 Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, May 12th, 2022. I'm Liz exton The chair permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me when I call Your name, please respond in the affirmative. Mr. Slickman in the affirmative Mr. Thielman will not be with us this evening. Dr. Allison ampe Mr. Carter Morgan Mr. Heyner And the administration dr. Homan. Yes, dr. McNeill. Yes, mr. Mason. Yes Mr. Spiegel. Yes, this Elmer. Yes, and our ae a rep miski. Yes All right, and our student rep and our student rep Megan Carmody Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model on February 15th 2022 governor Baker signed into law a new session law extending certain COVID-19 related measures the new law chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 Includes an extension until July 15th 2022 of the remote meeting provision of the governor's march 12th 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law The governor's order which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting Allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded So that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting Before we begin permit me to offer a few notes First this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on acmi Person's wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website Persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others And if you wish to participate you are asked to provide your full name in the interests of developing a record of the meeting All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment And those persons are not required to identify themselves Both zoom participants and persons watching on acmi can follow the posted agenda materials Also found on the town's website using the novice agenda platform. And finally each vote tonight will be taken by roll call All right, our first item on the agenda is public comment. We have one public commenter Cheryl miller Sorry, i'm i jumped at i'm just going to read something before you i apologize Um public participation for members of the public who wish to address the committee There will be up to 20 minutes of public comment Depending on the number of people who sign up time allotments may be reduced but will not exceed three minutes each If the number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 20 minutes The number of speakers may be capped and will be invited to speak based on the timestamp of their email to miss diggins The school committee respectfully requests participants of the public to utilize their camera if possible While speaking and to adhere to the public comment policy Be dh that requires participants to provide their name and address Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations And programs as concern them but in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel Nor against any member of the school community Except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as the operational leader of arlington public schools The public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than the superintendent Additionally, the committee will not hear anything that might identify and or infringe upon a student's privacy By name or incident if you would like to sign up to speak, please email e diggins at arlington dot k one two Dot ma dot us by 12 noon on the date of the meeting I apologize. Thank you for for awaiting miss miller Hi, um, so my name is show miller. I live at 10th asda street, and I'm the parent of two arlington public school students Uh, thank you for giving me time to speak today. Um, I'm here to comment on the proposed job description for diversity equity and inclusion specialist for the arlington public schools I wish I could say I was surprised to see no mention of disability in this job description, but I'm not The job description appears to equate diversity equity and inclusion with racial justice and anti-racism I have no desire to minimize the need for anti-racist work within the arlington public schools That work is central to diversity equity and inclusion But it is not the whole diversity equity and inclusion In an article entitled there is no justice without disability Massachusetts congresswoman ianna presley and disability advocate rebecca copely right Achieving diversity equity and inclusion Means putting disability justice in every policy discussion and making it part of the continuing struggle for civil rights Students with disabilities make up 16 percent of the arlington public schools population These students are disproportionately disproportionately disciplined and disproportionately suspended For example at oddison middle school between 2018 and 2021 students with disabilities made up between 17 and 19 percent of the school population In the 2018 2019 school year 50 percent of students disciplined were students with disabilities In the 2019 2020 school year 61 percent of students disciplined were students with disabilities In the 2020-2021 school year, 80% of students disciplined were students with disabilities. That's on 17.2% of the population that year. Over that time, students with disabilities were three to five times more likely to be suspended from school. In the Arlington Public Schools, students with disabilities do significantly worse on standardized testing than their non-disabled peers. They are less likely to graduate and more likely to drop out of school. I am a disabled person with two disabled children in the Arlington Public Schools. Ableism is pervasive in this school system. It is baked into classroom practices and the assumptions that teachers and administrators make about students and families, assumptions that lead to kids being disciplined for manifestations of their disabilities, to lowered expectations, and to othering informal and informal segregation. I am concerned that the job description as written will attract someone with no knowledge of and potentially no interest in disability. This is not acceptable. I ask the school committee to reject this job description and invite Arlington Public Schools to think more inclusively about inclusion, not just in this instance but across the board. Thank you. All right. Our next item is our student representative, Megan. For the student council, what primary are you mainly working on, a transition from our current council into the next one with elections happening right now? And then also with the mask mandate coming to the school, I thought the school committee would want to know that I think from what I've seen it's going fairly well. Students have been wearing their masks and from what I've heard most people are okay with it and understand that it is far too much. Sorry, Megan. I'm going to interrupt you. Is there a way we can make this louder or Megan can stop closer to her microphone? Now she's muted. Oh, sorry. I thought there was a volume that we could turn up in the room. No. Okay. We can hear you, Megan. It's just a little soft. Yeah, no. Those of us on Zoom can hear her just fine. So you're doing a great job, Megan. The noise, the speakers here. Yeah. Would you like me to repeat what I said? Go ahead, Megan. I'm sorry. Thank you. That's all I really had to say, but you want me to repeat it? I can't. No, I would like you to repeat it because that. Okay. So for the masking piece. Okay. So for the student council update, we are currently working on a transition from our current council into our new one with elections happening right now. And then I thought the school committee want to know that with the mask mandate being reinstated at age, I think it's been going fairly well and students have a wearing their masks and a lot of students have an understanding that's for our safety. And it's been pretty positive feedback with it. Great. Thank you. I appreciate you repeating that report. Just for the public, I want to offer a few words before I turn this over to Dr. Homan. So this report is being given to the school committee as part of policy KFD, which asks the superintendent to provide us with an update on after school space and the use of surplus space throughout APS's building. So the information that is being shared here is a snapshot in time. I know that Dr. Homan will share more about this, but I also know this is a very something that a lot of people in the community are thinking a lot about. And so I want to just make it clear that this report is being given to us today based on the date on our policy. All right. Dr. Homan. Thank you, Ms. Ecksten. So I am pleased to be here tonight to share a little bit of information with you about after school programs. I'm more than happy if there's more information that's desired from the community or from the committee for us to share to come back at some point and share more information. My focus tonight is mostly on enrollments and wait lists because these have been the topics that we've heard most frequently from the community about, and I would also like to share some next steps that we're taking in order to try to expand some of the umbrella care after and before school care available to families in Arlington. So I want to begin by taking a look at our vendor partners, those who come into our schools and run programs that are not directly overseen by the Arlington Public Schools. And I'm going to begin with 2021-22, which is this school year. So as I came in and came on board, I heard from a lot of families that they were really hopeful they would be able to gain spots if they were currently on wait lists, worked with our Arlington After School program as well as collaborated with some of our vendor partners to see if there was anything we could do to open up space or available slots. So when we hit this point in the year, this was the school year 2021-22 highlights with regards to enrollment and wait lists, our vendor partners were able to accept almost all families who had expressed an interest in enrollment at the start of the school year and wait lists were down fairly far with the one exception of a wait list at the Gibbs program, which is the kid care program, which is run by the Arlington Department of Recreation. I still had a few students who were on the wait list at this point in the school year. So this is a projection, this next slide is a projection into 2022 and 2023 demonstrating the wait lists for the programs that are operated by our vendor partners. So as you can see, if you take a look at just the enrollment numbers themselves, they're going up from 659 last year to into next school year and enrollment of 705. So the good news is that we do have more spots that are open for families and that are filled. And then we also have an increase in wait lists right now with 195 families sitting on the wait lists for these programs. There could be some overlap between some of these programs and wait lists in some of the Arlington after school programs that I'll talk about next. The most significant wait list that we have right now are at the Dallin and at Brackett at Dallin, the only after school program at Dallin is the one that's operated by one of our partners and at Brackett there are two programs, one that's operated by a partner and one that's operated by Arlington after school program. For 2021 and 2022 Arlington after school program, this is the program operated under the umbrella of the Arlington public schools by Mr. Todd Morse. In 2021-22 we had this school year we had an enrollment of 399 and that's our current enrollment. We have 91 students who were still on the wait list at the end of this school year who we didn't have spots for that we were able to accommodate. In speaking with Arlington after school program folks some of the reasons for this are challenges with stable staffing and a lot of turnover with regards to staffing the ability to keep folks in these roles which are part time. Sometimes they would find full-time work and leave the program and we had to maintain a certain ratio of students to staff. We have raised hourly wages throughout the year in an effort to attract candidates and open up more available space. Space has not been the primary challenge. Space can be a challenge because sometimes programs are sharing space in a school but the primary challenge really has been the ability to make sure that we have staffing that is stable to supervise the students after school. 2022-23 enrollment. Wait list in the Arlington after school program as you can see more good news is that the current enrollment the available and filled spots for 2022-23 is 498 and if you look back at the previous year it's around 400 so we've opened up almost 100 additional spots for next school year and the current wait list for 2022-23 is also larger. We have 141 students who are still waiting to find out if they can obtain a spot and that is contingent upon our ability to staff it and open up more space for those students. The pre-COVID capacity I received from Mr. Morse was about 160 we would cap it at Hardy and Thompson before the pandemic and so as you can see we're reaching a point where we might be able to hit that capacity once again if we can find the additional staff to reach an enrollment of 160 at Hardy and Thompson. We had previously set some caps actually around 60 at Brackett but have all already opened up the capacity of the Brackett program to about 80 and 100 at Pierce. That was a newer program from my understanding prior to the pandemic and so now that that program has been in operation we're looking to open up more spots but that's going to again be contingent on staffing. So if we can find the staffing to support additional openings we are open to doing that and I'd like to talk a little bit about what some of our plans are moving forward. One of the things we're doing right now is collecting and compiling financial information. This is something that would previously have been part of this report to the school committee. It's something that we the role that had typically collected that information and compiled it for you was actually left unfilled for a significant portion of the year but it's now filled in the business office and so we're working on that and that's something that we should have and be able to provide to the committee once it's available. We are in the process of holding building-based after meetings with all program directors in one place but we haven't had meetings at each school site to have a conversation about first what the program needs are we're including community education in these conversations because they sometimes use spaces for enrichment programming and make some plans about what kind of space they're going to be used how they're going to be rotated if we are going to use classrooms that can be an imposition on teachers because the spaces are going to be removed and so if things get touched removed or relocated that can be frustrating so if we are going to be using classrooms or if we need additional space in classrooms we want to look into options like rotating making sure that we're sharing the wealth and the love of the after school program across the building and that we're not imposing on teachers too much but through use of their space so the goal of these meetings is to have all of these conversations open up additional capacity what are space considerations agreements and challenges and hopes for the future going to be I have included a sample agenda for one of those meetings in your materials for tonight we're also investigating the feasibility of before school programming I'm not in a place where we can make any promises right now about what might be available because once again this will be contingent on our ability to adequately staff something but we're also investigating the potential model of their work schedules and needing some degree of before school care in order to make it to work on time we're also hopeful that the adjusted start time for elementary can help alleviate some of those burdens on families as well and we're investigating the potential model for some full-time shared positions for Arlington after school to help with recruitment retention and lunch supervision so one option that we have because it's a public school system in order to have for example somebody who is providing services or a during lunch times which can be particularly stretched for staff and then that person could move over into working for the after school program later in the afternoon and be on a schedule that's later in the day so those are some options we're looking into at individual schools that might be able to help us make sure that we keep the program staffed and make it more appealing because it's full-time role for Arlington after school program so if anybody would like to work with spectacularly energetic students at the end of a day please feel free to apply or email Rob Spiegel who will send resumes over to Todd Morse and we're certainly looking for folks and looking to expand opportunities for students to have after school care so that we can clear those wait lists and with that I will take any questions that the committee has anybody up I'm sorry Dr. Allison Ampe I had a couple questions first I was wondering is there any way that we can cross-reference all these wait lists to have a sense of how many spots we really need I would have to get the wait lists themselves and we probably have to do some data cleaning to make sure that the names are all entered in the exact same way and that we're referencing the same you might need to reference addresses or some sort of indicator so we take a bit of analytical time to do that but it's not certainly not impossible we can try to get the wait lists as we're getting the financials at the same time I'm thinking it would be good just to make partly because we don't have a sense of how many spots we need for the district right and that would be nice to start understanding so and then my second question is just given that we've now added Ms. Elmer as a second assistant superintendent who is in charge of the after-school programming is it you is it Ms. Elmer is it Dr. Mcnail you know where I'm wondering where it falls in the chain at the moment this falls under the purview of the superintendent right now it is under my office I think that as we consider organizational approaches moving forward and if we wanted to consolidate any other functions in central office we could certainly consider reorganizing it however for right now given the number of concerns that I heard in coming on board about access to these kinds of programs I want to maintain it under my role for right now and consider a potential reorganization in the future okay thank you that's all anybody else Mr. Cardin yes thank you so I want to just make one note and then a question so this doesn't include this sort of off-campus programs at Fidelity House and Boys and Girls Club and just a couple others correct so I think that's where Dr. Ellison where most of the overlap is people might be on the Gibbs program waiting list and our waiting list but that's only 22 people so most of the overlap is going to be with those other programs who as I understand all do have wait lists as of right now so there's nobody without a wait list and then I guess my other question is about the private programs I don't know if they've expressed to you whether they do have at Brackett and Dallin they do have high capacity that they're expecting for next year so is there growth limit for them space or staffing or both still that's one of the primary questions that I have when we go and do those meetings is to take a look at what the current wait list is say what are the constraints is it that you can't find staff is there anything that we can do to help advertise for that is it that there are space limitations in the location that you're at so that's really one of the primary goals for us to discuss at those school based meetings and then I guess also in those meetings you can is why the demand varies so much by school I mean I know that the schools that are closer to Fidele house and Boys and Girls Club may have more spillover to those programs so maybe that's why Brackett and Dallin are so heavily high in demand but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me Bishops way out there and they still have high demand they don't have that high demand so you have a much greater problem at some schools than other schools thank you first thank you very much for this report this is some of the most comprehensive information that we've received about after school and I appreciate all the work that you are doing and the time that you're going to take to meet with someone at every building to get a better handle on this I think as you heard in your listening sessions this is a big challenge for the community and so I appreciate your time with that the other thing that I just want to mention is I hope that we can bring the before school care to fruition at some point there's a need for that as well we have a lot of families in Arlington who are teachers who need to be in their buildings where they teach outside of Arlington at 4 o'clock and we also have a lot of families who work in the medical area and so also need to be downtown at a really early hour so it's something that I know you're working on it and I appreciate it and I just will encourage you to continue to think about that the last thing I just want to make a comment again for the community is that the wait lists here are really fluid so Mr. Cardin had asked about overlap I hear from directors that families will sign up because they are thinking about getting a job or they sign up and then don't necessarily need the days and so I think that it's a really complicated issue and then there's a family that is working and a single parent needs to and so there's a lot going on with making sure that these spaces are available for everyone. All right, AEA resolution on fair share amendment, Ms. Keith. Do you want me here or do you want me in the hot seat? I can see her. Okay, see you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay, all right. All right, good evening to all of you. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak about the proposed resolution in support of the fair share amendment. The resolution that you have is very similar to the one that was unanimously sent from the select board to the town meeting and is awaiting discussion there. The Massachusetts fair share amendment is a state ballot question that's going to be voted on in November. This is a proposed state constitutional amendment that has been in the work since 2015. It began as a citizen's petition and then morphed into a legislative proposal. It has passed the requisite to constitutional conventions in the legislature and is now awaiting ballot approval from the residents of the state. If passed, this amendment would allow the Commonwealth to impose an additional 4% tax on income over $1 million. The first million dollars earned would be taxed at the flat tax rate of 5% and only income above that would be subject to the sur-tax. The Massachusetts state constitution currently mandates a flat income tax so the constitutional amendment is needed for this. The amendment would require the additional revenue to be directed to transportation and public education. It would raise an estimated additional $1.5 to $2 billion in revenue a year every year and in these sectors in particular one-time funding is not going to be enough so an ongoing sustained revenue source is critical. On the transportation front if this is passed it would serve to maintain and improve our public transportation system could support climate resilient transportation measures like electrifying more of our system and allowing us to invest in alternative transportation modes like protected bike lanes. Here in Arlington many of our students depend on public transportation to get to school particularly at the secondary level so this is of particular interest in addition as we look to attract more hires to the community particularly many of our paraprofessionals are after-school workers who take public transportation we have a vested interest in making these improvements. On the public education front this additional revenue could help pay for universal pre-K for working families it will allow the state to fully fund the student opportunity act for grades K to 12 and help our state reinvest in public higher education including community colleges, state colleges and universities which would allow young people to graduate without crushing debt. The amendment was carefully crafted to consider which residents are in the best position to pay a little more towards critical state services. Income inequality has increased dramatically over the past several decades the top 1% of income earners in Massachusetts now collect 24% of the total income of the state. You need to make almost $600,000 a year to be counted among the top 1% so this measure would affect less than 1% of Massachusetts residents it's about .6%. The additional 4% surtax on income over a million dollars earners closer to alignment with everyone else in terms of the total percentage of taxes paid as a percentage of their income. By asking a little more from those in the best position to support increased state revenue we can make transformative changes in our systems public education and transportation sectors for our families and work force for generations to come. This additional revenue would support citizens across the state particularly low income residents and people of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the reduction of state aid in these sectors and in addition this change would benefit our municipal budget by increasing state aid for public school students and increasing funds available for transportation related projects. The Arlington Education Association along with Massachusetts Teachers Association has already endorsed this amendment and we are asking you to take the same step tonight towards increasing funding for our schools. Thank you. Thank you. Would somebody like to make a motion for discussion? Mr. Schlickman. Motion to adopt. Second. Any discussion? Mr. Schlickman. I don't know how is a school committee that we would not want to make sure that the commonwealth has the revenues required to provide quality education transportation for the residents of the state and it's very unusual that Massachusetts has a constitutional limit on the way we tax income and so this unusual amendment is required. It's good public policy and I'm very glad we're endorsing it and I hope the voters approve it in November. Anybody else? All right. I will call vote Mr. Hayner. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I vote yes. Thank you. Six. Six unanimous but six nothing because Mr. Thank you, Ms. Keys. All right. Approval of job description for diversity, equity and inclusion specialist. Dr. Ho-min. So we are bringing this job description to the school committee and we have not spoken yet about this job description in subcommittee part of the reason why we're bringing it to the committee tonight for consideration is because we are eager to post for it. We know that positions like these we really want to make sure that we attract strong candidates for these roles and they need to be posted for a certain period of time and so our hope is that we can get any revisions that might be required from the committee and move forward with them and be able to make it possible for this role. I want to thank Ms. Miller and one other member of the community who saw the job description and raised the concerns that we heard about earlier this evening. We have revised the job description that's in your materials for tonight in Novus to include a clause in the job goal portion that articulates that the goal of this role is really to support initiatives addressing all intersectional identities inclusive of race, gender, religion, ability and many other different things that if we were to list all of them here it would really take up most of the job description. I think the intent certainly was not to leave out certain areas of equity work that we know are critically important for our students but to use language like issues of social justice that are inclusive of social justice for our students with disabilities, our students from with different identities in terms of gender with different identities in terms of sexual orientation so certainly it wasn't our intent to leave anybody out it is our intent to have a role here that's going to support our teachers in developing their practice around inclusive classrooms and making sure that all students have what they need and we're able to meet them where they are in the context of the core classroom as well as in the context of interventions so with that in mind we're happy to take any questions that the committee has about this job description and to make any revisions that the committee would recommend before we post. Mr. Hayner? Thank you a couple questions. Number one in the job description how are you going to ensure that the person has a background in this area that was mentioned tonight by the speaker? My administration want to add on to what I say welcome to do so. I think that a lot of that will come out in our job hiring process we tend to ask a lot of questions about what candidates experiences are in these areas regardless of the role but obviously for this role it's going to focus on that what kinds of experience do you have can we see it in the resume leading professional development around issues of equity what background do you have working with students from diverse backgrounds and diverse backgrounds being everything in that list as well as other identifying factors for students and we will ask them to also do performance tasks which for this particular role could include something like doing professional development doing a mock session with us so that we can see is it interactive is it universally designed is it meeting the needs of every learner in the room are we modeling the practices that we need to see in order to meet the needs of neurodiverse students in the room in order to meet the needs of students who come from different racial backgrounds in the room or anything else so the role is to make sure that these people interact with multiple stakeholders in our community including families we include we will be including members of CPAC on hiring committees as well moving forward based on feedback that we've gotten in the last couple of searches so those measures help us really get a full picture of candidates and we're practicing them on a regular basis thank you my other question is how is it going to be handled is it going to be treated like any other incident or discipline does it go up a chain or how do you perceive it working a negative incident regarding disability or a racial issue or something that would be in the purview of this person so this specialist will be in an AEA role and so when we have issues of for example Dr. McNeil who is the director of civil rights coordinator when we have a complaint that comes to us about discrimination those would go through his office sometimes the director of DEI gets involved particularly in issues of discrimination and when we're doing the proactive work that's where Ms. Thomas will often step in to have a restorative conversation with the family or to work with the teachers to think about how pedagogy it might have impacted the situation and what we can adjust but when we have an investigation that really needs to be looked into in terms of disciplinary action or other follow-up actions or reporting to the state that's something that goes through the assistant superintendent's office thank you anybody else Mr. Cardin so just one suggested edit when I looked at this position description compared to the director description one difference is instead of saying anti-racist curriculum you said anti-racist and anti-bias curriculum so I would suggest you make that change thanks Dr. Alice Zanambi thank you I'm just looking at the updated description and I would agree with Ms. Miller that even the updated description seems very heavily it mentions race seven times it mentions ability in the context of students once and I do feel that if we're trying to get someone who's also working to make sure that our students with disabilities are having their diversity and being included in this stuff that this job description doesn't quite capture that so I would question whether there's a way of tweaking it I wouldn't maybe being more overtly descriptive of what's being discussed but that I don't hit my point is I don't have words for you I would trust you to add something but I personally would feel better if something was added overtly that would be very clear what we're trying to say that's all so I actually brought this up earlier this week when I noticed that it was a unit a position which are student facing right and that we typically and I did go back and look and the unit a position ads that have happened over the last three years have all come through the CIA subcommittee we've definitely had administrative positions that haven't but those unit a positions have done and they've been iterated and before we heard from some families today I was trying to go along with the desire of the superintendent and the chair to get this done and posted and I guess I just I feel like at this point it's it's there's the risk of waiting two weeks to actually take a look at it really you know make sure that it the language is the way that we want it is the risk of that is less than the risk of just rushing ahead to get it posted so it it just seems to me it seems to me that there's a little bit more work that needs to be done and it's an important position so that's where I'm at I guess the question I have for Dr. Holman is that you alluded to there being a hiring committee that would include CPAC members do we really have hiring committees for unit a positions it's never anything I've ever seen before but if that's the plan for this position that's pretty atypical I would think that the DEI director and others that she would put together a team and hire someone as is typical with unit a positions but I don't know if there's a plan on doing a search for this I guess I'd like to hear more about what that's going to look like we have a CIA subcommittee meeting coming up next Friday so bringing a revision of this job description back to that committee for further discussion given some of the concerns that have come up makes perfect sense and we'd be happy to do that with regards to hiring searches I sent out and I'm happy to share this with the committee a set of expectations with regards to hiring searches that includes hiring searches for AEA positions for teaching positions and that asks that administrators do everything they can to include students where appropriate family members important and relevant community organizations for this particular job post I would think that the CPAC would be one of those in hiring committees as part of a search as well as performance tasks as part of the search it's not always realistic to do that for every role particularly when we get into what I would call the reactive hiring season that happens in the summer but right now we're in sort of the proactive hiring season and so we can do a more rigorous search and that's a recruitment strategy when candidates see that we are very serious about inclusion in our hiring committees and our process there they go and they tell their friends and that gets us stronger candidates as part of our searches so yes the answer would be we do include family members teachers have hiring committees for AEA level positions and because this one will be heavily involved in doing professional development for teachers we want to make sure we have good teacher representation on this hiring committee as well that's great fantastic thank you very much would it be possible for us to get some sort of like redacted or no like of that communication because my understanding is that's a significant change in practice which I'm thrilled that we're doing but it would be helpful to understand you know how that's being messaged I guess I can absolutely share what was shared with our administrative team I do know that there has been striving to do a lot of this but not necessarily always a consistent expectation that it happened in as many searches as possible so yeah that's great well to my knowledge it's never been really canonized in any kind of like written communication so that's very good thank you so much Mr. Hayner just for the only man to be clear did I understand the superintendent say that we're going to hold off on this and they're going to bring it to CIA and then I bring it back to us on the next meeting I think it's fine for us to do that if it's okay with the rest of the committee Dr. Allison Ampe I'd be happy to have CIA approve it for us and would be willing to make a motion towards that if people so want it I'm going to take a turn before we go back to that so first I just wanted to comment on the process so when this came when this position came to me and Dr. Holman and Ms. Creedle Thomas asked to put it on the agenda I asked the same question about does this go to CIA or not and there was no written document that said that AEA positions go to go to CIA and it wasn't in the description of CIA's responsibilities so that was how this was placed on this full agenda this way I think that if in the past three years that's something that's been done and it sounds like it's something that we as a committee should codify somewhere and not just rely on past practice when there may be new administration or new school committee members chairing meetings newer school committee meetings chairing meetings so I'll just put that out there as a comment about the process I I having heard from community members and thought about this I also think that it makes sense to have CIA take a look at this next week so Mr. Haynor is that your hand for that two things number one because the job descriptions come to us this is the first one I've seen on AEA one but since the job descriptions come to us it should go through a subcommittee that's one point the other point is I would like to see this come before the full committee for approval not that I don't trust the CIA but I think it's important for the whole community to see the work that we're doing should not take long I will accept the CIA's recommendation at the meeting but I think it's important to do it in a public venue of the school committee thank you Mr. Haynor makes an important point now the thing is is that it's not often that there are job descriptions for AEA positions because generally speaking we know what a third grade teacher is so usually it's the one of a kind positions that we're getting job descriptions for which are either administrative union or non-union executives so yeah that's sort of where the confusion is coming now I have full faith in the CIA subcommittee as a member but I think generally speaking if you get members of the subcommittee approving something generally speaking we are on a glide path to getting full committee approval so my recommendation would be to bring it to CIA get an approval from them in allowing the administration in their wisdom to post it with the line in the description pending school committee approval so that we can put it out without having the full commitment to the exact wording of the job description we're putting out that means that an applicant will see that there's a possibility that the job description may be tweaked but at least we're out a little earlier in the job market and I don't think that requires emotion I think that's sort of a direction we're going to take the committee members object to us just letting CIA take it actually sorry can I ask one other question about the position so it's called a specialist but it reads a bit like a coach just how did you decide on specialist versus coach so this is intentional it's linked to the work that we've been doing around coaching design do you want to speak to this a little bit yeah so in positions so when we hire individuals we have a certain teams and so in language arts, BLA and math we have a number of coaches that we can have be at the building and that is our expectation for next year with our literacy coaches that they'll be building based when we have other content areas such as social studies and science we're leading towards having them be content specialists because they're not able to work with teachers individually because just their capacity and only being a couple of one or two in that department it would be unfair to have that expectation that they can work with all the teachers within the district so they're going to be more of content specialists and I think that is what we're going with in this particular position as well that they will focus on professional development work with curriculum leaders work with building administrators to look at the delivery of instruction work with Margaret or Miss Thomas our director of DEI with her and be more of a global and do more of the professional development that will impact classroom instruction so it is because of that because of the capacity and the number of people in those different content areas that we have to term this as a specialist or and we're also doing that we're thinking of doing that making that shift with our social studies and science coaches as well thank you I would add that if we think about when we worked with the coaching design team that Dr. McNeil brought together and we had consultants who worked with them and they really sort of differentiated between the role of the district wide coaches or what we might want to term specialists and the role of a building based coach who's in the same building with the teachers every single day might do more deeper coaching cycles might be more involved in things like ace block meetings whereas the people who are district wide the coaches or specialists who are district wide really have a very sort of higher level view district level view and are doing a lot of curriculum development work so we're seeing this as a district level not that we're trying to aim towards building based coaches in DEI but this is a district wide role so we're just making that adjustment to language now we would have to go back and adjust language on the other job descriptions in the future if we wanted to do that with those roles too no thank you and that's a helpful distinction to have okay so we are so CIA will take this up at their meeting next week it can if approved there will be posted pending approval by the full committee at our next meeting alright I think I've lost my agenda I think is it your report alright the super attendance report doctor hoping so I apologize I have not yet updated the Arlington case rates for this week so that is still showing last week's Arlington average daily case rate but as you can see from the chart on the left with our Arlington public schools COVID cases we are very close to reaching the height levels and likely will over the next several days that we were reaching in January when Omicron hit and so I'm going to speak a little bit as I move forward here about some of the measures that we've been taking with regards to masks and some of the reasons behind that in response to the rising case rates in Arlington schools so I'll do that now so we have as the community knows instituted indoor masking requirements at Audison Gibbs Bishop Arlington High School and Monotomy Preschool and since I created this slide we have also instituted a requirement at Audison Middle School in response to rising cases at those schools the monotomy mask requirement with an exemption is intended to extend through the month of May that has been in place since the masks were made optional earlier this year I think at the end of February we are only instituting mask requirements when school based spread is threatening our staffing levels so I think there can be a little bit of a misconception that what we're trying to do is prevent COVID infection it is certainly a goal we don't want our students to be sick but really what we need to make sure we maintain is our ability to keep services going and keep our buildings open so when school based spread is reaching a point where it threatens our staffing levels and our ability to keep the buildings safely open and operating as they need or is threatening our ability particularly at Audison and the high school to have the events that students love at the end of the school year we want to make sure that those can still happen then we're instituting a mask requirement on a case by case basis for a very short period of time and lifting it as soon as we can and we are currently also under a strong recommendation that even if you are in a building that's mask optional that you consider wearing a mask and we leave it to the discretion of teachers to think about if they want to have moments where they take it off or put it back on we want to give people the flexibility for that but we also want to signal to the community that these rates are high enough that they are threatening our ability to make sure that we have a fully staffed school and that is concerning because one of the things we've said from the very beginning of the pandemic is that from the very beginning of the pandemic but also really from the beginning of this year is that our number one priorities to make sure we stay open for as much as possible and when a student gets COVID they are out for a week and that's not insignificant at least a week and that's not insignificant when it comes to learning I want to emphasize that each situation is really unique and we make decisions in consultation with the department of health and nursing teams at each school we don't have a number of cases that we hit that results in a mask requirement because it really depends on the number and the amount of time it takes for that number of cases to come in if it's very swift then that means that we have some level of exponential spread if it's slow over time we can have 20 cases over the course of an entire week not as concerning as 20 cases in the space of 48 hours so it really depends on each situation and we assess each one as it comes we don't make the decisions lightly and we're open to working with families when there are extenuating circumstances we've had several come up in order to allow for exceptions when it's instructionally beneficial for a student not to have a mask on for example it's really difficult for a student to wear a mask so that's the update with regards to indoor masking requirements we do have a school that moved I believe Gibbs moved into a strong recommendation today after tamping things down pretty swiftly these measures do work we see case rates slow significantly and we see outbreaks cease once we put mass on for about a week and we have several schools who do not have an outbreak right now they have a slow and steady number of students who are teachers who are infected and are out for a little while but it's not spreading at the same rate as it might be in another setting so we're doing everything we can to make sure things stay stable and then we're able to stay open and give students as joyful of an end of the school year as we possibly can and I'm happy to answer any questions about that when I'm done with my update I'd also like to update the committee on our strategic planning work we had our third meeting this week on Monday it's you know hard to have an evening meeting on a Monday but the team was high energy and we had fun we revisited some of the data analysis and synthesis statements that we had done at the previous meeting which brought a wealth of data together and attempted to reach some conclusions about what we were seeing in various sources of data about the Arlington Public Schools we started a noise analysis of Arlington Public Schools data a noise analysis is a protocol of needs opportunities improvements strengths and exceptions that we see in what we're analyzing and we started that work with strengths and had some really engaging and immersive conversations about the strengths of the Arlington Public Schools that really brought a smile by the end of the meeting it was wonderful to hear all the things that we think were really great at here we have some themes emerging so far in the work of the team we're hearing that Arlington Public Schools stakeholders who are part of the strategic planning team would like to have a better understanding of what deeper learning and equity look like what does it mean for students to have really deep and enriching experiences and what does it mean when those experiences are truly equitable when every student has access to them the team is looking for coherence across focus areas data sets and reporting methods I think we sense a bit of incoherence and sort of what is our north star what is it we're striving towards what is it that we really want to all be about and a feeling that we don't always disaggregate data in the same way we always talk about what we see in the data in the same way and there's a desire for us to come to a vision that gives us that coherence as a district so we all sort of know what we're striving for together across stakeholder groups and across levels in the system and then there's also a theme emerging around how we can achieve some symmetry between student teacher and systems level experiences a lot of talk about how if teachers feel a certain way at school or if they don't probably inspire students to feel a certain way or not and so there's a desire for the teacher learning to echo the student learning that we want to see for teachers to have that experience to have deeper learning relationships with their colleagues in the same way that we want to see students do that with each other and with their teachers so those are some of the things that we're talking about and thinking about we have a marathon session next week with sessions on Monday and Tuesday and then more sessions in the two weeks and then we'll have one of those ones left if we don't have to schedule additional ones and we're looking forward to having some drafts of vision and mission statements ready for the committee to review before too long I included some of the materials from this work in your packet for today as well I'd also like to give you an update on the Deeper Learning Dozen conference that we went to this past week I want to thank the committee for supporting members of our administrative team in participating in the Deeper Learning Dozen work we're going to do a pre-convening where we learn some of the principles and frameworks of the group which has been convening now for the last four years so this is not a new group that we've joined it's a professional learning community that has existed for a little while and is convened by the Harvard Graduate School of Education the host was the Abbotsford School District in British Columbia we visited elementary, middle and high schools we learned about how vision, mission and deeper learning are implemented in that district across the entire district with a number of Indigenous students in it we learned about work to improve educational equity from the students and for the students in the Indigenous communities in Abbotsford when you go to Canada and they talk about equity they're often talking about equity in terms of Indigenous identity so it was interesting to hear and think about how that translates in the US we talked about the needs for the Arlington Schools team as we enter into strategic planning and how we can make this work strategic planning work that we're doing and we plan for opportunities to expand the DLD work to teacher and leadership teams throughout the district in the 2022-23 school year and we're still thinking about some of that Arlington Public Schools has done a lot of work on deeper learning already I know the social studies team in particular has thought a lot about what deeper learning looks like and experiences that they can build for students that are deeply experiential and let them really think about a topic in depth so we're looking forward to doing more of that and I don't know if anyone from the team you don't have to say anything I'm totally putting you on the spot but a bunch of them went no I think it was a very profound experience personally for me it definitely makes me think and reflect on our current practice and understand how we can integrate the characteristics of what a deeper learning experience looks like into what we're already doing there was a big emphasis on connection and reflection and understanding and given us an opportunity to connect what we personally value with the work that we do and I think that is something that is going to impact my practice especially through professional development and how I model that and how we design professional learning experiences for our staff so that it will be reflective and replicated within the classroom and that's something that around the principle of symmetry that Dr. Holman mentioned so I really enjoyed it and I think that was worthwhile to also speak to educators from across the country and hear about the things that they're doing around deeper learning within their district and actually we actually witnessed a conversation that was going on at the elementary schools and they had one experience that they had outdoor classrooms and they talked about how they have integrated that and how it was connected to the culture of the indigenous people to be connected to nature so it was very profound I learned a lot and I'm excited about implementing and sharing our knowledge with the rest of our colleagues Thank you Dr. McNeil Ms. Elmer didn't get to join us and we very much missed her but Mr. Mason came in her place and that's a picture of us in a long house a Native American long house in British Columbia which was a really exciting experience because they don't typically let folks into those spaces because they're very sacred spaces so it was really an honor to be able to be in that space and to learn about the indigenous cultures in that area A few other updates quickly we have had a lot of staff appreciation ceremonies including one today to honor our retirees to attain professional status we had a school nurse appreciation celebration yesterday in honor of our incredible school nurses on Massachusetts School Nurse Day I want to talk a little bit about the 10 minute adjustment to elementary school time and I will provide some clarification language also in future updates to families we made this adjustment in order to ensure that we're meeting time on learning expectations for our elementary students and we adjusted the start of the school day both from teachers and feedback from families who are working families and said that that time at the beginning of the day might be appreciated we did consider end of the school day time there were a number of reasons why we didn't approach the adjustment by looking at the end of the school day some of that has to do with how much time we were able to gain by putting this at the beginning of the school day other considerations include transportation and the fact that when you add time at the end of the school day across the entire district there are other reasons as well that I'll share with families as we move forward but we're looking forward to having that additional time on learning at the beginning of the school day and beginning the elementary school day at 8 o'clock in the morning I want to remind the community that early release days on Wednesdays for all levels in 2022-23 will be on Wednesdays for all levels and not on Tuesdays for elementary we have tried to reiterate this in several communications and make sure it's clear to families that Wednesdays will be the day that all levels have early release days and that's to accommodate some of the work we'd like to do around professional development district-wide I wanted to just let the committee know that we're taking a look at how to make sure that our 8th graders can go on a traditional field trip to Canobie Lake Park and that that might require some adjustments to a school day for 8th graders later on this school year I will have more details about this but essentially we're running into transportation issues with this field trip and we still want to make sure we're able to do it in order to do it we need to use Arlington Public Schools transportation and that means that we have to avoid the drop-off times at the end of the school day so an adjusted day backwards for some Audison students later on in the school year so that they can do this may mean that students arrive at school a little bit later and that their day ends a little bit later and we're working with the transportation department to figure out the details of this it could also mean that students who are traveling to a music festival somewhere else in the state need to be transported to a neighboring community of Wuburn by their families early in the morning to participate in that Great East Festival and this is also linked to the transportation challenges so I have more details about this I will discuss them with committee members if you have any particular concerns please feel free to give me a call and we're working out the logistics and we'll be communicating them with families as soon as we have nailed down what we are able to do and what we think the plan will be but we really want to make sure that we can still have this experience for our 8th grade students an update on administrative hiring searches we have done the finalist interviews this week for director of wellness we had a rigorous process for them to do a performance task with myself and Dr. McNeill and we are looking forward to finalizing and announcing who the candidate the final candidate for this will be very soon we are currently in the initial interviews we did the initial interviews for director of visual arts this week initial interviews for Arlington high school special education coordinator this week and the director of history and social studies and bracket assistant principal positions are posted and we will look forward to launching those searches very soon and that is all I have for you I'm happy to answer any questions I just have a comment just to because I know I'm going to hear it the change to the elementary start time is pending approval of the first unit A contract any comments or questions from the committee Dr. Allison Ampe oh I see Jane thank you also about the 10 minute earlier start I'm wondering when kids can enter the school because my understanding was the start time is they're supposed to be sitting down ready to work so when can they come in and if you don't know I'm just thinking that's actually a very helpful number to be communicating out to parents yeah we are we are we are working on the details of that we will communicate it as soon as it's ready we our intention is for learning to begin at 8 o'clock so for us to have the systems in place to make sure the students can enter the building so that they are in their classrooms at 8 o'clock and learning can start then miss Morgan so they are here at 8 o'clock they're actually often here around 745 and are often in breakfast at 745 so we're not anticipating that this is going to need to push their arrival time there is one bus at hearty that comes close I think to the 8 a.m. start time I talked with miss Smith about this not too long ago and but we don't anticipate that we need to change anything about that we might just need to take a look at the breakfast protocol and make sure that those students can still grab breakfast as they start class you can connect with miss but I just talked to her about this the other day and I'll make sure that we're clear that this isn't going to change transportation times from echo buses anybody else I just wanted to make one comment actually also related to mecca with relation to the field trip Mr. Schlickman and I hosted a chat with the mecca families and heard some comments about the challenge for junior prom which I realize is different than eighth grade field trip but the timing for them to get home and get back and so just with this adjustment to transportation in a school day for the eighth graders I want to make sure that our mecca students are included and have the transportation that they need to get here in the morning and the transportation they need to get home in the afternoon alright you're all set okay consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number 22242 dated May 3rd 2022 in the amount of five hundred sixty seven thousand ten dollars and fifty cents for meeting minutes April 28th 2022 approval of the Ida Robbins scholarship for 2022 presented to the top two AHS students with the highest GPA approval of the E. Nelson Blake book award given to the top 12 students with the highest GPA the AHS awards night will be held on Thursday June 2nd at 7 p.m. can I get a motion so I'm left to approve and a second from Mr. Hainer yes this Morgan Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Schlickman yes and I vote yes it's unanimous subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget Dr. Allison Ampe budget will be meeting next week I'm still in the process of scheduling the meeting thank you community relations Mr. Hainer nothing to report this time C.I.A.A. Ms. Morgan Mr. Seelman is not here policies and procedures Mr. Schlickman we're scheduling Arlington high school building committee Mr. Seelman is not here Dr. Allison Ampe do you have anything pertinent its demolition is underway the updates show pictures of what's going on it's been going reasonably well it's been going reasonably well and that's all I can think of right now great thank you alright liaison reports announcements if I may third grader Gallum today had their Mocktown meeting presented floor articles three passed one failed the one that failed was increasing fines for littering time to get caught littering would have cost $500 the second time was a thousand they thought that was a little excessive so they defeated that out was a great day for the children and I want to thank publicly thank the three before teachers at Gallum for phenomenal work and the children did a great job thank you anything else future agenda items alright we will now enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted AAA negotiations and approval of executive session minutes from April 28th 2022 we will not be returning to open session can I get a motion so moved and a second second and a roll call vote Mr. Heyner yes Ms. Morgan yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Schlickman yes and I vote yes it's unanimous alright we are in executive session