 at this point. And that's been very clear in all the communication. So one of the other issues that we have faced is the issue of equity and equity in many different ways. One of course was just simply technology access. So we've done, even since our last meeting, we've done another distribution of computers. This time we had a little over 550 computers that we distributed. This time, because there were so many, we had them at every single school. The week prior to that, we had about 400. So altogether, the district has distributed over a thousand of our Chromebooks for students in grades one through 12. And we continue to get some requests about that. And those are basically being handled at the school level at this point. Another issue of equity is just time equity. It's not always possible for students to be able to come into a Google Hangout or a chat at a specific time during the day because of issues, their parents may be on a, maybe working in a home or there may be more than one child using a computer. Or they may be taking care of their little, their brothers and sisters so a parent can work. There's a lot of issues, and there's more than that of things I've heard, that present equity issues for having assignments, the synchronous to a specific time. So everything that we're doing, other than when we schedule a chat or there's scheduled office hours, that has been asynchronous, meaning that the students can go to Google Classroom at any time in the day and to communicate with their teacher to learn what the assignments are and do them at different times during the day. And that is going to be true through this entire period that we are in, up to May 4th. So those were the key issues. One of the report, the entire report that we had to consolidate as much of the information as we could about remote learning has been sent to all parents, is on the website. Key ideas in that have been linked back to the FAQ that's on our website. We continuously update the enrichment website as well as information about how to access technology, how parents can help their student login. So there's just a continuous effort to stay current and provide as much information as possible. Now, since the announcement by the governor, one of the, I think one of the areas where there's just been a lot of information that has just been recently given to districts from the Department of Education in Massachusetts, as well as the US Department of Education, is what we will do about students with special needs as we move forward. While we have these assignments, the things we've been working on over the last couple of weeks is making sure that to the extent possible, our classroom teachers collaborate with our special education teachers in order to provide accommodations that accompany the assignment. And I think if you go to the enrichment page, you'll see that there are a lot of those that are linked to assignments. So I wanna just ask Allison Elmer, who is our director of special education, if she would update the committee, what are some of the key guidelines that we have received in the last couple of weeks? Hi, thank you. So yes, Dr. Bodie, as you noted, around March 25th, the US federal government issued new guidance regarding the provision of special ed services during school closure, which acknowledges the need to provide a FAPE or free and appropriate public education, which is explicitly tied to the IEP. We then had to await guidance from the MAST ESE to interpret that for what that meant for Massachusetts, which came out the following week. So during that time, we've been providing two levels of service, which is resources and support, which you just described. Dr. McNeil, he and his team created the enrichment page within days of the school, the district going into closure. And then our special education team then looked at what was up there and created additional resources, as you described, to help make those enrichment activities accessible to the students that they serve. In addition to that, they have been reaching out individually to families as educational teams, checking in on how the assignments are going, providing individualized schedules, providing individualized learning activities. If the student is working on a separate curricula from their grade level, as well as providing the types of general accommodations you mentioned or other learning supports. Going into this next phase, the other piece of service delivery that is part of providing a FAPE is the instruction and services. So I was just on a conference call today with the senior associate commissioner, Russell Johnston, and he's essentially the director of special ed for the entire state. And they issued what they're called a template for individual student service plans. However, we created those last week and essentially we have about 900 in district IEP. So if you can understand the scope of what our special educators have been asked to do in the last week is to take every student IEP and now create an individual service plan. So over the course of the year, we typically have 900 IEP meetings within this week. Teams have been working to create individual plans for each student. Unfortunately, due to the holiday tomorrow, they're most likely go out on Monday. Some may go out. Can I interrupt just one second? Sorry, Selma. I just got a text that people are having a hard time hearing you. You're not muted. I know that. So just bring it a little bit closer. I'm sorry. I have a microphone right here. Is it still not working? I don't know. Selma, it's fine to me. Okay, thank you. I hear you fine. All right, thank you. And so those plans will be directed to each individual family. If not tomorrow, then the beginning of next week in which they will outline the individual services that providers will be giving to students, that includes things like remote occupational therapy, to the extent, as you mentioned, to the extent that we are able to provide services remotely. Obviously there are some services that the federal state government recognized cannot be delivered remotely. But to the extent that we can provide those through remote format, we will, and that takes a similar constellation of services that may be recorded lessons. It may still be work packets. It can be live sessions, acknowledging as you have the limitations that we have for some families around being able to, you know, log on a specific time. So all of that will be going forward. And then we've had some security issues that we have to address as far as having remote IEP meetings. So we are working with our provider, Easy IEP, so that we are able to send, you know, document that our password protected and encrypted so that we can hold online IEP meetings. We've met with Easy IEP twice this week to get that up and running. And as soon as they're able to release that to us, we will then start scheduling IEP meetings to require that I've mentioned in our letter that are required. So unfortunately, there are a number of times that a team may be requested to reconvene, whether there's rejections in the IEP or not. Given our limitations and the ability to schedule both meetings that have already passed and meetings that are upcoming, we will be prioritizing those with required timelines. So families should expect to receive invitations to schedule those meetings over the course of next week and the following week. Would you like questions at this point before we go on or just keep going? Are you asking me? I'm asking you to start it, yeah. Oh, if we're done with the special education update, why don't we do a round of questions? Okay, Mr. Heiner? Do you have any questions? Just for clarification, did I understand you correctly that what you're trying to do and your intent to do it is to deliver the IEP as best you can remotely and part of that will be an assessment and determining the success and progress of the child. Is that correct? So what will happen is the teams have been working together this week to determine what are the level of services that are necessary to maintain existing skills and prevent significant regression. Similar to Commissioner Riley's letter, this is not going to replicate the full IEP, just like this is not gonna replicate the full school day. So teams are doing that. We are providing notice to the family of those services. This is not an amendment to the IEP, this is not a change to the IEP, so it does not require consent. However, families can opt out, given some of the constraints that Dr. Bodie had mentioned. And so that going forward, they will continue to receive the services that the team has determined to maintain existing skills and prevent substantial regression if over the course of this period and if it goes longer than May 4th, and the team sees that it's not enough or that they can reconsider and redevelop that individual plan. So I think you've answered me, I just want to verify it. There will be a two-way communication. Programs will be offered to the child. The child will be doing some sort of work or some sort of to show that he or she is attempting to work on that skill or whatever it is done. There'll be assessment done by the provider and moving on from either. Evaluating it and going forward, am I correct? Sure, I think probably I need to know what definition you're using for assessment. It's not going to be a formal battery of assessment. It's going to be the judgment, the professional judgment of the individual as they are interacting with the student through the various formats to determine if that's sufficient. And with feedback, yeah. I recognize that, but there will be a record kept of what has been offered and the child's progress and what's going on. I'm not, I understand the restrictions. I think this is wonderful. Thank you very much for you. And please pass on my personal appreciation to your staff. Thank you. And I will. Great, thanks. Dr. Gialas and Ampe, you're muted if you're talking. Ms. Seuss, you were able to join us. Thank you for joining. Do you have any questions or comments? All right. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, just one question. I got maybe for Kathy and for Allison. Nia, you know, there's a narrative out there that says that we're not able to advance the curriculum for our students because 15% or 900 of our students are so on IEPs. And I think actually what I've learned in this meeting and in other discussions is that we're not able to advance the curriculum for all students because it's challenging to replicate the school day given the fact that children are in their homes and they're living in different circumstances all day long. So, I mean, how would you respond to people who say, maybe this should be for Dr. Bode. I have an answer. Oh, you have an answer to Allison. Okay, maybe, I'm sorry, then I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to cast you. You know, how would you respond if people say we can't advance the curriculum because 15% of our kids are on IEPs and we can't accommodate them all. I yield to Dr. Bode, but. Okay, I don't mean to, whoever should answer it. Well, the question is really what does advancing the curriculum mean? There is a lot that can be done in broadening it, deepening it. This is something that we are wrestling with right now. This particular plan that we have, it's very clear when I put it out, is from April 6th to May 4th. But we do have to, if for some reason, we get an announcement in the next week or so that schools are gonna be closed for more time, perhaps even for the rest of the year, we have been having a lot of discussions in the district in terms of how we're gonna plan for that. And I think at the next school committee meeting that we have, it'll be a good time to get report out on that. But it's not even just equity in terms of accommodations. It's if there is no way to replicate a school day. And if we were to go on in a curriculum, it would be probably more of not synchronous, not in the moment lessons, but rather some kind of video or readings or whatever. And there are students that are going to have difficulty with this. It's not just special education. It's our English language learners as well that need a lot of one-on-one in order to be able to do the work. So I wouldn't just say that it's our students that have individual education plans, but it's our English language learners. And it's also the students that are in our homes that have different, as you mentioned, different situations that make it very difficult for them to access the information. I'll give you one example. And we just, to a family that we had given a computer for some reason, they're now not able to have internet access. So there are also technology issues for a lot of our students. I will say this, that no matter what we do may forth beyond. We all in the district recognize that we're going to have to do remediation next year. That is, and we're gonna be planning for that. In every one of our grade levels, every course, we have to plan for that next year. So that would be part of any plan that we have and in order to maintain equity for all students. Great, thank you. Mr. Sikman, you're up next. Thank you. I just wanted to get a very brief sense of how things are going for our out-of-district placements. So our out-of-district placements, so we have essentially three types of out-of-district placements. We have public day placements which are otherwise known as collaboratives. We have private day placements and then we have residential schools. Most of the Commonwealth's residential schools have remained open with the exception of a very small handful. So by and large, most of those students are in their residence. There are some cases where either a parent obviously could elect or a guardian could elect it to bring the student home from the residence and in many of their residential schools have a policy where they're not allowed to return during the closure simply because they wanna prevent the spread of any possible COVID infection. So there are a few instances where we've had students who are now home by the choice of their families rather than to stay in the residence. The private day schools and collaboratives are responsible for the same plans that we just described to you. They're responsible for a remote learning plan, similar to what Dr. Bodie has described and then they're responsible for the delivery of special ed services, those individual service plans that I've mentioned. We are continuing to pay full tuition to these placements. So the expectation is that they are providing those services. Great, thank you. Good, Ms. Morgan. So just to clarify, we're just doing questions about special education right now, yes? Yeah. Okay, so I had two, the first one is probably, so for the IEP meetings, I've gotten a lot of questions about that from families. Has that, the information about, it sounds like you're making good progress with the software and that seems like a really real problem. I think anybody can understand that. Has that been communicated to families and sort of secondarily to that piece? What is the plan for students who are awaiting placement decisions for next year, for whom the assessments haven't been, were not completed before we left school? So that's one question. So one communication to parents about where we're at with scheduling those IEP meetings and then what the plan is for kids whose assessments weren't done. And then the other piece is, and I think this is, it's actually probably not a question, it's just feedback. It's hard for me to reconcile as a school committee member what I hear here, which sounds fairly like we're making progress and things are being done. And then what I hear from parents, which is my child receives 40 minutes of reading instruction daily when she's in school and she's had one 10 minute meeting with a reading instructor since we got out of school four weeks ago. And like I just can't, I can't wreck, I get we're not trying to replicate school, but I feel like we are so far apart right now. And so it's hard. I do think a lot of our families have been really patient with us. And so it's tough. It's tough to hear what's being said it's being done and then hear the stories about what people's experiences are and just seems like we're really far apart. So that's my feedback, but I would like to understand what we're telling parents about these IEP meetings and then what we're gonna do for kids who have not received, didn't have their assessments done before we left school. So as far as communication, the special ed webpage is updated with that information as far as we are going to be planning the IEP meetings and that they're coming out. And then Dr. Bodhi sent a all community email last week indicating that we will be moving forward with scheduling meetings. It did not describe our the ins and outs of the IEP, however, told to have the school reach out to them to start scheduling meetings shortly. Your question about if a student required an assessment, if you're referring to a reevaluation or an initial evaluation that was not completed prior to the closure. In most cases by and large, those types of assessments require face-to-face interaction. You can't do a whisk over online. So those timelines are effectively stopped right now. I don't know if that's the question you're asking regarding a change in placement because that may not be, if you're referring to someone who has requested a change in placement or if they're transitioning grades, I think that would be a different question. No, I'm just, I'm mostly asking, oftentimes there are various assessments and evaluations that theoretically have to be done before you have an IEP meeting, right? So people who maybe have their IEP meetings scheduled for May, the expectation was, is that, whatever these evals were, were being done in April or maybe late March. And for those students, that didn't happen. So- Those timelines are paused. So those timelines, we will not be able to resume those until we return to the end of this closure because they require face-to-face interaction in order to complete those assessments. And then, I'm sorry, I'm trying to remember. I know you made a comment around- Yeah, those were my two questions. You specifically mentioned reading. I do wanna offer, and I don't know if this parent was specifically speaking to a reading service that's in their IEP or if they're talking about the tiered instruction that many of our students received. So I couldn't speak to someone's experience about receiving one 10-minute session, so to speak. But as I mentioned, up until last week, the Department of Education had not indicated what direct services were going to be. So all teachers should have been reaching out, offering activities and assessment. Even if we move forward with services, it's not going to replicate a five time a week, 40-minute session per day. So I just wanna be clear that similar to Commissioner Riley's guidance, we are having this halting, cutting in half the school day essentially, and that is still a combination of activities. It's not just sitting in front of a computer screen for three hours. So special ed services are not going to look exactly like they looked prior. That's a good point that was gonna, my next notes on this is that there are guidelines from the state with respect to how much time students should spend in learning activities. That guideline of three hours is encompassing, it's an encompassing three hours of exercise or mindfulness or other learning activities, sometimes self-directed in terms of interest. It is not sitting in front of a computer working on assignments on the computer. And that's really important. Remote learning is not the same thing as online learning. And I think we're all evolving in this and trying very hard to be as responsive as possible and as robust in what we can offer as possible. But it is not, that's really important. We're not giving assignments for kids that are gonna sit in front of the computer for three hours. It's just, that's not how it's designed to work or being recommended. Okay, thank you. Dr. Phyllis and Anthony, did you, we skipped over you before, did you have anything to add? Yeah, sorry. My questions have been answered at this point. I just wanted to mention that my computer is just hanging on by its fingernails right now. So I've turned off, I'm here, I had the turn off video, but I'm listening. And if I leave, I'll come back. That's all. So I guess my question, my questions. So just to clarify, I think there's a lot of anxiety about the transitions, Ms. Elmer. So somebody who is at the preschool going to kindergarten or at fifth grade going to Gibbs or at Gibbs going to Otteson or at Otteson going to the high school. And those meetings would be happening now, starting now, and they're not going to happen. So how are we going to handle those, assuming we don't reopen, and maybe you haven't gotten there yet, but how are we going to handle those transitions and how are we going to let people know that we're, how are we going to handle those transitions? So I think it's important to note that in some cases, transition meetings have been happening throughout the year. So even in November, if a fifth grader is having their annual review, we will oftentimes invite a member from the Gibbs sixth grade school to that meeting. So that happens throughout the year. We have already had our internal meetings prior to the break, closure, I should say, sorry, prior to the closure about the transitions from fifth to sixth grade. And I know, and Ms. Keyes can speak to some of the work that they're doing over at the Otteson about the transition from Gibbs to Otteson. So I think one, there are fewer meetings possibly that need to happen than maybe people assume, not every fifth grader who has an IEP who is transitioning to Gibbs needs them. If it is required, as I mentioned, we are prioritizing required team meetings. Those would require timelines. If an IEP has not been updated to reflect because our annual hadn't happened, then that meeting is going to be the transition meeting. What I'm referring to are some of these optional meetings where folks wanted to have another meeting, to discuss concerns that they had. We will have to figure out how to have something more informal than that. But if it's a required team meeting because their annual is coming up and they're a fifth grader or an eighth grader going to ninth or in their preschool, or those meetings are still going to happen. Great, that's great. And that message will be going out shortly with... So people will be reached out to individually. So that's a question that we've received from some folks have been emailing Dr. Bode or me, wanting to know the specifics of the remote learning plans. As I mentioned before, each one is individual to the child. So there's 900 roughly individual remote service plans being developed over the course of this past week that are going out to families. Similarly, those individually scheduled meetings, the team chairperson will be reaching out directly to those families who have meetings with required timelines to schedule them. Once we get more information about May 4th and we move further in, obviously we'll have to address more meetings. But obviously our priority right now is for meetings that would have already occurred or are set to occur during the next few weeks up to May 4th. Okay, great, thank you. All right, Dr. Bode, back to you. Thank you. I wanted to ask Dr. McNeil, if he would talk a little bit about the work that's going on in terms of the types of assignments and what we're doing. We have in the remote plan that everybody has had a copy of and I won't repeat everything that's in it by any means. But we have some differences among the schools, which is fine in terms of how assignments go out and whether there's a staggered rollout during a week or whether everything's loaded down on Monday. And those were individual school decisions with their staff. But I think it would be helpful to hear a little bit about the actual sort of the focus of these assignments. And Dr. McNeil, would you like to speak to that? Sure, thank you and hi to everybody. So at the onset of our school closure we work to provide consistency. In order to do that, we looked at it from a district level. So our curriculum leaders work with the coaches in the various content areas. And then in the specialist areas, it was pretty much at the level of the curriculum leaders that were looking at the various activities, the enrichment activities that would meet our goal for review and going deeper in a various concept. So we have pretty much maintained that at this particular point in time. And I can speak to each content area in order to give you some specifics. Looking at literacy, the coaches are still, and when I say that the coaches are working with the teachers in order to identify various activities. So looking at literacy, the coaches have been working with the teachers and they've come up with the various activities that teachers can choose from. So to maintain that foundation of consistency across the district, and then teachers can definitely supplement those foundational activities with things that they would like to add and push out and post on their Google classrooms. So that's pretty much what we've done for literacy and for math. So, you know, and then those assignments are shared with principals and teachers on it. So like as we move into this period of time of having, providing more structure, it will be on Tuesday. So next Tuesday, well, you know, depending on whether or not we're gonna be in school, but the way that it would work is that next Tuesday on a Tuesday the principals and teachers will receive the information for the following week. So they will have the rest of that week in order to develop schedules that they can send out and post on their Google classrooms so that parents can, you know, have a choice or students can have a choice. And then there could be recommended activities that the students and parents can choose from. Now in social studies and science, it's been a little bit more prescriptive and they've been actually giving specific lessons that students can follow on a weekly basis. So those will also be pushed out to teachers and principals on the previous Tuesday. As it relates to the specials, they give a range of various activities of K through five. For instance, in health and wellness, there's a K five, April calendar of various things that students can, you know, do on each day in order to remain active. And then looking at the K through five music, they have things for K through two and three through five. Again, a choice of activities that teachers can choose from that they can highlight on their classroom pages. And then looking at our library resources, we have a page of that and that has different links on it that can give parents access to the Robbins Library, also Boston Public Schools, I mean, excuse me, Boston Public Library, where they could do some remote checkout of books. So we have various things that teachers can choose from. Same thing with art or visual arts. It's like a bank of activities that parents and students can choose from. So that's pretty much the structure of how it's going to work as we move forward. And that started on April 6th and we'll go forward to May 4th until we get more direction of how we're going to, whether or not we're going to be in school or beyond that. At the secondary level. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, yes. Right, we have a slightly different way of doing it because we have a lot of teeming that's going on. You have these keys here. She could maybe wait, you want to talk about that. But there is a lot of collaboration that's going on in the same learning community and same discipline. Right, exactly. So that same concept of trying to be consistent, which is a little bit easier at the secondary level where the teachers can work with the curriculum leaders and so they can push out specific assignments. And again, at the secondary level, I would say that because they have a little bit more experience using Google Classroom. And so they pretty much used that throughout the year. So it was that learning curve that had to happen at the elementary level with the use of Google Classroom and Google Hangouts Meet that really had to take place. So at the secondary level, it was a little bit more easier for transition to do that because of their usage of Google Classroom that they've done, that they already had that knowledge base. I don't necessarily want to put miss keys on the spot, but I don't know if she would like to report a little bit about what experience of a teacher has been in this. Sure, it's definitely been interesting. We're essentially writing entirely new curriculum because when you say go back and reteach what you've already done, well, I've already taught that. So it's creating entirely new lessons. So I know my department, we meet twice a week, wants to figure out what we want to do the following week. And then we all go on our own and sort of come up with something, divide up the labor and then meet back together again and share what we've come up with. And then from that pool of resources, we're able to craft stuff specifically for our students. So sometimes one teacher has covered a concept that I haven't covered yet. So I can't use that resource, but we're getting the same general pool of resources out for our students. At this point, we're looking at between a 40 and 50% participation rate from kids, as far as kids who are going into Google Classroom opening up the assignments and doing them. It's not always the same 40 or 50%. We've heard from almost every kid at this point. I caught my last one today, but it's a lot of work trying to create entirely new lessons and then grade them without any real student interaction throughout the process. So it's sort of all the bad parts of the job. It's the lesson planning and the grading without the good parts, which is the kids. So it's been hard. It's been a lot of work. But we're not exactly grading. No, I'm sorry. Feedback, feedback. Yeah, and it's so much more time consuming to try to like type out what a kid did wrong on something than to just point at it and be like, see here, you missed this one. So it's good to be giving them that feedback, but it definitely takes a lot of time. And teachers have been reaching out to kids that are not participating. I think what we're seeing is that the secondary level, which you're reporting, it depends on the course and it depends on the level of the course. We're seeing the most participation at the lower grades. We're seeing a high participation in the 80, 90% and as they go up, it does vary and it does sometimes not the same students either. Right. And I will emphasize the fact that, to Ms. Elmer's point about collaboration amongst teachers and special education teachers and other support personnel, that there is that collaboration there. So that happens before the assignments are pushed out onto Google Classroom. And then also there's various links that can be put on the teacher's Google Classroom site that teachers can, I mean, that students can access that can help with a particular assignment like graphic organizers and other resources that are available to them, which are also available on the enrichment page. So we've tried to do our best. And I think we actually, we've done a very good job of providing those type of resources. And so, and also that with the communication that students can utilize on the Google Classroom page or contacting their teacher, that's where that collaboration between student and teacher can take place as well. So I just want to applaud all of our teachers and coaches and specialists and everyone has really rallied at this point in order to provide, I think, a very strong and robust foundation of activities that students can draw from. And I think at this point, which just at the elementary level is trying to make sure that we're providing that direction for students and parents so they can structure a weekly calendar and also at the secondary level making sure that that's still ongoing. We are, teachers are reaching out to students who are not participating. And so if I was to say anything tonight to parents who might be listening, is that we really need your partnership in this to have your child participate in these learning activities. Your role is really essential in this process. I see Mr. McCarthy's on here. I don't know if he'd like to have a little update from the high school perspective. Thank you, Dr. Bodie. I just wanted to say, you were speaking about reaching out to students that we haven't heard from. And I just wanted to applaud the school counselors, the social workers and the deans, in addition to the teachers, which have done an amazing job of reaching out to the students. We have gotten contact with just about every single student just to check in, make sure they're doing well beyond the academics just to make sure that they're doing well in terms of having food at home, that they feel safe, that they have internet connections and technology. And I think that speaks to a huge amount of what the infrastructure that needed to be put in place that Dr. McNeil was talking about. And he's done a wonderful job of leading us through this, giving us direction through the curriculum leaders. So far, we have been using the Google classrooms that Dr. McNeil was talking about. We had those in place the last couple of years. So they've been working really well and it's a natural transition for the students. They're used to them and they've been accessing them. Like Julie Key said, we've got about 40, 50% on average participation from the students, which is great. And we're hoping that will continue on and we'll see how May 4th rolls out. All right, so any questions before we move on? Let's do around based on all that, which is quite a bit. Mr. Heiner, your first. Dr. McNeil, you may have addressed this and I apologize if I missed it. I heard that there's communication back and forth at the secondary level. Is that going on at the elementary level as well? What do you mean? You mean between a staff? Teachers and students, yes. Yes. Is part of that interaction, I keep using the word assessment, just evaluating what is going on, the programs that they're suggesting to their students. Is it a help or both? So I would say it's both. I mean, we try to balance, like Mr. McCarthy was saying about the social-emotional piece of it. And just I think, to answer your first question, yes, teachers from the get-go. And this is where I think I really need to emphasize just the passion and the willingness of our teachers in order to reach out to students because that has been happening from day one since the first day that we were out. That was a big concern of teachers of being able to reach out and maintain that community aspect that they've developed since the beginning of the year within their classroom. So they were doing it in a myriad of ways. I think within the last week and since the first day, we've kind of come to an understanding of like, these are the different methods that we're gonna utilize to maintain contact. And at the elementary level, that was the adding on, not adding on, but like really delving into the use of the Google classroom and the Google Hangouts Meet. So right now, you know, the expectation is that, you know, all staff will reach out at least two times a week to their classrooms, the students in their classrooms. And I think that's been going on. And I dare say that that's been going on even more than two times a week. So, you know, I just can't say enough about the dedication and the passion of our, everybody has taken a team effort. And so to answer your question, yes, that's been happening. And what goes on in those meetings, you know, it's gonna vary between, you know, depending on what the teacher wants to focus on. But I think that, you know, most of our teachers are just concerned about maintaining that community aspect. And so making those live interactions fun and engaging and not so much about academics. But if they do discuss academics, I think it's done in a fun way. And so that they can, you know, make sure that the students feel safe and that they're able to really connect with the teacher at that particular time. So I think they've done that very well. And I will say that I want us to continue to emphasize the social emotional piece of this, because I think that's the one thing that really, you know, kids wanna come on. And I've heard reports that kids just like seeing their classmates and just being able to interact and the teachers have been, you know, showing a little bit more of themselves. Like, you know, hey, this is my, you know, taking, you know, sharing like this is my pet, you know. So it really gives an opportunity for teachers to do that. And I will say that this week that Gibbs, a video from Gibbs that the teachers did, the whole staff has engaged it in, engaged in was featured on a, I think it was Fox. Channel five. Channel five, yes. So that just goes to tell you that those are some of the things that have evolved through this, like the whole staff in a building has done, you know, various things to show the students that they are thinking about them. And then at the high school level, they've done a very good job of, now they've gone to video announcements. I saw the other day that one of the students is maintaining like acting like a sportscaster. So he's giving updates and now they're like going back and they're showing past sporting events like some of the, you know, exciting ones where they've won a championship so that students can access those YouTube videos and see those past sport sporting events. And then they have poems. And so at every level, I think that there's been a great job of reaching out to students and letting them know that we're thinking about them. Thank you. My next question, quick question is, oh, Mr. McCarthy wants to say something. Sorry, Mr. Hader. Go ahead. I just wanted to say, first, thanks to ACMI, they've been working with us on those video productions. That's been amazing. We're working on updating those as well and getting more information from the students and more video. And I also wanted to say a lot of those pieces that Dr. McGill just talked about were student or teacher generated. Great. Which has been wonderful. Question, maybe to the chair. Is it appropriate to ask a question about MCAS now or should I wait on that? Why don't we hold that for now? Thank you. All right. Dr. Allison Ampe. Is this where we're talking about all aspects of online schooling or is there gonna be more after this? I think that this would be a appropriate time to discuss. Okay. I don't have questions so much as comments that I've been hearing from parents. First, that it's good for teachers to recognize, teachers and actually the whole staff of APS to recognize that parents are under a lot of different constraints that some are trying to do their own work or even work more because they're in healthcare or others from home while simultaneously oversee any schoolwork that their elementary school student or other students are doing. And that flexibility, for example, in terms of timing of assignments is really crucial that some parents don't have the ability to get to assignments until maybe the weekend when they have their free time. This next, so that's one thing. Another is that many, I'm hearing two different things. One is it's good not to require synchronicity for requirements but at the same time because it can be difficult to arrange in a household that maybe doesn't have tons of computers and has more than one student working. But at the same time, it's been really nice for the students to have some kind of check-in not face-to-face but screen-to-screen say in real time where they're able to meet with the other students and the teachers. And then the only other thing is that one other question about communication is just if parents or others have suggestions about online schooling, ways to make it more effective, things that they feel aren't being addressed, how can those be effectively communicated to Arlington and then conversely, if teachers have needs that might be helpful, they might be able to get help from the community, how can those be communicated out? That's all. To your last question, I think that parents should contact the school principal. We as an administrative team and with teachers and coaches as well are in constant communication. So we would certainly know that but I think that's the first place to go and teachers the same, they're working very closely with their principals. The comments you made are exactly the, what we understand is also the challenges. This has been a tough time for everybody. A lot of people are very concerned and maybe have family members that have the COVID-19. So we are very aware that in any plan that we have going forward is going to be a blend of continuing what we're doing with having, working with Google classrooms so it's asynchronous but also trying to have some scheduled times where there can be face, screen to screen as you say. So it needs to be a blend. We are not gonna be, this is the unanimous feeling among everybody in the district. We are not gonna go to having regularly scheduled classes at nine in the morning and 10 in the morning. I mean, those schedules that were put out are just ideas of how to organize. I think that the one that the high school put out, Dr. Janger and his team in the remote learning document gives you another idea of how to sort of think about this. And honestly, there are students that are working right now because their families don't have an income and were laid off and so they don't have time during the school day either. So we know that we just have all of these different kinds of home situations that we need to be sensitive to. Thank you. Thanks, Mr, sorry, Mrs. Seuss, you're next. Nothing? Okay, Mr. Thielman. I just want to say that, to echo what others have said is there are families in the district who want a replication of the regular school day and then there are families in the district who can't keep up with what's coming in from the schools and are confused and are overwhelmed by it. So, you know, we have a wide range of people that are doing the best they can in the community. And, but one thing has come up that I've heard from people is would there be, you know, and I know I heard Dr. Bodhi say earlier in the meeting that we will be remediating a lot of what students lost in the first part of next year if we're not able to recover time in May and June. And even if we're able to recover time in May and June, we still have to remediate next fall. But there are parents who have said, would it be possible to have some sort of a summer program in which remediation could take place? I don't know if this is the time for this question, but it seems like I couldn't figure out where else an agenda it is, so that's why I'm asking. Nope, it's a great time for the question. It's a great question. We've actually talked about that, particularly the conversations going on at the high school. Like there was on a Metco meeting yesterday and we're talking about something in Boston as well. So yes, we're looking at it and it relates to actually one of the topics later on in our agenda, which talks about budget. We will just wait and see. We're open to the idea. Of course, like in any kind of idea like this, there's a lot of planning and details and what we might be able to do. And then, okay, and then one follow-up question. Have you, how do you address, and then another question did come up in my own community action, my neighborhood, is what is the plan for graduating seniors? How are they gonna get all the credits they need to graduate? Well, I haven't answered, but since we have Mr. McCarthy here, maybe we could talk about that because they have done a lot of thinking in the high school about seniors and where we're going with this. We certainly, the seniors have fallen into this. This is a, of all the groups, this is a really tough for seniors because they may not have their proms and they may not have graduation as years and years, decades and decades of students have had. But in terms of, and I'll let Mr. McCarthy jump in here. The high school has done an extraordinary job of really reaching out to all kids. It might be in danger of graduating and have set up plans for them to make sure they get the credits that they need. Mr. McCarthy, you wanna add in some color to that? Absolutely. So first off, if we have any students that were in danger of failing, we actually start tracking them and by failing I mean fail for the year. We start tracking them in second semester. So we already had a pretty good list. On Monday, we will store the grades from term three and that will give us a better picture of where we stand for those students that might fail a course for the year. Our standard protocol is to actually have our, is to either work with the teacher and the department heads or curriculum leaders to put together work. Summer school obviously is an option as well. We also have Play-Doh, which is Edmontum Credit Recovery, which we do have a few students working on right now knowing already that they were going to fail a course for the year. With that, we've trained several TAs in the building to be working with those students, to support them, give them motivation, tutor them when necessary to help them really grasp the material to be able to move forward. Now with seniors, like you said, this is a very difficult position we're in because even if we return on May 4th, that leaves us three weeks of term four before we venture into graduation. So I think we've been taking a very long look at how term four could be rolled out. If it, and I think that's really gonna come down to a lot of conversations. I know we had a conversation, Dr. McNeil, Dr. Bodie, myself, Dr. Jang, we had several conversations about this in the past week and we're still hammering out the details on that piece. But it is something we're very aware of. We are keeping track of it. And like I said, on Monday, we are wrapping up term three with a grade store and we'll have a better picture of students that are in danger. Yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate it. I'm good, Lynn. Great. Thank you, Mr. Smithman. I'm just wondering if we have a count of students who are engaged electronically and how many students are being challenged to connect in, not refusing, but just having a challenge to connect in through a remote environment. I don't know if it's a challenge. I think there's different challenges at different levels. To your point about getting onto the network, I think some of those have been technical challenges at the lower grades where we need parents to help students log in and we've gotten a number of emails. I don't know how to log in. I don't know what I do about a password, all of these kinds of very technical questions. And then you have other issues as you move along the grade line, the grade. So I think we're solving the technical issues as they come up, but then we don't know what we don't know in terms of what people need. But if they do have a question, they certainly should approach their principal. And I think that's in general, the best way of any kind of issues that come up is just first go to the principal of the school or the assistant principals for sure. Was there another part of that question I didn't answer? I was just trying to get a sense of the count of how many students are successful in interacting versus how many students, some sort of a barrier is coming up, either a technological or something else. It's sometimes that the upper grade is not even technological because they all know how to go into, use their five pounder account to get into Google Classroom. That's not the issue is questions, but they're not necessarily doing that either. And those are other issues. At the elementary level, the early grades, the participation is very high in any kind of contact. So as the issues come up, we're trying to solve them as best as possible. Can you sort of define very high? Technical issues, I think we've solved a lot of the technical issues. I think there's other issues that prevent students from going on. And that's why teachers are reaching out individually. If the grades six through 12, they can reach out by email and that is happening. Like what's going on? How are you doing? I see you haven't been on Google Classroom because they can tell, they know who's not at the lower grades where even though they have email accounts, they're not activated, teachers go directly to the parents and just do a check that way. The participation in these either Hangouts or Google Classroom, as they said, goes very high at the early grades and may go down to 40, 50%. So I will say our AP classes, high participation going on as they get ready for the AP exam, which have changed this year. Kathy, can I just add to that? We've kept some analytics on how many people have referenced the enrichment page and we have over 32,000 visits to the enrichment page at this particular point in time. So that can give you kind of idea of the number of, it doesn't tell you individually about the participation rate, but it does tell you that the interest that people have had or parents and students have had with contact and I can't parse out how many of that have been teachers or whatever, but it's a very high, we've had a lot of visits to their enrichment page and I just want to emphasize what Mr. McCarthy said earlier about counselors and social workers and those individuals at the secondary level and also at the elementary level. So kids are not reaching out. That's when I say that that's where that passion and dedication has come in because we've done a very good job from the things I've heard about leaching out to those people or those students who are not accessing a Google Classroom page or not accessing an activity. Okay, thank you. Great, thank you, Ms. Morgan. So I have a question also about communication, which obviously is a challenge and we are certainly a family that has had our share of technical issues with passwords that come from one person and say one thing and come from somebody else and are totally different. So that's been tough, but I think we're getting there, which is exciting. So what I'm hearing from parents at the high school level is that a lot of the communication from principals is going through the students, which is probably appropriate. Oh, I have a very angry dog, hold on. A lot of the communication is going through the students and so the parents are really in the dark about what's going on because they're not getting the emails. And then my experience at the elementary level is that my kids, my first grader can't really do email but my older elementary kids could communicate with their teacher, but they can't because they don't have email and they're supposed to communicate through Google Classroom, either in some sort of chat that all of their classmates can see or through some sort of like private chat function that they don't really understand and hopefully is attached to a certain assignment. So they only wanna talk about that assignment in that function. So it's this like kind of like interesting dichotomy where the feedback I get from high school parents is, oh my gosh, my students have all this information but I have no idea what's going on. And then me, you know, in with my elementary kids and especially my upper elementary kids, my first grader like I've gotta manage it for him, I get that, but my fifth graders could be far more independent. And they don't have the ability to do that because we haven't put the technology in place for them. So it seems to me that if we're emailing students at the high school level and we're asking parents to partner with us right now in a way we never have before, maybe it's appropriate to include them. Again, I don't have high school students. So, you know, this is just, but I've heard this from more than one family. So, you know, that's the feedback that, you know, these are like really like technical nitty gritty things that, you know, we can probably improve on and make this just a little less painful for everybody. Well, good suggestions. As far as the elementary, we are not going to activate the emails. We looked into it, you made that suggestion and we have looked into it and just decided at this point that's not what we can do. If we can maybe send out some instructions to students and how they can have a private chat on Google classroom, that may be something that we need to do. And we'll make a note to have that be a list of, you know, information that we can pass on to the digital literacy team. Can I ask something? As Mr. McCarthy's here, maybe we can get a little bit more communication out to the high school. Though I think a lot has gone out. I don't think all the emails, but you can speak to that. So at the high school, what we've been trying to do, and this is long before the closure, we try and teach all of our students about the benefits of technology, email. Starting freshman year, they're setting up for Google classrooms. We really put ownership on the students around their own education. Around the closure, what we've been doing, we've been posting everything we send out and details on our website. There's actually a link, frequently asked questions around the school closure right on our homepage. We've been trying to keep the students informed and keep them up to date. And when we find students aren't connecting, that's when we've been reaching out to parents. I definitely see the benefits of what you're talking about in terms of perhaps attaching parent emails of the guardian list as well to some of our broader emails so that they can be included in this process. Obviously we want them to be included in this process in supporting the high school students. So thank you. Great. Thank you, Ms. Morgan, anything else? Nope, all right. So I'll just add a couple of things that I've been hearing and thinking about. And as I said last meeting, I think our plan should continue to evolve. It has been evolving and that's great to see. And hopefully it will continue to evolve. One of the things that I've heard is that the two touches that we're requiring from teachers per week is sort of inadequate. One of the touches is posting the assignments. So it's really just one touch that we're requiring. I know most teachers are doing much more, but not every teacher is. So I think looking at what some of the other districts have required, why not require office hours? Why not require one video chat per teacher per week? Why not require a little bit more structure? I know some of the principles are, but it's patchwork. So again, moving forward as we evolve this, I think a little bit more structure as to what the teachers are doing on a daily basis as far as this communication with input from the teachers as to what it should be. But again, in the plan, documenting what's going to happen would be great. The other comment is looking forward as this continues to roll out, Massachusetts is really becoming one of the exceptions that is recommending no advancement of the curriculum. So we need to be ready that first week of May if this gets extended. It doesn't make sense to me to have our teachers going out and creating curriculum as Ms. Keys described to reinforce what was already taught. I mean, they're basically, if you look at some of these lessons, they are teaching more. They're teaching more about the same subject but they're teaching more. So the notion that we're trying to tiptoe around this equality issue, the kids that aren't learning right now, it's terrible that the kids that they're not learning. But the kids that are learning, we should be thinking more strategically about what we want them to be learning going forward. So those are my comments and don't need a response. We can move on to the next item, which I think is April break. April break, yes. As we've looked at what's going to be happening for the rest of the year, there's still uncertainty about what will happen after May 4th, but one of the things that's happened since the last time we met is clarity from the Department of Education as to the number of days that a district needs to be in session. And we don't have to be in any more than 185 days. It's a little more nuanced than that. But for Arlington, what that would have meant is June 25th, Thursday, June 25th, that's just the last meeting in the last week in June. A number of districts, and there's been a lot of discussion among superintendents on this over the last two weeks, have gone in the direction of not canceling April vacation for a couple of reasons. Some of us actually have been discussed here tonight, is that we are evolving and we have gotten a more structure and I suspect as we move forward, we're gonna have more structure in what constitutes remote learning. But it's just starting to root and more so in the last week and this week. And that if we go, if we have April break and have a complete break with what we have been doing, it may be very difficult to get back on track and take a little bit more time. So that's been one of the main reasons why districts have thought about canceling vacation. And also, if we come back, and that's very unsure right now, we would be in the fourth week of June. And one of the things that's been true in Arlington Public Schools for many, many years is that our buildings are hot. That time of the year is not the most productive time just because of the environments that the students are learning in. So, but this is not a, this is a decision that ultimately is the school committee's decision, but I wanted to get a pulse on where people were in the district as well as once I knew that to do a little bit of a testing of where parents were on the issue. And in the last couple of days, we have surveyed staff, all units of the AEA, the Education Association, and I've also looked at surveyed administrators. And in both, both in district staff, the majority favor canceling vacation. Today, we sent out a quick notice to parents, letting them know what I was going to recommend this evening, which is that we cancel April vacation and also asked if they would like to weigh in on that recommendation. And we had 1,120 responses, of which 86% favor canceling the vacation. In, there was 120 parents who wanted both. They wanted us to cancel vacation, but also wanted us to continue school through June 25th. And in terms of the finances of this, that's really not an option in terms of the cost. To have the cost, to have a regular school day beyond what is our contractual year would be about $240,000 per day. In that realm, but that was only 120 out of the, close to 1120 responses that we had. So there seems to be some unanimity around this issue that it makes sense to cancel April vacation. We're doing that, not knowing what's going to be recommended about closure, but it made sense just in terms of the continuity and the evolution of what we're doing in the district. And so I present that recommendation to you and ask for your support of that. All right, let's go around on this one, Mr. Heiner. Just to clarify, is the Department of Education or the state treating all days since the closure as school days, with the exception of the April vacation? The answer is yes, but on the other hand, they're also saying that all districts should go to 185th day. So if you cancel vacation, have four school days in the April vacation, in terms of what we've been talking about, if they're not, they're remote learning days, then you can go to your 181st day. Arlington's 181st day is- Okay, okay, I just repeat it again. All days that have not been in the classroom since the closure, once the school opens up, those days will be considered regular school days. That's correct. With the exception of an April vacation if you took an April vacation. Correct. Okay, so the intent is to cut back four days or five days? Four. Four, because the first day would be considered a holiday. Am I correct? It's a state holiday, yes. State holiday. So we're looking to recover four days at the end of the year, correct? Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Ellis-Nampy. I appreciate that, Dr. Bodie, that you did this survey. I do wish that it had been done earlier in the week and given people a longer time to respond. I'm glad that we got over a thousand responses though. In my experience with that many, I think no matter how long the survey would have been open, we would have gotten something similar. I do wanna speak to the people who were pro break. There are a lot of families out there who are feeling like school is hard on them and that they could use a break that it's hard to overseen work and school. And, but I do understand that losing momentum is a problem. I'm still thinking, but thank you for the information. You know, it's mixed feelings in the district too. I will say that maybe Ms. Keith can also talk to this because she's seen all the responses from the AEA. But, you know, people are tired. People have been working very hard these last couple weeks and it's stressful on trying to also balance your own family life and a lot of our families, our teachers have young children at home as well. So this has been exhausting, but I think when people thought about this on balance, what made the most sense? And I would like to just pass a little time over to Ms. Keith who might wanna talk about this too. Yeah, so we surveyed our membership earlier this week and there was a comfortable majority that supported closing or canceling vacation and being open for school that week. That, you know, it's most of the people who voted for that said they were doing it because they felt the kids were getting into a rhythm and they didn't wanna disrupt that with the online learning. There were still a large number of comments that we got in our surveys that people were overwhelmed, they were stressed, they were burned out, that they've been trying to do a full-time job, be a full-time parent or they're worried about, you know, their people in their household who are essential workers and still going to work or elderly family that they can't go see and that just the stress of this has really been atoll and as much as they feel that it would be good for kids to keep going, they could really use a break as well. So I think there's support for canceling the vacation but with some trepidation that like this is hard and not, you know, losing that prospect of a break is hard. If I could make one, thank you, that's very helpful. If I could make one other comment just in terms of communication, I know there's some confusion. This isn't to the teachers union, this is back to the administration. I know there's some confusion about how we count the number of days and when we do it. And I know that that's partly because of the way that Desi said, well, some of these days count it, snow days and all this stuff. And just, if we could make it really clear where the day counting is coming from in whatever written communication we send out about this that would be helpful because people are like confused or like, well, we only had one snow day. Why are they counting something else? And it's because of the very specific requirements that would have come down from Desi. That's all. Great, thank you, Mrs. Seuss, nothing. All right, Mr. Thielman. I don't have anything to add. I'm gonna vote in favor of this. I think everyone's covered everything so that I want to bring up. Mr. Schluckman. Yeah, thank you for bringing this forward. I've been tracking two things. One, I've been tracking on the MASC, lists serve the number of districts who are voting to go forward during the normal April vacation. And there's a whole bunch of them who are either going that way for the full four days or are going to at least do three days out of the four. And I was a little anxious about doing it at first but the more I read what's going on out there, the more I make sense. One of the parents who wrote to me said, you know, we were planning to go to Disney over the April vacation. And with the canceled trip, being in school sort of eases the pain on that a bit so that it won't feel as lonely being stuck at home on a vacation without school going on. We're recognizing the difficulties. We don't know what's going to happen in May. We don't know how it's going to fall out but I think that it is a reasonable move to keep on going especially as we're reaching the peak of the curve and anything that keeps kids in and connected to learning rather than outside without a structured activity, I think is a good thing. That's why I'm going to go and vote to support this. Great, thank you. Miss Morgan. I'm going to support it too. I think it's the right thing to do with the information we have right now. I will say that if I thought there was a realistic chance that we were going to go back and finish the year, there is nothing that I want more for my kids than for all of our kids than to have four more days with their teachers. I actually don't care how hot those buildings are. I don't care. I want every kid who needs reading support and who gets one more meeting with their occupational therapist or their physical therapist or my first grader whose teacher is so phenomenal. If I thought there was any chance I could get that to my kids and to all of these kids in Arlington, I would vote against this because I think that getting four days in the classroom is so much better than the lousy job I'm doing delivering this at home. But I don't think that that's what's going to happen. And so I think we're having to make decisions without full information. But I do want people in the community to understand that we're not doing this, you know, that we're not doing this because things at home are going so great and that this is just like such great learning and that somehow, and I really can't say strongly enough that if I thought there was a chance I could get my daughter back with her ELA teacher or my son back with his fifth grade teacher for four more days that I wouldn't do it. But I don't think that we can. So I think the right thing to do is to keep going and do the best we can. And the way to do the best we can with what we have is to do what we're doing now, so. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to echo what Ms. Morgan said. I think it's very unfortunate that the state structured this as a kind of trade-off. I think they muddled the waters a bit. And I think it's unfortunate that we as a district sort of jumped on it as a trade-off. But given where we are, I mean, I do think there are separate issues. And if we do reopen, if there's a miracle happens and we reopen, then I think we can definitely negotiate with the union as to whether we have those four additional days and how much that costs given that they've been, everybody's been working very hard but has not been working full time. So, and hundreds of companies are furloughing people and people working temporarily or getting pay cuts. So that's something we can address if a miracle happens and we get back to school. And as chair, I commit to doing that at a future meeting, if that happens. But given what we know now, I think we need to plow through April break so we don't interrupt the learning again for just so everybody understands it is just four days because of the holiday on Monday. We're also continuing, for now, we're just continuing these enrichment type activities. So if there are families who want to take a break, then certainly they can take a break and they should for all the part of that week. But where we are now, I think it makes sense to go ahead and do the learning over that break. So can I get a motion to have remote learning days for those four days during what we're supposed to be able to break? So move. Second. Mr. Schlickman, seconded. Okay, we'll do a roll call. Mr. Heyner. Aye. Dr. Allison Ampe. Aye. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Aye. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm yes as well. Thank you. All right. So the next item is a budget update, both because it's, we haven't had one for a while and related to any COVID-19 impact or issues that have come up. So Dr. Vody or Mr. Mason. I will turn this over to Mr. Mason in just one second. You received in your Novus a look at where we are at this point, there are clearly some savings compared to where we were a month or two ago that's related to COVID. There's also other expenses that are being tracked related to COVID as well. But this is a snapshot of where we are right now. It may not be exactly where we are later on. And I will just preface this by saying that we're also going into a very uncertain time in our state in terms of what we could possibly expect next year and for that matter, even the following year in terms of revenue and how this could be impactful to schools. So we are very mindful of that as we think about next year. And right now our commitment has been to all of our staff whether they're hourly workers or not that we are paying them through this school year. And that is reflected in this budget. So I'm going to let Mr. Mason sort of give another overview of it and see if there's any specific questions you might have. All right, good evening everyone. So tonight your normal presentation as you get your normal documents that this is for the period ending of March 31st. And I really want to focus on the general fund or the TAN appropriation side of the report which does show an increase of balance that we're anticipating about $983,000. And once again, that's mainly driven by savings and out of district tuition but as well as now everything is starting to slow down. So at this point, I mean, as we've been focusing on trying to get remote learning built up I think that we'll start to see some focusing on trying to also prepare for next school year as our department heads would normally do at this time of the year. It's been very hard to project the expenditures due to this pandemic. And some of the challenges that came with this is trying to see how we normally spend. And we had to look at, okay, we're at our optics and normally we do spend a little bit more in the beginning of the year and towards the end of the year. And so about 40% of our spending's in the last quarter. And so that's some of the issues that was difficult to try to project this. As well as understanding as much as we want to support some of DESI, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's guidance in regards to trying to ensure payment to certain vendors such as collaborators out of other special education out of district service providers and transportation vendors. There are some times that we're at odds with two different legislations where chapter 71 section 68 points out that we do have to provide transportation for certain children. And where chapter 41-56 says that we only pay for services that are rendered. And so this projection can change if depending on how the state decides how we should actually handle payment. And that will also come on with the controllers decide on how if we can actually make these payments to some of these vendors. Also as part of this projection, it was difficult to determine the impact of the revenue because we don't know when we're gonna go back in session or if we're gonna go back in session at all. So you'll see that also in this report. And so as well we're considering the refunds but we're waiting to see how the rest of the year will be like before going forward with that. And part of trying to manage the budget and trying to think forward is we don't know what the revenue will look like on the state level and how that will be funded to the town and how our budgets may be affected. So we are trying to be proactive in the sense of reallocating some of our revolving expenses and to give us some kind of buffer in the out timeframes. And I think that basically kind of explains where we add in terms of what it took to kind of go into this projection but you'll also notice that the revolving funds in this report is we're possibly going to not spend as much in the revolving funds just in case we can spend even more next year if our budget is impacted on the town appropriation side. Okay, Mr. Interviewee, before you start I just want to note that I mean, I think we as a committee need to look at policies regarding refunding of fees, operation of fees particularly for the bus fee and the preschool fee which is a fee that we set. But I think we also need to look at the revolving funds that are supposed to be self-sufficient like the afterschool program and our faculty daycare program as to whether it really is, we're also paying the employees and I know their private daycares and all that are requesting continued payments but I think that's something that I'd ask the budgets of committee to take a look at going forward. So Mr. Heiner, go ahead. Going on along with what you just said, students that were in out-of-district placements full-time that have returned home would we be entitled to a reimbursement of that fee as well or is that something we need to look into? The state has asked districts to pay those tuition as if they were in school. The reasoning behind that is that should we go back to school and the students return to their placements out-of-district that those could be staffed and continue as they had been. So we're not asking for reimbursements at this time and to Mr. Cardin's point, we have a lot of programs, let's flip in Arlington is that they're fee-based and we've made a commitment to continue to pay the salaries of people who are in those types of programs such as afterschool or daycare or the before and afterschool, preschool program. There's just a lot of programs that are totally fee-based and we do need to take a look at that. I think that the budget subcommittee should meet and discuss this as we go forward but right now the state is asking all districts to pay for those tuition and the transportation. I think that's wonderful and I would support the concept but at the same time I feel the state and the federal government with all the money, we're an entity too and we have to survive. So by us supporting these groups, we also should be eligible to some sort of reimbursement or recognition that we are doing our part as well. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Ellis-Nampy, anything? Nothing to add. I'm hearing what you're setting up for, I mean what people are requesting the budget look into and we'll set up a meeting soon. Thank you. Mrs. Nning? Nope, Mr. Dillman. So are we projecting enough of a savings to support any kind of a summer remediation program? Michael, is that your, what's your sense? I believe we can support a summer program but I think that more discussions need to happen between me and Kathy and the administration. Okay, I mean, I don't mean to harp on this but I mean, does anyone then the estimates at all like a range of what might cost to some remediation or not yet? I think the closest we've been looking at is what we already offer, which is our special education programs in the summer and what the cost of those programs are, which is something that the district assumes. So we do have some basis for having an idea of what this would cost. But also one of the things that is even a challenge with that program is stacking it every year. And so it's like so many things when you start digging into the details of how you would administer it or organize it, it gets much more complicated and would seem least initially. So yes, we're looking at it and Mr. Mason and I have talked about that is how we could, cause that would be in a new fiscal year. Another thing that you should all be aware of is that we right now it'd be possible if we don't have town meeting, don't have approved budgets that we can use one 12th of the FY 20 in FY beginning in July. Whether we would go two months like that is another issue because I did hear the other day that the legislature is probably not gonna pass their budget until August. So that puts us in a little bit of a difficulty in that any of the increases that we had in our budget due to increases for FY 21 really will not be available money possibly July one. And so we're recalibrating right now in terms of what is that gonna mean in terms of hiring for next year. So there's layers and layers of complexity in all of this, but I feel we are in a very good position in our district, better than what I've heard in other districts. So I feel very good about that and I feel good that we're gonna be able to pay all of our staff through the rest of this year. And that's important. And it takes a lot of, for those people takes a lot of anxiety out of what they're going through too. Okay, thank you. Mrs. Did you have something? Oh yeah, I mean, you sort of answered it, but just a question about whether we're potentially get some flexibility about using any extra money after the fiscal year ends, if you've seen any discussion about that. And then if not, and I know most of our budget is salaries, but are there one time expenses that we're supposed to be spent in FY 21 that we can shift to FY 20 with any of them that we have left over to free up budget stuff in FY 21? The answer is yes. And one thing, for example, is prepaying three months of tuition for out of district. That's something that we could be looking at. Certainly money that is in the special ed stabilization or in our revolving accounts can also help us as well. But even though we can have one 12th of our budget go in through July, it doesn't change the fact that the fiscal year ends June 30th. So that's what we are having our eye on in terms of trying to figure this out to create as much buffering as we can possibly manage. Okay, Mr. Shipman. Ms. Selmer has her hand up. Oh, sorry, Ms. Selmer, go ahead. Sorry, I was doing it digitally too, but I don't know if you guys can see that. I just wanted to back to Mr. Heiner's question around tuition and to Mr. Mason's point, while we have been advised to pay those tuitions, obviously so those services remain available when we do resume. However, what has not been determined is how the circuit breaker reimbursement will work. So I do think people need to factor that into our discussions. I was on the call with Jay Sullivan today who is in charge of that. And they have not figured out if they want us to pay the tuitions, but they have not determined if we will be reimbursed at the regular rate for those tuitions during that period. So I do think if you were asking around what pressure we need with our legislature around that, I do think we need to advocate that if we are going to be paying full tuitions that we should be getting our regular reimbursement on that. The other thing that I do think we need some additional voices is the other governmental agencies who have responsibilities. So DPH oversees early intervention. Students age out of early intervention at three and under which that time they become the responsibility of the public school district if they're eligible for an IEP. DPH is not extending coverage for students after the age of three. They announced that this week they do not have plans to do that. Similarly, DDS is not at a place where they can intake students turning 22. So at this point, the only responsible agency is the public school system. So there's a question of when those students turn three, do they become the responsibility of the public school system if we hadn't had the opportunity to evaluate them and determine whether they're eligible for IEP services. For the reasons I mentioned earlier to Ms. Morgan around evaluations evolve face to face assessments. Similarly for the students who are turning 22, the suggestion would be that the schools would continue to keep the 22 year olds on in their placements because they can't move on to DDS. So I do think we need some support in the legislative decisions or policymakers who are also making those decisions. Okay, thank you. Mr. Shipman, you're next. Thank you. I just wanted to make one sort of a side remark here in terms of our budget and that we still spend less than the state average in one of the places where we are spending less is that we do have a very lean administrative staff. So when we have a crisis such as this, I mean, nobody was sitting around saying, well, what are we gonna do with school if there was a pandemic and we had to close down? And a lot of the stuff we've had to do is either been in-house or involve cooperation and sharing with others. And so when the question becomes, well, if Cambridge is doing this and this or if Burlington is doing something or if Weston is doing something, we're comparing ourselves to districts that have a much higher per people spending than much larger administrative staff. So I just wanna say within the context of the budget right here, we're working very lean, we recognize this so that what we're doing with the relatively lean staff, I think is pretty amazing. Being a former central administrator, I know how difficult this is when this has to land on a limited number of people. And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who's doing this work. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Ms. Morgan? Nothing. All right. So I don't really have anything else to add. Just, I mean, obviously, well, as things roll forward, we're going to have to continue to look at the FY21 budget. You know, we may need to prioritize which positions we fill and which ones we don't and all that. But that will be something going forward that we'll need additional guidance on. And Michael, I believe the Federal CARES Act did have some funding which is gonna roll out through the Title I formula. I don't know if we've gotten any indication of how much money we'll get through that yet. No, we have not got any indication. It was actually seemed like a very low amount that it would be allocated to the state of Massachusetts about, I think Jay Sullivan was around, said about $50 to $55 million that would have been allocated additional to the Title I. So I don't really know how much Arlington will receive of this funds. Okay, great. Thank you. You had any agenda, other things related to this? It's on the agenda, is it okay? Yeah, so, right. So that was what, anything else you wanna add? And we could also discuss the high school program of studies adjustments here. That's exactly what I was gonna suggest as we go into that. Okay, go right ahead. Okay, is Mr. McCarthy still here? There are in your Indian Novus folder, you'll find the list of topics that are in the list in the program of studies that really are not applicable to our current situation. And Mr. Cardin has requested and actually was an excellent idea is to look at all of the places in the program of studies where the school committee should vote that they're just waved for this year. And so the high school administration has put together that list and you have it. And I don't know if you want, if Mr. McCarthy would like to speak to that because I know you're part of the process of developing it. And what we would like to have from you tonight, though it could wait, I mean, it could wait to the next meeting too, is a way, is a motion to waive these requirements in the program of studies. Okay, do people wanna, I don't know how much people got a chance to look at them. Do we want Mr. McCarthy to render them quickly or not? I have the list here, it goes into all the description of it, but they have to do about having final exams, the waiting that we do for credit and grades, the AP exams, the attendance policy, community service. We have 40 hours of community service for our graduates and then the PE requirement. So those are the key things in the program of studies that we are just not gonna be able to meet those as described there and need a waiver. All right, Mr. Heiner, let's go ahead. This waiver is just for this year? Yes. Okay, thank you, I'll support that for this year only. Should we go through that list? Dr. Allison Ampe, any questions? No questions, it makes sense that we should do something and I'm in support of this. Mrs. anything? Oh, I'm just confused. So are we only talking about the highlighted sections or it seems like there is more to be waived? Mr. McCarthy? Actually unfortunately I don't have the document in front of me. Let me go down and I have it right here. It's really just the requirements that they're highlighted because these are requirements in the program of studies but if anything about final exams, there's a lot of language about having them and the instrument and the evaluation and the waiting, that just all has to go because we probably are not gonna have final exams. So it's just all of the language around final exams in the program of studies. Then there's a whole section on how you wait the work in terms of a final grade. And some of that has already happened with language went out to students and to parents in the high school in terms of how the third term, how that was weighted differently than it's in the program of studies. The whole issue of weighted GPA needs to change. Advanced placement test, one of the requirements was that if you take an AP course that you take the exam. The exams this year are going to be done remotely. They're 45 minute exams now. And so we're just, we're not requiring students because they're remote exams to have to take the remote test. There's a very clear language about attendance policy in terms of how many or what is excused, what's not excused, how many you can have per term. And while some of that all was operational until we hit third term, it's no longer going to be true for fourth term. So that needs to be waived. So, sorry. And then, well, so the other one is graduation requirements. One of the other graduation requirements has to do with physical education. So that needs to be waived because we can't really do that right now. And that was a list. So just in terms of the motion, I think this is correct and being a little bit confused. I think the motion would be to grant the requests or proposals. So within the document, sometimes it uses the word request and sometimes it uses the word proposal. It's not highlighted, but that's sort of what they're asking us to do. So in each section, there is either a request or a proposal. And by approving that document, we are approving those proposals and requests. Did that clarify it? Sorry, Ms. Unjust did what you were asking me. No, no, I'm just asking Ms. Seuss if that clarified what action is being requested of us. Yeah, yes, it does. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. I'm good. I don't have any questions. Mr. Seuss. Yeah, it was a little puzzled at first as to why something was highlighted green, something was highlighted yellow and negotiating through what the actual request was, basically from the format of this, but these waivers seem necessary and I'm prepared to vote in favor of it. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. For my only question is for semester, so for semester one courses though, they've taken their final exams and those will be weighted as normal or we're, sorry, yeah. I can just explain that a full year course, it is divided up and I'm not gonna go down to the fractions, but I believe it's 23, 23, 23, 23, 10% for each term in the final exam. I know my math is off on that. Sorry, I was an English teacher. What we'd be looking to do is remove that the weighting of the final exam. Now for a semester course, their final exam is actually factored into the overall semester grade so it doesn't come out separately. That's only for semester and quartered classes. What we're looking for is the year long courses. Got it. And semester one though courses that just met for semester one are fine. Yes. Okay. Thank you. All right, great. So can I get a motion to approve the requests and proposals within the document presented? So move. Second. Second. Second. All right, we'll do the roll call. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Aye. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm yes as well. All right, thank you. And Dr. Vodir, are there any other COVID-19 updates that we should be talking about tonight? Tonight, but I'm sure that there will be more as we evolve on this the next meeting. And some of them have to, some of it has to do with the issue of credits and no credits, that can wait until the next meeting. On the agenda, yeah. So I think we're fine right now. Before, let me just, just if anybody else has anything they wanna raise, wave your hand on this. Nope. All right, go ahead. Yeah, Mr. Schlickman, go ahead. Yeah, the one question I have, and I think Mr. Heiner wanted to bring it up, and I think this is the place where it needs to go, is the topic of MCAS. So I don't think that, right now is the time to go into a detailed description of it, because I think we stand a chance of having a further desi advisory come forward before the next meeting, but it's certainly not gonna be a valid measure if they try to go and do the testing if we should come back. So I'd like to have that as a placeholder in the agenda for the next meeting. I just wanna give a little bit of an update on that, though it's not really much. There are two components to MCAS in terms of permissions to do something that would be any evolution of it. One is you have to have a waiver from the federal government because the federal government requires standardized testing. You also have to have a legislative action in Massachusetts. It is not the decision of the Department of Education about MCAS. So right now the Department of Education has submitted a waiver to the US Department of Education. In fact, I think almost every state has and we have been the email back was basically interpreted as yes, we agree with the waiver. And I've read since that they've given waivers for all states. But now there's legislation in our legislative both the Senate and the House to, I think the language of it is going to be to allow the commissioner to make the decision about MCAS. That legislation hasn't passed yet. There's a lot of things in that. And so that's where we are right now. Great. Mr. Heiner. Unless I got it wrong, the Boston Globe today said that the legislature and other governor were going to cede the decision whether to have MCAS or not over to the commission. I'm sorry, Jesse. My biggest concern is those seniors that have not passed the MCAS requirement for graduation. I'm worried about them. A lot of kids pass it in the sophomore year, the junior year, I'm just really concerned that, and I realized the federal government, everybody else has it, will those waivers, and you may not, I don't think you're gonna be able to answer that tonight. Cover those kids. Thank you. The only thing I can say is that the commissioner is very well aware of all those issues around this. That's all I can say. I have no further information. He was quoted as saying that the MCAS should go forward. All right, go ahead, Mr. McCarthy. Just speaking on behalf of the high school, at current I can tell you there are two students that we're currently working with who need MCAS to graduate. One, we're doing a little more digging on. We may be able to do a cohort appeal, but we are waiting to hear back from the state. So right now it is two students that are being impacted by this, but they are being worked with Mr. McKnight and Ms. Tivnan, our dean of students, both working with those students trying to come up with plans to get those supports that they need. The cohort appeal, does that allow for graduation and diploma if it's successful? Yes. Thank you. All right, great. Thanks. So next I put on the agenda student opportunity act plan update. The legislation which did pass today, I don't know if the MCAS was in there, I didn't check, but the SOA deadline was in the legislation that was passed today and is waiting for the governor to sign. It extends the deadline to May 15th or a date later determined by the commissioner. So we have at least until May 15th, but possibly longer. But can you just give us sort of an update on where our plan was and what we're gonna do to move it forward assuming that we need to this spring? We actually were quite far along with it, not in terms of the templates that we'd have to fill out, but in terms of the plan itself, which was actually pretty good. There wasn't much of a change in terms of what we had put forward with the budget the things that we were planning to do next year to close the, to minimize the achievement gap. So we know what we're doing. I think one issue that's out there that still has to be resolved is that this is based on money that you receive. And that's not at all clear either. So we have communities that are expecting to have millions of dollars that they have to write a plan on. And in our case, we are going to receive under that legislation, two million on paper, on paper, because we have a formula in Arlington how monies come into the school district. But what I can say is that 75%, 1.5 million is based on our efforts up to this last year and the year before and continuing them in the 500,000 of additional new money toward the plans that we had in the FY21 budget. And I think this is all waiting to see what happens on that. Once we get the templates, we're ready to go and fill them up. I guess I'm confused because some districts did submit a plan. So how did they do that without the templates? I don't know how they did enough templates because we have with the example ones but we haven't received as far as I'm aware we haven't received them. Okay. Are there any questions from the committee? All right. Great. Superintendent's report, including AHS. We've met as a building committee this last Tuesday and received reports as we always do from our OPM contractor and our designer. I think one of the most important things I need to tell you about is where we are with Parmitter. We know that we're probably going to be off schedule now with the Parmitter build out because some of our trades, the beginning with the carpenters and I think Panges and some others are not, stuff that they're on strike is that they are doing work stoppage due to COVID-19. When they will go back to work is not clear but the Parmitter schedule was very tight and even throwing it off by two weeks, three weeks is really puts in jeopardy whether we will actually be able to have an occupancy for September. So we have been in discussion about plan B, sometimes plan C in terms of what we would do with the preschool for next year and I can give you more information on that as we work it through it. At this point, there are, there's not too many options. The one that was presented by our OPM was to have modular classrooms. They're a challenge with that or twofold. One is the cost that would take away from the high school project, which we probably shouldn't do because it's all, we're going into an uncertain time in that area too, in terms of costs and timelines and so forth. But additionally, I'm not even sure where we'd put them. That's another problem. So we are developing plans on that and I can give you more information later but as far as other things go there, we've had transition meetings and we have actually this plans to begin toward the end of April, some of the pre-preparation that goes, that needs to go on before construction can begin and we've talked about that before. Some of that has to do with clearing trees in the park area along the drive, setting up fencing. And so there were big packages that the committee did approve. How the timeline of the high school is going to be affected by COVID-19 and the trades not working at the moment or what is it going to be the impact on obtaining materials over the next year is still all very uncertain as to how that will evolve. Certainly the building committee is aware of all these issues and our planning is best possibly can with our design team. The other thing that the building committee was informed about is a change in where the parking lot is going to be for the high school during construction or during all the different phases. At one point that we're gonna be split on the east side and the west side and now the parking is going to be concentrated all around where the basketball courts are. There's some positives to that because there was some issues of movements or downshuler court. If that was also going to be, if that was also gonna be where the parking lot was going to be for some of the staff. So it's something that we need to inform the high school staff about once these plans become more finalized parking. But a positive on it is we're gonna have more parking places than we would have on the previous plan. So that's good. And so everything else is sort of moving forward as best as can. The plan continues to have the build out of the downs house for administration, guidance and nursing. But again, that could be affected by some of these issues as well. And basically, I think that's it. The communication subcommittee is working on a blog to explain what's going on with geothermal. And that will probably be out in the next week or so. I don't know if Mr. Thielman or Dr. Allison. Ampey wanna add anything to that but that's essentially where we are. I think you covered it, Kathy. I don't have anything else. And we've got three meetings planned during April vacation. Yes, we do, yeah. I mean- Former April vacation. The only thing that I'd add is that the blog is just a recap of how the geothermal decision was made and the rationale behind the decision to eliminate geothermal wells. So. All right. Great. Mr. Stifman has his hand up. Yeah, I noticed the town sent out an alert that there's gonna be work in front of a high school starting in the next couple of weeks. Yes. And we're also going to be communicating that to a butters, people that both some of the tan, some tan delivered and some of it's just sent up by email. All of that will be beginning. Mr. Heiner. The monuments that are out there, they all been relocated and stuff. That's a Mr. McCarthy question. He's in charge of that committee. The monuments that are out there on the front lawn bill. Yes. The memorials committee. I chair the memorials committee for the building. Right now, the plan is to take those memorials and put them in storage during the construction. Obviously the sites will, it's actually only a handful because a lot of the memorials that are out there are going to remain. Mainly the ones that are embedded by trees along that sidewalk will remain. The other ones will be collected and stored safely while we determine their placement. We're in the process of contacting those families that might still have connections to these memorials to work out placement. If they do want to continue its placement at the high school or if they want to cease that piece. So we'll give updates as that comes along. I would ask you to communicate that with the veterans council and things of that nature so that if the family makes a determination not to, the veterans council may want to pick it up. Absolutely. Thank you. All right, great. Anybody else? Okay. Consent agenda. All items listed are considered routine and will be enacted by one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items. It must remember the committee's requests. In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. We only have the approval of warrant number 20243 dated 331-2020 in the amount of 261-977.04. Zero motion. I'll move. Second. All right. Mr. Schuchman, seconded. Roll call vote. Mr. Hayner. Yes. Dr. Ellison Ampe. Yes. Ms. Seuss. I didn't hear you. You're on mute, hon. You're on mute there. Am I still muted? Sorry. Sorry about that. User error. Yes. No problem. Yes. Mr. Seelman. Yes. Mr. Schuchman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm also yes. All right. Are there any, I'm not going to go through the list. Are there any committee reports? Mr. Schuchman. Thank you. The superintendent search process committee had an RFP out with the intent of doing a lot of the work this spring. We're obviously not going to be able to do that. And the deadlines that we had incorporated into the RFP are deadlines we no longer can work with. My question is to the committee and also to Mr. Mason. Do we revoke repeal, put aside this RFP and revise it when we're a little more clear of what our timeline's going to be? So I guess the first question to Mr. Mason, what are the technicalities about doing a do over? Well, if you wanted to make any changes to dates, that would be a cause, that would be a reasonable reason to do another RFP. However, you could also continue forward with the current RFP, but provide the updates to your selected vendors. Yeah, my instinct is that we should probably go out with a new RFP when we have a sense of what our new timeline might be once we emerge from the current situation. But that's just my opinion. I think that we may want to put this on the agenda for a future meeting so that everybody has a chance to think about it and have details put forward. I don't want to be surprising folks with a discussion or a vote tonight, but I just want to raise the issue. All right, Mr. Hander. Just a quick question, Paul. Why is there a reason it can't be done remotely? In other words, send it out, get responses and the initial part of it. Well, the question is, is we were very specific about what we expected the vendor to be doing and when we expected that to happen in our original RFP had a timeline of focus groups and meetings with the community in April, May, June, that's not gonna happen, obviously. And I don't know where we're going to be or what our ability is going forward to put together a process. And I think that we should consider where we're going in terms of what the search is gonna look like and re-advertise. I would support an agenda item as soon as possible for a discussion by the committee to do just what Paul said. All right, we can do that. Oh, Percy has a hand up. Sorry, what was that? Percy has a hand up. Oh, yes. I wonder if the superintendent search committee could convene outside and discuss this just to see if they're, to understand what all the alternatives are and see if there's any other data that the group may want to have. Mr. Sikman, you're there. Oh, Mrs. Seuss, did you have a comment on that? You're unmuted, so, come on. Sorry, I keep reversing it. So I'm comfortable having this discussion with the full group. I think it'd be great to get people's insight. I think the key issue is we only receive two proposals. So the question is, would we get new and different and more proposals if we change the structure? I think it'd be valuable to get the full committees insight into this. Yeah, Lynn, I wanted to weigh in if I could. Sure, go ahead. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it should be a topic of conversation for the full committee at the next meeting we have. I think everybody should be talking about it. Anyway, we have two vendors. We should just all be talking about it all seven of us. Okay, we can do that. Any other committee reports? Any liaison reports or announcements? I have an announcement. Go ahead. As a Vietnam vet, I would like to thank all the people of Allington who stood out in the rain for a long time to honor Mary Foley yesterday. She was a Korean and Vietnam Air Force veteran and had no immediate family, but she had a phenomenal outturning of Allington as her family. Thank you all. Thank you. Any... Mrs. Go ahead. So I just wanted to wish people Khao Tsimaya, Happy Easter, Ramadhan Mubarak and just... It's a difficult time, but I think some of these rituals, even if practiced in odd ways and not fully practiced, can give us comfort. Great. Are there any additional future agenda items? I thought it was the one that we talked about. Okay. And then I put on here the date for the next school committee meeting because of April break, what used to be April break. We had scheduled the meeting for the last week of April, which is three weeks from now. I did not know if we wanted to go that long. If we wanted to schedule it, move it back to the April break week, since we're no longer taking the break, if we wanted to do a special meeting, if the need comes up and leave it to me to call a special meeting, but I wanted to get the sense of the committee as to when we should next meet. Mr. Hayne, I'll go through the list. Mr. Hayne. I would suggest we meet two weeks from tonight basically to discuss the superintendent search. All right. Dr. Allison Ampe. I need Mr. Thelman to weigh in on when our building committee meetings are. I can't remember if we have one scheduled for a 23rd or not. Yeah. Now we have reserved the 20, we're doing value engineering, potentially value engineering at 60% design phase of the project. So we have reserved the 21st, the 22nd and the 23rd. I am hoping we don't need the 23rd, but I don't know for sure. I mean, we can go ahead and schedule it. And if there's two meetings going on at once, there's two meetings going on at once for part of the meeting, that's all, I mean, that's what'll happen. Maybe you can get the committee a little bit later. I don't know if that's an idea. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'll be, I'd be at the building and Michael Mason, Mr. McCarthy. Maybe Len, go ahead and schedule it. And then we can just, you know, as we get close, I don't know. But let's get a sense of the other committee members. Mrs. Do you have a sense of when we should meet next? Do you have a sense of when we should meet next? Two weeks, three weeks? No, I think I would leave it at the chair's discretion. Lots gonna change in the next week, I assume, in terms of edicts from the state and other types of things. And so whatever seems to make sense. Mr. Stelman, any other thoughts? Maybe meet on the 16th, maybe call, maybe everyone should just reserve the 16th. And then if you say we don't need to have it, we don't have it. And then we meet the 16th and then we meet the 30th. 16th. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. I think what we should do is maintain the meeting of the 30th and maintain the possibility of a special meeting somewhere in between at the call of the chair. It doesn't necessarily have to be on a Thursday night. But if there's a, if we need to come together, I think we should be able to pull it together as I don't think anybody's traveling. All right, Ms. Morgan. I'm fine with that. Okay. Mr. Heiner, are you okay with that proposal? Sounds good. All right. I'm old and amiable. All right, so we'll leave it at that. And Jeff, if I do need to schedule a meeting, I will consult with you as to when we could fit it in. Okay. All right. Is that looks like it? Motion to adjourn. So move. Need a second, folks. Second. All right. Second. Second. Second to that. Let's do the final roll call. Mr. Heiner. Yay. Dr. Allison Ampe. Aye. Ms. Seuss. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I'm yes as well. Be well and be safe. Thank you all, everyone.