to stay building based rather than the you know Having to spread people out all over the district to balance some of these off caseloads and this would be a group that could help out with testing because like right now our Some of our special educators end up Missing a lot of the time they're supposed to be servicing kids because they're off doing testing for other students Which can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days So it would be you know a team who could come and help with some of that testing And then provide the results to the liaisons or to the learning specialists who could actually be the ones to write up the IEPs because they're the ones you know the students So This is something that has a lot of support in our special ed staff And I'm we're putting it forward as Consideration for you the other thing would be some unit C positions to help with some of the paperwork that our liaisons are doing We are paying highly qualified people top of the salary range on the unit a pay scale to like make copies and send mailings For a lot of the special ed stuff And it would be great if we could have some unit C support who could help with some of that sending out Notification letters about when meetings are going to be You know putting you know mailing progress reports that kind of thing So that's we're throwing those out there for your consideration It's hard for us to sit here and say we need to add more ta's we need to add more learning specialists and liaisons because we can't Fill the open positions we have So it would be great to have more of those I Don't know that that's the best way to plan going forward when we've still got open positions We can't fill right now So if we can get the people we have some back-end support We think that that would be more expedient going forward So those are our special ed support proposals In terms of technology we love that we are a one-to-one district right now, but we do remember that we work with children Children like all of us are forgetful sometimes so sometimes the Chromebook it's left at home Sometimes the Chromebook doesn't get charged And we we just need some extras We need some extras that can live somewhere in the school buildings that if a kid who forgets it or if a kid drops it Which occasionally happens? Or sits on their backpack at lunch out on the field because they didn't want to sit on the ground and they forgot their Chromebook was in the backpack That you know they're not just out of luck for the rest of the day can't do the activities I've given my teacher laptop to kids before I give my charger to kids all the time So just having a little bit of extras in the classrooms or in the schools would be really helpful and finally Power school is awesome. There's a lot of data in there We don't have a lot of people who are able to access us and use it to the best of its ability And if you want a real-world example of that if I want to get an alphabetical list of all my students I have to open up each one of my classes copy the names paste them into a Google doc or a Google oil sheet And then do like split the columns and then sort it after putting all five classes in there There's got to be a way to print a report from power school and we know there are some people out there who can do it We don't know who those people are and there's not enough of them So we'd like more people in the building to have power school training so that we can actually Access this data pull this data print out reports every teacher should be able to go in and be like which of my kids Have signed a photo release and just print out a report and get that data And right now it's like a five-day process of trying to find somebody who has the right access to that or even if you can find it You have to click on every kid's individual name You can't just print a master list So it would be great if we could get some more people access to power school and like train them So there's more people out there in the buildings who could make this program more functional for people And finally, I don't know what this is gonna cost. This is a capital expense. Good luck Climate control is becoming a big issue and we haven't really dealt with this over the past few years because it's been like windows open for COVID and keep everything going full blast, but Dalin needs work. There's leaks. There's some places that have uncontrollable air conditioning There's other places that have uncontrollable heat. There's major concerns about air quality there So we'd like some work there Audison has a zone that involves the main office and then the music rooms downstairs and some of those rooms off the lobby That just is cold a lot of the time and the heat just seems to constantly be breaking in that area There's also other rooms that are essentially 90 or nothing Like the heat's on or it's off and when it's on man, it's on And the custodians have said like yeah, there's just some rooms that are just not there's something wrong Okay, so Yeah, across the district a lot of complaints about very hot classrooms in the early fall and late spring Thompson in particular is one of those places and then Not expect you to do anything, but want to you to be aware AHS and monotony have major issues that with heat Hopefully they will be resolved after the rebuild is complete, but it's it's not a happy teaching experience in parts of those buildings this year When the heat's not working properly or working too well So we'd like you to you know spend some money in the capital budget looking at some of these heating issues over the next year so and then finally if we can dream those unfilled positions have really hurt this year and Nobody's blaming the district. We know that you've posted the positions. We need we know that you're trying I know Audison had somebody come in from a staffing agency this week late We know people are trying But it's really hard and it's it's in some of our schools. It's really hard We really appreciate in our negotiations last spring efforts to increase our TA salaries You know, we settled in early June and then towns around us who settled in late June and July and this September and October Settled for significantly higher starting salaries for power professionals. So like the gains we made were quickly erased So If you want to reopen the contract and raise salaries, I'm always open for that But if we can't do that, you know, could we look at hiring and retention bonuses perhaps? Because we don't want to only give money to new people. We want to reward the people who are staying in these low-paying jobs But that that's our our pipe dream that maybe we could get some of these position fills if we could find a way to Get some more compensation to them That's about what we got like I said, it's a weird. It's not a whole bunch of FTEs. It's a Lot of you know training and support and that kind of thing. So Thanks for listening. Thank you Thank you very much. I appreciate hearing all of it. I have just one question about something at the end When you say AHS and monotony have major issues about heat Do you mean old monotony? Oh, no. Well, like temporary monotony Yeah, yeah Okay Yeah Oh, thank you. So obviously we can't negotiate here at the table. Oh, I know I know Clarification about whether whether we should think about negotiating. I mean in the past like last year We always felt that it had to be a bonus to everyone And you and you sort of said we need to do hiring and retention bonuses. So it again, it seems hedging that way again if if we just theoretically would a package that Paid a hiring bonus to people who are being hired now late in the year But the people who got hired in August got missed out on that. Is that something that that would at all fly? Is that something we should even think about or no? I I'm less concerned about the people who are hired in August than the people who have stayed here working for 10 15 years When we've been so significantly below everybody else and really shown loyalty to this district To then say like but this new guy who might not even last past June is going to get this extra money And you don't get anything. That's where I'm more concerned Yeah, and I'm also concerned people are gonna quit like it like there's so many jobs available right now that I Don't want to like get people angry and have them leave because then we're in no better shape. Okay. Thanks. Yeah I do want to follow up on the Parmenter thing we we've kind of that's been funded with the high school building project I think as you know, so what what like so what the heat isn't working what's going on? We've had some days where It's basically either we're boiling or we're freezing it just the heat won't stay on some days and There's other days where we have the windows wide open in the in the air quality just feels horrible It's just it makes match So we did have one weekend where for some reason the heat was off during the weekend And then everybody was freezing on Monday morning and it took forever for the heat to get back up We started checking in on that over long weekends to make sure that we're not like over the holiday weekend That people weren't coming back to a frigid building But they're and at AHS in my office is one of the places where your options are either you're really cold or you're really hot or You're hot and then you turn the air conditioner on which is not super energy efficient We do seem to have a bit of heat regulation challenge, which I have been talking to Facilities about but I guess our ability to modulate is just very low in these older buildings All right I don't know what okay. Well, I guess we I mean Departmenter, we should be looking into that. I'm into we should look into so par mentor is Well par mentor is been constructed and so it's out of the building committee's jurisdiction technically, but we should still follow It is yeah, it is okay. So we should okay. Thank you for that information about the par mentor Which we just put a lot of money into From the taxpayers of the town. Okay Geez, thank you Allen is a 16 year old building right or 17 something like that. So Dallin's got all these issues too Dallin is Slated for some improvements to the HVAC system. Oh, I don't know mr. Mason Do you want to jump in here on timeline in capital? You have that better memorized than I do In terms of the Dallin school, yeah, yeah Well the Dallin school that they were actually working on we we purchased some ventilation equipment and I believe that it was going to be done during the the break the winter break But I will have to confirm the final timeline But all the procurement was done for he The most recent ventilation equipment I don't believe there's any other thing tapped for capital at the moment for Dallin And we are aware that Allison has multiple climate zones It seems to be that office one You see people in coats a lot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Same at par mentor Better climate zones too. Okay. All right. I guess well, we have a call tomorrow, dr. Holman Okay, thank you for that As a school person I You know, I feel your pain on the climate I have never worked in a school where the heating systems have all worked uniformly and well There's always been hot rooms. There's always been cold rooms. There's always been schizophrenic rooms and and it's just Amazing when things are just going well And and you know just keep up on the conversation I This is the most impressive Union budget report I have seen thanks. We were told this we were told everybody was stepping it up this year So we did too First of all, I'm tissues as a former administrator I will tell you that if you're walking through a secondary school You can tell which classrooms have female teachers because they have the tissues Male teachers and I completely guilty to this when I taught high school math I never had tissues on my desk, but you go down the hall and the women did so, you know We need to train our teachers are male teachers a little better Well, the schools provided them during COVID but they and like I think technically there's some somewhere But they they're really scratchy and they go Where they provided You know I Also ran a preschool and you know, I hear you on your your monotony conversation and you know, thank you and I would love to visit and Because I love this the when I when I was in Lowell the only people who loved my singing were the pre-k early childhood kids I'd sing them when I walked by they were online for the potty preschool is an easy audience They love the attention The training for paraprofessionals that's that's really a thoughtful request And I think the other thing we we never do is we never train teachers how to work with other adults in the room I know the first time I had a para Okay, now. What do I do right? Right? And when I was hiring Paris You know trying to match them in the right para to the right teacher and try you know Fortunately, I had a couple teachers who were experienced at Paris and and they knew how to bring them in But some teachers just looked at it said, okay. Well fine. Thanks now now what? and the equity lens that you're viewing the ea Students through I think is really really important. So You know for a list of Union requests, I Just I love it. I I embrace it. I love it and as a school committee member I've got to sit here and say nothing, but thank you very much for this really very persuasive and thoughtful report Thanks Oh, sorry, so dr. Hope. I want to say that I also want to say Julie hold on one second. Sorry No, I also really appreciated the completeness of this and I think that you both really painted a clear picture of what it's really like to Be a teacher or a paraprofessional in a classroom and the amount of things that you are asked to do on a daily basis And the kinds of things like tissues that it's sort of assumed are available that are not and so a It was as someone who shares all of this Experience with you on a daily basis. I think it's really important for the community and the committee and the administration to hear Not that I doubt that they don't know this What it's like on a day-to-day basis. So thank you and dr. Howman wants to say a few words madam and mr. Merenter. Do you need tissues? Mr. Mason I are on it I'm just saying like at the first day of school next year if there was a palette of tissues in the lobby And I was just take one on your way out. You'd make everybody's year that that's easy to solve I do want to also say the theme of this year's budget request process And we have been through a marathon four days with all of our cost center leaders And now it's great to see the AEA's presentation which Ms. Keys has shared with me over the weekend is alignment It's been amazing to see our leaders and our union where we're a partnership And we've seen so many requests come through from multiple different people and multiple different voices And that really shows us that we're moving in one direction. So thank you so much I have to agree with mr. Schlickman. It's these are exceptionally thoughtful requests from our staff We agree with you and we want to work with you and make sure we can make these things happen. Nice job. Thank you All right They are you all are welcome to stay and listen to reorg or you can go home Thank you all for being here So next Dr. Homan is going to give us an update on the central office reorganization since she began her tenure here In July of 2021 There's been some changes to some positions titles and some movement of reports. And so The budget subcommittee and I have asked For her to share this with the full committee. Thank you. Dr. Homan, okay I Will do my best. I want to I really want to focus on the first three pages of what you have in your materials because The fourth page while It's my favorite at the moment. It's also very live So it's changing on a sort of regular basis as we work on the strategic plan So I'll walk through the first three. I will briefly speak to that last sort of future vision strategic plan page But wanted to give everybody a sense of sort of where we've been and where we're about to be in January so the what you see on your screen here is probably hard for folks at home to See very well or really even anyone in here who's trying to look at the screen It I sort of have to zoom in and out on this because it's a very large chart But this is the organizational chart as of the moment. I began in the position for the central office Staff and I'm already noticing an error because this should not say assistant superintendent of student services It should say director of special education So we have a couple of things that we're still tweaking on these will make sure that we have final versions to the committee And these are definitely still a draft one of the things you'll notice Is that they're in this original org chart are a lot of direct reports to the superintendent? And that's one of the things that we've been trying to build some systems around that provide for upward mobility and therefore some retention incentive in our upper in our central office as well as a little bit of ability more ability for me to do some direct leadership of people who are in the central office, so You'll notice that in particular some of these director of operational areas are reporting into the superintendent in this chart That you know we added that year the director of diversity belonging Inclusion and equity and moved the director of Metco that was new at the start of FY 22 And that the director of nursing pre-k to 12 director of SEL counseling pre-k to 12 Were under the assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction at that time So now I want to go to the start of this school year because we had one Important shift that happened at the start of this school year Which is that Ms. Elmer became the assistant superintendent of student services from previously being the special education director in conjunction with that adjustment we Made the early education coordinator a full-time coordinator and increased some team chair roles To give a little more capacity at the monotony preschool We moved the director of social emotional learning counseling director of nursing in their departments Beneath this office and that even some things out at the central office level though Most of these other functions were still Reporting directly into the superintendent with the adjustment to mr. Mason's title in January of 2023 So this will be effective January 1 of 2023 You're seeing a pretty significant shift in the organizational structure So we will create the assistant superintendent of finance and operations at least for now all of the positions in the budget office That currently report into mr. Mason will continue to report into mr. Mason And in addition to those roles the payroll manager and the four payroll specialists that report to the payroll manager the director of Transportation and the director of food services will also begin reporting into mr. Mason and then the dotted line to two town Side leaders the chief information officer and the director of facilities which are primarily operational functions We'll have a dotted line now to mr. Mason functionally right now. This is how a lot of this operates It's because it is more or less impossible for a lot of these folks to report Directly and to me and for me to provide the kind of leadership and oversight that would be required of these functions They tend to go to mr. Mason as their liaison at the moment. This will simply make mr. Mason their supervisor I would say that that's a little less true perhaps for a chief information officer who sits on our cabinet But it's a natural shift for her to be Going directly to mr. Mason first and then when needed he'll come to me or she can come to me So this is the shift as of January 2023 As we move into the strategic plan I want to be very clear that what I'm about to show you is the future. It's not necessarily FY24 it's not necessarily Happening right away, but these are some shifts and you'll see the ones that I just noted in yell in orange Are still in orange and then the ones that are in red are things we want to do eventually Some of these things are things we anticipate doing sooner than later Others of them are things that might get tabled for a year or two. It kind of depends how the five-year plan Shakes out and where certain adjustments are expected to be made. It of course depends on the availability of funding And it depends on the outcome of a potential override So all of these things are penciled in and this will change with time and we'll discuss rationalizations for adjustments as we Encounter them, but a couple of things I want to draw attention to is first that the finance office will come eventually under a director of finance Somebody who will oversee the financial aspect of the office of the assistant superintendent of finance and operations and Report directly to the assistant superintendent finance operations. This creates upper mobility within the operations functions of the district And also alleviates some of the direct reporting structures that would be underneath that office It creates a clerical role for the assistant superintendent finance and operations, which does not currently exist There's no assistant to that to the CFO. There's no assistant to the that office So that would be needed. There is there have been multiple requests this year You've seen some of people allude to them tonight to build out the office of diversity equity and inclusion To have more coaching support when it comes to equity and inclusion work to have more specialist support in the district More providers of professional development for diversity equity and inclusion work And so you're seeing a little bit of build out of this office though There's been a lot of discussion this week about exactly what that looks like and how we can actually create some dotted lines between the diversity equity and Inclusion office and the deputy superintendent of teaching and learning, which is why you see a dotted line there on my screen So we're thinking through how we can kind of matrix these two offices because we see that work as pretty Tied to itself like there's professional development going on. It always needs to be linked to this There's curriculum work going on. It always needs to be linked to this. So how can we make that work? You'll also notice another big adjustment is that there is a new office There's a director of communications and family engagement. This is the welcome center So we've been talking a lot about a welcome center. There's a in strategic priority for There's been a lot of talk about building a family welcome center That will have resources that will invite families into the district in a welcoming way and provide whatever they need in order To get enrolled but could also be a hub for communications and engagement with families could provide forums to families and opportunities for families to learn with us This breaks. There is currently a role in my office that is grants and communications That we have we get a lot more grants than we used to Which we are very happy to have and there's a lot of coordination that goes on with a F as a part of the grants administrator role We had added the communications function onto that many years ago Because it was something that the staff person in that role thought was important for the district And so she sort of took it on and then when I came into the role We have focused heavily on communications work for the district this year And over the past 18 months since I came on board and it's a lot There's there it's too much for one position. And so this has broken that position into two There's a grants administrator underneath the business office functions. And then there is a New office that is going to be focused on communications family engagement potentially to include communications experts To potentially to include perhaps school-based family liaisons What all this would involve is going to be hashed out as part of the strategic plan priority for and I need More clarity on that before we can sort of nail it down But we are imagining creating that new office and that that would be a member of the cabinet These positions along the top with the exception of the attendance officer who's sort of Still reporting into me, but it doesn't sit on the cabinet All of those other positions at the top accepting the building principles would be the superintendent's cabinet So that's an overview of some of these Adjustments that we've been making the most important one to really pay attention to probably being the one That's about to occur on january 1st. I'm happy to take any questions that you have Mr. Thielman, so thank you very much for this The cabinet members include who's your cabinet just right now the cabinet includes mr. Mason miss Elmer dr. McNeil mr. Spiegel Patricia Shepard the CIO and Julie Dunn grants and communications And Margaret director of equity inclusion. I was like six. I don't have it everybody. Yeah, and your direct reports right now 17 right because you have 10 principles. No right now. It's like 24 or 24 Yeah That's all that's kind of a lot to evaluate now. It's this chart. Oh, it's I don't really know that's that's how many there are I think it's about 25 25 People to supervise and evaluate. Well, you know, you might that's good So January of 23, which is just a few weeks away. It's gonna go down to 18 21 Really? Okay, then I miss oh Okay, that seems is I you know, I don't even know I mean frankly is that is that typical of I mean a superintendent's across the region? That that many direct reports in a community this size snow Yeah, I was gonna say it just feels like a lot of communities that's smaller. No, yeah, no, it's not it's not super You're you're you're in Waltham Not that many yeah, I was gonna say yeah Yeah well keep keep Cutting it down. It's it's it's an interesting exercise because I think we've had a lot of conversations as part of budget planning around what a Boundary role definition and like what we want to make sure someone has access to Supervised not to control it but to be able to influence it which is where that conversation around matrixing comes in I think you might see an org chart ultimately that has a lot of dotted lines and you know It's important to note too that our teachers have a lot of dotted lines like they Miss keys reports to a director of history and social studies and a principal and also has a couple of assistant principles And a lot of people leading Some of the folks throughout our organization that's beneficial at the top of the organization too because it prevents siloing so You you might find that you know We try to have as much opportunity for people to work across these offices as possible But we do have to kind of define those reporting structures And this is it's much more balanced certainly on that last chart than it is on the first one. All right. Thank you What are the coaches fallen so they would be under the The relevant directors right now they report to the relevant directors of Their content area, but I will also say that we're shifting we have Coaches coaches that we've called coaches who are systems wide like they might be K-5 or K-8 They're being called specialists now because we want to differentiate these roles because our coaches are really about They need to be in the classroom as much as possible and you can't do that if you're not building based So we have coaches now in literacy and math at every building at at the elementary level But we have specialists who do content area curriculum work and try to get into classrooms too as often as they can To work directly with teachers in some of the other content areas And they would live under their content area experts But the coaches would also have that dotted line to their principal because they Are school-based and they work directly with their principal. Yeah, that's really one of the toughest things to Because You know if you take a look at the org chart From the superintendent through the principles really feels like an accountability line Whereas through the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction department department heads to coaches is a support line and One of the things you really need to have in terms of building relationships between coach and Teacher is that the coach isn't also filling into the accountability function. Oh, yeah Principle has so that clearly and in I'm not saying it's happening in Arlington, but as a problem We always had in Lowe was that principles who had coaches who were reporting to them would Would kill the coaching and have them doing all sorts of lunch duty and other stuff in the school Or they're not really doing what we put them there to do so that I'm Really really sharp-eyed in terms of watching where that kind of Position falls within the strands in the org chart so It looks like I See that we need to reduce a number of direct courses superintendent. I mean that's critical You can't you can't have a couple of dozen people reporting to you assistant superintendents and principles Should basically be it with maybe one or two other specialty things, but other than that We've got it sorted out in a way that Makes all the jobs manageable and has some sort of a coherent structure So I'm very very happy to see that you're really attacking this difficult thing which Oftentimes within an organization chart things just sort of happen naturally in and I see that many places were throwing lines now where they naturally occur versus where they have been in the past, but I Hope the community realizes that While on one level it looks simple or on another level. It's very difficult and something We really should be doing thoughtfully and systemically and I'm glad to see that we're doing this Mr. Cardin, thank you. Just a couple quick comments first. Thank you for Putting this all together because we haven't had an org chart before so it's good to know where everybody stands And it shows needs for improvement that you're making on the sort of the long-term vision You know as as our growth Plateaus Our financial ability to support additional positions is going to be extremely limited So we may have to be much more thoughtful about Where we're creating positions, maybe there's other positions that are less important And things like that. My only other comment is the same rationale that you have for a director of finance also supports a director of special education and and I Again, I think moving forward. We need to think about whether You know the assistant superintendent of student services role Really can be the directors of special education and oversee all those other things Just like these students who this is in superintendent of finance and operations Who's gonna have difficulty doing everything and being the budget director, so I can't even see miss Morgan Okay, thank you very much for putting this together and it's really helpful to see the adjustments All right select So we as a committee need to select a school committee member to the advisory panel and naming and memorials at Arlington High School per policy F F dash e and so just to give everybody a And understanding so the panel would include a minimum of one representative appointee from each of the following One the superintendent's leadership team to the school committee by vote of the school committee Three a school administrator for Marlington High School For one to two staff members from Arlington High School five and Arlington High School student representative selected by student government and Six a minimum of two community members by vote of the school committee So dr. Homan and dr. Jinger Are would like to start bringing this Advisory panel together and so dr. Homan asked if we could start to If we could find a committee member who would be willing to serve on this advisory panel And I know mr. Hainor won't speak a bit later about the community members, so is there anyone on the committee who is willing interested Mr. Seelman are you automatically a member of that as being the chair? I'm not automatically in fact I was gonna encourage dr. Allison if you do I So we got to have a name in this is what we all voted for Okay Would someone like to make a motion to nominate your move that mr. Seelman be Designated for this appointment. I'm not chairing this on a right like dr. Homan's gonna chair or something I am not on this committee My appointee is the CIO Patricia Shepard with Michael and Rob as alternates Okay, we have a Mr. Slickman seconded by mr. Hainor to a point mr. Seelman to the advisory panel on naming and memorials at Arlington High School any more discussion Roll call vote mr. Hainor. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr. Allison Ampe. Yes, miss Morgan And I vote yes, that's unanimous. Thank you, mr. Thielman Okay Superintendents report dr. Homan. All right First day strategic planning update we have Three community forums that are complete the third one just ended about 45 minutes ago I hope it went well I was up there for the first half hour and then I came down here to spend time with all of you and They have been really Energizing conversations. I've really had a lot of fun with these our cabinet team has been present at all of them and We just held one in Boston last week mr. Thielman came to that one And we are getting a lot of input from families that we're collecting input from students right now as well We will be doing a review of drafts and feedback by our teams Mr. Anderson our consultant who we're working with took what all the ideas that have been generated so far by the teams on the 12 Initiatives and developed a comprehensive draft, which I am in the process of reading through. I just received them earlier this week Everything looks fantastic so far and we're looking forward to getting a draft to all of you Right now. It's slated for a meeting. I need to talk to miss X about this It's slated for a meeting later in December. We also have a CIA meeting later in December And I'm wanting to explore whether and you all can weigh in on this whether the full committee wants to see that first Or if they want CIA to look at it first and get a draft in January I know that that pushes some timelines back a bit But it would also give the planning team a little bit of breathing room to look at all the feedback that they've gotten in So that's something that we might want to discuss The year-to-year cost-out is something that we're going to be generating as we're also generating this year's budget And the final plan is still slated to be completed and shared in January It is a tight timeline in terms of turnaround and gathering feedback Which we're still doing but I think it's a realistic one depending on how the teams respond to some of the drafting work That's been done in the past couple of weeks another a few additional Updates we had first. I want to celebrate that an Arlington high school AP art student Augustin Donaldson Gaul is Exhibiting his work. He was one out of fifty from sixty two thousand AP art and design entries for the annual digital exhibition and his work is being Displayed digitally and I can happy to send anybody the website if you're curious and would like to explore some of the other artwork That's his artwork up there on the screen He said in his display on their website for this Display that he's grown up in a house full of music And so many of the records around his house don't necessarily just have the artist on it But instead an image that's fun and colorful that encapsulates the idea of the record itself And so his artwork tends to Mimic that sort of artwork in his very abstract. So I wanted to share that honor This week as I noted earlier, we have been doing budget meetings with our cost center leaders many requests Have focused on actually the supportive infrastructure to both lead and support student-facing staff I think you actually saw this also in the AEA budget proposals there's not a lot and I think we've done a lot of work to sort of Support the enrollment Increases at the elementary level there are certainly some requests to support enrollment increases at the middle school level because those are Classes are moving through now and at the high school level But there's also a lot of requests that are focused on making sure that everyone has the support that they need to do some of the Learning we want to do aligned with a strategic plan. So you'll see at that theme I'm sure when you see the request report that will come to you at the next meeting Our APS calendar committee has been meeting We are getting very close to sending out potentially a survey to the community regarding some of the things We are considering a major topic of conversation for the calendar committee has been around religious Observances which are not actually religious observances They are days that we take off on religious holidays because of an anticipation that we may not be able to effectively operate on those days due to Short staffing or high student absence rates We are looking to do a bit of data Gathering about this as we prepare three years of proposed calendars for the school committee's consideration So my goal is to give you in January three years of calendars that you can take a look at And discuss and deliberate on and potentially vote on so that we can have a calendar set out for the next three years Of course, we need to make adjustments. We can do that As we go playground update all playgrounds are open one of the other pictures that's up there on the screen Is mr. Amati about to cut the ribbon at Pierce. So we're very thrilled to have all of our Playgrounds open. We still have punch lists on some of the playgrounds that we are doing little repairs to if we noticed something that was wrong But we're very happy to have full playgrounds at all of our schools now open a Quick update on odyssey transportation. This is something I added to the update later today But we've received a lot of feedback from families about Challenges for families who live in East Arlington getting to the odyssey. We are aware of these challenges I was spoke with mr. Mason and Our transportation director Steve Angelo today about the feasibility of getting something in place so that our students can get to school on time We would not be looking at a return bus because that's not as big of a challenge We have a lot more MBTA service in the middle of the afternoon But the MBTA service to odyssey in the morning has been a pretty big hurdle for a lot of our students And we don't want them getting to school late or getting to school stressed honestly because they were having trouble getting to school so we are Looking into what we're gonna have to do to get this off the ground I think a realistic goal would be February March But we're trying to get the bus drivers. We might need in place the actual buses We might need in place and the good news is that we might have a couple of electric buses before long so Hopefully we have a solution coming. We are responding to families saying we're sharing their feedback with the MBTA, which we are And with our elected officials to see if there could be any movement on some additional transportation help and run bus runs in the mornings Deputy superintendent search we have posted the role Congratulations to dr. McNeil. He has a signed contract And so we posted the role as we came back from the holiday break and we will keep it posted until December 16th Okay, and are looking at doing an initial round of interviews the week before we go on break or immediately after we return from break Depending on the search committee schedules. We're in the process of putting a search committee together It will include members of the cabinet Principal team director team members of the AA and members of our community So looking forward to getting that started and enrollments are in your materials for today Thank you any questions or comments from the committee Dr. Austin ampy Thank you. I was just wondering how's the turnout been at the forums We have more people sign up than show up. I haven't say maybe Half to two-thirds of people who sign up show up We had fairly low attendance at the one in Boston, but the couple of families who came included one kindergarten student And it was a lot of fun We had the highest attendance actually at the one we just held today We had maybe 10 or 12 families there today and we had maybe about the same at the first forum And we have the highest sign up for the fourth one. So that's the virtual one. So I'm not super surprised by that I'm also working on because we've had I think you know people are busy. The world has opened up lots of evening commitments I understand why it's hard for people to make it to these so I'm gonna work on In the next couple of days a way for families who haven't made it to a forum to learn a little bit about the initiatives Review the overviews and provide digital feedback if they'd like to on their own time So that the teams can have as much as they possibly can That'd be great. Thank you Okay Policies for first read. So there are 11 policies here. So what I'd like to suggest is Mr. Schlickman, the chair of the policies and procedures subcommittee sort of give us an overview of of all of them a lot of them are sort of updates recommended by MASC and then I will Name each policy and if anybody wants to pull it for further discussion We can do that and then those that Committee members are willing to put forward To suspend of the first read move to a second read and then approve and then we can have a conversation about Any that get pulled does that so so essentially you're running a consent agenda? I'm proposing that I do that. That seems reasonable. Okay So the and you want to pull them for first you want to you want to get them out tonight because of Talk about them in other words that they're well if you want to talk about it say hold yes, and then we'll go To a second read into the second reading two weeks Okay, it looks worse than it is because a lot of them are just Very very minor. In fact, the only thing it's really new new is the electric vehicle policy We now have four stations here at the high school and we're gonna have more when the Second phase is over. We have two up at Gibbs, but particularly here at the high school We've got a significant problem with people who are parked blocking the EV chargers either People who have EVs is think oh, I have an EV. It's a parking spot for EVs when it really isn't It's a charging station or people who just see it as a parking spot and know that we're not gonna bother with them Now the towns has in talks of the deputy town manager who is Managing the whole EV program for the town has been very cooperative in fact Encouraging us to move forward on this policy Because it's a it's a growing Concern throughout town because one of the goals of the sustainable our links and group on the town side is More EVs and because of the demographics of the town and I fit this a lot of people who want to have EVs who don't have the ability to have a Charging station at home and being a condo dweller. I don't I rely on public charging stations so when Somebody who's relying on a public charging station encounters a charging station is blocked by people who aren't using it It's a significant issue and some of that's on our property some of it's elsewhere in the town and We're looking to coordinate with the town side in order to do something constructive And so that's exactly what we're doing here We're calling for a policy that will post signs that comply with federal regulations and in requests at the police to enforce them Agenda format preparation and dissemination be EDB We're just adding a couple of items that usually appear on the agenda what what's happened is is that a couple of things pop on in the superintendent in Conversation with the subcommittee Decided these are important enough to be included just sorting into the standard template BEDH and BEDHE Guidelines for public comment we noticed that What was in our policy does not align to What we're doing in practice and what we're doing in practice isn't really Stated in the agenda isn't really what we're sort of looking to do so what What we're looking to do is revise the language in BEDH E which is the exhibit to the policy of how things work is Add this language members who wish to address the committee during public comment or advised a register to speak by 3 p.m On the day of the meeting by telephone or by email directed to the administrative secretary of the school committee The list of persons registered to speak Ordered by the date and time of request shall be presented to the chair at the beginning of the meeting Additionally, there'll be a sign-up available prior to the in-person meeting if the registered speakers do not Consume the 30 minutes of time allocated for public comment the chair may recognize persons in attendance who request an operate an Opportunity to speak the chair shall call upon persons who have requested the opportunity to speak based on the meeting format Speakers may participate remotely or in person If the number of people who sign up exceeds those who we can reasonably speak in 30 minutes speaking time may be reduced Or the number of speakers may be capped at the discretion of the chair persons unable to speak due to time constraints We'll be invited to speak at the next regular meeting the school committee So we incorporated some of the language we have now With the reality of what we're doing now is is hybrid meetings Kcd we referred to council, so that's not before you school choice We're removing a portion of that policy that does not conform with state law and Here is within many of the other policies going forward past this point references or language pertaining to the Crown Act Which is chapter 117 to the acts of 2022 governing non-discrimination and hairstyles is added student discipline on JIC As a reference to the Crown Act JIC a student dress adds the reference to the Crown Act JB equal educational opportunity adds the reference to the Crown Act AC Non-discrimination Including harassment and retaliation Again adds the reference to the Crown Act I Think there was a couple of another reference added in there, but it's really no policy change AC-R non-discrimination policy similarly the Just in terms of the references Gba as well GCF as well Though the language around protected groups is tweaked a little, but that's basically what's happening within the group in in the Novus in the subcommittee reports is a draft of the meeting minutes and the MASC policy newsletter with the advice to What we should be changing Thank you. All right, so I'm gonna just say each policy and if you would like to hold out for discussion just say hold So policy ec that ec-v The electric vehicle charging stations BEDB agenda format agenda preparation and dissemination BEDH dash e guidelines for public comment I would like to Policy JFBB school choice policy JIC student discipline Policy JIC a student dress Policy JB equal educational opportunities Policy AC non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation Policy AC-R non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation Policy GBA equal employment opportunity Policy GCF professional staff hiring Okay, so those will all be moved to a second read And possible at the next meeting I just so one of the things I wanted to mention. Well, I guess since I held BEDH. Oh My What I'm my sort of challenger concern about People come people who can come and sign up is the discrepancy between people who can't physically get here at 630 to put their name on the list to speak But could get onto a zoom and raise use the raise hand feature so I guess The way the public the way the public comment procedure is written now Which part of that is what I did was the three o'clock time for everyone Was because I wanted to give equal opportunity to both people who could get here in person and people who wanted to speak on zoom so Depending on how other people feel I Would like there to be a way for someone on zoom To use the raise hand feature if we're going to Allow someone at 630 to come and put their name on the on the sign-in sheets. I guess that's That's my thinking around this policy right now and why it is the way it has been well I've been chair mr. Heyner and then dr. Allison I'm still confused why the three o'clock if I'm at home and intend on coming to speak What's the problem of me calling up and tell miss Diggins that I plan on coming put me in the queue in other words The queue ends at 3 p.m. The day of the meeting Whether you're live or whether you're virtual currently yes, right, right? I'm I can't understand why we need to change that Is someone going to get it? I apologize. I'm gonna be sarcastic walking in the dual If nothing else should go at least at the bottom of the if we're gonna have this policy You should go at the bottom of the queue, but the problem it happens It's now going to diminish the time If we have three or four people you're all going to be able to do the max time But if we have ten or twelve and I plan on I have a document that I want to share And it will take more than a minute or whatever the piece I get to find That's the part I think is that inequitable I Understand the people walking in should be able to speak Maybe the solution is the chair will have the option to extend the time Well, I mean that the chair has that option anyway anyway, so then Go with the policy is presented Mm-hmm So I am not in My concern with having people be able to raise their hand on and want to speak is Just a practical one that We have enough problems with zoom bombers and and stuff that and I don't feel Comfortable with our ability to manage that technological Barrier well enough that it feels like it's a way of derailing the meeting. I feel like this is giving both People who anticipate coming in and people who want to speak on zoom a chance to sign up and be first on the list But you know if they sign up by three the first on the list they all get recognized In whatever order they signed up But I also feel uncomfortable with telling people who just show up That they can't speak if that was their intention to do And I recognize that there's a disparity between the experience for the zoom people and the people in person and maybe at some point if we have a way of Reading out the zoom bombers Mm-hmm, I would feel differently, but right now I just I don't want to see our meetings be derailed by You know we've all seen what so I I so I agree with that I don't I I'm uncomfortable with the hand raising also but I also am uncomfortable with Someone who is able-bodied doesn't need child care has a vehicle decides at five o'clock that they can they want to say something They can drive here come up the stairs walk into this room put their name on a list and someone who Is home with coveted has child care needs is disabled doesn't have a vehicle The 77 bus doesn't work decides at five o'clock that they want to come and speak and they don't have that opportunity So that that's my position. I we're a committee and I will go with the majority but But I wanted to share my my feeling Mr. Slickman, I I share dr. Allison Ampe's concern in terms of managing the meeting with Trying to solicit people raising their hands and then an issue of well, I raised my hand and he didn't recognize me Traditionally the way to speak at this Committee was You show up and put your name on the list And when we went to covet protocol we changed so that we developed the sign-in sheet So that we knew that If you wanted to speak We were looking for you on zoom It and that that takes a certain amount of work So that we're adding the service now that we're back home in the school committee room and allowing members to participate by zoom I don't want to take away the ability for members of the public to register and sign in and look for them for the meeting As in addition to the way we've done business But I also don't want to take back the right that people have always had to come to the meeting sit there and put their name on the list so by take so by Shutting off speaking by appointment at three o'clock We're taking away a right that people have traditionally had But we're also giving priority to people who were being thoughtful enough to say hey I want to talk to the school committee. Please put me on the list So that's why in my mind I sort of like this policy. No policy is perfect I'd love to be able to go and have as many people coming in but we also have to manage the meeting in a fair and respectful manner and I think this is crafted in such a way where we are Neutral to folks who are coming in and Not exhibiting any kind of bias to people who are friendly to us or people who want to offer criticism So it's really difficult balance and I just think this is the fairest Compromise of how to approach this Mr. Heiner Do you I'm asking first Do you see the raising of the hand at any time during the public comment by people online? The select board No, no with which you know Okay, my concern is remembering town meeting last year people all of a sudden had comments during discussions and stuff and reacting Maybe I haven't been clear my My preference which I'm in the minority and that's fine and this will pass as written but um Would be that we That we have a time by which Anyone needs to sign up whether they are speaking in person or by zoom No, I'm not suggesting we use the raise hand feature. I'm suggesting That everyone have a deadline for signing up Miss Morgan um I It's it's tricky because You know, we're at a place right now where we have like one or two people joining us on zoom and I'm sitting here looking at Mr. Mason and I'm remembering back to this meeting we had in august of 2020 and I was the chair and We were on the phone because like literally people couldn't get in because there were like more than 1500 people that showed up to that meeting And it all on zoom and it was really really stressful um, and there were you know, literally like dozens and dozens of public comments and um I think you know if if people so What what I would like to avoid Is and we we had this at that meeting where there were a lot of people and it was very contentious And again, I hope I never want to go back to august of 2020 ever in my whole life, but we have like What what happened then was that people started to raise their hand to give public comment In reaction to other public commenters, right and that is where things can can get really tricky. Um So I think you know if if we were going to do zoom commenters up until like people like The policy has written but including zoom commenters It would it would need to be that like you raise your hand buy 6 30 in the same way that like you get like You don't get to just decide during public comment that you're going to go put your name on the list, right? There's a point at which Ms. Diggins picks up the list of people All of our fans who have come to see us and walked it over To Ms. Exit and say these are the public comment people There would have to be the same mechanism to do that for the zoom people, which I think is probably doable um And so I guess the piece that I would want to prevent is the ability to sort of jump in and provide public comment As public comment was happening. So I definitely agree with Ms. Exit and there has to be a cutoff time and If we're going to provide the same cutoff time for zoom and in person then You know, I guess that would need to for you know, my preference would be that that's at at 6 30 um But certainly people could sign up in advance But then the in person people could do it until 6 30 if you raised your hand on zoom because you've just decided to log in And you found out at five o'clock that They're discussing the calendar Then you can do that. Um And so I don't know that That seems like one way to do it. Um I'm I'm less concerned about the zoom bombers because I I think we can just like kick them out really fast, but I I don't know. I'm not a yeah Mr. Cardin Yeah, I mean you could still require an email to miss diggins and not do the raise hand thing by 6 by 6 30 right Or 6 25 to give her five minutes But I I can go either way. I mean we get very little public participation as people are not Locking on our door to to speak to us. We have chats. We have lots of other opportunities for participation. So Whatever whatever the policies committee ends up with I'm fine with Mr. Yeah, I'm just wondering Is it how easy we make it for people to sign up they just email you is that what they do? I mean, is there like if if you really wanted to be You know, you could create something on the website that allow people you want it You would you like to sign up for for public participation here's here's when you do it the deadline is x I mean, there's like a way to make it simpler for the public and more accessible Um email is pretty simple. Uh an email is pretty simple. Well, it's the easiest thing to do Once we have them going through the website to go to what your every every step you take Uh structured and mr. Heiner made the point advocating for adding phone To the email is that there people might want to talk to us who just don't do email Yeah, that's true. There are some there are some but sometimes email is not the easiest thing for everybody It actually isn't and actually if you make a website more accessible it actually increases traffic I mean, there's a lot of actual experience that I have with Mr. Mr I didn't finish yeah, okay, okay Thanks for letting me finish So Would it be would it be possible for you to make a to to like make a proposed amendment for us to consider? Actually a written amendment is that rather than just because I feel like we're talking We're trying to wordsmith on the fly and it just doesn't feel like a really productive way to do this I mean, this is a way to win the water just this is the first read so people could Present amendments at this time. Yeah, I was actually saying that but thank you for for for making it Improving my my language. I appreciate that Could you write something? For the next meeting. Yes. That's what I would suggest Yeah, I would suggest that so that we actually have something to look at Okay, and then the other thing is is it in the wording members? I think that it should be members of the public, right? And that and that in the red. Yeah, I don't have the yeah, I do. Yeah, hold on What paragraph one? Well, no, it's red in the red the new language here the general rules for the committee's committee's public comment period members Of the public, right? Okay. Yeah members of the public. Yeah, sure. We should have that there. I think so. Yeah, absolutely All right So that's what I suggest. I think I think you should write something we should talk about it And it's a it's a motion to amend the the proposed thing It's perfectly legitimate for second reading and either passes or it doesn't and that's the way to do this Thank you, mr. Sillman. Of course. Thank you for letting me get the floor Anything else on this policy's policies? Okay, we will bring them back for a second read at the next meeting So now I'd like to have a brief discussion and possible vote to hold our March 16th 2023 regular meeting at the Metco headquarters In boston Ms. Diggins and I have worked to arrange this date With metco for there to be a tour of their exhibit halls a presentation by the executive director miliar bahay tom About metco and then we would have our a ps metco presentation As part of that Some things we will still need to think about is Finding a way for a cmi to have their equipment there to record it to post our meeting later And I know there were questions about the budget the public hearing on the budget is the meeting before so this does not affect The public being able to come here or watch live our budget Mr. Thielman, I move that we have the meeting on the 16th at metco headquarters 11 roxbury street boston, ms. Jesus Second We have a motion by mr. Thielman seconded by mr. Schlickman any discussion mr. Cardin what time? Uh, it would start at 6 30 the tour would start at 6 30 or the meeting would start at 6 30 The the tour would start at 6 30. I asked for only 45 minutes So I'm sorry. So what time would the actual meeting start? Like 7 15 So the tour is 45 minutes. Okay, the tour it but it includes the presentation by Mr. Our bahay, thomas, so Would that one we want that as part of our meeting? At any rate, I mean, I I think I personally think a presentation about meco, which should be an important part of our meeting Yes, yes, we need to get adjourned the meeting at 6 30 and then we take the tour But we need to be in boston at 6 30. Yes Anybody else I think this is great. Um, I was impressed by a report of what the belmont school committee had done a couple months ago and I was thinking that we should do something some more Down the street from my office is great You'll be early Miss morgan As someone who unexpectedly today did not come to our meeting Would that one would we be able to do hybrid for that meeting or probably not right? They're not set up for it It's not really set up for it. No, okay. So just if you're sick, you just don't go. I think that's fine Like back to the old times All right, uh roll call vote mr. Heyner. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr Allison ampie. Yes, mr. Morgan. Yes, and I vote yes, that's unanimous. Thank you Consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so request In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence more at number two three one one five I'd like to separate Hold the warrant Not pull the what pull the minutes the minutes. Okay. Okay. So i'm gonna finish reading the warrant and sorry That's okay More at number two three one one five in the amount of seven hundred eighty six thousand seven hundred twenty six dollars and two cents Dated november 29th 2022 Yes So Second We have a motion by mr. Slickman seconded by mr. Thielman. We'll call vote mr. Heyner. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yeah, mr. Thielman. Yes dr. Allison ampie. Yes, mr. Morgan Yes, and I vote yes, that's unanimous. Um, okay approval of meeting minutes november 17 2022 mr. Heyner I abstain I make a motion. Okay You're abstaining the gift. Okay second All right motion by mr. Cardin seconded by dr. Allison ampie to approve meeting minutes of november 17 2022 mr. Heyner I abstain mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Slickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr. Allison ampie. Yes, mr. Morgan Yes, and I vote yes, that's six in favor and one abstention I just want to point out you can vote on minutes if you're not at the meeting Yeah, historically we haven't so i'm in town council city Yeah, it's just a minister okay subcommittee leads and reports and announcement budget dr. Allison ampie We'll be scheduling the meeting in the next couple weeks community relations That's your heyner uh, the school committee chat notes for uh, november 12 2022 we're forward to the superintendent The next school committee chat will be on december 10th for grades K to 5 The school committee representative for the allington human rights commission has indicated that she will not seek Reappointment at the end of her term in june 30th on june 30th 2023 Before opening it to the public i want to offer to any member of the committee first If you have an interest to serve as the school committee representative, please contact me Prior to the next community relations meeting which will be held on december 8th And at that time at that Community relations meeting we will also be discussing the two community members For the school committee advisory panel on naming memorials at allington high school thank Curriculum instruction assessment and accountability miss morgan We are meeting on december 21st to talk about uh, things related to our December 21st not the 12th the 21st uh facilities mr. Thielman well given tonight's uh Mom shell by the a a president ceo We're gonna meet to talk about some of the issues raised by the union leadership and figure out what's going on Okay, I don't know when I just got the news Policy and procedures mr. Schlickman Yeah, I mean Yeah, we we had a lot of fun at the last meeting. We talked through a lot of Technical changes just want to mention there are a couple things on the agenda The budget committee will be sending us A proposed change on our policy related to budget calendar Mr. Heiner asked us to consider what our policy should be pertaining to Uh, how we recommend people for appointment to the various boards and commissions and committees that we have to deal with And we're also going to be working with the cia committee in terms of recommendations for Classes and levels Arlington high school building committee mr. Thielman We're meeting on uh, tuesday at 6 p.m And the project is going great Superintendant evaluation mr. Cardin no report the azon report announcements Mr. Schlickman at the masc conference It turns out that There's this little award that was presented unfortunately the recipient of said award was unable to attend because He had to Attend a funeral in new hampshire at the time and everybody missed having him here He said is a condition for presenting the award that I can't say anything nice about him Uh, which is very difficult because I really like the guy but I I want to Look back at the time that I first Met bill heiner not really met I came aware of him in town meeting when he stood up and said We should fire the superintendent and all the school committee members should be recalled And then he ran for school committee and we all ended up voting for him because the other option was considerably worse And we we went and did the uh retreat And talked about roles and responsibilities and understood who we are and how we interact with each other And and what it takes to be a good school committee And he took to that like a duct taste of water He he was all there and he has been the most collaborative cooperative person on the committee who challenges us at times But always Supports us and backs us in addition to doing that. He's Given us the opportunity to donate money to see him go in a dunk tank To go and swim in freezing water To do all sorts of altruistic things on his own time to make the community better and to Do wonderful things for children So in recognition of this the massachusetts association of school committees Decided to present him with a lifetime achievement award and recognition of his many years of services a strong advocate for children And his unselfish contributions to the community of arlington presented by the massachusetts association of school committees november 22 Congratulations mr. Hey One of those rare times where I can't talk Thank i'm going to hold my responses for uh march 31st I have already started working on it something special for each one of you so anticipate Including the rest Thank you mr. Schlickman Any other announcements Future agenda item right motion to adjourn So moved second Motion by mr. Thielman second by mr. Heyner mr. Heyner Yes, I'll vote Mr. Cardin mr. Schlickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr. Allison ampy miss morgan Yes, and I vote yes