Peter Nelson, can you hear me okay? Okay, great. Okay, so seeing a presence of the quorum calling this meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order at 6.07 p.m. Welcome everyone. So just as a reminder this meeting is being recorded by Amherst media and will be posted on the website later. I think we're still having some technical difficulties with the live broadcast. So also just an important announcement. We currently have two members of our committee that are joining us by phone. We have Peter Demling who is actually driving on his way here from a meeting just outside of Boston. And should be here in about 45 minutes or so, maybe a little bit longer. And then we also have Allison McDonald who is currently home sick but wanted to join us for this conversation. So as per the rules for open meeting law, both of the members are allowed to participate in discussion. And they can vote but they don't count as part of the physical quorum. But we actually have the physical quorum here so the committee can proceed with its business as usual. So do I need to just read this now? Okay, so there is actually something that's required to be read here. There's something that was passed, a policy regulation that was passed in January 23, 2017. And it's with respect to our members not being present and participating remotely. And basically what I need to say is that the record reflect that the Amherst school committee member Peter Demling is attending remotely via speakerphone. Today, November 5th, 2018 for reasons of travel of work under 940 CMR 29.105. Mr. Demling, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, can all those who are presently here hear Mr. Demling? Yes. Okay, so let the record reflect that Mr. Demling's attendance via speakerphone can be heard by all who are present at the meeting. And of course all votes that are taken during the meeting with the remote participants shall be by roll call vote. And I will, Ms. McDonald, let the record reflect that Amherst school committee member Ms. McDonald is attending remotely via speakerphone. Today, November 5th, 2018 for reasons of illness under 940 CMR 29.105. Ms. McDonald, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, can all those who are here hear Ms. McDonald? Yes. Okay, thank you. So let the record reflect that Ms. McDonald's attendance via speakerphone can be heard by all who are present at the meeting. Thank you all for your patience. This is just a requirement, so we will proceed now as planned. So the first order of business that we have is approving Amherst school committee minutes of October 22nd. This is a reminder was a joint meeting. The first part of it was a joint meeting between the select board and the Amherst school committee. And then we took a break and went on to come back here. Actually, the meeting can continue. So I'll give the members a moment to look this over. Mr. Nakajima. I move the approval of the minutes of October 22nd, 2018. Okay. Do I have a second? A second. Okay, thank you. We have a motion and a second. Any comments, edits to the minutes? Okay, seeing no comments. Okay. All those in favor? Signify by roll call vote, please. I just wanted to make sure. Nothing. Okay. Thank you. All those in favor, please signify by roll call vote, please. Nakajima, aye. Spitzer, aye. Ordonez, aye. Mr. Dumling. Dumling, aye. Ms. McDonald. Thank you. The meeting minutes are approved for October 22nd. Yeah. Good relief. Yes. Okay. Now moving on to announcements. I have a couple of announcements, but I will also look to the committee members to see if there's anything or Mr. Superintendent, any comments or announcements? Okay. Mr. Dumling, Ms. McDonald, do you have any announcements you'd like to make? No. I have none. Okay. So I just a very quick thank you to Joe Coverford and to Mindy Dom for coming out to North Hampton Rally, actually more of a press conference given the rain. So we had met Mr. Dumling myself and North Hampton School Committee members and several representatives from the state and local area actually got together to basically let the community know that we were concerned with the proposed expansion of the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School. And we had members of the press come. There were a couple of stories that came as a result of that. And I think for the most part it was a very positive event. People actually felt really good to be there because the message was really just about the support for our public schools and how much we care about our public schools. But also a very important message coming from representatives from school committees in Holyoke and Springfield, North Hampton here in Amherst about the impact of charter schools and how this expansion would actually impact our budget in the upcoming year and why we're actually asking the state commissioner to reject the request for expansion. So there have been various letters that have been written by school committee members and school committees as well as select boards and state and local representatives asking the commissioner to not approve this most recent expansion. So I just wanted to thank representatives and others who attended in that very rainy Saturday and took time off from their schedule to do that. Okay, so with that I'm going to open it up to public comment. If anyone has any public comment, please feel free to come up to the microphone, state your name, and you have three minutes to speak. Okay, seeing no public comments. We'll move on to the superintendent's update. Sure, I'll be brief. Well, if there weren't any public comments, there'll be a lot of comments in quite a while by many people who are here. So some of them are written and some I'm going to do early as well. So tomorrow is a professional development day because it's election day and we made the decision last year. You made the decision last year to accept the recommendation of the APEA and myself to schedule, not have students attend school on election day given the safety concerns. You can see in the second basically all the pages except the first one describe the activities in the morning. They're focused on social justice and anti-racist, anti-bias work and the way we framed it was that all staff members have access. So power educators, professional staff, custodial staff, so on and so forth. And this really came, you think about March, I know we shared the professional development day that occurred last year in March and the feedback from that drove us to make the decisions we made. I think it's also notable that we've had more staff members commit to leading a session this year than we had last year which is what we wanted. We definitely have some outside folks but we also have a significant number of current staff members who stepped up to talk about what they're doing and the successes they're having as it relates to the general theme. Our keynote, if you call it a keynote, it's a little different than a traditional one will be students on a panel talking about their experiences and the student leadership around social justice. So I'll do an introduction, they'll do a panel and then we'll go off into the session. So we're really excited about tomorrow. And I really want to thank Tim Sheehan who's in the audience and Doreen Cunningham who's not because they're certainly the primary people responsible for the day tomorrow. So we're very much looking forward to it. I'll mention that the Alana cabinet, this is a topic conversation that we talked about was in my goal a couple of years ago but I want to keep active because the group has continued to be active and what we've, the group has decided this year's focus is increasing participation. So we have the cabinet but how do the pipelines between Alana staff members of the schools more readily find its way to Miss Cunningham and myself. So we're looking at some school based meetings that then feeds into our conversations and we're supporting the Alana cabinet members to facilitate that they've happened, started happening at some of the schools and by the end of the year will happen in all schools and just making sure everyone feels like they have that pathway to our central office administration and also to engender more community within the Alana staff across the district. So I think it's the right move in getting conversations in smaller groups at a building level makes a lot of sense and that's the way we're deciding to proceed this year. Dr. Morris, I'm sorry. Can I just interrupt you for one second? I just want to make sure that the members on the phone can hear you. I should be speaking louder, yes. Mr. Jenley, Ms. McDonald. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I did a little louder would be helpful. Okay, thank you. I will do that. I agree. Thank you. Sorry about that. So that's on the Alana cabinet. The next one I had one of the more powerful and poignant experiences I've had actually in quite some time separate from my role just as a human being was we had high school students and I know this is an elementary meeting but I do feel like it's worth mentioning here since they touched on their elementary experiences. So high school students decided to organize a meeting to talk about the Pittsburgh tragedy talk about there, how they experienced the tragedy but also how they experienced being a religious minority within this community and there were many notable things that happened. One is that it was sent out to everyone and allies were invited and there was a significant number of students who openly identified as not being Jewish but wanting to support that community which I think speaks a lot about our larger community. The students asked me if I'd reach out for religious leader and I want to thank publicly I thanked him in other ways by Weiner from the Jewish community of Amherst came and was really helpful in framing and contextualizing the incident, the response and the networks of support that exist and so we were really fortunate that he was able to run on his time for obvious reasons is significant and he dropped what he was doing on a Friday afternoon right before Shabbat and chose to spend an hour and a half mostly listening to students talk about their experiences. We're incredibly grateful for his time and many of them talked about their experiences all the way back to elementary school which I thought was interesting because the students facilitated the meeting. There was a couple staff members who also chose to attend but I would guess I didn't have a count but 90% of the comments were from students. I spoke once, the rabbi spoke once, other staff members spoke once but really the whole meeting was not just spoken but run and facilitated by the students and it was powerful, more on that perhaps at the region but I think because it touched on their elementary experience and I think it was, we don't meet for a region for a while I thought it was worth mentioning. Last week we taped the next episode of Window into Arps and it featured the science coordinator Jennifer Rees and Farmer Lila, excuse me, Farmer Lila who worked with students in the elementary gardens. It'll be a really good episode. It's high interest for families and students and also they were able to describe the origins and where they think the program can go which I think will be great for the larger community to see especially those, not only those with kids in school but for the larger community to see what we're doing and the next episode actually, I got a response after the episode with Mr. Yaffe and Ms. Estes from a parent guardian in the schools, elementary schools who said, these are great but I really want you to, you know, someone should feature the ELL, the English Language Learner Department because they've done an amazing job and really made a huge impact on my child so we're going to do that. So it was great to be able to respond to feedback that way. Three other ones that didn't make it on here, one from an MASC perspective. I was able to attend that with Mr. Demling. I think it was the Region 5 MASC meeting. There were three presentations, one from the Berkshire Task Force looking at regionalization, one from Springfield that looked at a presentation about the tale of four cities focused on Springfield, Holyoke, Worcester and I believe it was Brockton and then talking about Amherst Pellum and the Amherst Pellum Regional Schools about the impact of, we were all talking about finance in different ways and in addition to enjoying the company it was great to see the other presentations it definitely helps inform our work to hear what other districts and regions in the case of the Berkshires are struggling with and dealing with. Last night I was able to attend the Roger L. Wallace Award ceremony so Lauren Matone who is a teacher at Crocker Farm was this year's awardee and was highly attended and festive atmosphere and environment for everybody and it was great to be able to, it started the same day Lauren did in the same school with teachers at Fort River so we had some nice moments just reminiscing of where we are and where we are and that was a lot of great event and thank you to the foundation who puts on not just that event but through my comments last night I started by saying the first 12 years in the district there was a Robert Frost Award given to the high school staff and nothing for anybody below high school and it didn't feel great to not just me but a lot of elementary staff and in addition for honoring Roger Wallace who was a mentor of mine I started teaching in sixth grade it was really notable that we recognized that we have a pre-K to 12 continuum of educators who all make a huge difference and the other thing I said was the foundation, the finest form of flattery whatever so the middle school PGO has now taken up the mantle a couple years ago and now we have an award for elementary, middle and high school staff so it's nice to be copied and lastly just a quick facilities update we met two weeks ago just a quick update is that Mr. McPherson he's retiring this week but his last work has been to exhaustively look through all the the secondary well speak to this one the elementary schools to build a capital plan that looks out not just for next year but multiple years into the future understanding what the current challenges are what can be addressed short term what can be addressed sort of medium term the long term is a different conversation we'll talk about a little later tonight and so it's a little atypical for Amherst where as opposed to the region because in Amherst the capital budget goes to JCPC and at region it's much cleaner what I'd like to do is at the next meeting bring a draft of that capital plan because it's such a high interest it is of such high interest at the elementary level and have a little bit of an atypical process wise a little bit of an atypical conversation but I think we'll be ready to go a couple weeks from now with the draft and I do think it'd be good for you and the community to understand the thought process we're having and the dollars attached frankly to start taking with the deferred agent taking a swipe of the deferred maintenance and really making some true headway on what our urgent needs in our opinion of the facilities at the elementary level so when we get to the future planning we can talk more about it but I think much of our work has been making sure the buildings are clean we spent the Saturdays I think I described that but we're now in the phase of really thinking through what the larger next steps will be because we know we're not going to have a new building make sure these buildings can work for the staff, the faculty and the students for some time and trying to prioritize the needs has not been an easy process but it's been really truly been a full sweep of every building, every classroom every exterior space and so we'll bring that back next week or next time excuse me I think it's November 27th we'll be ready to present that here next time yeah any comments or questions for the superintendent nice update and how about for Mr. go ahead Mr. Demling yeah Dr. Morrison, glad you mentioned the presentation by the superintendent from Springfield the four towns and I just wanted to make a general comment that this is going to be a huge fiscal year of advocacy for state funding of public education and it was really one of the most heartbreaking things I have heard on my time on the committee of hearing the details of what has been cut in Springfield public schools and so when we talk about advocacy for state funding of public education of course it affects us and it affects our children and our town but we have colleagues we have brothers and sisters and other towns that are getting destroyed and running a public education and it's an economic and moral issue that I think our representatives speak really well on and you know I just wanted to highlight that as a theme going forward for this year of advocacy thank you Mr. Demling there's a lot of nodding heads here Ms. McDonald is there anything that you wanted to add or ask the superintendent okay thank you thank you Dr. Morris sure so moving us along to new and continuing business the first item on the agenda is the specialized special education program working group recommendation so Dr. Morris are you going to introduce and then we have a lot of members of that group and I don't know if everyone is speaking but I've seen nodding or shaking heads so not everyone but I think we'll have some representatives who are going to come up and we can figure out maybe a space toward the front with this microphone there's three things I want to share and then really pass it on to the group that did the work so I was able to be I would say in and out of the group I wasn't a group member but I would come and offer some contextual feedback every now and then so that the group was well informed with other things going on in the district that we were in siloed and my observations were that the group was incredibly hard working and I think you'll see of a summary of a tremendous amount of work that occurred they were flexible in their thinking so what I was impressed with was I didn't perceive that group members came in with a preconceived notion of an outcome and I think you'll see some evidence of just the exhaustive nature of all the different options that they looked at and I think they also did a fantastic job listening to one another people who are choosing their life's work or in the case of parents really connected to this work to talk about a pretty major issue where kids go to school and yet I saw a flexibility of thought and an openness to listen that I think is a good model for any topic that we do at any point in time and I think to that point my experience with the group when I would go in and out is there was different times where there was strong leanings one way or the other most the bulk have been done and I really appreciate the advocacy I'm going to look away for a second because they're here and it feels weird to talk about them and not look at them I appreciate the advocacy that occurred at the appropriate moments and really the continued thinking so we would take straw polls or I'd see straw polls and then people would sleep on and say hey I thought more about this what about and it really was an iterative process so I just want to publicly thank people and they got together in the fall and they thought they were done and they got together this is still fall-ish just as I feel like it so much for their work and I feel very comfortable to preview where they'll get to at the end I feel very comfortable with both the process that was used and also the outcome in terms of their recommendation but I think with that I'll pass it over to the group just before you do Dr. Morris I'm wondering if you can just give a 30 second reminder of the genesis of this this group last year there was an enrollment working group subgroup that looked at this very question about specialized special education programs and what was the best location to meet all students needs and that was the framing the group did a lot of work last year and then kind of offered some advice for future groups to do work and one of the pieces of advice was that people who were in the work should be the ones really digging in the group last year did a great job but there were experts in this area we're fortunate to have them here tonight who should take the data that was developed last year and do a deeper dive and that's what we did and I'm really pleased thank you for that reminder because I think it's important to make that explicit connection to work that did last year and I think I know Jen McIntyre is one of the people but maybe and I thought there was one other talk and very good so for the presenters if you don't mind you can stand near the mic over there or I guess there's a lot of you over here so maybe just in the front row here but let's bring the mic closer just to make sure that the folks that are on the phone can also hear you we have an extra mic here yeah you could borrow that mic over there why don't you take this mic here we each have a mic what's easiest what's easiest for you it's all easy for us so thank you for letting us talk today we had a big group of people and we'll talk about that in our presentation who actually did all of this work so first so I wanted to start with the charge of our group what Dr. Morris asked us to come together and do is really to work together to explore the possibility of creating an additional building blocks program in another elementary school currently we have two programs in the Fort River School we have our building blocks program and we have our aims program and we have room for about 30 kids in those programs and so we were trying to figure out if we maybe split those programs up and disperse them across the elementary schools if that would make more sense we did this because of sort of in the broader context of where it made the most sense to educate all of our students that had highly specialized educational needs and also as a result of the Special Ed Working Group that Dr. Morris was just talking about and we also wanted to address the fact that there's a higher percent of students with disabilities within Fort River because of the higher number of programs that are in that classroom and how that impacts the school overall we came together knowing that this was our charge but that we would have other issues that came up including things that we would need to really identify talk about and sort of put on the table to continue talking about it at a later date we had a number of diverse group we had Special Ed administrators both Dr. Brady and Joanne Smith were there as well as Diane Chamberlain joined us I was there I'm the elementary program coordinator at the elementary level our school psychologist for the building blocks program Jessica Rudnick who's here in the front was there as was one of the building block teachers, Kristen Rhodes we had another Special Education teacher who was a Fort River specific teacher Karen DiMadio we had a General Ed teacher one of the Fort River Librarian Lenny Blackman we were lucky enough to have a pair of educator in our group which I think really was something special because we don't often have that representation and we had two parents Nancy Stewart both also CPAC representatives we met exhaustively some of these meetings were three and I think four hours long in the summer and then again like Dr. Morris said we came together in mid-August and then at the beginning of September and then again just last week to finalize our thoughts and our recommendations we thought a lot I included these slides we took a lot of pictures of what we did but I just wanted to represent what Dr. Morris was talking about that we thought a lot and we wrote things down and we really tried to capture I tried to capture that that we were thinking about all of the programs where all of the students were coming to our programs from like if you are living in a Wildwood district and you need to go to building blocks and you have to change your home school to come over to building blocks and all the different lenses that we needed to represent at this meeting that the parents would have some ideas that teachers and general ed teachers and special ed teachers might have different thoughts and ideas and then we got down to the nitty-gritty of what did it mean to have a program in one school versus two schools and what that would impact how that would impact everybody we spent a long time on this we had many many documentations like saying what are the pros what are the cons what are the things that work to have them in one school and what are the things that might be better to have them in multiple schools and we also had sort of our parking lot of other topics what were some of the other things that we needed to consider if we were really going to think through the needs of our specialized programs and the students in the schools as well we identified 13 options we might have been able to identify more but that was a lot and we talked through all of those different options and we thought about just some of the obvious things like moving building blocks and splitting that into two different schools but also some of the less obvious like what if we impacted Crocker Farm what if we moved the intensive learning students into the Fort River School and moved the building block students into the Wildwood School and so we tried to just be really open to all the different scenarios that we could come up with once we identified those options and went through them we sort of came up with a list of considerations and I'm going to let Catherine talk about those Hi, I'm Catherine Lodge my daughter is in the PIP program at the high school she has been in the preschool Wildwood the middle school and now a senior at the high school just so I'm perfectly clear the lens that I looked at this through was like what is good for the kids I didn't think about money I was just thinking about what's the best for parents and kids so our underlying beliefs were inclusion and students receiving appropriate level of support things that I really was concerned about and thought about were most of the models didn't allow for children to attend their neighborhood schools which was initially a concern for me the uneven numbers of students with special education concerns special considerations were transportation and children being able to go to school with their siblings and our recommendation came that we retain the specialized programs in their current locations Fort River having two building blocks classrooms and one aims program Wildwood with their two ILC classrooms and Crocker Farm maintaining their preschool so it seems like a lot of work to come up with a recommendation to stay the same right but that's what we did and probably one of the number one reasons for this we also did in a building blocks some building blocks summer development as well we changed the needs of our programming based on the population of students that are in it at any given time and so we met this summer to talk about the student population that we had and changed the model of service delivery slightly this year and what we did was really lends itself to having two classrooms in one building so we have this model right now with the two classrooms in one building and it really allows for a continuum of service delivery within that one school we have two teachers and two rooms and that allows us to take some of our students who have more significant social emotional needs and are receiving the majority of their education within that classroom to be in the classroom with one teacher but then allows us to have a second teacher who is available for the students that are following more of an inclusion profile who are getting more of their education in the general education environment when we split into two schools we lose that opportunity because the kids that are then the ones that have the social emotional needs require the teacher to be with them most of the day the students who are more able to be included throughout the day don't have the opportunity to have a teacher there to go in to model for the pair of educators to consult with the general ed teachers to talk to the librarian about the future so that continuum of service delivery would be lost if we split up on the same in the same area is the inclusion supports because we have that we have the two teachers in one building one of our teachers is freed up to move around the building and make sure that we are observing students in the inclusion classroom we are there for the general educators and we can really focus on the inclusion which is something that Amherst really prides itself on I know that it's one of the reasons I like to work in Amherst I've been here 12 years and it's one of the reasons I really like what we're doing here with our intensive special needs kids also the third piece of this is equity of treatment for all of our students and this goes back to the same piece if we move into two classrooms and we have one teacher having to work most of the time with our most needy kids the kids that don't have significant needs are going to be educated more by pair educators it's just what's going to happen because the teacher won't be able to move into the classroom they won't have the same level of support from that special education teacher so we developed this program where we split the population of students more this year based on the students that are there and we have had a really successful year we have kids that are included most of the day and we have kids that have significant needs really beautiful that have some significant needs that have made great progress and we're really proud of them but I think a big part of that is because of the way we've changed our model so the last piece of that is that I think Dr. Morris went back and looked at our special ed percentages and we have a number of students in the sixth grade in our building blocks program right now I think we have ten students in the sixth grade and so with those students graduating from our program and with some of the other the students graduating in the sixth grade at the building blocks our percentages will change dramatically next year so instead of being and I think I'm reading this right 8.6% higher we're going to drop down to only 4.3% higher which is not, it's much more similar than 4% versus close to 10% so because of those reasons we opted to remain the same we have more stuff to look at we still haven't figured out transportation this is a problem to get kids from one school into another school is hard work and our transportation department is amazing the problem of siblings we really haven't gone into so if you have a student if you have two kids and one goes to Wildwood and one goes to building blocks and you want them to both be at the same school we don't have a solution for that yet but we hope to talk more about it and also just the changing needs of our special ed percentages by school over time I mean I think that Fay talks about this a lot that as the population of the students in your programs changes we really need to be able to respond to that and we may see that this changes over time and we may need to come back together and we may need to do something different but at this time it seems to be working and we'd like to move forward the recommendation is to move forward and stay the same I just need to make a quick announcement so some folks may have heard that we lost Mr. Demling on the phone but he had actually warned me that this would probably happen once he hit a certain patch of the roadway so he had asked me to call him back in about 10 minutes or so and he suspected that he would be back online so Dr. Morse do you want to add anything to that? Yeah I want to thank Katherine and Jen for presenting and articulating and drilling down many many many many of hours of work into you know a pretty finite number of slides and minutes for a presentation so I think I think the only thing I'd like to add just come back to where I was at the beginning is given the process given the level of detail and work that occurred by the group I feel very comfortable with the recommendation that was made and the last point is an important one that it's not a forever decision or recommendation it's that we have to continue to look at our program of services who our students are and whether the model is working and what I heard from the group particularly this fall after the changes that occurred in the summer not many changes in students but changes in staffing how the staff was being utilized support students is that the program model is working right now and it's working to meet students needs and to the cost benefit analysis that I use I fully agree with and endorse. Any comments, questions from the committee? Mr. Nakajima? Thank you very much for the presentation and for all the hard work I really appreciate the amount of time you guys put into this. I just have a couple questions first off I was just wondering for the benefit of the folks at home if you could just quickly combine building blocks aims and ILC what does ILC stand for? Yeah, just for us but for everybody watching. Is this close enough? So we have three district programs in Amherst the building blocks program is a program for our students that have social emotional needs and needs more social emotional supports they often have some type of trauma history in their background that sort of binds them together in the learning center the students in that classroom tend to have more educational needs where they need to have their learning broken apart into really small components and put back together that sort of is what brings them together is some cognitive differences and disabilities and the final program our aims program is for our students used to be considered to have Aspergers or high functioning autism friendships and understanding social rules and social norms and those are the three programs that we have Thank you for that because it really makes sense that you'd want to have clusters I think around the professionals who specialize in these specific areas of special education so I guess I have two questions one was just if you could outline any outreach to families who were not members of the groups because I have heard in my personal experience that at least there's a perception in the community that there's a great burden placed on families with students who are attending their neighborhood schools and that's the thing I hear the most when both when I was just out there campaigning and then also as a school committee member I hear that all the time so I was wondering what would be and if this was explored at all I can see the perfectly the reason why I would want to keep this as the status quo but is there any potential of the non-special ed child into the school that the child needs to you know attend for this specialist program was that maybe that's something that's going to be discussed at a later time once you've made the decision whether or not to move forward with this current model but it seems like we could look at it also that might be one potential solution that when it disrupts the learning that goes on in these specialized classrooms so it did come up as a topic and we did spend some time talking about it there isn't a simple answer to that because there's no right or wrong way to do it and different parents have different things that they want to do so we discussed talking about it more after we made a decision of where the programs were going to land and how is the best way to handle that to have either to see if we could figure out how to accommodate the parents and have both kids in one school or again not all parents are going to choose that so make that a choice with that said one thing I didn't point out too which is a future topic is to think about what to do with students to graduate our program because if you have a student that's attended a specialized program for three or four years and we've done some amazing work with them and now they're ready to go back into the general population if we take them from Fort River where all their supports are and put them back into their home school then that's really taking a kid that's somewhat vulnerable and putting them into a situation that's somewhat untenable so at this point we've been making a case-by-case decision on that but we've talked about getting back together on that as well to try and figure out the best way to look at those two particular topics we don't have a great answer yet it's good that you're talking about it yeah, thank you Mr. Navajima I'm impressed with the level of work and effort that the team put into this I guess one thing a couple of things I'm wondering is given that you just did a bunch of work is there a plan to move on to the next step like the future topics you know right away or is it going to sit for a while I don't know if you would mind I mean I think both right, so some of it we have to address right away, we have kids that we're hoping to graduate out in the next couple of months so the talk about what we're going to do is going to be right there because we have to make those decisions now so that we can start that transition process the siblings is probably a bigger issue that will be taken up at administrative level to figure out because it's going to impact the enrollment in each of the different elementary schools that makes sense the funny challenge of ending up with the status quo is that a lot of the issues that have been raised and have been talked about is concerning some members of the population of the community remain so you sort of it immediately makes you feel like you've done all this work so if you said you wanted to take a break anyways I don't understand what but it sort of makes you want to jump into the next step and see what progress can be made there the funny question is maybe something you don't want to answer I have no idea but a funny question for me is how much did you learn as a group so when you started out you tried to keep away from preconceptions which means you started out with the concept that maybe there wouldn't be much harm in separating out doing different chunks of building Brock's programs throughout the elementary schools the practical learning that you've gotten that you've described today on the other hand seems to be exceptionally well articulated about why you wouldn't want to do that why actually not the best interest obviously for professional development for the staff but apparently just for the population of kids, for the students and how differentiated they are you wouldn't be able to give them the appropriate attention that's tailored to their specific needs without setting up the way it is now so I'm actually just curious for anyone in the group how much learning you did over the last few months that moves you to this really articulate and in-depth and the reason I'm asking the question but also part of what I'm asking is it tells me why it's worth diving into these next topics that if your assumption is not that there's a one size fit all single shot answer differentiated answers to me it reinforces the value of doing that work in this manner so I just love to hear about how much of that journey you went on do you want me to answer this question does anybody else want to speak up no I mean I think it was a journey and I know that you know I've been with the programs for a long time I started in the schools and I've been working within the three programs for quite a while I had some ideas about things I would like to see and they changed over time based on the work that we did together I think that the building blocks model and what we do as a team I think was not well understood by other members of the group that were outside of our team I think that was really something that we learned but that we were able to articulate over time and that people I think came to a better understanding of what it was that we were doing and trying to do with that particular population of students I think that there was a lot of movement in different directions where we'd say oh wow we're going to go this way and then someone would come back to the group and say well have we considered this and it would sort of sway things to more conversations so I mean overall I think it was very worthwhile to spend the time doing it and I know that again I changed my questions from what I wanted to do I was really hardcore at the beginning I'm like we're going to just do this, this is what I want to do and that's not what we ended up recommending at all so okay, yeah you want to add to that can I just add one thing I was at most of the meetings and did a lot of listening and what I observed to your point was that people who had really strong opinions and strong feelings one way or the other watched that evolve and change and people switch totally and then back to where they were I think it's not very often that educators get this amount of time to sit down and collaborate and listen and really think together it's like a think tank and people really changed where they were and it was just a beautiful thing to watch that people were safe people really articulated very very different perspectives and just went from where they were to whole different places and then even when kind of I forget the date when we thought we had a decision people as Dr. Mar said said no I thought I meant that when I voted but I really want to say something else now so I think it was a really genuine process and the fact that we had I think to your point we only had two parents involved we had Catherine and Nancy Stewart who was there for part of them but they really spoke as collectively as possible for as many families as they've talked to so I don't think we had two parents just speaking from an individual perspective but really trying to have more of a collective input and both expressed lots of different feelings that made the whole group stop and think and reconsider it so it was fascinating to wind up right back to where we started that was interesting process thank you so I actually have a question as well but before I do that I'm going to try to see if I can get Mr. Jemling back on the phone again because I know he would you I'm happy to because I think it's probably less disruptive so one thing I would just say while you're dialing is I I appreciate the recommendations and the work and I think the presentation itself was really interesting and informative I'm also just I'm saying this to Dr. Brady as well as the superintendent I'm endorsing the method if we have subjects like this and particularly where Mr. Jemling hi we lost you we got you back thank you thank you okay I'm saying particularly where there's a core program whatever the services whatever the educational program it's a core essential program that's serving some of our students either as part of the curriculum or otherwise and their concerns that are developing around how it should be modified how it should be developed what's the best way to try to think about I mean I think the enrollment working group process is really great too but then to give the educators with a wide stakeholder group professionals and parents the opportunity to engage at this level of depth is really just you know immeasurably valuable when you think about what you could otherwise end up with if you have like a flavor of the month or some so you go I mean I'm not gonna be sarcastic but you go to a workshop the workshops eye-opening you come back with an idea you start thinking about implementing the idea and you haven't taken the time to really do a deep rich evaluation of what you have and what the different factors are and it's not perfect but nothing ever is right you're talking about the reality we live in anyways I just think that was really I know you finished dialing I'm sorry but I really wanted to say that because I think it's a good teachable moment for the school committee for the staff and for the leadership to think about thank you so I just want to give a chance to Chris McDonald and Mr. Demling if you have any questions or comments for the group you know I think I can see what a tough problem this is you know when I first moved to Amherst my oldest son went to the ILC program at Wildwood and yet we live in the Parker District so from the time I was my kids were split and that was a definite loss so it was not ideal for that to be the case and yet I totally see the and agree with the resource and teacher support argument that this group included with and that we was reiterated in the letter we read from building blocks to ask and just how you know there's a certain level of resource-based constraints that restrict how flexible we could be here when we know that we have pretty significant resource constraints um so I also want to thank the group for spending those multiple minutes for our meeting because this is a very difficult problem to solve in an ideal way and it's probably something we'll continue to talk about as our um as our as our facilities are all thank you Mr. Demling, Ms. McDonald is there anything you want to add or question you had recently a hard work and in-depth um exploration that the team has done um it's been educational and I think also you know when we're talking about the issues um you know one of the questions is is definitely do we restructure the program and I think you've answered that and recommend your recommendation is a strong one to not change the structure of the program because it puts more urgency I think in addressing the future topics to explore that you've outlined on the last slide in particular the question about the siblings um school attendance as well as you mentioned in your presentation what to do with the students who um graduate as you said from the program and it's less than ideal in many cases to send them back to their holding school so given that we've explored restructuring the program and decided that no that's not what we want to do given our resource constraints um but also in the best interest of the program we really need to step up and look at how do we how do we stress or at least alleviate some of the other issues um uh that you've listed here um so that's I think that's what everybody else is saying but I just want to add my voice to that um the parent of a child who has special needs um originally I thought oh everyone should get to go to their neighborhood school we should have you know and aims at building blocks and at ILC at all the schools um that way parents and you know it's easier for parents to get their kids to school and um kids can stay with their siblings and now after really thinking about it I feel that it's great when kids really have a peer group so there's more kids in the ILC there's more you know kids with special needs they have their group they can bond with and also gives parents a group kind of to bond with and learn from and you know figure out what the resources are for their kids um so that's really what changed my decision and made me feel really good about keeping the programs the way they are so while we're talking about these programs it has felt compelled to thank the people that work directly with our students in these programs our paraeducators our teachers our psychologists they have a level of expertise that is second to none and want to recognize the asset that they are to our school district and our students um because they understand the needs of our kids to a level that is outstanding and um speaking to that cohort in fact it's not only a cohort for the kids and a community for the kids to find their safe place um we now have seen a sixth grader in the Ames program become a mentor to a younger student so having that age range ability for them to cross uh cross pollinate to a certain extent is a wonderful thing too and allows them a growth opportunity that they might not be awarded if there was a smaller number of kids um as well in the years that I've been at Fort River I've been able to see the collegiality between the programs grow as well where that level of expertise and that level of resources shared um and also shared with the general population of our staff but um it has been a wonderful thing to watch grow and develop and as the programs have grown and developed monumentally in the years that I've been there it really has been to benefit of the kids so I just wanted to recognize everybody publicly for their outstanding work thank you uh Miss Brady did you want to say something so I was going to say what Diane just said to really thank people um but I wanted to comment one other thing because um the participants on the phone were talking about the resource allocation and how maybe you know in the constraints we have how we make decisions based upon that I do want to reiterate I think either Catherine or Jen said it before none of this was done with that in mind in fact Dr. Morris was very explicit to say don't put that on the table so these decisions in this discussion was all based upon what is the with the students needs in mind and in terms of special education that's my interest that that's how we make decisions sometimes then we down the road have to get into the real world and kind of think about that within another framework but this was made without that in mind in fact I guess earlier on a few meetings back there was a proposal that wasn't what this one was that would have had more resources needed um and Dr. Morris was very clear we're not making the decision based upon that if that's what's going to be come forward with that so this was all based upon just student interest and student need and I give them a lot of credit that's not easy to do when you're kind of know in the back of your mind people are wondering about resources well thank you very much I just have actually one comment I guess and I think it was back to I can't remember who it was that mentioned it now but um the you know I the CPAC parents for taking the time to um well to spend thinking about this right but at the same time also acknowledge that it's you know I think a small number of parents that are being asked to represent a very wide community and diverse community and so I think it would be worthwhile in next steps um you know Mr. Nakajima had mentioned before so what comes next I think it would be really important for us to actually make sure that we reach out to more members of the community because uh you know I'm looking at transportation and siblings those are definitely two of the top issues that we keep hearing from members of our community who are particularly challenged because they're either taking public transportation or they have multiple children that are spread out throughout the district and so um it's a question that we have to be very cognizant of in the front of our minds um to me this isn't settled I think that we still have to come back and figure out how we address this problem um and I would like to um you know I was excited by the moment working group last year because I felt like this is a question that they immediately grappled with and they were asking it out loud um I think we have lost Mr. Dunlin again um and I was hopeful that we would be able to come up with a solution of some kind and while I appreciate the group's work on this and understand the reasons for you know kind of going back to status quo whatever you want to call it um I do think that this is still a moving problem um and that we haven't answered it yet and so I'm hopeful that we can come back uh sooner rather than later maybe after you guys have had a break um and we can think a little bit more about this and you know and put together a plan that really addresses those problems but thank you they just did one thing and it's related to what I was going to say either beforehand was I think it would be really important if we could either find a way to communicate this to the parents or just some sort of communication it doesn't have to come from the committee but even if somebody could explain that we have you have been spending months thinking about this and people's minds were changed like I think a letter from a parent like yourself speaks much more loudly than something coming from the school committee because if if people really did do these you know 180s on where they stood and it only happened because they spent this time together in a room like it's going to be hard to the public to to come along for that ride without some sort of communication so I'm happy to think about ways we could do that but I think it would be really useful Mr. Dr. Jr. Yeah I wanted to jump on that thought because I like that a lot in my mind if the superintendent was able to include as an attachment into one of your newsletters some kind of summary or letter that went out to the community obviously of the parents but professional staff too I think that would be really useful and in particular not just the PowerPoint because when I saw the PowerPoint I had lots of questions that you answered during your presentation the one I sort of walked at the door I was thinking to myself I really need to understand this better and then when you were done talking I'm like okay now I understand it better a little bit of exposition around it similar to what you talked about tonight I think good then on this topic thank you very much for taking the time to present for all of you for your hard work I really appreciate it and with that I just want to welcome Mr. Dunley who is physically here now Metaphysically, spiritually Yes he's been a disembodied voice on the phone but thank you welcome Ms. McDonald can you still hear us okay so just let us know excuse me if you need to step away okay so moving along to the next item on the agenda is the dual language proposal which we have been discussing for several months now this is a possible vote as was discussed at the last two meetings that we had and this is actually following again several months worth of exploration conversations and multiple visits that have taken place members of this committee as well as the superintendent and others across the district have gone and visited schools where they have dual language programs to try to understand this a little bit more many conversations had with educators and staff in the district and so it feels like a very long journey to get here but I'm glad we're here so with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Morris Sure and I won't make the same faux pas I made on the last topic which is to say that this also is a topic that came and derived from the enrollment working groups work last year and I would say that over the last this is my 18th year in the district this is the third time that the dual language a dual language topic has come up at the elementary level the first I think was 2004 or 5 the next one was in 2009 and 10 and there was just the stars didn't for a variety of reasons either time so when we talk about the last year, year and a half I also want to acknowledge that many people did work over many, many years on this and thinking about what made sense in the Amherst public schools a lot of the resources that were developed all the way back in those years were still utilized by the enrollment working group if you look at their report, their reference multiple of the reports that predated them so while it may be new to some it's also something that many in the community have been discussing in some cases aspiring to over years to broaden the context you know last year the report came out Phyllis Hardy from MABE the multi-state association for bilingual education came here in February I'm not going to go through the whole context I know that would take a long time but I think there's some touchstones that I want to mention came out and talked a bit about this we decided to move forward with a further exploration we planned a two-day retreat in the summer called La Siembra that primarily Fort River staff attended I attended much of that as well that was run by MABE and folks who work for them who currently are retired from dual language programs the summer we had at least three meetings where we talked about zoning we decided in the fall to come back with presentations about communication academic program and resources and so I'm not going to go through all those there's not that many slides tonight probably thankfully we went through a number of them but what I tried to summarize is my current thinking as to why I'd make the recommendation that I'm making as contrasted to the prior presentation to actually make a change a functional change in the structures of our schools and I'm saying schools in particular with a plural because yes it's located we planned to be located at Fort River School but students from all schools had access to a lottery system so just from our last meeting we've had just a summer we've had nine family community engagements in the last five weeks, five at the preschool sites, one at Fort River I think to PGO and three at central locations mostly at the Jones Library although I think the PD Center as well served that function the one thing I want to note is that the conversations that we either the meetings that we either conducted were either primarily in Spanish or 100% in Spanish I want to say that it wasn't just that families came and had different levels of participation it's that because they were in Spanish particularly the one at the preschool site they were more willing to share about themselves their culture and aspirations than if it was through translation there was something about being translated to that well it's functional it doesn't allow for full communication and I think there's so many ways that I'm making then the connection that's a metaphor for me for actually why we're talking about a dual language program that when we use translation which we had available at all the meetings and what it was utilized the richness of the dialogue wasn't the same for the person who was not the who was not the English speaker not comfortable in English and so I thought a lot I've reflected a lot on why was the quality of the conversation different and I can't get around the fact that being able to speak and potentially as we think about students instructed in students home language and what a different experience that'll be for them not just on a you know when we'll get to graphs and we'll talk about achievement in a bit just in a functional human level how different that'll be so I've done a lot of thinking particularly again going to one of the preschool sites but there was a significant number of people whose first language was Spanish and the quality was just different so these are most of the questions were 10 months away from potential implementation so you know the good news is that the further along we get the more questions we're able to answer more definitively and yet we continue to want to receive questions that we can't because that's pushing our thinking about the program so I listed five questions not that we don't have thoughts on them but there were ones that we hadn't considered in close detail before there's a lot of interest in families having access to Spanish classes and we've we have a good plan for staff if this vote passes we hadn't really thought as deeply about families and how they might have access to Spanish language classes so something we're still thinking about how the change be communicated to current Fort River students none of whom would be part of the dual language program so that's something that's been an active part of the dialogue and I want to thank Miss Chamberlain and Miss Richardson who have facilitated a staff leadership group and then also a parent group that's parent guardian group that's been connected to the program so these are things that often get pitched back to them to discuss with the staff and then come up with solutions one that was particularly novel how will families be supported to have one student do a language program on one who is not either based on a different choice for the children or this question really derived from someone who has an older child at Fort River so they would very much hope that their younger child was part of it they believe in dual language they're incredibly excited and they're a little concerned about the family themselves bilingual and if they're speaking Spanish at home does the older sibling not have access to the dinner time conversation and that's something we've thought about in great detail and so that's why we have these sessions not just around communicating out it's actually about receiving and pushing our thinking something we've spent a lot of time on but it came up in a lot of the sessions was how the program specifically integrate culture and identity into students social emotional curriculum the overall school culture so for students in the monolingual English classroom what are the benefits to them how will their cultures be recognized how will non-Spanish speaking students cultures be recognized whatever that culture is and how does that integrate so actually my base spring conference is centered on this very question so we're doing a lot of thinking but we also lots of other schools are also doing a lot of thinking about the integration of culture not just language and one that we done something about but it was it was probably asked a little sharper than we had where I thinking was how the assessment schedule look like in both languages there was a concern that well if my students getting my child's getting assessed in English and Spanish well they'd be just taking assessments all day long like will it double the time and cut down on instruction time so the answer is no right that we're not going to do double the assessments at the same time we have to think about and make very intentional choices along the way what assessments happen when in which language and being able to support students in their language acquisition both in English and Spanish so that's just I put the ones we didn't have easy answers right I could put all the ones we had easy answers to but that's already on an FAQ website but really appreciate the families who came out listserv which is totally self-defined of families who came is over 70 families right now who wanted to stay connected to the program and we continue to update them along the way so the rationale so why are we recommending a dual language program so kind of five basic principles one is that it's responding to changing demographics of our students and I'm not literally going to read the slides but you can see that bless you we've talked about this in previous meetings with some graphs I think particularly last year with the enrollment working group we had a number of those to talk about changing demographics and I could mention and go on for what we've done to respond to the changing demographics but someone pushed me recently what have you done structurally to respond to the changing demographics and I could talk about professional development I could talk about outreach I could talk about translation devices I've talked I could talk a lot a lot of things but truly structurally instructionally this is a much larger change than what we've done in the past and as you'll see there's a slide that's not in your packet just of what the research evidence suggests around this but I do feel like these demographic changes are not minor they're major and it's on our ethically we need to respond structurally to the changes second is as a district we're deeply committed to reducing or eliminating the achievement gap we know in Massachusetts well it's number one in the nation for achievement and there's lots of banners over at DESI around that and for good reason we're proud of that we also among the highest achievement gaps between English learners and non English learners of any state in the country I can get very political and talk about question two from the early 2000s and the elimination of exactly what we're trying to do which is being able to instruct in Spanish and I could go down that road but I'm going to be in the name of time I'll just suggest that I believe that contributes to the achievement gap that we have we have many program strengths we have incredible ELL teachers and yet we're not pleased that the achievement gap we still have we mirror the state in many ways in terms of our work and the next slide with the visual I'm sorry it didn't have time to get in the packet we'll kind of I think visually show that and the reason is you know when we look at our English learners whose first language is but no matter what their first language is building their academic skills and maintaining their first language skills is critical for second language development our English learners who come in with high levels of academic fluency in their first language generally do pretty well in our schools they're generally not in the ELL program for very long and they have high rates of success for our English learners who come in and don't have access to continued development and don't have access to academic background in their first language they're often our students who we despite our best efforts in our English learners program longer than we want and don't even when they exit they don't reach the level of achievement that we want them to achieve and this dual language programs are proven to change that dynamic for that population the third is our expression of the district's commitment to social justice it's not just about the language it's about the culture you all have heard me say that basically every presentation where we talk about this every district I visit talks not about just the language and the achievement but about the cultural benefits of having this program and for us it's very consistent for me it's very consistent with what our commitment is our experience from site visits so I've been on three to three of these locations and staff and school can remember I've been to the fourth in Holyoke and no program is the same but every school was excited to have us come excited to showcase their program whether it's been a 35 year program or it just started and they were working through some growing pains along the way and in every district that we talk to which is much larger than the ones we visited we couldn't get them off the phone to talk about the academic and social benefits and that doesn't happen much in education we could think of any critical topic in education the more districts we talk about we made this decision we didn't like it we changed our curriculum in mathematics or language arts I don't have and I think I've said this before I don't often have the experience of calling places and people calling back immediately and me having to leave them because they want to tell me how wonderfully this is working out for the students particularly around the dimensions of the achievement gap and the demographics and finally we've had incredibly strong positive feedback from our family sessions the interest is high the questions are many which is what we'd want but the feedback we received has been pretty close to entirely positive which again for anything we're proposing that's new or a structural shift is not necessarily what we experience and I think the graph I just wanted to fill out I don't think I've shown this one before I don't think you've seen it so this is a graph researched by Thomas and Collier so you can see on the bottom it's a little blurry there's 700,000 EL students in five large districts across the country and what it's looking at is English reading performance and the thing that's not on this chart is for the top bar which is the red which program we're proposing that has the highest achievement it's for students who are in the program for five years right so generally it's the elementary school experience and then they often times in this research went back to a more traditional middle school high school model and so this shows the reading performance the dotted line where the 50% is the average reading performance of native English speakers or people who have kids who have English as their first language on the right you see a number of different methods and I don't mean just to be critical of some of our current methods which mostly focus on content based ESL you can see there's significantly better outcomes than no services but they're also significantly low and this really mirrors in Massachusetts the result of English learners right so this research comes from multiple states and yet it's exactly what we see in Massachusetts and frankly what we see locally we're a little better than the state anyways but and the two-way dual language programs that you could see not only does it get to the achievement gap which would be getting to 50% and their research surpasses the achievement gap so these students are achieving above grade level by the time they hit middle school and high school and so for us who are so deeply committed to this population and really feeling like we are doing all that we can do and within our current constraints this shows us that there's something else that we can do that has really different results so I'm sorry this didn't make it into the packet we've talked about this research orally but I thought it might be helpful to see the graph of that so before I continue I thought I might pause and see if there's questions from the committee Does anyone have questions for the committee and Miss McDonald I'm going to give you first dibs if you have a question just because it's a lot harder for you to be hanging on the phone I apologize I'll make sure I email it before I leave tonight but essentially what it's showing is the outcomes for English language learners in different models no services ESL pull out content based ESL some bilingual education with some hybrid models that include bilingual education as well as some others and then some dual language programs and the dual language programs are the only model that eliminates the achievement gap and the differences between dual language programs and other models is pretty significant that would be my oral summary but I absolutely will share this with you electronically before the night is done sorry I made a decision about 10 minutes before the meeting started to include this so so opening it up to the rest of the committee any questions or comments for Dr. Morris more presentation okay move it along so last time I did fiscal investment and I was asked to come back with a little more finite and specific numbers the thing I want to note is these are budget additions and one I'll talk about is really a redistribution of priorities last time there was a slide on resources that talked about program coordination and that is not a budget ad it's a reorganization of central office and FTEs so we are committed to having a part time program coordinator but we can do that without impacting the budget based on our central office current central office staffing and the budget that was approved last spring so it's not on here because it's not a budget suggestion budget impact but I do want to I don't want me to say and us to say how important that is and not to be reflected on this document so we expect the annual increase to the appropriated budget to be $14,000 that is primarily and that is curriculum materials and classroom display materials the second line down professional development professional slash curriculum development what we are currently using is title 2A grants that's a federal grant that's designated specifically for professional development and we also often supplement that with existing curriculum lines in the appropriated budget being that this is a major part of the district we've been able to do that this year without a budget ad and we continue to do that the signage that we talked about what we look to do is one of two things a capital request for FY20 so for the next fiscal year to be honest based on the fiscal one quarter the book quarterly report we received we'd look to see if we're able to do some of that with this year's funds we don't know that yet we'll know that better after the second quarter budget update that Mr. Mangano would do in January a better sense of exactly where we're sitting but in any case it wouldn't be on the appropriated side of the budget because the dollar amount is significant enough to be on capital and so our total ad that we'd be asking for in the budget process is $14,000 and the reasons as fiscal investment is on the bottom right the cost of one Amherst charter school student one student from our town attending charter school is over $20,000 and that's not, I want to be really clear the goal of this program is not to fiscal it's not like our goal is the goal is about the students and particularly the English language learners and this is a slide about fiscal impact and investment so I want to be really cautious about that because one is way more important to me than the other obviously I create budgets, we have a budget cycle but if it was just a budget saving mechanism I wouldn't have the same passion and perhaps making the same recommendation the same way I want to be really clear that I have to think about the fiscal thing it feels actually sort of odd to do it and way secondary to the prior slides but the next slide sort of talks a little bit about the fiscal investment so I thank you for bringing that point up because I feel like sometimes in the community where you talk about dual language like oh you're doing that to compete with the charter schools and it's not, I think it's important to re-emphasize that that's not the point of it although it's interesting you know if even one family chooses this program it pays for itself that's how ridiculously out of skew the charter tuition formulas that one student would pay for the entire budget appropriation but yes Mr. Nakajima I'm just going to make I mean I agree entirely with where you're coming from philosophically but in terms of the slide I'll make the counter argument given the fact that we had to cut our budget this past year and goodness knows what's going to happen this year I think for the committee to be looking at making approving a budget and doing a budget ad it's entirely appropriate to say there might actually be a net benefit fiscally if we're able to encourage families to keep their or their kids in the district I mean there's nothing wrong with saying that you shouldn't apologize for it because I know that's not the reason any of you are recommending it nor is it why I think the committee's been excited but if we're going to have to add something to the budget then good there's a good fiscal case to be made and to add to that fiscal case, thank you so this is the enrollment working groups survey that they did and one of the really nice things they did on their survey is they had a very good response rate and they then pulled the responses for families with young children so they had like a different they had the pre-K to six responses and then they had I think it was pre-K and K it was over 100 responses and 77% of those and I know I'm reading the slide but I think it's worth reading the slide 77% of those expressed being very interested in having instruction in Spanish and the second bullet point is the little more shocking one to me is that 65% of respondents reported considering sending their child to a school outside of ARPS and by shocking it's just that was more than I would have guessed there's no critique in it I wouldn't have guessed a majority and that 80% of those respondents so 80% of the 65% to be clear on the data indicated that having a Spanish dual language program would make them more likely to attend the district so the odds that one family in the district would get into the program and choose to come here seems like a conservative estimate of the financial impact and this was the survey that the district did the bottom one of Amherst families who send their children to charter schools and at the elementary when it was done the only charter school that they were sending them to that's changed a little bit in the Chinese charter school in Hadley that 89% of respondents so I think it was 25 of 28 maybe the math's a little off on that but it was a very high number of respondents specifically said in an open-ended question that the importance of the dual language program was critical to their choice it was by far the hardest there was a forced choice and by far the highest response was unique program there was some variable as unique program much more than building facilities and so when you know the slide before I'm hard pressed to think that we won't be fiscally self sustaining you know if not net positive to the district so here are some key next steps if approved so we have a schedule meeting scheduled Mr. Chamberlain already scheduled that for Thursday with the faculty staff we met on Friday morning prior with the faculty staff communicating via email just some feedback and update from that meeting which I thought was incredibly productive and positive and we do have to apply for the approval so now that the look act happened I think it was Thursday of last week they came out with you know the documents to apply you know Mabe has been assisting them and Mabe is very savvy and the work we did in Losiembra is wonderfully attuned to exactly what we do for the application for Desi they're using Mabe as consultants to help them with all their work at Desi because just capacity wise Mabe has a lot of background knowledge so I just want to be clear that we do have to do that but Mabe has assured us that it's not from their vantage point we're well in good shape with that we'll continue the dual language leadership group and work and professional development as well as collaboration Mabe for instance the leadership group next for me hopefully personally we're doing some celebration and continuing the work I think that's on the agenda actually hopefully celebration and continue the work we have to hire staffing for the program and we imagine that our aim is to be done sooner but we want to make sure that we're done with that at the end of January just because we don't exactly know who will apply and particularly for the Spanish side we want to make sure that we're doing full vetting of if it's not so an internal of that candidate speaking skills, language skills and making sure they have experience teaching in Spanish so that process may be a little more extended than our typical posting process is because we need to get that right we are ready to ready to go on my list of things to do tomorrow if there's a positive vote is GCC has been working on a Spanish for education staff members course to be one day a week and starting in January and be a full calendar year so January to December it will plan to open it for anyone in the district but it will house it at Fort River because that's going to be the primary area that makes sense to have it but GCC is Greenfield Community College and they've developed many courses, sorry about that, many courses are on language that are specific to occupation so they have a very popular Spanish for healthcare professionals course for instance they use in places where nurses and others are working and there's a need for more communication, they really gear it specifically for the role so we've been making some curriculum decisions we want to finalize those in March we are hoping if we have a positive second quarter budget update actually to get in a cycle where we're purchasing the curriculum the year before so there's time for all that work to be done before kids let out and that will put us on a seven year cycle of being able to do that we'd still make the same budget ads we'd just then have the money banked to buy the first grade materials in the middle of next year and we're feeling good we did reserve some funds at the curriculum lines and we're feeling optimistic and pretty confident actually about that we want to have more family engagement events with finalized schedule staffing and curriculum information well prior to registration essentially once the staffing is done we want to kick those off because our meetings so far have been about the program and we need to shift our focus to the program and children which is a little different if we have an affirmative vote our registration will occur in its normal timeline but we'll have the additional dimension of having families no matter where they live either opt to express interest in the program and if they're not at Fort River to opt into a lottery kind of system normal lottery will play out in early June after our registration and screening process and we're looking to name the dual language program before students get out we'd like to think of ways for current students as well as families to be involved in the naming process my experience in general is that students come up with better names than their adults their accompanying adults myself included and so we have current Fort River students who we think could play a large role in what the program is named and we'd like for the signage to be installed before this two-year gets back this is a summary there's I could fill out five slides of the smaller details but I tried to pick on the big ones that would inform the larger community and we develop motion language for your consideration so and I know other people are here we're open to any questions that might come up so return to the committee any questions or comments for Dr. Morris just like a procedural question just throwing it up that should we read the motion first and then discuss it it seems like sometimes we do the opposite when we have a big discussion we read the motion generally we're going to have a vote that we actually have the vote read but if there's any technical questions or anything like that maybe we want to get out of the way first Dr. Morris would be okay with that but it's up to the committee I have a couple of questions about the presentation I guess my first I shouldn't have said a couple I think it's really just one so I wouldn't have entered into this conversation about the charter schools except we just talked about the charter schools so I'm looking at the calendar now and I see that the enrollment lottery is going to be early June 2019 how does that align or have you considered how that aligns with the Chinese immersion charter school if that's our golden I assume those are the parents we're thinking about trying to keep right so it doesn't totally align or fully align for families who are not current Fort River families just to put a finer point on it because Fort River families we believe will have full access regardless of a lottery and some of the thinking behind that is we want to make sure that our lottery perhaps a little more complicated I know at charter schools it's siblings and then just a random lottery and ours we want to take into account language background, language acquisition and I'm just going to speak plainly to speak around this so I do think there's going to be families who apply for both and maybe committing to one it's not like college where we ask for a deposit nor is it at the Chinese charter school so I think for families who apply to both and get into a charter school and then get into our school I don't think there's going to be a conflict and we heard feedback from this couple of families it's not the first time this question has come up and what I don't want to do is to make decisions before we get good screening information we have more time for families to talk through it so I do think because private schools perhaps it's a little different but for charter schools it's not a deposit system so families could theoretically make a commitment and this happens all the time we have families come back routinely who register one place and then they for whatever reason I'm impressed by the school bus transportation is really important to me whatever the thing is so that's sort of where we have landed with it I think we'd be hard pressed to do it on a timeline that's earlier in the spring because we don't feel like we'd have all the information and frankly we don't have all the kids not everyone registers at the time that in early March because families move here and a whole variety of factors and we want to our focus on getting the demographic mix right is sort of super seeding perhaps rushing the process to move it quicker earlier I should say Mr. Dr. Julian I move the Amherst School Committee support the superintendent's recommendation implement a dual language program beginning in the 2019-2020 school year with the following specifications Spanish and English will be the partner languages the program will be implemented in kindergarten only in 2019-2020 school year when additional grade level will be added each year through grade 6 the program will be based at Fort River with a lottery process to allow participation of students from other Amherst elementary schools as space permits and the program will prioritize Spanish-speaking English learners in the lottery as per the mission of the program second okay Ms. McDonald do you have any questions or further comments I just want to give you the chance to speak first grade level that will not be part of the dual language program because I really really struck me from that evening's presentation was the idea of the multi-lingual mindset which I absolutely love and I I feel like that should be a mindset that we have in all of our schools not just the school that happens that has the dual language program because we have so many students that come with different languages and that that multi-lingual mindset could benefit all of our students whether it's regardless of the curriculum program they're in but that said the dual language mindset I feel like we're leaving out the students that whose families opt for the English-only classrooms whether they're English learners themselves that are non-Spanish-speaking families or English-speaking families that just for whatever reason should not to participate were by not offering in the past to learn Spanish in a more formalized instruction I worry that eventually in the first couple years it's not going to be as noticeable because it's only going to be one grade level or two grade levels but as it as it grows throughout the school it could become an issue of feeling like that there's a separate but less unequal classroom track within the school because they're not getting that halfway and the fact is that at the elementary school the students they're required to sit and eat lunch with their own classroom for most assemblies they sit with their classroom there too the opportunities for them to mix and mingle and learn from their peers that are in the dual language program won't be as great as they are now where students are mixing classes every year you're going to have a group of kindergarteners that start in kindergarten in the modeling classroom and they're going to be with that cohort every single year there's going to be kids moving and leaving and coming into the district but they're going to be with that group of kids and if they're really using to make for them to access Spanish language learning I worry that it will make them feel a little bit isolated and sort of not as inclusive as we might hope I'm not looking for an answer now I don't think it's necessary in the first year because it's going to be one grade level but it's something that I would ask that we come back to you in the future and think about how are we going to make that multilingual mindset something that is apparent in every classroom not just sort of in the dual language program and hopes that the kids in the non-dual language program sort of come along I think that it would be important for maintaining that inclusive environment for all of the kids in all of the classrooms to have some pathway for the students and potentially their parents if that's a part of the program to access Spanish language learning Thank you Dr. Rose, do you want to comment on that or if there's a follow up from a community member I can wait Yeah, I mean it's going to be brief which is to say we have spoken to other schools in Estran so out of some of the schools we've spoken to and visited it was the whole school like Cambridge and then Princeton Harrisonburg other places it was a strand within the school which is more common in our MSN partner districts I think it's something that I know Ms. Chamberlain and Ms. Richardson have talked a lot about is how do we have some differences because they're different academic programs and then what brings all students together and one of the best things that I appreciate the lens is one of our earlier presentations Ms. Chamberlain and Ms. Richardson shared the mission of the school and the mission of the program and the connection rather between though those were some of the things that we realized that is something that we're actively talking about thinking about and it comes up in most meetings I'm in on the topic with the leadership team is how do we retain the identity of Fort River and bring it along collectively so separate from language I would part of the other conversation that we have is the cultural aspects of what we talked about that don't have to do with specific language how do all students have access and all students feel as the school moves into kind of a more direct explicit focus on culture that's something that has to happen in all the classrooms at Fort River including the ones that are there now and then Ms. Chamberlain has been leading that work over the last couple years so if there was a no vote tonight it's not like Ms. Chamberlain would say oh no we're not going to focus on culture that's part of what Fort River is and it's what the work that needs to happen for every classroom so I know it's not getting specifically at the linguistic piece because I think that's a larger conversation that we can have but the cultural piece in making sure that all students feel connected to the larger school is an active conversation. Mr. Dr. Jenner. So I really appreciate the presentation and I think one of the nice things about it is that it gets more specific over time so when you look I mean I appreciate that you said behind every item in the schedule of free activities there's a deeper set or nested set of descriptors that you could share with us I think just seeing laid out for us and then obviously made available to the public what those steps are gives me a good sense that we're organized to execute because obviously the key thing is that we're able to do that. One thing that is I think probably I was thinking about this a lot but I think it echoes well what Ms. McDonald's was just saying is and I'd love to hear your thought on this I'd also love to hear the principal's is interested is you know how jazzed up are you for this and have you built in the cognitive and schedule space to make it work because in the end there are going to be a million things that come up from parents from staff facility wise things that are coming up like this like kids from families who choose not to participate for whatever reason but in fact then they start getting the sense of yeah but I want to be part of this community how do I get part of it and one of the challenges for any organization and I'm sure for schools is that once you get into an implementation mode you could get mentally into a mode of saying well I got between now and next August to get these 30 things done and man I'm plowing ahead and yet to me that's exactly the worst way to build something that's embedded within a living breathing organic community an organization a community of school but also is going to have to evolve over time and is in fact going to get better over time and that only happens so I know it's not just about the intent which is part of how jazzed up you are hopefully but it's also about whether you're building in structurally the cognitive and resource space not just money but time and staffing to be able to figure out how to hear actively and sympathetically these issues when they come up and think about exciting and creative ways to use them as positive building blocks as opposed to a holy crap it's only October of the first year and now we're getting negative feedback and oh my god this is terrible and you know what I'm saying I do I'll start and then if you want to jump in you're welcome to so jazzed yes I think that is clear I've been a little more subdued because it's a potential vote but I think you've seen me a little more boisterous in earlier meetings talking about this but I think I added the graph and I went back and forth whether to add the graph in the presentation and part of the reason I ended up doing it is when we think about the achievement gap just being able to have one chart that shows the potential impact is huge and I think we do so much good in this district and the staff do an incredible job and one of the main parts of my job is to eliminate structures that are not promoting us to move the needle on the achievement gap right some of it's like about programming and for me kind of an odd statement but this is for me removing a artificial structure that American schools have used teaching only in English that's in particular the last 15 years that's getting in the way of what everyone wants which is elimination of the achievement gap in this case you know particularly focus on Spanish speaking students and families and so that gets me jazzed and what was interesting when I met with staff on Friday at Fort River is both in the meeting but particularly after the meeting there were a number of legitimate implementation questions that arose as they should 10 months before something gets implemented and the qualification every staff member said is I really want to see this program work so well for kids and how are you going right I mean it was like the framing of it was that there was a firm commitment because of the perceived benefits of the program that we've got to get this right we have to have the right staffing models we have to have the support in the schools and I really appreciate the Fort River staff for having that framing because one could imagine a different conversation with a different staff right and that was not my experience and it continues not to be my experience. In terms of structures I really want to thank Miss Richardson and Miss Chamberlain because they've set up internal structures around a leadership team inviting parents into that group visit to Holyoke not only involve staff in school committee but also parents who are interested and that outreach and that effort is to your point I think what will continue to make the work happen in the right way and you know absent this ongoing leadership group we're really concerned about it we have to keep an eye on but I think the best example I could use is the Google Docs that we did at La Ciembra and I've told the story here before but not everyone might have been here so the way La Ciembra works is they create Google Docs based on research based how to implement dual language programs and what Mabe reported is they go to many communities and they spend two days in the summer and they go back and the Google Docs and Google Docs for those people who don't know how to use the Google Doc tool so if I'm not on there if someone else is in the audience if we're all shared on this doc and Karadad does some work then I can see that work happen and what's a very frustrating experience for them is most of the places they do this nothing, not much happens between the moment they leave and their next visit at some point in the fall and what Mabe reported to Ms. Chamberlain and I is they kept on going back and be like oh my god there's new pages here that's deeply considering the issues and and I expect that to continue for not just the next ten months but the next number of years as we implement the program that there's an established leadership group that has good processes to make decisions about curriculum learning about communication about outreach so that's what gives me confidence in our ability to pull this off in a good way but I want to own that it's really Ms. Richardson and Ms. Chamberlain's leadership I think my first time in that group will be Wednesday, it's really the school based folks and the staff who have taken that on I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add I don't feel like you need to if you have nothing to add I'm going to hold for now so I actually have a couple of questions so this is something that I've raised in previous meetings and it's really regarding staffing and I heard you mention that before I think making sure that we have not just support for staff currently but that we're also thinking about how to attract thinking primarily about the Spanish speaking staff how to attract high quality Spanish speakers who are trained educators and preferably I think from our local communities and I say this because in the visit that I made to the Holyoke school one thing that struck me was the principal talking about how they have been challenged to find Spanish speaking educators quite challenged in fact and according to what we heard have had to appeal to the Spanish Embassy to help bring over qualified educators from Spain and also put out some global search you know and while I appreciate the creativity in that and think it's great that they have that kind of reach sometimes I wish we had that kind of reach for a whole bunch of different things I also feel that when you're thinking about culture and how that's a good cultural fit or a bad cultural fit because we're not going to assume that you know European educators for example have the same experience or even speak the same language that a lot of these Spanish speaking students might speak at home with their families right some of them maybe but not all of them and so you know I think there's a certain experience there you know we talked a lot about that cultural fit which is really important and so I'm hoping that that is something that is being thought through and there's a plan in place because I haven't to be perfectly honest heard the plan I just heard you know we're thinking about it and you know we're talking about it but I haven't heard what the plan is to make sure that we are attracting you know qualified preferably local staff or that we've you know we're getting folks here who match our students right so that's just the first thing and then the second thing was in thinking about this I'm really happy to hear that there's going to be the Spanish education staff members you know so every year long workshop I think it's really important for staff to be engaged in that way to that degree but I'm also wondering if there's any cultural sensitivity training that goes along with that right and if there's an aspect of that workshop that also includes not just language but that also includes the you know a lot of the social equity based issues and thinking that we've been doing in this district because I think that in addition to learning the language it's also about educators and staff understanding the reasons why we're doing this and the value behind it right and I think most of them if not all of them are already on board but it's just a different level of engagement and thoughtfulness that would go into you know and asking themselves and asking all of ourselves I think questions about you know why this is important for us and why we're doing this and hoping that everyone has the right framing in mind so that when they set foot in that door that very first day in the program you know is is implemented if it's implemented that they're ready to go right and so I was just hoping that you could talk a little bit more about that about those two things and you know if there's any thought that you put into that. Yeah so in terms of the staffing piece I think one of the reasons is we do have some staff in the district have the skill set to perhaps want to do this and you know whether they want to be doing kindergarten or upper grade level we may you know have to look outside the district and we may not for the first year or two and so I want to be cautious because it's you know we're talking about a relatively small group of people and identify but you know that kind of pieces and I want to feel like there's any pressure being put by the district but I think that's the first slice of it I think at our broader slice one of the things that we've heard from multiple districts is exactly what you say that there is this kind of Spanish embassy route and it's not for our population necessarily the most preferred route to go down some of the places have found that particularly there's a lot of folks who are coming from Puerto Rico for a whole host of reasons who have been good fits in their programs as well as people from the Caribbean who live in this general area so our plan would be to engage with a local community and then to do broad outreach and local communities posting in some of the typical places but also posting in some of the atypical places as well and what we find in general is word of mouth is shockingly still a very effective strategy so we know there are teachers who are bilingual who would love to teach in Spanish who are teaching in partner or in neighboring districts in Venezuela and I think that's the challenge of not teaching in partner or in neighboring districts in western Massachusetts and our task is to let the larger western Massachusetts area know because that would be the ideal situation that we have this position and that it is exclusively teaching in Spanish and that Amherst is a desirable district to work in and so the challenge of not trying to poach people but at the same time if people want to make this job change because oh great I get to teach in Spanish for the heavily Latino that only that possibly only exists in two districts west of 495 and so trying to really get the word out through word of mouth through some of our staff members even if they teach at the upper grade levels and they would never or secondary schools and they would never choose to teach kindergarten or first grade where their networks their professional networks where we can get the word out and frankly we do have some families that we know of who have been in touch with us with families in Puerto Rico and I think it's worth there are job fairs down there and I have my own I have a lot of ethical issues with sometimes these things but I just am concerned about the island and at the same time if families want if teachers want to leave and they want to come to the mainland and this seems like a great job we want to make sure that are we're in touch with contacts down there as well so we're trying to spread our spread the word wide and that's not only particularly for this role I mean I want to say that we're also thinking about we're constantly looking for bilingual staff members so being part of a district that has a dual language program even if they're going to teach in English for four years until we get up to third or fourth grade that can be a really exciting thing for someone to plan, work on and then be part of and the cultural aspects of the school changing as well something that may be very attractive to staff members so we're trying to let the word fly to many places and both specifically and more generally but if I was a betting person the word of mouth piece of our staff talking to other people in their networks is a significant and significant effort and a variable that shouldn't be underestimated in addition to all the formal ways of posting and getting MABE to post for us on their website all those other things we have a fair number of bilingual staff members and even if they're never going to teach kindergarten they're more likely to know other bilingual folks who may be interested so that was long winded but then the second question was now I lost it oh cultural sensitivity training so we wouldn't rely on GCC for that there's this very focused on the language aspect of it just to be really clear on what they're able to offer but certainly these are active conversations they've gone on just in fairness at Fort River since Russ Front and Jones was principal when I was hired in 2001 and the change in student demographics that will accompany this will need to push us to be one level higher and go deeper on the cultural and multicultural education aspect so it's something that is we are very attuned to and I know the leadership team has talked about not just in the language piece in the academic quote-unquote academic pieces but how do we have a plan to really work on that cultural aspects as well I do think that's happening I think if you look at the planning that we talked about for superintendent update is it solely focused on Latino or Spanish speaking students know is it all getting is the theme the same I believe it is and even the beginning of the meeting tomorrow will focus on we all have to advocate for every child so we can't rely on oppressed groups to be the only ones advocating for themselves we need to no matter who you are be an advocate a staunch advocate and what every single child needs and I said this a convocation is one adult who is irrationally crazy about that child and that's what we need to get to with this program and understanding what students bring to our schools as a strength model is the way we approach that questions or comments for Dr. Morris I mean this is a big vote so I can't let it go without making a comment and I'd like to you know say I share a lot of the concerns expressed but I'd also like to say that I'm just really excited that we're making hopefully I think I haven't talked about this at all but hopefully you know I'm excited about voting for this tonight I guess the one thing you know just to add to the list of things I want to make sure we're looking at as we move forward is just how we're going to make sure that we're implementing and evaluating you know like as somebody who does a little bit of evaluation work does Mabe assist with that? they do okay great because I think it's so exciting and seeing like the research that's been done on this there's clearly always a need for more and I especially for we're going to be having some random assignment through a lot of I don't think we'll have big enough numbers to actually do any comparisons but and that the evaluation not only focus on the impact on the kids who are in the program but maybe considering I mean Allison's raised some valid concerns I think for the other classroom I think we should make sure that we're tuned in to keeping an eye on how those kids are doing too and then I guess just also just I think that kind of reflection would help as we you know I'm really optimistic about this and optimistic that it will hopefully grow over time so I think that kind of learning would help as we hopefully embrace this model and if we find that it does produce the outcomes that we think it will that you know hopefully we can have good reason to expand thank you so much for everybody who's worked on this I'm really excited about it any Mr. Domen so yeah so I agree with everything that's been said about how should we responsibly implement this and what are the things we want to look out for as we evolve this thing that will continue to evolve and change as to the motion about you know whether we support this or not I for one am pretty jazzed up about it I feel like one of the core things that we should be doing on school committee is is keeping a sharp and continual focus on the achievement gap I feel like sometimes it's such a difficult problem it's such an all pervasive problem with so many dimensions you know special ed low income Hispanic African American ELL it's a tough nut to crack all around and so when something comes along that shows real promise for shutting the door on the achievement gap for a particular group like nothing we've ever done before I feel like that's like the driver I feel like we have an obligation to push the envelope in that respect I'm very gratified to feel like we're really well prepared I liked reading Mabe's letter about their opinion about how prepared we are not to say there won't be bumps in the road but I think I would vote for this even if we were less prepared than we are at the moment right now because I feel like there's enough sincere creative smart hardworking attention on this that it will it's going to be implemented and implemented well I think about similar things that we do for other groups to support other students we don't have to invest in the family center but we choose to do that because we see that as a core to our mission as part of our moral obligation as a district we don't have to continually push the envelope about all the different ways we offer special education about co-teaching it would be pretty easy just to kind of pull back and we would still be well above average in terms of special ed services but we wouldn't be pushing the envelope but we feel that need and that's how it should be so to have something that's so well not only feels so good in terms of embracing the culture in the obvious juxtaposition with the insanity happening at the national level right now even that aside to have the evidence and the research support this as an approach is really excellent so I'm pretty psyched to vote for this tonight again I wish it was bigger I wish we had four classes but I think as it goes along if it becomes obvious that it is as much of a benefit as we're all hoping that it will be we'll see what those opportunities are we'll see if it is having the impact but this isn't the primary goal on charter retention that adds to the budget that allows us to expand where we see the more sustainable sources for staffing which is one of the big impediments to starting off really large so yeah I just want to thank all the people behind the scenes who have done an incredible amount of work over a long period of time okay so it sounds like maybe the committee is moving towards getting ready for a vote is that right am I reading this right Mrs. Dumbled any other comments or thoughts okay thank you for hanging in there with us okay so if we're ready for a vote this will be a vote call vote as well so we'll start from Mr. Nakajima Nakajima aye Ordona's aye Spitzer aye Demling aye thank you very much I just want to say also a big thank you to Ms. Chamberlain and all the others who have worked on this program for such a long time I'm very excited about it I actually do think that it will be a really positive thing for the district and for our community I think this gives us an opportunity to take a step forward in a way that many other districts don't get a chance to do and for that I'm really grateful I do think we have some very serious work out and I'm hopeful that we will keep this in the spotlight as we move forward and one other comment that I just wanted to make in looking through this calendar especially now that the vote has passed the family engagement events I'm hopeful that we can actually do a very strong promotion to push this throughout the district and throughout the community so that people really understand what this is thank you I just wanted to add something on that because I asked what could seem like a silly question about how jazzed up everyone is but I'm really excited about this but the reason I brought it up as well as resources is really building off of a lot of things that have just been said particularly what the chair just said is anything we can do as a committee anything we can do collectively to keep the orientation on an organic learning continuous improvement and the core mission and the goals of this thing because there are going to be bumps and things that have to be worked over and I don't want to sound funny about this but there's an odd tendency sometimes in our society I won't say in our town I'll say in our society to start picking things to death and starting to see sort of games of telephone where people think something's happening in a program working out or it isn't what I thought it was going to be and I really feel like there's going to be a lot of work to do over the next year that's going to be a learning experience and one set of challenges solved is going to set two new challenges that can be embraced and can be embraced as a really positive environment for that change in that building and my point is we all have to collectively keep our energy focused on that positive process of embracing criticism embracing creativity not shrinking from challenges that we see but keeping positive about it and then as you said thanking people when they're doing wonderful work thank you okay so moving us along the next item on the agenda is Wildwood and Crocker Farm Identity Work Update and I want to thank those members of the community that are here we've been waiting patiently for us to get through the previous topics Dr. Morris I'm assuming you have so I'm actually going to turn this over to Mr. Shea and then Mr. Yaffe and Ms. Estes we're going to update the committee and the community on the work at each of their schools we've most recently had the groups get together on Friday afternoon so there's some fresh updates but I'm not sure who would like to start I'll leave it up to Mr. Shea it seems like it's going to start I don't know if this is a if you follow in that rather than this slim especially really important yeah I know thank you can I just say a few things about what I heard that are connected to Crocker Farm so I was just thinking I was just thinking that one thing we've got to make sure that we don't get lost in the shuffle here you know I just spent like a you guys all spent an hour there really talking about a whole new program another school and I'm sitting there going alright we really got to get our skates on but I think we've had our skates on for a while so I'm not that worried the thing I just also want to remind people is that our school Crocker Farm school is a very diverse school as it is next time you get a chance if you're driving by or you want to come into the building every year we do our open house and when we do our open house all the kids come with their parents this year I think we'd probably between 83 and 85% of the families came to the the night and what we do is we take everyone's picture and we put it up in the wall and we sort of build a sort of collage or a photograph of who we are at Crocker Farm and it's worth looking at because when you walk in and it's actually not a bad thing to do if you're in the business of trying to have a private school where you make money I think people come in and they look at it and they immediately say you're part of it so no matter what we build say even at Fort River Crocker Farm's still going to be this incredibly diverse, vibrant, strong place with lots of different ideas and knowledge and viewpoints and history and so for example 25% of Crocker Farm families are of Latino heritage it's not going to be 2% when Fort River moves it's still going to be probably about 20% so I think let's all remember that and keep that and I got to remember that and our people have to remember that the last thing I just want to say before I even say two words and what we're doing is that for years I've been around I keep talking about people leaving and people going to other places and so I get stressed when I hear that because we get the opposite problem so we get 59 kindergarteners right now at Crocker Farm 59, right? 50% of our school choice 54 are kids who live in the Crocker Farm District so that's a good number we feel pretty good about that so we're not that worried about us not having enough kids we're actually worried about having too many kids and not enough room for all the kids that want to come to your school so I say that just because I want to keep thinking about as we're thinking about identity we're not thinking about identity because we're having a problem in the business I think we're trying to capture a little bit about what we've been doing well maybe trying to get better at some things that we're not doing so well and move from there so I think we feel pretty positive getting into this work that we're about to do and I think that says identity or theme work and really in essence it's about building a school improvement plan that's meaningful and something that people can latch onto and not be a piece of paper that we just bring here to the school committee and say please stamp and please make okay we want to build something that you know has his teeth and helps us continue to have I don't think Michael let us keep having 59 kindergarteners because we want the space but we want to take everyone who wants to come to our building so with all that said I'll just say a couple of quick things one is that just in terms of the process so a small number of our teachers and a small number of family members from Crocker family family six or seven teachers met over the summer for two days with Dr. Rodriguez who you're all familiar with who helped do the enrolment work and we spent two days just really sort of grappling with some of the material about how to tackle this school improvement plan your work with some identity work in the second day of that work we started to look at sort of trying to draft a vision about who we want to be so that was in the summer subsequent to that our teachers have used perhaps up to four maybe three or four staff meetings over the last couple of months sort of looking at just a draft of the vision sort of we've also done some protocols and a little bit of research in a sort of where people feel strong in their practice where people would like to improve and doing a little bit of thinking about how that impacts us individually and collectively so we've done that in staff meeting time last Friday we have a group of teachers who are a school leadership group probably about nine or ten teachers and power professionals and then we have about eight or nine parents on our school governance council five of them were able to come last Friday with eight or nine of our teachers meeting with Dr. Rodriguez in the afternoon Nick right, 12-3 and so on Friday we spent a little bit of time again just looking at our vision sort of turn apart that again a little bit looking at starting to dig into the values that we would like to sort of investigate thinking about next steps in terms of how to get larger groups of parents involved our SGC group has got some good ideas starting this Thursday our Math Night come along if you want to see it try to get a little bit more feeling from them in terms of what they see with our draft of our vision and our core values a couple of our teachers in the SILK group have taken on the task of surveying students in the school we shall convene again sometime December 5 to start to think about next steps in terms of really diving into sort of greater detail of the work so I think in essence we've got working groups working together starting to bond trying to get as many voices from the community as possible and the goal I think is at some point in June for us to come here I think, and Nick might be able to see this with greater clarity than I can I think that this identity theme stuff will emerge as we talk and as we meet together I think I speak with many families at Crocker Farm whether it be in the morning at the bus or and people I think are generally quite happy to come to Crocker Farm what's not always so easy is to express why and so we're really we've got feelings that it's a nice safe place it's warm, it's welcoming, it's got really strong teachers we have a really nice sense of community but we've got to dig a little deeper and see what that's all about and we'll do so and hopefully over the course of the next few months come back to you with some specifics hopefully that's helpful ish my veteran colleague Mr. Yeffi I think I'll sit here how's it going would you like to follow up Derek? share the mic too so you all know Alison Alison Estes yeah so take a breath following up Derek is always a wonderful thing because he gets me excited about the work that we're doing and passionately he feels so passionately and Diane's here too so I feel like I told Alison I'm just going to give a little bit of a historical background I feel like all this work really started eight years ago when the school was redistricted and we all became interested in forming a community of schools so we're building on that so I don't see this as anything new but I do feel like this is the right time to do this to go deeper into the work that we've all been doing so Fort River's doing the dual language as Diane's already said quite often they'll continue doing the work in terms of best practices and Wildwood started like at the other schools too with really looking at student engagement and be active participants and that led into conversations about students owning their own learning student led assessments and from there thinking about what learning is and how you go deeper and create these deeper experiences for students and that's how we got to at each of the schools exploring project-based learning at the same time building a culture and character and community that's where we're at and as Derek said it's going where the identity is going to go we're not quite sure because we want it to be an open process so it started at the open house where this is an example of how ideas feed off each other I had gone down to Derek's open house and he was talking about two years in a row and it just knocked my socks off it was so exciting and I went back to the staff and staff weren't sure but everybody jumped in this year and Derek's saying that students were leaving the open house and that led to engagement so that's an example of how the ideas should be shared in the elementary school and now Alison we've been part of this Derek's talking about with Dr. Rodriguez at the open house we started to get surveys from families and kids about what they want Wildwood to become and now that's online so families can answer online and we're going to be asking staff these kind of questions tomorrow afternoon what do you want Wildwood to be in five years from now what type of school would be a great place for kids and for families and for staff so Alison how do you want to no that's exactly what we've been working towards I think that one of the things that I will add is the work that the school has done over the past is definitely being carried through so that the staff feels a sense of connection so that the work that has been done doesn't feel like it's being dropped we are not starting from scratch we are using that as a good foundation in base in order to a sense of continuity in a sense of culture that has a history to it so I'm excited I'm new to the community so for me this feels like I'm getting a chance to learn all of that and I think what did you say like 30% of the staff has is new actually it's turned out to be bigger in the last so we created a vision six years ago and we conducted a similar process I think we're definitely going to improve on it and have it be more reflective but since that time in 2013 43% of the professional staff is new if you added para educators it's over 50% so this is giving us all such a great opportunity to connect to the history of the work that has been done and then to really create that excitement around student engagement and student leadership in learning which is not always what we as educators got into the profession to do and I first started teaching I would not have thought of student centered learning as the way that this would go 20 years ago but this is where we are and we have to start reimagining how classrooms are run and I'm excited about that future to add on to that tomorrow's election day and so I feel like we do it as preparing students to be citizens in the 21st century and so I actually dug up the mission statement from the Amherst public schools and it was pretty inspiring you know the thing that stands out is like contributing members of a multi-ethnic multicultural pluralistic society so if that's our mission as in all the schools like okay how do we do that how do we make that happen so I feel like the dual language program is pretty bold at Crocker farm and at Wildwood we want to be bold too and forward but you know so what would that what and I do feel like with your support and blessings and mics and Dureans we could do that there's nothing really holding us back except our own sense of limitation of what we can do and whether it goes you know the directions we've already started to go into in terms of integrating the arts project based learning outdoor education gardening these are things that people in Amherst are already super excited about and we really at this point I'd love to have us dive in and say yeah let's embrace this let's reimagine our schools for our children the families will support it the kids will get excited the teachers they need time to plan and to do this well that's the main thing because it's going to take time to plan these kind of curriculum experiences what's that so here we are we're looking forward to the work well thank you very much for all of you for coming tonight really appreciate that and I think that this conversation had actually started because we recognize that all of our schools contribute so much to the fabric of this community and to the district and you know we didn't want to leave that behind right and conversations around Fort River we wanted to make sure that it was being very clear made very clear to the community that Wildwood and Crocker Farm are also very well loved and extremely vital to the health and well being of our district and so we're looking forward to that and I did want to mention and then I'll look to the committee to see if there's any other comments it's great to hear that you'll be looking maybe to present something in June and I'm wondering if it would be possible maybe to get some kind of indication a little earlier than that it helps I think in our conversations and this is what we've talked about in our conversations around the dual language program and how we're thinking about our priorities and our goals and all of that for the superintendent in the next year it's really helpful to hear from our other schools the direction you're headed in just to get that big picture in mind so perhaps