 ACMI Productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help. Hi, I'm Kirstie House and Ampe and I welcome you to our regular school committee meeting of Thursday, March 21st, 2024. We actually have no public comment today, so we forgot to put our AHS student on, but we're going to let them speak. Let Mrs. Coler you speak anyway. So, hi. Just to give a couple updates, the PIA teacher event went well. I saw Mr. Schlickman there. How did you enjoy it? Oh, it was a blast. I've got pictures. The musical Twelfth Night, which evolves like over 60 AHS students and staff is this weekend. You should definitely check it out. People put a ton of hard work into it. Students taking MCAS next week. Normally that means upperclassmen get the morning off, but not this year. I'm okay with that. All counting down the days until April break and that's it for updates. Okay, great. Thank you. Next we have the community and family engagement report with Ms. Pierre. We need to slide you away. Hello, can everyone hear me? All right, awesome. I just said I'm getting there. Yeah, I have an updated link though, but I know too. Moving too fast. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Wesley Etienne Pierre and I'm the Director of Communications and Family Engagement. I have my whole team here with me in the audience, which I'm really excited about. And we are super excited to be sharing some of our wins, growth opportunities, and priorities for the department this year. So just to ground us a little bit. So our department sits squarely in strategic priority four, sustaining collaborative partnerships, which calls for the district to partner collaboratively with families and meeting the educational needs of students and providing consistent two-way communication and information in a timely manner. So our entire department is based squarely on that and we've been following the strategic plan to the T. And you could click twice, one more time. All right, so our department is made up of quite a few wonderful human beings. We have two full-time enrollment and engagement specialists that work directly out of the Welcome Center, supporting everything having to do with registration and family engagement for the district, amongst a lot of other things. We have a full-time family liaison that works directly out of the Gibbs. We have two humans that make up our 1.0 com specialists and we also have a stipend a translation and interpretation coordinator who manages all translation and interpretation for the district. And we have an administrative assistant that manages all of our schedules and bookings and meetings and really just keeps our department running. One of the most, the things that I've really prioritized during my time here in Arlington is really collaborating with all sorts of departments, school side and townside, ensuring that we're tightly knit into the organization and putting our hands kind of in everything. So we have done, well, I'll dive into this a little deeper but we've done PDs for the district. We have worked directly with PTO leads. We've worked with all the schools. We work really closely with the DIBJ department and ensuring equity in our model. On the townside we've done a few projects with the Arlington Police Department. We work with the National Guard, partnerships with the Fox Library, you name it, we've done it. So we're really, really proud of how much work we've done in weaving throughout the Arlington community. All right, I'm first going to dive into the work of the Family Engagement Department. So the Family Engagement Department is made up of four human beings who are awesome. Makai Healy and Jasmine Ballin serve as enrollment engagement specialists and their team directly manages all registration for the district. So they work directly out of the welcome center supporting families as they walk in with their needs for anything and everything having to do with the registration and other needs that may come up with families just existing. They also oversee our family. It's not titled this yet, but what will eventually become our family university, which is learning opportunities for our families to engage with the district. And really their job is to help the district with the onboarding process for new families to Arlington, really weaving them into the community and finding ways to form partnerships. So also part of this department is Sylvia Rodriguez and Akesha, so Sylvia is our family liaison and she works out of the Gibbs. Akesha is the family liaison from Meco, so we've really kind of pulled both of them into the department and assuring that family engagement is really cohesive district wide. So the mission for the department is that it's dedicated for creating partnerships between students, families and school staff and community members. And our goal really is to foster opportunities to build relationships and collaborate with stakeholders. And our vision really is to do exactly as the strategic plan says to assure that all community members feel a sense of belonging and that our devotion to supporting families, navigating the district and having a clean and cohesive process for registration and ensuring that everyone can connect with each other. Awesome, some of our big wins include the development of district guidance for welcoming newcomers. One of the first projects I worked on was supporting some of our newcomer families, some of our newer newcomer families to the district and really collaborating with Townside, with the National Guard and all those that were involved in ensuring that the families were brought in, felt welcomed and really got the resources that they need to get their footing and have a strong start. We had, we opened up our welcome center on the first round. One of the other things that we participated in that was I was really proud of, oh, sorry, back to the welcome center. So for the formation of the welcome center, the family engagement team did statewide district visits. They went to Lowell, they went to, where else did y'all go? Somerville, tons of different districts to really figure out what are the different models around welcome centers statewide and kind of how do we use what we know in terms of the panorama data, data that we've gotten from families and staff around what we need and kind of what's already happening out there so we're not reinventing the wheel on what our community needs. So we do a really good job of seeing what is out there that's great and how do we, oh, sorry, bring that back to Arlington. Another thing that we're proud of for the welcome center existing is that we brought in three different student interns from EHS to work with us to have worked with our communications specialist directly who had interests in having experience with communications after high school. So they've been able to intern with us. We currently have one student intern with the family engagement department and it's a student who's really interested in engaging with family. So she's with us twice a week, four hours, got it. And she works directly with the family engagement team and Carissa working on outreach. Currently we're working on a community resource fair and collaboration with the town for April 18th. So she's working on doing outreach and figuring out which organizations to reach out to to bring them to high school. We also, another proud moment was the Desi Better Together Summit. It was a summit where we pulled together staff, families, and various leaders throughout and we all attended this Desi Better Together Summit. The Better Together Initiative is a new kind of family engagement initiative that Desi's working on and we're trying to figure out pulling from that model what's gonna work best for this district. So we're really looking to kind of dive in. We are working through our pre-development of our parent university. So that are the parent and caregiver forums and we work with various organizations for that. Our chronic absenteeism task force were part of that in supporting the district and addressing absenteeism and supporting families and students to getting to school and engaging with school. And we also are working on our enrollment. Do you mind just passing out the guidebook please? The kindergarten enrollment was big. Our team was brand new. So the kindergarten enrollment was a huge undertaking and they nailed it. And one of our proudest kind of like culminating type of things is our homeschool partnerships guidebook. We are rolling out our first draft and that was in collaboration. So you're all receiving right now the first draft of our homeschool partnerships guidebook. So one of the big kind of goals of the team was to figure out what are all the family engagement type things that exist in the district and how do we get it to one place? So when a new family member comes in they can kind of have this menu of options at every school. What are the ways for me to engage? How do I know what's going on at my kids school? How do I be supportive of their learning at home? So this first kind of draft is out right now to staff and leaders to give feedback on the definitions of family engagement. What are the things that we want to highlight? What are the great things that we're already doing? And then on the second draft we'll get it out directly to family and community members to give feedback at while. What are the things that they'd like to see? What are the things that they'd like to do? And furthermore, next up is growth opportunities. One thing that we really want to continue to do is create opportunities for schools to cross collaborate. We want to talk about defining family engagement and involvement as a district. We realized when we started pulling feedback from students, families, teachers that everyone had a different definition for what engagement and involvement looks like. So really deciding for ourselves, what does it mean to us? What does it look like here in Arlington? And really customizing that experience to our community as it changes. One of the other things that we're looking on, working on is location and parking for the Welcome Center with the construction. It's made it fairly difficult for people to access the Welcome Center to know where it is, to know where to park. And we've had accessibility people with mobility that need mobility supports to actually make it all the way up the hill. It can be really daunting and language as well. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the language piece but making sure that we have all the things we need here to support language needs. Another thing that we really want to have is to be able to maintain a stock of supplies so that if a family needs something in an emergency, they can come here and grab a backpack. They can come here and grab like a gift card or something. We have ideas around how to support people who may come in crisis and how we will be supporting them. Awesome, some priorities continue to talk about, yep, the district resources for emerging issues with families. We really wanna prioritize the family university development. Families have been attending our forums so finding a way to really streamline that and have kind of a clear kind of model, like what are the different banks of learnings that families wanna have? How do we work with other people within the district, outside of the district to really create those opportunities for our families? Having multiple language templates generated by our systems in more languages, having a streamlined translation process, doing family needs assessment at the beginning of every year and throughout the year, figuring out what is it that our parents or our families need and assuring that we have the resources either internally or can get them externally to support our families. We're working on designing the welcome center. This is kind of a mock-up of what it will look like once it's completed. So we're really excited about that. And we are also working on solidifying our ML PAC so that we are in compliance. Feel free to ask questions as I go. I don't know what the rules are. I'll vibe either way. All right, key initiatives and action steps. We wanna continue to build strong relationships across departments, creating district-wide orientations. What does it look like when people come in? What is that initial hurrah that we're doing for our families every year? We wanna continue to approve the registration processes, increasing parent involvement, parent and family involvement, action plan supports for new families and current families concurrently. Needs assessments, restructuring our welcome center, figuring out operations-wise what makes sense. Should we have late nights? Should we have early mornings? Should we have walk-ins? Should our welcome center be mobile? Are we bringing it to the library? Are we bringing it to a church? What is it that the community needs so that we're addressing that everywhere? So figuring that out and really continuing to support families and schools to support families as they integrate into the APS community. Resources to support our success funding. We would love to have a welcome center that's always stocked with basic needs and new needs that a student might need. So backpack, school supplies, pantry items, clothing, et cetera, figuring out where to put it and how to store it and how to keep it clean. We're thinking of having more positions to support building team capacity that could look like anything like having family liaisons model at each school, whether that's stipend it, whether that's a role that's shared between departments, additional enrollment and engagement positions, and funds for professional development, really supporting the team to build their knowledge and being able to bring that knowledge back to the buildings. I'm moving into communication. So if you have any family engagement questions, I can pause. Anyone have any questions? Thank you very much for this. It's exciting to see all the work that you have done in seven or eight months. The one thing that I have been thinking a lot about that I'm not seeing, and maybe it's just sort of an oversight, is the afterschool program. So I quickly browsed through here, and I didn't see afterschool contacts in here and the contacts, your in-district contacts, your town contacts. And I'm just curious if you've thought at all about connecting with the afterschool programs that are housed in our school buildings, but are not APS afterschools, and then the town afterschools. So we have, what's the word? We've done reconciliation with all the programs. We're working with the director to get them all listed. So the website is finally updated with all our current afterschool programming, and they have their own APS district afterschool programs website that they manage as well. So that's, though that doesn't fall within our priority, because we're 4.2 and 4.3, that one is 4.1, we have work reconciled that for families, and it will appear in the next version. Great, thank you. Yes, absolutely. Can I? Yes, absolutely, yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about, I know it's very new, but the work that the chronic absenteeism task force is doing, and sort of what that's gonna look like going forward. Had parents reach out and ask me whether there's gonna be opportunities for parents to be involved, just since you listed it in wins, would love to hear a little more. You can take it, you can take it, yeah. So I'll take this mostly because, while most of good portion of Ms. Pierce team is on, that group is being led by Dr. Hoyo, and sort of with oversight by myself and Dr. Ford Walker. So they have, right, it's so nascent, like we had the idea that we should have a group that should talk about how we're working on this and working to better understand it. So for right now, it's mostly staff who have the ability to meet at 2 p.m. in the middle of the afternoon, and the goal is to get better insight first, to do some research into what the experiences are, so to involve families in understanding what the experiences are that might lead to chronic absenteeism. We know just from the experience that we've had over the years that we've been here, that there's lots of different things that can lead to chronic absenteeism, and so there's never gonna be one solution that helps address it. And so they're in such an early phase right now that I think we'll know better at the start of next year what the work of that group will be. Right now it is data gathering, it is understanding what the challenge is, it's digging through some resources that Desi has put out on ways to address chronic absenteeism, and thinking about how it plugs into the work of the working groups that are also currently meeting into the work of family engagement because those people are also on the task force. But I ask that folks be patient, and it's not that the goal is not to eventually have family members on that committee. We are going to engage with them in the information gathering process, and then figure out what our plan would be for next year. Great, thank you. Yep. Hi. I sat over here. Oh, you, I, so sorry. Yeah, it's all right. I have to see people when they talk because I need to see how their mouth move. Thank you, this is great. I think my only, you know, it seems like you're doing so many things, which is a lot of things, and I guess, again, you take your direction from Dr. Holman, not from me and not from us, right? But I guess what I would say is, as you go into your second year to try and leverage your considerable expertise, to pick some number of things to do really, really well, right? Like these are all of the things that need to be done. This department hasn't existed until like eight months ago, so it's understandable. There are many things, many things that need to be done, and looking at things that you have to, you know, that you're gonna do really, really, really well, going into years two and three, and it's gonna take time to build that capacity, I guess would be something that those of us who have been waiting for this department to exist for a long time and waiting to be able to have one, you know, would like to see, and so, you know, figuring out what other, you know, who else provides school supplies to kids, right? Who else, like, where else are some of these things happening, and then really, like, really digging in and using the talents of all of these amazing people to just do some number of things really, really well. So that, you know, it's really impressive. It's, it looks like an enormous body of work. I'm sure that it is. Look at their faces. And they're like dying. Dying. Dying, I don't know. So anyway, that would just be my feedback. Use your expertise. Find the things that are really important. Kindergarten registration is super important, right? That has, you know, that has tentacles everywhere. The sooner we get those families in, sooner we get them sorted out. The sooner we teach them what they need to know, the better it is for the budget, the better it is for, you know, everybody, you know, up and down through the district. That seems to be like a huge priority. I'm sure that it is for your team. So I, I'm really excited that you're here and it's great to hear all of the things that you're doing. Awesome. Okay. Mr. Phyllian. Thank you. She does have, like, a whole next section of the presentation. That was wonderful. So why don't we, why don't I wait and... Okay, cool. All right. I'll speed through the rest. The rest is fun. All right. So communications is led by Julian Tristol and with these two roles, we also have a stipended translation coordinator, Hilary Dawson. Next one. And the vision for this department is to empower a community in creating a sense of belonging by communicating effectively, transparently and consistently. Some of our wins include the development of a monthly staff and newsletter, tons of views. We're continuing to circulate our leader log for district leaders. We're working on, we've rebranded the district website and updated photos and we're still working on increasing accessibility and navigation. We're moving to daily post on social media, celebrating all of the rich culture that is here. We collaborated with an Arlington High School student that supported us in creating some graphics and really sharing some of their expertise in our work. The team has led a three part professional development session. Sorry for teachers that went really well. We're working on 95% of the parent teacher conferences that needed interpretation requests. Got that. And the majority of the staff feedback and the family feedback said that they were easy and positive and they had a positive experience with interpretation and translation. Can you go to the next one first? Thank you. And then we'll go backwards. Sorry, I thought I changed that. So growth, oh, I lied. Actually, I lied, sorry, go back. So the pocket talk plus, do you wanna pass those out? We're just passing stuff out, it's fine. So the pocket talk is a new device that we are gonna roll out to the district. It is a live translation feature. So it'll help us cut down on the amount of external kind of things that we're spending money on to translate and they translate live in the moment. They translate text and voice conversations in 84 languages. 77 of our APS languages are covered by this device and it's really incredible. If someone speaks a language and wants to practice on it, it's fabulous. It also, if you take pictures of a document, it'll translate it to English if it's one of the 84. So it's a major win for our district. We purchased one for every building. Yep. Exactly, exactly. Can't be better, right? Yeah, no, can't be better. So what's great is you can take a picture of a document, it'll translate it for you. Each school will have one. We're gonna get training directly from the company and then our communication specialist, we're gonna train all the admins on how to use it. All right, stop pressing the buttons, everyone. We have students visiting us from Japan in April, so we're gonna hold them so that each of the families that the students will be staying with will have a translator. Once we get those back, we'll disseminate them to every building, so we're really excited about that. Growth opportunities, we want to continue to increase the amount of day-to-day stories. We want to continue to improve training for school-based website managers the way it's formatted now is schools are managing their websites. They've been doing a really good job, but we wanna continue to work on improving training. We want to work on creating some consistent school-based communications. Currently, it's not really dictated, this is how we communicate for every situation. So with the new development of this department, we're hoping that throughout the next few years, we did a lot of data collection this year, so we're gonna slowly start to collaborate with both students, families, and educators on how we wanna best communicate all the different things that happen. We want to continue further updating the district website, increasing family outreach, and all the great things. You can go to the next one. Some of our priorities include increasing social media engagement, providing regular PDs for teachers and leaders, launching the pocket talks, updating our crisis communication protocols, increasing family outreach, making translation interpretation continuing to be better. Go to the next slide. Key initiatives, we wanna train school leaders and school-based communication with families. We wanna continue to strengthen translation services, and we wanna decide, oh, nope, skip the last one, because we got the virtual translators, next one. So resources to support success. We would love to have a dedicated human for website management. We're thinking of a contracted role to really help us clean up the website and get that solidified, do some training, and then we'll be all done with that human. District PD would be helpful to support our efforts, really trying to get all the information out to everyone. We wanna create some physical resources with the Welcome Center. Some people do require physical papers to hold, so we wanna be able to do that and really update the Family Welcome Center with that, and obviously language interpretation. Our top language is Japanese, and it's unfortunately sometimes really hard to find an in-person interpreter. What's great about the pocket talk is it does translate in Japanese, and we'll really see if that's helpful for families, and now I'm all set. If you have any questions, I'm ready to go. Mr. Thilman. Thank you very much. Thanks, great presentation. My question is this, so if you're new to Arlington and you're from, say, from another nation, and you moved to the town, and you are trying to figure out how to start your journey in the Arlington Public Schools, does a family go to their nearest school? Do they know to come to you? How do they know to come to, like, how does it work? How do they, how do they, how do you get connected? How does that connection happen? So there's both, and what's been very interesting about this community is that the people who arrive here seem to be very resourceful. It's been very rare that we get a person who just, like, comes in by themselves and isn't sure. Somehow, some way, people are connecting with other awesome humans in Arlington that are helping them get here. We wanna figure out how to find them, but either they start at the school or they start here doesn't make a difference. Often the schools will then connect us directly with them, so it really doesn't matter where they start, but then they come to us and we really start that initial registration process and orienting them to the district. So the school, wherever they come in, and then you guys navigate them. Yes, exactly. You're the navigator. Yeah, we're the compass. Okay, good term, okay. And then once they're settled in the community, in the school, does your participation with that family continue? Or are we, like, what's the- So goal is with capacity building, the enrollment and engagement specialist role would support them in that continuation of that, whether it's supporting the school directly and saying these are the things that this family needs, these are the resources, if it's a high-needs family, we may roll that work over to the social worker or the school nurse or the teacher themselves to navigate. We currently, with the staff that we have, don't have the capacity for that one-on-one relationship, but my vision and my goal would be that eventually we do have either building-based liaisons or other people on the ground directly that can continue that support throughout their time here. Okay, thank you for that, because one of the things on the strategic planning group last year, the committee last year, one of the things we talked about in our group, which focused on this particular function, was alleviating some of the administrative challenges, burdens on individual schools to respond to students who were new to the district. And so I don't know, maybe this is a question for Dr. Holman, but do the principals feel better supported? That was sort of the thing that came up when we listened to people last year. I mean, I think that's valuable feedback for us to get from them as we head through the registration process this year, and we're kind of right in the middle of that right now. I think one of our focuses in building out K registration has been how can we streamline that process so that they're not hitting roadblocks, because one of the things I think the principals will feel is actually not in the initial contact with the family, but in the getting them registered in part of the process. And so where are those hangups exist and how we can make that a faster process so that principals feel like they have the time they need to determine what's needed and get a schedule set and get the student in and focus on that experience being really positive as opposed to all the nitty gritty details of get this paperwork. Yes. Do we have that data that we need from that district or that doctor and have that be more centralized? So we're working out the kinks on that, I would say right now, and because some of those things actually are barriers to getting a kid into school faster, depending on the situation in which they enter the district. They don't have their vaccines and all that stuff, right? Exactly, so figuring out a system that is at once flexible on requirements that will make it take longer but also not compromising the safety of the school and taking some of that burden off of the school so they can focus on the welcoming process is what I would say you all are working on. Absolutely. Okay, because I mean, when the principal spoke, that was their main thing. They would love to take this administrative challenge of having to get all this stuff and give it to you. Give it to them. Or give it to them. Yeah, give it to somebody. So that would free them up to manage and support the people that are in the school rather than newcomers. Okay, so that's the goal, that's where you're going and you're gonna evaluate that over time in your eight months in so it's too early to tell. Yep, absolutely. That's what I want. Thank you. Yep. Do we get to keep these things? No. The books, yes. Come snatch those back when I put them in his pocket. We had seven, right? Count them off. Any other questions? Count them twice. Buy your own, Jeff. I will, actually, I think we have. They're cool. You can try this out, actually. You can, you got language, go, do it. I don't. Japanese. Do it. I'll bring it back next week. No. We're never gonna see it again. Oh, yes, you will. You have me on video. Fair enough, recording. Okay. Yeah, thank you. That is $275 or whatever the cost is. $279. $279? That was close. I was paying attention. No, it's pretty obvious you've got a bunch of talented people working with people. Yeah, they're brilliant. And you've done great things over the past few months. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you're gonna follow up with next year. Because, I mean, it's just blossoming. Awesome, thank you. Anyone else? Okay. I get it. He's gonna take it. Okay. We're gonna hold, we're gonna check. He actually is. My wife is a very firm critic of Japanese English translations. Yes, I will definitely do that. So my only, I appreciate the presentation and the thoroughness that you went into everything. I think the one thing, I feel like this falls under your billiwick, but I don't know where. But one thing I know is that we've recently had some sessions on Zoom that were for the high school, the session about the heterogeneous English class, and then there was another one that I don't remember what it was. And I think in the community, there was kind of an expectation, looking at social media and stuff, that it would be recorded and available for later watching. And I think with schedules and things that people have now, that feels like something that would help them be more engaged, because if they can't get to the initial, at least they can go back and see what happened. And so my suggestion is, could we come up with a protocol for when do we record things and does that have any implications for what's going on, at least that the people who are there know that it's being recorded. And then where do we put it, and kind of by when. But I just feel like this is something now that we've kind of transitioned to being comfortable with Zoom and doing a lot of things on Zoom, that this is the next step and it doesn't feel like it's a big ask. It's just making sure all the boxes are checked and that the record button is pushed. And then later on that it's posted somewhere. Okay, great, anything else? Okay, thank you very much. So moving on, we have the discussion and vote on the superintendent's proposed budget, Dr. Holman. So I don't have any updates to present from a week ago when we talked about this last. I'm happy to take any additional comments or questions. We're finalizing based on a couple edits that we got from a member earlier today. The version of the book that we'll go to finance committee as well as the slides that will go to finance committee as soon as we're done with this meeting. So. Okay, does anyone have any comments or anything? I don't see anyone. Just because I feel like I have to say something. I just want to point out that the athletic stuff is still, has things that must be ice time as a salary scheduled for the hockey teams. And that's, you know, I understand there's been a lot of changes and with the new chart of accounts and everything that there may have been some mismapping. But it's something we'll want to try and get fixed for next year. Okay. So I can show you later. Yeah, I remember you pointing out last time. I just don't think we went back to. Yeah, no, that's fine. So anyone else have any? Nope. Okay. Do I have a motion? So moved. What are we moving? We're going to approve the budget as proposed. Okay. Including the budget transfer categories set forth. Oh, yes. Including the budget for categories set forth. So. You guys are supposed to put that in the teleprompter. Yeah, we should have had it in the agenda. But okay. So Mr. Thillman, you moved it? I did. Second. Okay. I was quite criticized for it, but I did move it. Any further comments? Okay. We can just vote in person. So all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So that's the unanimous vote. And the superintendent's budget has now become the school committee budget. Fantastic. Next we have the superintendent's update. Okay. I'm going to start with one good news thing, which is just to reinforce that the High School Musical 12th Night is this weekend and I cannot wait to go. My daughter and I will be attending on Sunday. And it sounds like it's going to be a fantastic show. So just to boost Ms. Chilariu's note earlier. And I have a couple of business items to attend to tonight in the update, but it will be relatively brief because we just had a meeting about a week ago. So I want to start with a little bit of information about the Student Opportunity Act plan that is in your materials. I'm doing this as part of my report. I mentioned it in my report last time. This is something that we need a vote from the school committee on. And if there is a desire for us to delay it or comments or adjustments that folks want to have made, that's fine. It just might mean we need to come up with a meeting time or ask for an extension from DESI to submit it a couple of days late. So just a little bit of background context on the Student Opportunity Act plans. So SOA funding adjusted the Chapter 70 calculation a few years ago to better reflect and provide resources for addressing specifically achievement gaps for focal groups or subgroups as the state refers to them across the Commonwealth. So the Chapter 70 allocation in Arlington in particular goes to the town as a revenue source and then that contributes to the town allocation to the school's budget as we have discussed. So the SOA dollars as they are allocated by the state in the revised funding formula don't come directly to the Arlington Public Schools. So it's not as though we budget explicitly attached to exactly the number of dollars that come from the SOA, the act itself. But we are required by the state to submit a plan every year explaining what we're gonna do in alignment with the SOA legislation that is really particularly focused on closing achievement gaps for students. The good news is our five-year strategic plan is tightly aligned to the goals of SOA. And like the SOA, it identifies focal groups and targeted initiatives that are evidence-based for addressing achievement and opportunity gaps and the whole plan is designed for that. So it makes doing plans like this that are regulatory required a lot easier. So we submit an annual update and every few years a refreshed SOA plan which is what you're receiving now to DESI for review. And that gets posted to the district site, gets posted to the DESI site as well. Engagement with families around long-range strategic planning is an expectation of the Student Opportunity Act and a vote by the school committee on the three-year Student Opportunity Act plan is also required when we submit the plan. We have to check a box that says that we have discussed what we're doing strategically with the school committee and that there is agreement about our strategy for reducing opportunity gaps for students. So a quick update on what is in the plan that is in your materials for today. The focal groups we've identified for the state are students who identify as Black or Hispanic, students with disabilities, multilingual learners and students from low-income households, notably our LGBTQIA plus focal group is not in that list because that is not one of the options that the state allows us to check on the plan. But we mentioned it anyway in a lot of the narrative that we put into the plan that would go up on the DESI website. There are accountability measures that we have to agree to. There is one portion of the plan. It's very short, I think it's like part four that says what targets are you going to use? And so we have, we check a box that says we will use DESI's targets. They set those three-year targets for us and we share those with the principals and that's your target for MCAS, for chronic absenteeism. Those are the ones we're measured against in the accountability reports that come to you in the fall. And we're also noting that we also have the targets that are in our five-year strategic plan for analyzing the success of our initiatives that are also tied to other data sources that we have beyond just MCAS. We've chosen two evidence-based programs from the list. DESI gives us a list to pick from and they say these are the ones that DESI is supporting and choose a couple that align with the work that your district is doing. So the ones that we're highlighting for the next few years of investments that we would like to put forward for closing gaps are as follows. One is developing, you heard a lot about this tonight, developing authentic partnerships with students and families that elevate their voices and their leadership in decision-making and connect them to their communities and we've specifically selected diverse approaches to meaningful communication with families within that category. We've already put a lot of resources towards that particular initiative and improving our communication with families and our opportunities to involve families in leadership and decision-making through the working groups. And so we think continuing with that and finding new ways to continue improving upon that would be a great use of both our funds and our strategic energy since it's already in the five-year plan. And then the other one is to select and skillfully implement high-quality and engaging instructional materials and there's like a practice beneath that focal area that is specific to the implementation of high-quality curriculum. And so because we are moving forward with the implementation of EL education at the elementary level and it's possible that will lead to adjustments and shifts in curriculum work at other levels and in other disciplines, we know that there are likely investments in professional development and curriculum materials to be made in that area and have chosen that program and described our efforts in that area over the next few years in the plan. So happy to take any questions about that. Another really quick safety update. First, before I go to questions, I just wanted to acknowledge that we had a situation today that we messaged the entire community about. We received a threatening email, a teacher in the district received a threatening email last night at around 8.30 p.m. The principal and superintendent were immediately notified to that staff member's credit. They were very quick about making sure that we were aware of what was going on. I immediately notified the Arlington Police Department who immediately launched an investigation. We wanted to look into it and decide we needed a little bit of time to understand what was going on, what we thought was going on with the threat, to contact the STARS threat assessment folks and understand what their interpretation of the email was. So we had police present at the two impacted schools this morning. And while we were looking into things and getting some messaging together and then police details were present at all the schools this afternoon for dismissal. I can't say a lot more about the situation right now because the investigation is still ongoing. We're working with the Arlington Police Department and the Middlesex District Attorney's Office. We know we will be able to have a new update available tomorrow morning. We will have some police presence around the school neighborhoods outside over the next couple of days while we assess the situation and get more updates out to the community and we'll share more information on at least 24-hour intervals until the situation is cleared. So I'm happy to take any questions as well about that. Okay. Any questions? Okay. Any comments about the SOA? Would someone like to make a motion to approve the SOA as presented? So moved. Second. Okay. Any further questions or comments on the SOA? I'd like to have it aligned with what Desi was doing. It's like, oh wait, all these things. I just want to say thank you also to Dr. Ford Walker and Ms. Pierre who wrote the sections that are tied to the evidence-based practices that were put in the student opportunity plan. It worked very nicely. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, that's unanimous. So it has been passed. And then is there any questions about the security issue? Understanding that there isn't much that can be said. I want to say anything in public. Okay. Okay. Then we move on to the consent agenda. At this point, 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 and as normal sequence. Warrant number 24218 dated March 19, 2024 in the amount of $1,873,563.11. School committee meeting minutes dated 3, 14, 24. Motion. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So those pass. Next we have policies which Mr. Cardin had brought forward for consideration. Just to be clear, I didn't write, I wrote this while we were at negotiations because I had forgotten about it. And I did not write the agenda item as clear as it should be. These are only being put forth so that we can take a vote on whether or not to pass them onto policy. The intent was not either to have significant discussion tonight in order to approve or to approve. I know some members of the public were confused by this. I wrote too many members of the public clarifying that issue. So. Move to refer to policy and procedure subcommittee. All three. Second. We'll wait a minute. Wait a minute. We can discuss it under the motion. Yeah. Let's discuss it. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. We're including it on the agenda. And thank you for clarifying that this is just to refer it to the policy subcommittee. We do periodically update our policies and consider policies updated by the MASC. But we don't really have an established process for emergent issues updated by a committee member. We did have Ms. Morgan's recess policy a couple of years ago, which I think went through the same process where it came here first and then went to policy. So that's sort of what we're doing. I can give a brief introduction of these three things. I know there are copies in the agenda, but just quickly, BGB policy adoption. As you may recall, we had some issues with a resolution. Oh, sorry. With a resolution that came before us at our meeting in June because it was up for final adoption without any prior process. And since we can't comment or talk to each other or propose edits outside of a meeting, it was very challenging. So this change would have those resolutions handled the same as policy. They don't have to go to the policy subcommittee, but they do have to come to us for a first read where we can present edits and then a second read where we can finalize the policy. So then BDD would be modifying the language about the school committee's sub superintendent relationship. That policy already requires the superintendent to provide us with relevant information. But I do think we need to clarify it to ensure that any reports of non-compliance from a governmental agency are provided to us. You may recall that a few years ago we had to revise the bullying policy in response to a finding from the state. And I was disappointed at the time that we hadn't been alerted to that finding when it was received. So this is just taking a look at exploring whether our policies should be more specific about the situations where we need to be informed. And then finally, IHBB is a new policy about Child Find. We did discuss it at a meet this Child Find requirement at a meeting a couple meetings ago. It's a requirement under state and federal laws that APS has to identify and evaluate students who reside in Arlington who may have a disability and may be eligible for special education services. I wanna be clear, I'm not suggesting that APS is not currently meeting these requirements. However, there is at least a perception by some parents at some schools about the lack of clarity and commitment to this obligation. We have lots of other policies that pledge our commitment to follow certain laws and guidelines. For example, the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse is a clear law on that, but we also have a policy on that. So in a similar vein, I do think it's important to be clear that the school committee is fully committed to fulfilling this obligation and for all parents and staff to be aware of that and that's why I proposed that policy. Thank you. Okay, so we have a motion to forward these two policies of committee for further discussion. And it's been seconded. Is there any further comments that people wanna make? Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So those will all go to the policy subcommittee for further discussion and exploration of what these policies mean and if they need to be changed at all to comply with law or anything. Next we have subcommittee lays on reports budget. Mr. Cardin. So we met briefly on Monday to talk about final changes to the budget and briefly talk about the finance committee meeting which is next Monday. If anybody is available to attend, you're welcome. At 730, we are meeting the budget subcommittees meeting again right before our next meeting on April 10th. We'll do a little bit of a debrief on the budget. We'll get an update on our fund balances. There's one other thing, but you'll see the agenda when it comes out. Thanks. Curriculum. I'm sorry, community relations, Ms. Eckston. We have a school committee chat scheduled for Saturday, April 6th at 11 a.m. on Zoom. I am going to need some volunteers to be at that or we may have to reschedule or cancel. I'll reach out. Thank you. Curriculum. We met on Monday. We heard from the Math and Computer Science Department as well as the World Languages Department. We got an update from Dr. Ford Walker about professional development and we did have further discussion around the notifications sent for the Dibbles testing. Facility? We do not have another meeting planned at this time. Facilities? There's no report, but the subcommittee doesn't need to meet probably around the third week of April, end of April, to review various topics. Okay, so you're punting it to whoever follows you? Yes, but I hit me up. I stepped before me and I felt the fear. That's one way to do your work. Well, I'm letting the next chair know what's coming. Well, the next chair can take that into a consideration. A consideration hanging back, that's correct. You didn't get your work done here, do it again. Do it again. Okay, policy? Yeah, I mean, I would like if we can to schedule another meeting before the turnover in April. I know the timing is tight. We've got four policies, BEDH, JLCD, KDC, and KDCB, which have either been held or tabled, and maybe we can clean those up. And then the three policies from Mr. Cardin, which I think are definitely worth considering and moving forward, I'd like to get that started as soon as possible. Okay, High School Building Committee. We meet next on Tuesday, April 2nd. Okay, any lays on reports, any announcements? Not so much an announcement, but as this is our last full committee meeting before reorganization, I just wanted to say thank you to our chair, Dr. Allison Ampe, for keeping us on topic, on target, moving through these meetings quickly and efficiently, and all the work behind the scenes that I know you did as I was in your chair at this time last year. So thank you, okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to concur. Kirstie's been an excellent chair, and she's been an accessible, thoughtful kind of person you really want to bring your committee together, and she's done an excellent job. And I even gave him information about how to redo the school committee thing today, so I've fulfilled my obligation for the next step on that. The tables? Yeah. No, I was waiting on some information from ACMI, and I was able to get it today. So now we know how it needs to be set up. Well, thank you all for being very kind. I would also like to note, I think this is, I understand Mr. Mason is not here, but this would have been his last meeting and just to express our appreciation for everything he's done for us over the past many years. Yeah, I will absolutely pass that along. Okay, thank you. So now we move, I'll say first, is there any future agenda items? So none. Now we move on to executive session. And this is to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union, in which you've held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which you've held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. This is for the purpose of discussing negotiations with unit AA, unit A, and also to discuss the deployment of security personnel or devices or strategies with respect, if they're true. And we will not be returning to open session after exactly a session. So, oops, we need to vote. Sorry. Second. Okay, roll call. Ms. Gettleson. Yes, sir. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I also vote yes. Okay. ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help.