Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting in the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, September 22nd, 2022. I'm Liz Ekskin, the chair. We have a lot of attendees on Zoom this evening, so permit me to confirm that some of the members anticipated on the agenda who are online are present and can hear me. Dr. Allison Ampe and our EA rep Miss Ferranti. Yes, I'm here. Thank you. And then I know there are administrators here that I'll let Dr. Holman check in with. I think Mr. Mr. Mason's here and we also have some student reps. We have Mo Hagenbue in person, and then I think we have another member, another student representative online. To Miki Suhihara, are they here? Okay, we have an item before that. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model on February 15th, 2022. Governor Baker signed into law a new session law extending certain COVID-19 related measures. In light of that, before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded, and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment, and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novus agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. Our first agenda item tonight is public comment. Before I call our first speaker, I just want to share a few ground rules. For members of the public who wish to address the committee, there will be 20 minutes of public comment. Depending on the number of people who sign up, time allotments may be reduced but will not exceed three minutes each. I will give the speaker a signal when they have 30 seconds left. If the number of people who sign up exceeds what can be done in 20 minutes, the number of speakers may be capped and they will be invited to speak based on the time stamp of their email to Ms. Diggins. The school committee respectfully requests participants of the public to utilize their camera if possible while speaking and to adhere to the public comment policy BEDH that requires participants to provide their name and address. Speakers may offer such objective criticisms of the school operations and programs as concern them, but in public session the committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel nor against any member of the school community except for the school committee or the superintendent in their capacity as the operational leader of Arlington Public Schools. Public is reminded that the school committee does not hold jurisdiction over the performance of school personnel other than the superintendent. Additionally, the committee will not hear anything that might identify and or infringe upon a student's privacy by name or incident. If you would like to sign up to speak, please email Ediggins at arlington.k12.ma.us by 3 p.m. on the date of our meeting. Our first public comment participant this evening is Ms. Judy Geyer and she's here in person. And just step up to the microphone please, yep. Good evening. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I met you last June in my capacity as president of the Arlington Education Foundation. But this evening I'm here as a parent of a ninth grader. I understand that this committee has a decision to make about how to manage the delay in the construction schedule for the Arlington High School. I am so grateful that a new high school is being built and I really appreciate the dedication of all towards figuring out how to manage that. I understand that one of the options under consideration is much more costly than the other. Perhaps 1.2 million, if I understand correctly, there's 7.7 million in the contingency fund. So that option is about 16% of the contingency fund. I'm really excited for this community's dedication to the new building because we want a building that will allow teachers and students to be and bring their best. So I ask that the school committee think about which option allows teachers and students to be and bring their best. Education research from education researchers at MIT and at Brown, studying the educational outcomes from the pandemic proved to us that being in school, in person, helps students achieve the best educational outcomes, better emotional health, social emotional health, and helps us achieve more equitable outcomes. That's why I support option 2. Last week, Dr. Jengar hosted an open house for parents or freshmen, and he said it's really important to set students' expectations. My hope is that teachers are in a setting that allows them to set expectations that students provide their full self, their full dedication to the school day, to their school community, and to also expect that the school community is there for them the whole day to support them. I also hope that the school committee thinks about how to help teachers be and bring their best in a month where whichever option is chosen, they're going to be curveballs thrown at them. For example, I think with both options, teachers need time to move from one building to the other. To respond to these curveballs, it's my imagination that teachers need time to regroup and to coordinate with each other to think about how they're going to catch up in their curriculum and in their teaching to meet their educational goals for the year. So how do we protect that time? I believe option 2 protects that time, but option 1 does not. That's my understanding. I also want to note that today is day 13 of this school year. About a month ago, I and I imagine lots of other families were thinking 10 weeks is a long time, mid-August is starting to feel like April 2020.  Day 13 of school, my freshman has had quizzes, has given school presentations, finally became brave enough this week to attend an after-school group, has done auditions for music. Wrap it up, please. Thank you. And I hope that next year's ninth graders can enjoy that same opportunity in their first three weeks of school. Thank you for your decisions. Thank you. Our next public comment is Ann Marie Faust, who I believe is on Zoom. Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Should I just start? Yeah, go ahead if you can just say your name and address, please. Yep, so my name is Ann Marie Faust, and I live at 16 Waldo Road in Arlington. So I have a second grader at Hardy School. I'm also a founding member of the community advocacy group, Safer Air, Safer Schools, that we started during the Omicron Wave late last year. So I hope to speak at this meeting in person, but I can't because my seven-year-old son has COVID. He did everything right, he's vaccinated and boosted and wears a high-quality mask at school, and he was still infected within days of the start of the school year. And I'm speaking to you tonight because I believe our current COVID protocols are not enough to prevent widespread infection in our schools. Last school year, we had many COVID protocols in place, and we largely avoided outbreaks. For much of the year, we had masking, testing, notifications of close contacts, HEPA filters, increased HVAC monitoring, outdoor lunch options, a district-wide case dashboard, and a test-to-return policy. And nearly all of these mitigations have been dropped for this school year. With the exceptions of HEPA filters, HVAC monitoring, and sometimes open windows, the district has taken away the mitigations from last year, and with them, they've taken away crucial information and protocols that we need to limit infection. Although state funding for testing is gone, there are still important things that the district can do to limit COVID infection and transmission. First, we need to notify families of exposures in their students' classes. My son and another student in the same class tested positive within two days of each other, but even these two cases were not enough to notify families under the current policy. Families need to know that their students have been exposed in school. Another issue I want to highlight is reducing transmission during lunch. And here, also, there are things that the district can do. Right now, there's no option for outdoor lunch, so students have to eat lunch in the cafeterias. We need to offer outdoor lunch options. We also need better monitoring of air quality using carbon dioxide monitors, which read on the quality of ventilation in a space. And without this monitoring, we don't actually know how effective our HVAC systems are. These are important because a recently infected student can return to school in a mask, even if they're testing positive, and then eat lunch with their class. My son is still testing positive today on day six, but the school would allow him to return and eat lunch with his class. Most adults would not choose to eat indoors under these conditions with someone who has a known COVID infection, but that's what our students have to do. I've asked Dr. Homan and the district for these mitigations and have been told no. So I want everyone to understand what you're saying no to. With the current protocols, we're opening ourselves up to repeated infections in schools. And we know that COVID infections are not good for long-term health as scientific studies are starting to highlight. So we need to do better for our students because they're not given the agency to choose the level of exposure to COVID. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda are our AHS student representatives. I had mentioned Mo was here, and I see, I think now, our other rep is here on Zoom. We are so happy that you are here to attend our school committee meetings and share what's happening at the high school. So I will turn it over to you. All right, so the start of the school year has been going great. I was part of the freshman welcoming committee. We set up this scavenger hunt to help them get to better know the school. And I just think overall, everyone has felt very welcomed to, like, the new school, the building being all confusing, and that was just very good. It was a little confusing at first for freshmen, and probably everyone really. There's a lot of, like, crowds in the hallways, being only one hallway between the old and new building. But now it seems fine. I've been getting to classes on time. There's no problems with that. Also, like, the sports teams are doing wonderful. There's a lot of spirit in that regard. And I just think that has gone really well. Also, we have some wonderful things planned for our school community with a pep rally being planned. I don't know the exact date for that right now, but that's all being figured out. It's our first one in since a while before COVID. And also, we are planning a homecoming, which will be fun for everyone. I don't really know what else to say. No, the start of the year has gone great. And I'm excited for the rest of the school year. That's great to hear. And you are welcome to raise your hand as we continue our discussion this evening, if you have thoughts to share about other parts of our agenda. Be open to hearing that as well. I'm looking for our other Zoom participant. Tamiki Sugihara, did you want to add anything to that? No, I think Moe COVID. Great. Thank you. Can I? Yes, please. Could you introduce yourself and tell us what grade you are in? Thank you, Moe. I am Moe Hagenbiew, and I am a junior study graduating in 2024. And I'm a student representative for my class on the committee. And I'm also a student representative for the school committee. Tamaki. Tamaki Sugihara, senior. I'm graduating this year. I'm also a representative for my class and a representative for students here. Thank you. Our next item on the agenda are new administrators to the school year. And I will let Dr. Holman introduce them to us. All right. I'll ask our new administrators who are in the room to come up towards the school committee table so that you all can introduce yourselves. I'll let you do that and tell your name and where you're located in the district. I just want to say I think we've had a very successful start to the year. And these new administrators have hit the ground running. And they have been learning their new schools and their new departments very well and very quickly and have been doing an absolutely fantastic job. Dr. McNeil led quite a few searches for some new directors last year. So you'll get to meet all of them. And those searches were well attended in forums. And they got to speak with members of the community, including students. And we really are very excited about their leadership. So I guess let's start. I'm actually just going to go in the order that I have them here in Novus because that's easiest for me. So I'll start with Amy Benjamin. Was she able to be here tonight virtually? Amy is not here. So Amy Benjamin is the special. Oh, she's at an open house. She's that's where she should be. She's a special education coordinator at the middle school level. She actually started with us partway through last year and has been with us for several months now and has been a great asset to our middle schools. Amy Forseth. And correct me if I say your name wrong. Amy Forseth, I'm a coordinator at the high school. Welcome, Amy. Eileen Woods. Good evening. I'm Eileen Woods, and I am happy to be serving the Brackett community this year as the interim vice principal. Always a joy to come back to Arlington and be part of the important work here. Thank you. And Jen Rich. I'm Jennifer Rich. I'm also at the Brackett School, part-time assistant principal with Eileen, Dr. Eileen Woods, and I'm thrilled to be part of the Arlington community in doing this important work here in Arlington. I grew up in Arlington. I went to Hardy School for elementary school. We then moved, but my mother went to Arlington High School and her best friend grew up on Situat Street right next to the Brackett School. So it's very fun for me to be part of this community again and to be sitting here tonight. These two have been tag-teaming the Brackett Assistant Principalship and doing a great job with Stephanie in the lead. So Jing Hui Wei. Hi, I'm Jing Hui Wei, the performing art director. Really honored to be here. I am no stranger to Arlington community. I've been here for the past 20 years, started as a probabilism violin viola teacher and then started teaching orchestra for the past 18 years. And I'm really honored to have this opportunity to continue to serve our students and community with my new role. Thank you. Caitlin Moran. Hi, good evening everyone. My name is Caitlin Moran. My pronouns are she, hers, and I'm excited to be the new history and social studies director for the district. And we've had a great month getting to be in classrooms and see what teachers are up to, and I'm just excited to be able to continue the good work of my predecessors. Kim Visco. Hi everyone, I'm Kim Visco. I'm the new wellness director. I've been with Arlington Public Schools for the past 17 years, so I'm looking forward to stepping into this new role. Thank you. Leo Muelner was not able to join us today. Was he? Is that accurate? Yeah, and he's the director of visual arts and has been having a great time getting started as well. Michelle Crawford. Hello everyone, I'm Michelle Crawford. I am the seventh grade assistant principal at Auditon Middle School. Good to be here. And Taylor O'Brien. Hi everyone, I'm Taylor O'Brien, new assistant principal at Stratton Elementary. I am absolutely thrilled to be here. Dr. Hanne and I have had a great start to the school year and we're excited to see all this come this year. And that's it, these are our new leaders, and we're very happy to have them on the team. Anybody want to say anything? Thank you all for being here, either in person or virtually. It's nice to see you and welcome all of you to Arlington or to new roles here in Arlington. You are absolutely welcome to leave. You do not need to stay unless you are extremely curious and would like to. Thank you all. Our next agenda item is the equity audit report. Do you want me to just call? I'll introduce it a little bit. Would you like me to share slides and steer for you? Our DEI director, Margaret Creedle-Thomas, will be giving us this presentation.  Okay, so before Ms. Creedle-Thomas gets started, just want to make sure you can see the slides. I just want to thank her for the extensive work that has gone into coordination, planning, execution, and now finally this report that you have in front of you. This has been an extremely participatory process, one that has involved many members of our community, not only in the doing of the development of the report and the review of the audit materials, but also in accepting the report. It was accepted by a group of people in our community and I'm sure she'll talk about process. But I just want to acknowledge the hard work that has gone into it ahead of our presentation and you can take it away. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Thank you everybody for letting me be here this evening. So this is the summary of the equity audit report, which we got the official report in August. So the agenda, you all know who I am. I just finished my first year, so I'm starting my second year in this position. Purpose of the equity audit, partnering with Longview Education, our strategic recommendations, action steps, and any questions that you may have after. So the purpose of the audit was to understand the drivers impacting the gaps at Arlington Public Schools students achievement and opportunities and the obstacles contributing to those gaps, as well as to fully understand our equity and inclusion challenges, identify best practices suited to address those challenges and align resources to meet the needs of all APS students. And so when I first entered into this position, I did listening sessions and I thought it would be a great idea. And Dr. Holman and the cabinet agreed that if we could get an equity audit to just get more data and to hear more of those stories. So the process of this is that in November of 2021, we did request for proposals for RFPs, open to organizations for submission. In 2021, we've got six organizations that submitted their proposals. They went through an extensive interview process with stakeholders. I invited school committee members, teachers, administrators, and there was a student that sat also on that committee. From there, we had three finalists. Those three finalists in January met with myself, Dr. Holman and Michael Mason. And from there, we contracted, went long view education. And in February, long view started the process of a participatory equity audit. And like I said, in August, we finally got the official report. So the process of that was that the auditors asked for participation from our stakeholders, which was comprised of 56 stakeholders. We had teachers, administrators, community members. Students weren't actually on those subcommittings. We couldn't get students, however, they did participate in the empathy interviews that we had. We had three focus groups. We had the Mecca program. They went into Boston. They were supposed to go into Boston. Excuse me, what happened was one of the consultants got delayed, so that got transferred to a virtual. And then they met with leaders and curriculum leaders. And like I said, we did the interviews with students, teachers, administration, and families. The audit activities were that we had seven dimensions that they were looking at, as you see there, the professional development, leadership, team readiness, student achievement, policy, staffing, curriculum, interventions, and family and community engagement. I am moving my own, sorry. So from there, with them doing the data analyst, they accessed for different documentations for those different dimensions that we requested for scope of work. As you see there, I'm not gonna read it all there. They accessed for documentation for policy, for the professional development and leadership, the student achievement, staffing overview of current recruitment strategy and processes, curriculum and school experience, family and community engagement, and the engagement strategies avenues used to communicate with families and caregivers. So those were some of the documents that we had that they requested. And from those documents, what they did was the seven dimensions, the stakeholders were then put on those different subgroups, and they were then able to look at those documents that they requested. They walked them through the process of what to look for and how to look for what they need to be looking for and how to rate them. So from there, like I said, this process went from February until August. And in August, we got the official report. Here are the strategic recommendations from that report. So the strategic recommendation, number one is to create and refine and use a bias and discrimination reporting process. At this moment, as you all know, we are in the process of doing some strategic priority planning that started in August. And so that group would help us with strategic recommendation one. Also, APS has developed a reporting system at the high school, and we are discussing next steps for pilot implementation for that. And then strategic recommendation number two is to begin and refine human resources data tracking process. We're regularly reporting on hiring and demographics of new and current hires that Mr. Spiegel does, and then tracking retention and recruitment practices are not started yet. Strategic recommendation number three is require ongoing professional development and diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging. And so we are continuing to offer ideas one and ideas two for all stakeholders. We just ran a course in the summer. Also, this year, there's a new requirement for 18 hours of DEI professional development learning for our non-professional teaching staff. This year, we're developing choice-based professional learning for all APS educators. And also we're creating affinity group spaces where individuals who can share a common identity can come together for collaboration and support. Strategic recommendation number four, carry out a review of intervention services. We have adjusted the schedules at the elementary schools to allow more push-in interventions, related services and intervention blocks. Strategic recommendation number five, create clarity about roles, expectations and visions for the district to effectively integrate diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts. APS created a new vision and mission statement as everyone knows. And again, we are in the middle of strategic planning, working on key strategic priorities. And then strategic recommendation number four, is to begin to transition from a culture of compliance and accountability towards one of student centeredness and inclusion. In 2022, 23, the district focused on establishing and sustaining a sense of belonging. We're doing a participatory strategic planning group. We have now implemented the instructional leadership teams at all the schools, the IOTs. Partnership with the town DEI director and the departments is ongoing with me and Jill Harvey. And we will be then looking at focusing on connection to school and sense of belonging with Gidd and Audison. So our next steps is that Dr. Homan and myself will be hosting community forums to have stakeholders discuss and gather feedback on the equity audit, the new vision and mission statement. And then APS will continue to work the strategic planning group design initiatives and action steps for that strategic priorities. Dr. McNeil to roll out the new approach to the professional development and then to work with me to meet the new 18 hour requirement for educators. And then the other action steps related to this is that the elementary literacy working group which had started last year is continuing this year. And then the cabinet and the administrative leadership team will have DEI workshops and instructional rounds. And busy. Thank you. Anybody? Mr. Thamman. Thank you. Great presentation and great work. Congratulations on all of this. My question is I'm just curious in this whole process was there ever a conversation about trying to get recommendations from the firm, from Longview to get to operationalize all this? Were there any, say that again, I'm sorry. You know, recommendations on how to operationalize all of the recommendations. Like this is the reality of how many staff you need to do this right. Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to do and I'm still in the process of thinking through is for them to now help us with implementation of the strategic recommendations that they have stated to us. And that Dr. Holman and I have discussed this and we think that we should really go through the strategic priority planning. Yeah. And then they can help us with the implementation because then we will have those goals and those priorities. And I think that that will then, them coming in and helping us with that will work nicely. Yeah. I'm curious to know how many people we actually need to do this right. That's kind of what I'm curious about. Right. I mean, you might be thinking about that too. And I'm on the strategic planning committee but the superintendent put me on that. So I'm trying to, I accepted the invitation of Dr. Holman to serve on the committee. Is that the right of frame? Yeah, I should frame it that way. So I'm, and we're talking about this report and what to put into place and that's guiding the discussion. So, okay. Yeah. It's a good question and I don't have that answer for you at this point. Okay. Thank you. It's my standard question when any strategic plan comes to me anywhere in the world. Are we gonna operationalize this thing? All right. Thank you, Dr. Thank you very much. Mr. Heiner. Did I miss it? Or is there a thing for training the school committee as well? It is not, that wasn't in the report per day. And I did talk to Ms. Exon and there was a group of us that had talked about the continuation of professional development for the school committee and the select board of Arlington. Great. Thank you. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you. I really take interest in this because I've always worked in urban and diverse districts. And I think this is just so critically important. And one of the things I really love is the move to the word belonging instead of welcoming because I can welcome you to my house for dinner but then I throw you out at night. You know, it's not your house but the school system, every school needs to generate that sense of belonging for every student. Every student must feel, must feel that they are an equal and valued member of the community that they belong and they care about and that we care about them and they feel that reciprocity. And I was sort of interested in one of the more difficult things that we have to manage because we are a diverse district in terms of the cultures that feed into it that we're really working to recognize cultures that have very different attitudes towards certain things. I welcome the discussion of assertive versus collective cultures that blend within the district. I saw, and overall when I read the report I was impressed about how far we had come and that there's a willingness to go further and that one of the things we need to do and one of the reasons why I value your presence here in your new role, I don't know if you've been here a year, is that one of the aspects that they talked about was uniting the culture across the district from K to 12 so that we're speaking the same language and we have the same vision for our kids. My one question, the thing that I see is sort of missing in what I've read. I'm viewing the culture as something that if a child comes in a kindergarten we have a vision of how to move them through the school system so that we have a continuous and supportive culture for all students. The question is, well we talk about onboarding new teachers into the system. I think one of our biggest challenges not just for us, for any school is onboarding students who are new to the district. And when I take a look at some of the discipline records for the high school because the state breaks them out by certain categories as well as the four year versus five year graduation rate, you get that mark or whether or not they came in with you in ninth grade is that I'm seeing that the kids who are with us K to 12 are faring better than the ones who are transferring in. And so I'm wondering, thinking, and I don't expect an answer tonight, but the thing that's on my mind is the thing that worries me most in this cluster are how do we bring students who show up here on October 12th into the community and make them feel like they belong here just like the kids who started off in kindergarten? Yeah. I mean, I know you can, you said I can answer that. You know, come back and think about it, but one of the things that I have thought about it and that Ms. Smith and I, who's the director of the Meckle program has, she brought in a ninth grader this year. And what happened was the parents came in with the student the first day and so didn't know where the bus was, missed the bus. And so helped to navigate that. And we were both talking about that it would be great if that student had like an ambassador for a couple of weeks just to help them kind of transition into the school and into the culture. I mean, and that is one answer. That's not the only answer. I think that to really talk about that is to really also talk to students and say to students like what would you have liked if you were coming in at a, in the ninth grade and you weren't here in kindergarten, what would be helpful for you? And I think students are the ones that give us the best answers for that. And the one thing I can say is that if we had like an ambassador of students in the same grade that that to help that student transition that's one answer that I can give you. In some way we had a measure of when they feel a belonging, not getting past acceptance to actual sense of belonging. They're a part of our school. Thanks. Welcome. Dr. Allison Ampe, I just don't want to. Thank you. So, Ms. Creedle-Thomas, I appreciate your report and I think this is really helpful. And I want to, before I freeze my question, I want to say I understand it's really important to have the kids have a sense of belonging and a sense of feeling community in the schools. But one of the reasons that we undertook this was to help close the achievement gap. And I'm looking at the strategic recommendations and I was kind of wondering how, do we know that all of our achievement gap is coming from kids feeling disenfranchised or not being taught to their level versus things like cumulative summer learning laws or lack of enriching opportunities. And I just, I wasn't, I will admit I didn't read every word closely in the report, but I didn't see anything about that and I was just wondering how we're trying to tease that out and is that part of the future work or what? So, thank you. You're welcome. I think it's, to answer your question, Dr. Ampey, I think to understand whether or not belonging is gonna help to decrease the gap. I think that's just one, you know, sometimes it's like when you don't feel like you belong, yeah, you don't then attain or you're not, you're not really involved in your learning and when you do feel like you're belonging, you value and somebody feels like you're connected, I think that does increase people's learning and I think there are other variables that attribute to also the gaps that I can't speak to at this moment. Okay, I guess I'm flagging that for Dr. Holman or someone to just be thinking about and or talking to us at some point because I'm just, we're doing all this stuff but I wanna be sure that we're not missing another big area that's really important. So, thank you. I just, in response to that, I think, thank you, Dr. Allison Ampey and when we, this is important to maybe think about too as we look forward to Dr. McNeil presenting some of the outcomes from last year and thinking through where we've made progress on outcomes. The equity audit team did have and it was part of their document review access to look at our outcomes academically as well and so that was a focus of the team. That curriculum piece of it was, of course, one element of the larger operational equity audit and which is why we also included the curriculum audit that was done a couple of years ago in the materials that you had for tonight because that was taken into consideration as well but you're raising a really good point that making that connection between the social-emotional learning of students, the belonging and equity work we're doing and the actual outcomes in academics is gonna be an important thread for us to connect moving forward. Right, but also, is there anything else? Sorry. I just wanna be sure that we're not looking at just one side and that we're ignoring something else that can help kids so that maybe they need both things. So, that's all. Thank you. Yeah, I think we're looking at all data, Dr. Ampey, to answer your question. I think this is another data point that we're looking at. Ms. Morgan. So, I didn't actually have a lot, I didn't have any questions on the presentation. I thought it was great and I was able to read a lot of the audit and I had seen Ms. Crittle-Thomas earlier, was it earlier this week? And I had said, I just need your presentation to set me up and then I'm gonna go back and have a chance to read it again. So, I feel very sort of set up and appreciate that. So, thank you so much. The question that I have is around the additional documentation around the SEL curriculum analysis that was included in the packet but not addressed in the presentation and that's a piece that I'm trying to, is that something we're gonna talk about more later or are we going to, so that all of those pieces that are in that analysis are the pieces that for me, when we see that especially elementary principles come for their presentations around their SIPs, that I get confused because there's a lot of acronyms and seems like everybody's doing something different. It kind of feels like that was some of the feedback from the curriculum analysis that there's a lot going on. So, I guess I'm curious, how are we, like, are we gonna address that piece through the strategic planning? Are we gonna talk about it separately? There seems to be a lot to sort of unpack there. So, I don't even know who to direct my question to. You wanna answer? So, you said a lot. So, what is, can you just like summarize what? Your packet for this agenda item, we received the SEL curriculum analysis, there's 51 pages apparently broken over two pages. From Dr. Simmons? Yes, yes. So, I guess the question was, are we, is that something that we're looking at anymore? Was that just included? I just, it's in our packet, so. No, absolutely.  So, I think that we can build on what Dr. Simmons found through her analysis and continue to evaluate that against what we have, the data that we've collected up till now and then look at the programs that we have. We have added explicit SEL programming at the elementary level, second step, and at the secondary level, which is ruler. And so, I think that we have to continue to evaluate that and make sure that we are looking at the, and students are able to use their cultural identity as we talk about the different things that we're trying to get students to do, like manage their emotions and think about the ways that they can navigate different situations and utilize their ability to make responsible decisions. So, I think this is all taken together in conjunction. This summer, during our all leader workshops, individual principals work with their IOTs to develop problems of practice using all of the information that was provided to the equity audit, during the equity audit. And so, I think we're moving in the right direction. I don't know if I answered your question, but I'm trying to ascertain as to what. So, can you help me understand how does this, how does this documentation, the SEL curriculum analysis that looks like it was completed in March of 2021, how does that connect to what we just got a really clear presentation on? So, I'll take this. I added this to the materials because there have been questions from the committee about access to this particular set of documentation, and I wanted to make sure that it was public for the community so that they had access to this audit, which we had not previously had publicly accessible. Some of that was because of concerns that came from the consultant who had partnered with us on that surrounding explicit naming of particular curriculum areas. We've since unlocked it, it's available now. If it is the desire of the committee for us to come back and talk about the findings of that audit and what we've done since we received it because I know Dr. McNeil's team has used that to make some changes to curriculum instruction that I imagine you'll hear about when we have some of our directors come to and talk about some of the curriculum work that they're doing this year that we can do that. Like we can explicitly talk about that report, but I hadn't asked Dr. McNeil to do a presentation on that tonight, so he's not ready for that. Yeah, so I guess for me, I would just be interested in what Ms. Crenel Thomas thinks is the best. I think that it's fine to sort of say this was where we were at in March, 2021, and it informed where what we've been presented tonight, which was fresh as of August, 2022. So I'm fine either way. I just needed to sort of connect the arc of like, where we were, what this was, how much impact this had on what was produced and like how they fit together, so. I just wanted, some of the work that we were doing since we received the first equity audit on our instruction materials, that work has been in process all along. And so I think that information, the findings from Dr. Simmons is still relevant and this will actually highlight some of the things that have been done during that time and then lead us back to using that document to maybe implementing some of the strategic objectives that were in this particular equity audit. So we're using them in conjunction with each other. I think that's answering your question. Okay. Yeah, and I guess just, for me as somebody who doesn't do this all day, every day, I just, I have to like really understand how those pieces like get together. And that's what I'm trying to sort out. And there's just a lot of pages, right? So it's just, it's like, so that's helpful. And yeah, okay, thank you. Okay. Mr. Carden. Thank you, and thank you for all, everybody for all their hard work on this. So reading through some of the detail of the report, and this actually goes back to Dr. Allison Ampey's question, there aren't recommendations for all of the things they looked at. There aren't high level strategic recommendations. So for example, there's a whole section on student achievement, where there are a lot of best practices that we're probably not, are not fully implemented in the district. Do we go back and look at those separately, or are they sort of, were they sort of over, sort of trumped by these others, things that emerge as the strategic recommendations? Yeah, that's a good question. All I can do is tell you like the process that the consultants like have the stakeholders go through. And so the stakeholders are the ones that also created the recommendations with the research base. So this is how they came up with those really high themes. So to answer your question, I'm not sure that would be something I would have to go back and ask them. So I do, so like I said, in the process, this is, you know, they had the 56 stakeholders, they look at the data, the team comes together and they are the ones that also thinks about those recommendations with the research base and those, those are how those themes kind of emerged the way they did. Okay, cause what we're sort of used to seeing is, like from the special education world, the state has a list of criteria, right? Is this implemented fully, partially, or not at all in the district? And then you have to go back and tell them for the stuff that's not fully implemented, how are you going to implement that? And I guess when I look at these best practices, I could see that going the same way, right? Are we, have we implemented all of these best practices? Have we decided not to? You know, is that the type of level of detail that's next? Or do we focus on just the strategic stuff? So this is what I have been saying with these six strategic recommendations. I believe that they're going to be phased in. I don't, I don't see us doing all of these recommendations all in one year. I think this will be, this will work well with the strategic planning that we're doing. And that's why I was also discussing that the consultants continuing to help us with implementation and them helping us to prioritize what would be the first step of us, what would be the first priority of these recommendations that we should be really looking at and to really build upon that. Great, thank you. Thank you. So first of all, I just want to say thank you for the presentation. It really broke down and made very clear the long rapport. I was, I was waiting through it too. I'm like, whoo. And then so I appreciate how you pulled that all together. I have a sort of very specific question and then a few comments. Can you share a little bit about the thinking around the 18 hours of DEI training just for non-professional teachers? Thank you. No question. That was a component of our negotiations, our contract negotiations with the Arlington Education Association, Educator Association, and that that was an easily agreed upon portion of the contract that we agreed to. I think that, you know, the idea behind it is that if we offer those 18 hours as part of the menu of options for all of our educators, the reality is we're gonna have a lot of educators who are going to become part of that. The goal is ultimately that we have all of our educators engaging in this training. And that implementation of that 18 hours just for all of our educators in their first three years is going to be a massive undertaking capacity-wise. So we're going to have to really expand the number of partners we work with to provide this training, the capacity of our internal professional development professionals to deliver this training. In some cases people have taken an ideas course but that doesn't necessarily mean they're ready to offer one. So building the capacity of folks within the district to facilitate adult learning so that we have the internal ability to do that. We felt really able to facilitate that to start with our NPTS educators. But certainly the goal would be that we track and make sure that all of our educators engage in that learning and that all of our offerings really on that PD menu, and I know Dr. McNeil's working hard on this, all of our offerings are aligned with the DEI strategy of the district which is pretty deeply embedded in the strategy of the district. The administration just this past week, one thing I wanted to add to what Margaret was talking about we've already been working on, they mapped, they did a mapping of all of these recommendations, actually the sub-recommendations beneath each of those large recommendations that Ms. Cradle-Thomas just went through, and they said which priority area for our strategic plan does this specific recommendation live under? And so they did that mapping in groups and we've shared that with the strategic planning team in hopes that they can take those more granular recommendations from the audit and say this belongs under strategic priority too so that that can help the strategic planning team map out what five years of this might look like. And so expansion of professional development was one of the big priorities. We've already taken some steps towards the NPTS educators. The hope would be that they can think through how do we get more educators involved in some of those PDs and how do we keep expanding the capacity of the district to offer them. My other question is sort of a big picture piece. So we did this equity audit, we have these recommendations, we're working on this strategic plan. Like in five years, does one do another equity audit? How do we sort of have an external perspective on are the things that we're implementing? Yeah, consultants usually say that you should go and do another audit within the five to six years. And like I said, we have these recommendations and the way I look at it, it's a roadmap of how we can embed the work that we wanna do. It's our new vision statement, this is helping us to get there with our mission. And so like I said, I've talked to consultants and they usually say within another five years you should do another one just to see where you're at and if you have progressed. And I think that's the other reason why I was saying, I wanted the consultant to continue to work with us with implementation. I think that's really important to make sure that we do what the recommendations are stating and the way we need to phase them in as priorities. Thank you. And the last thing, I just wanted to make a comment sort of piggybacking on what Mr. Heiner had said and also for the public that's watching. So in the summer, the school committee participated in a workshop facilitated by Jessica Peppel who the administration and the school committee members were there talking about these diversity, inclusion, belonging and equity. And so I just think it's important for the community to know that it's a conversation and work that the school committee is doing as well. And I have been in touch with Ms. Gretel Thomas and Ms. Harvey, the town diversity director how we can continue this work as a committee and as a school going forward. So thank you very much Ms. Gretel Thomas for your presentation. So the AHS start of 2023, 2024. I think we have an update from Dr. Holman and then. Okay, so good evening. School committee and members of the community, I'm here to provide a little bit of an update and I'm gonna go back through a bit of an overview of the challenge we're facing with regards to the Arlington High School schedule for fall of 2023. I'd also like tonight to make a recommendation to the school committee for your consideration and potential vote so that you can make a vote to recommend whatever option you choose to the Arlington High School Building Committee. So our agenda is I'm going to go back over the purpose and review the two options for Arlington High School in fall of 2023. I'd like to share a more detailed cost out of option one because that was something that we still had questions about last time we met and then provide my recommendation and we can have a discussion. So as we have discussed previously, based on the current project timeline in fall of 2023, Arlington High School will not have enough space to host the entire student body during the first three weeks of school before moving into the completed phase two buildings, which is currently slated for September 25th of 2023. So this is obviously a challenge and an important one for us to think about how to resolve. Resolving it has implications for the future of the project out through phases three and four. It has implications for student learning and it has implications for the overall project budget that are quite significant. So the slides that I'll go through are going to explain the options for addressing the challenge, both in phases two and in phase three and out through the rest of the project. The purpose of the discussion today is to vote to determine which option to recommend to the Arlington High School Building Committee. So for those of you who might want us to go through a review, I'm just going to explain again what option one and option two are. Option one would be that we would follow the contracted construction timeline, the construction timeline that's currently under contract with our construction company, our OPM and our architects. So the phase two transition in option one would be in September of 2023. That's same in option two. So the phase two transition is in September of 2023, regardless of which option you choose. It's just what that transition looks like that differs significantly for phase two. So the details of option one is that the demolition of Fusco would begin in June of 2023, which is about three months before we would actually take over phase two. So we would lose Fusco and we would need to use the steam wing, which is the newly constructed wing of this high school, downtown house with a connector to facilitate half day classes for the first 11 days of the school year. Under option one, Arlington High School would only be able to accommodate half of the student body at a time. And under option one, we would need to have some additional classroom spaces as well as some other modifications made to the building in order to accommodate that schedule. So students would attend three classes a day plus lunch, some students would be required to attend both in the morning or the evening. If they had cross grade classes, for example, it would be certainly a disrupted schedule from the one they are used to. This equates to approximately 30 fewer hours of time on learning in 2023 and 24, still within our regulatory requirements, but a significant reduction in the amount of time students would be spending in class and the students would have a disrupted student schedule for the first three weeks of school. We would probably need to absorb or eliminate some early release professional development time later in the year in order to accommodate this and the move. And we would need to build a connector to downs, some additional classroom spaces and cover moving costs both in the spring, the spring before the Fusco demolition and then in the fall to move into phase two. And I have a more detailed cost out of this coming up in a moment. For option one, this also has implications for the phase three transition, which would happen in September of 2024, according to the current contracted timeline. In option one, we would continue with demolition of downs in June of 2024. So that means that we would need to use Monotomy Pre-K to host the lab program, which would be housed in downs from June of 2024 through late September of 24 when they would be able to move into their phase three building. Actually, they would need to wait for, until phase three actually opens. So that's an error. They would be in the Monotomy Pre-K from June of 2024 until phase three were to open, which would be later in the year in December of 2024. There would be swing space required for athletics and Arlington Community Education. This wouldn't have any schedule impact on the main student body or main classes because most of the classrooms are in the newly constructed phase one and phase two, which would be open at that point. But we would need to figure out a solution for gymnasium, locker rooms, the lab program and administrative spaces, which wouldn't be available until later on in the year. Financially, we would need to be outfitting our temporary lab classrooms in Monotomy. They do require particular equipment in those classrooms that we would either need to move or actually outfit the Monotomy space with. We would probably need modulars or rentals for athletics and ACE. We've done a little bit of costing out of that, which I'll go through in just a moment. Option two is to use the shifted construction timeline. This would keep Fusco online for the first three weeks of the school year in phase two. So once phase two was done being built, then we would move into phase two and then Fusco would be demolished. So that demolition of Fusco wouldn't begin until September of 2023 because that demolition is delayed. That delays the entire project timeline by about three months and that it results in delays throughout through the rest of the project phases. AHS would be able to accommodate the full student body for the phase two transition because we would be keeping Fusco online in phase two. There would be full school days to start the school year in 2023, 24 with the exception of likely some half days to facilitate the move just as we did in phase one. We would maintain time on learning and early release for teacher professional learning. And if there are no further delays to the project, we would move into phase two in September of 2023. Again, that's the same as option one for the move into phase two. It's the move into phase three that shifts the timeline back. And this would of course shift the project timeline back requiring us to keep all of our construction folks on site and our architects and our OPM on contract, which would total about $1.2 million. So phase three is also impacted by the shifted construction timeline. This would keep downs online for the first three months of the school year and 24, 25 demolition of downs would begin in January of 2025. If we were to go with option two, it's possible that we could move monotomy pre-K into their new space sooner because lab would maintain their space and downs and move once phase three was opened. There wouldn't be a significant schedule impact on the main student body for this one, but the move into phase three in January would be delayed. We would have new gymnasiums, locker rooms, lab program and administrative spaces that wouldn't be available until January of 2025 and would need to figure out some details with regards to athletics. This would shift the project timeline back, as I said, and it has the same cost implication as the previous slide, $1.2 million. That 1.2 would come out of contingency and one of the questions we've received is what the actual cost out of option one is. Option one comes with a lot of unknowns and so we know that there are going to be additional costs associated with option one and we've given it our best attempt to sort of estimate what all of those are, though we generally anticipate that we're going to find more as we try to implement option one. So right now we know that option one is going to require a connector from the new wing to downs house. That comes at a cost of $125,000. We would also need to, in addition to that, create a temp server in the front lobby and some temporary classrooms in the auditorium. We were a little unclear last time we presented on whether that was included in the $125,000. It turns out it's not. The 125 only accounts for that connector so those would come at additional cost, the temp classrooms and the servery. The temp storage for Fusco classrooms would be over the summer so because we'd have to come all the way out of Fusco we would need to store some of those materials because we wouldn't have the summer to store them so we would need storage for that or estimating that at $58,000. We would need to move our kitchen offices and storage and our AHS library also into a warehouse because of the spaces that they're occupying and that would be, they wouldn't be able to occupy over the summer because of the demolition and that comes at cost as well. We would need to move facilities offices from where they're currently located into downs house and lab into a new space and the gym and fitness storage which is out in 2024 due to phase three. So the total of all of those costs which are the ones that we feel like we can estimate at this time is about $309,000. We're not including in that because we're not honestly sure what the implications would be. We'd have to problem-solver on this. What the temporary location and move of central office and payroll would be for four months under option one. We don't know where we would go or what the rent would cost so we would have to figure that out if we were gonna go forward with option one. And we're not sure about the cost yet of athletics replacement spaces. We would need to rent a gym in phase three under option one which would be August through September and we're not sure exactly what community we would go to. This would be in order to host some of our fall athletics programming. And then one other cost that I wanna make sure I mention that is a very important one I think. It's not going to be reflected in the contingency, the impact on contingency for the building project but it is a cost that I think it's important for the school committee and community to keep in mind. And that's the opportunity cost of option one. If you think about what 30 hours of Arlington High School education costs us based on our general fund allocation from the town and you calculate that on a per pupil basis and you exclude even other grants or funding sources and you exclude taking into account the fact that our high school education actually costs more than some of the materials we purchase for the elementary levels. That cost out is approximately $675,000. That's what we would spend on those 30 hours of education that we would be giving the students and that we would spend anyway because we'd be keeping the lights on, we'd be keeping our teachers staffed because we would need to. So that is an important cost I think to add to our consideration of option one. It's one that I've been thinking about a lot. It does not impact the project budget but it is a cost to the town and the taxpayers and it's one worth considering. So with that, my recommendation would be that the school committee consider option two for moving forward with fall of 2023. And I have a few reasons why and then a couple other things I'd like to emphasize. First, I think that the first several weeks of school are exceptionally important for establishing routines in relationships as we heard from a member of the community earlier today. Those first few days of school are incredibly important to students getting into their routines of schooling to establishing relationships with their educators. And we've seen what the impact of disrupted schooling can be during the pandemic and that it can be quite extreme. We know that we have chronic absenteeism challenges. We've had them throughout the pandemic. We have them still and we wanna make sure that we don't feed into those by any level of encouragement of students not to be in class. And option one, I worry, could have that impact. Logistically, I can't imagine what we would do in the event there were any more unanticipated delays to the project timeline because in the event that were to happen we would not have a building to run in. Fusco will have been demolished and we will be short space. So if there were any delays due to supply chain challenges or any other considerations that we just simply don't know about right now, any unknowns that happen in the next year, we wouldn't have a building to move into in September of 2023. And that situation would result in some pretty major challenges for the school system and for students. The cost impact is at least 300,000 for option one. We know additional costs will be incurred and the opportunity cost of option one and those 30 extra hours of instructional time bring the overall cost of option one quite close to what we're considering for option two coming out of the project's contingency. It's not a small decision. $1.2 million is certainly significant and worth discussion. It will put some strains on the project and require us to make some choices about what we move forward with from contingency and that we really reserve what's left for emergency situations until we know for sure that we've come towards the end of the project and might be able to fund any additional pieces of the project. I also wanna emphasize and Dr. Jankers here to answer any questions that you have. But this is my recommendation but this is a unanimous recommendation of myself, the high school administration and the high school faculty senate. This is something that the teachers agree with us is important for us to consider something that the high school administration agrees with as well. And so we look forward to any discussion or happy to answer any questions that you have. Mr. Heiner. Being the school committee representative on the permanent sound building committee, I'm well aware of contingency aspects of contracts. This is early in the contract to be dipping into this, to this amount of money. But this is specifically the type of thing that contingencies are built into contracts for. A quick question, in my understanding that option two is approximately 1.2 and option one is approximately 600 plus. Option two, impact on the project budget is about 300,000 based on the costs we know now. Option one. Option one, option one, sorry. But I saw the 675, what was that? That is what I would call the opportunity cost to the district that we would be paying anyway but without giving those dollars to the students for those 30 hours of instruction. I think the, as presented by a member of the community, as presented by the superintendent, I will support option two. The contingency fee is there. The need for the students are paramount. Thank you. Mr. Schleckman. I'll let Mr. Thielman make the motion after I speak but I do wanna say that my first reaction to this is that wait a minute, we wanna spend $1.2 million to delay the project. But then the reality set in and listening to the community and listening to exactly why we're where we are and what might happen a year from now. There's no guarantee that we're gonna be done with the second phase of the project to the point where we can move in students three weeks later and every single day that we have to wait puts us deeper in a hole. And I could accept a week or two of adventure, scheduling to get us into the building but to not have any kind of certainty that we'd be able to make that date and get in really is a deciding factor for me. So I really don't see option one as being very viable and I thank the superintendent for thinking very carefully about this and presenting the information that we need to make an informed decision. So after Mr. Thielman makes this motion, I'll be glad to support it. Okay. Mr. Thielman. I'll make the motion. So let me just say that the way the process works is we make a request to the building committee and we'll have good discussion there. I also wanna make sure the public understands by supporting option two, we are not increasing the total cost of the project. We are taking money out of contingency and that contingency is part of the budget for the project. We, it may, as Dr. Holman said, it may make us not do some things we wanna do in the future but we can get to that when we come to it. So the motion that I have is, and I agree with everything that others have said and that is that this is the best interest. This isn't the best interest of our students. It is very important to get off to a good start next year that our freshmen in particular start the school year strong, that people, I think Dr. Holman said, develop good routines. You know the word with R, what was the other one? Relationships. Relationships, two R's, they're good. So I, and I think I agreed that that is, it's extremely important for the start of the school year and so I support option two and I will be talking about that with Dr. Allison Ampe and Dr. Holman and Dr. Janger with the building committee in a few weeks. So the motion has moved that the school committee endorses an academic calendar and schedule for the 22, 2023, 2024 school year in which Arlington High School opens with the traditional full day schedule on September 5th, 2023 with all students attending full days of school while phase two of the high school building project is completed. Further, it is moved that the Arlington High School, the Arlington School Committee, respectfully request that the Arlington High School building committee takes all necessary actions to ensure that the facility can accommodate the opening schedule described above, including if necessary, utilizing contingency funds and shifting the construction schedule to allow student and staff use of Fusca House in the Blue Gym during September of 2023. Okay. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Thielman, seconded by Mr. Hayner. Any further discussion? All right. Oh, did she, okay. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thanks. I just wanted to thank Dr. Holman for coming back with the additional information that we had requested and presenting it in such a clear form and making such a clear recommendation because I think this makes it easy for people to understand why we're making the choice we are, even though it is using a big chunk of money. I think educationally option two is the right choice, especially given the lack of options if there is any further project delay, which I think under current construction circumstances is just too likely to occur. So, thank you. Anybody else? Okay, so essentially Mr. Thielman's motion is for option two. A roll call vote, Mr. Hayner. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes, it's unanimous. When this goes to the building committee, I'll say at the top motion in support of option two. Okay. So it'll be clear. No, I just wanted to make sure that everybody watching knew that all of those words meant option two. All of those words meant option two, but it clarifies what we have to do. Okay. All right. Handbooks. Thank you. Well, we still have a vote. Dr. McNeil is going to talk to us about handbooks. Yes. So before you have the four handbooks, you have one for elementary, which represents all of the elementary schools. You have one for Gibbs. You have one for Otterson, and you have one for the Arlington High School. And in preparation to make sure that we were in line with current regulations and policies, we had our council, our district council, Katie, how do you say, mine out? Mine out. Mine out. I'll review the policies that were in the previous handbooks. And so she updated all the policies and the regulations, and then we provided a template to each principle so that they could add the any language or any information that's germane to their schools to the handbooks. And so I am presenting the 22, 23 handbooks to you. Once you, hopefully you will approve them. Once upon approval, we will have them translated into the major languages that represent, that are spoken within the Arlington community. And they will be posted onto our district website. And I'm open for any questions. So I just want to clarify, so you all know this, but we need to vote to approve the high school handbook and then the elementary gives an audits and handbooks are presented to us for discussion and informational purposes. So now I'll take any. Mr. Heiner. I move approval of the high school handbook is presented to the committee. Second. Motion by Mr. Heiner. Second by Mr. Thielman. Any discussion? Mr. Schlickman. Are there substantive changes? Well, yeah. Some of the language and some of the policies on discipline have been updated. I mean, I could go through and provide, but I don't have a list of all the changes that were made, but there's minor language here and there just to make sure that it's in line with current policies. But other than that, I don't think there's any major changes to anything. Just minor language has been altered. I'm seeing your response and I'm looking at the superintendent shaker had no. Major changes. So there are no major changes in the future. I mean, in the past, we've had red line versions so we can see where the changes have been. For the most part, these things are pretty. Mr. Heiner. I move the school ground. I apologize. In the past, we've had red line versions so we can see if there are any substantive changes or not. And that would be helpful in the future, but I'm comfortable given your reassurance that there are no major changes and I'll vote to approve. Sure thing. I will take that under advisement to make sure that I provide that. Yes. Can we, is it possible to do the handbook in the spring when we do the program of studies so that it's not like in the kids' agenda books? Right. Which is neat, but is that possible that it can be done? I don't know when we do the program of studies like in, that's like in the winter. It's like in March. So like, basically like Ms. X can do it twice in her tenure, like maybe see the handbook. I don't know. It just would make sense. So the program of study is in the end of January. Do we want to do this more in like May, June? March. I guess all I care about is that if, so for the one we need to approve, the AHS one, before it gets like printed, and maybe before school starts, we could approve it. That would be my preference just because it feels a little bit like. The answer to your question is absolutely. And that is why I wanted to make sure that we had a template so that the language is consistent in each one of the handbooks. So before we were doing it kind of piecemeal. And so I think now that we have a template, our council did an outstanding job going through the language, making sure it's updated. We can do that again in the spring. And I can present it to, based upon the superintendent's recommendation, I can present it to the school committee and then you can make the approval. Because that would help us as well because we want to get the handbooks translated over the summer. And so they're ready to go and they're uploaded onto the website on the first day of school. So yes, a resounding yes. And are these, these are going to be, so the one on, I know that they talk to the kids at least at the oddison about the hats, caps, hoods thing, where you can now do that's a thing. That was a big deal actually. Is this what's in the handbooks that the kids have, that's like in their, like is this consistent everywhere yet or not yet? So we have to have a larger discussion about dress code to align because there is, like I said, there's uniform language based upon school committee policy as it relates to what, as it relates to dress code. And then I provided the principles in order to have some consistency. I said, well, you can add to that language but you can't take it away. So as long as what they were adding to the handbook was in line with school committee policy, that's what they put in there. So we will have a larger discussion about dress code and trying to, as much as possible, align our policies across the district. So students as they matriculate from one level to the next, they will know what the expectations are. And so that is something that we will, you know, have a larger discussion about. Great. I think especially from Gibbs to Oddison that the language is currently different between the two, if different-ish. Like, I mean, I just, that feels like a really, like a year to have one and then go to one that might be interpreted differently is pretty confusing for kids. And I also would like to say, I think, and I don't know, Dr. Jinger has left, but I really like the language around clothing that the high school has in their handbook. I appreciate a lot of, I appreciate everything about how it's written and presented. And I feel like it goes away from sort of policing apparel, especially apparel of people who identify as female, which is often where the sort of, where that happens. So I really like that one. So I'm excited that we have that. And I hope that we can figure out if there are pieces of that or the philosophy behind that, that are pedagogically appropriate for the middle grades as well. So thank you. And I really, Dr. McNeil, I know this has been a labor for you since you came here. And it was really something when you started. And so I'm saying, I think we still have a ways to go, but I also really appreciate where we started. When I came on to this committee four or five years, whenever we've made an incredible amount of progress. And I think we're really well positioned to like, I think we're gonna get this cleaned up. And it's imminent. And I'm excited. I'm really excited for you that that's almost. Thank you. Yes, it's the highlight of my career. This is why I took this job. Yeah, you do keep coming back to us with these handbooks that I see you as like, you've got them sort of on your back. And you're like, here we go guys, we're gonna try this again. So I really, I do appreciate your diligence. I do think that it matters. I think that in times of stress and strife, people do go back and look at these. And so I think that your work on this matters and it's appreciated. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Mr. Craig. I had one question now I have two. So just to clarify, just looking at it as quickly, hats are not, hats are allowed at Gibbs, but not at Audison. Was that intended? I think, sorry. I have to go. I thought they were the same. I thought it was the same. I don't think that there's any difference. I think that what may have happened, and I will do due diligence and check is that in one of the things that I know was a focus for particularly the Audison, but also to some extent the Gibbs this year was to make it clearer what our expectations were at the start of the school year. And that the faculty at Audison had questions about hats and hoods. And so they may have added some guidelines, some sort of procedural guidelines to what they were telling the kids that might have gone home in their agenda books. We'll have to check on this. Yeah, I just did a quick search. So for Audison it says no hats, bandanas, or other headgear, but for Gibbs it says hats, caps, bandana hoods, and other headgear are allowed as long as they don't cause disruption. I will follow up with that. Okay, we'll have to add it on to that. So I'm greatly appreciative of the template except for that issue and the consistency and a lot of the language that you see about attendance and other things across the handbooks. That's a terrific advancement that you should be proud of, Dr. McNeil. Thank you. I do have a question about the high school, Dr. Janger isn't here anymore, but maybe you can pass it on to him or another issue to look at. I still think from an equity perspective that requiring a doctor's note for a multi-day absence is not good, but I understand the balance that you have to have at the high school where attendance is important. But again, I still think requiring documentation for a multi-day absence is not where we want to be as a district. And then within the policy itself there's a contradiction because it does say that students may be excused for illness or quarantine, but then when you go to the absence, the attendance policy, it says that illness is not excused unless it's a multi-day illness with a doctor's note. So I support the more general excuse and whether I appreciate that you can't rely on families to write the note all the time, but I still think requiring people to go to a doctor to get a note for a three-day absence is probably too much in these time frames. So just some feedback and I'll vote to approve it. Thank you. Thank you for, I will follow up with Dr. Janker. Dr. Allison Ampey. Thank you. So I agree the handbooks are important and I'm glad that they've been updated and I'm especially glad that we will have them in the appropriate languages. At the start of next school year, I'll update and everything, but I'm going to abstain because when I went to download my materials, this stuff wasn't on there and I didn't realize it was there, so I haven't actually even looked at it yet. So thank you, but so I'll abstain, but not because I have a problem with it, just I haven't had a chance to see it. Thank you. Anybody else? All right, we have the motion by Mr. Heiner, seconded by Mr. Thielman to approve the AHS handbook roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Slickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Abstain. And I vote yes. That's six in favor and one abstention. Financial report, Mr. Mason. Good evening school committee members. So I, you have the monthly reports that were for the second period of fiscal 23. That were for the month ending of August 31st, 2022. In Novus, it was updated with an updated report. The general fund report is now reflecting expenditures as of September, as of today, September 22nd, 2022. So I'm not sure if I can, there's little differences, but mainly driven by payroll and conferences has now been entered into our financial system. And so our manual projections have been removed and additional expenditures have been added. So as, as always, the report includes the general fund report, which is the town appropriation, which is the chapter 70 funding plus the local contribution with also included was a revolving of special revenue reports and some grant reports this month. You would have saw somewhat of a new format where you would have got at a glance pages as well as including prior year carryover grants since, you know, some of our asset funding is allowed, allowed us to carry over. And plus in addition, we have a few of our entitlement grants that are also being carried over due to the additional funding that we've been receiving that we're allowed to carry over. So I want it to be fully transparent. So sure, this is the right report. Yes. So the first report is the general fund report and do not know why this is different, but it could be something behind the scenes driving my sheet, but the numbers are right. So the total budget that the town is appropriated was $84 million, $447,000. And at this point, at the September 22nd, we've spent about $9 million and include we've had totally encumbered about $67 million, which includes the salaries before in your previous report, did we do not have that included? As I stated earlier, that is the adjustment between the two reports that you would have received. Projected department spending. These are the spending of the budgets of the school principals and curriculum leaders and department heads that are sitting at this table. That's currently remaining is about $4.4 million. And then after doing an initial analysis of our current vacancies and some salaries that have not yet to be encumbered, it's another $1.7 million. And that leaves a projected balance about $2 million. But however, I do believe that these numbers will change slightly for the October as we are still entering new hires in the system. We'll probably get a more accurate perspective at that point. There's still due to some bargaining units having late execution of agreements. Those expenditures are not factored into the encumbrances. Those would be maybe a few hundred thousand dollars and with retroactive payments to those groups. So I would see that this would also change. There's no driving factors yet. It's too early to determine. But what I would say is that right now we're gonna see salary savings from having vacant positions and some of the turnovers. Once again, as I explained, this is for financial size of September 22nd. And I think I've covered all what the general fund report now includes the salaries. And once again, I just wanna emphasize that due to the process of from hiring until we actually enter personnel into our financial system, not everyone is being factored into these projections. One of the new charts you would have saw, this is the actual expenditures by budget transfer category. This is where we're at in terms of September 22nd for the general fund. As you'll see, the elementary secondary education expenditures are a little lower because this is the first period. Those will start to shoot up as we start making payments to salaries for this fiscal year. And so this is pretty much in line to where we expect to be. Another new chart that's been added is a month-to-month analysis that will be included so long as the template that I've left will be leaving for the next success, my successor. They can do a comparison month-to-month if you guys deem that this is something you would like to see. What you'll see is that the blue is the budget amount and what we anticipate every month they spend. The black is what the actual is. September is not closed, so we're midway into September and that's what this data is showing. There's a gray line that's gonna show the cumulative amount that will continue to increase as we get towards the end of the year. Special revenue and revolving. We started around about $6.2 million and the main funds that we track, well, obviously we track all funds, but the ones that are included in the operating budget. And we are still collecting revenue. We're anticipating about $2.5 million and projected revenue for a circuit breaker along with building rentals around $500,000. And then there's a couple of other items that's monotony preschool and whatnot. So the total projected revenue is about $3.5 million and right now we're projecting about $740,000 expenditures. These are still soft numbers but our projected remaining balance is about $5.6 million. And then lastly on the report you would have received is expenditures for grants. So our total awarded grants for FY23 was about $2.8 million. What I wanna make note is that our entitlement grants, we did receive some increases over what was approved in the FY23 budget. Title I increased about 13.9% in which we were seeing about allocation of $157,000, a little bit over that. Title IIA increased by 6.7% which is now around $69,000. Title III for ELL has increased by 10.4%, $47,865 for a total budget allocation. Special education, early childhood has increased by 7.4% which is about, is that $51,050 for the annual appropriation and IDEA special education grant has increased by 4.8% to $1.6 million or a little bit over $1.6 million. We're carrying about $2.1 million of prior year grants which we intend to continuously spend down. SR3 is a big portion of that. There will be some adjustments that we'll be bringing to the school committee in the future months. And that will pretty much wrap up my financial report for period two ending August 31st, except for the general fund which is September 22nd. Thank you, Mr. Mason and questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Schlickman. Usual question, any anxiety or anxiousness among any of those numbers? No. Excellent, thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. Mr. Mason, could you upload or have the presentation that you gave uploaded to because it has some graphs that I don't have in the report? Thank you. We'll do it. Anybody else? Can answer the report. Dr. Hellman? Sure. Okay, so a few updates for you this evening. First, a strategic planning update. The strategic planning team met on the 12th and the 20th to start mapping out initiatives. We have slowed a little on our pace and also did a little bit of an adjustment to our approach vector because the teams were feeling like they needed a little bit more sort of guidance on the work of their subcommittees. So we started at our meeting on 9.20 taking sort of a backwards planning approach to identify first the concrete outcomes we need and expect in five years. This allowed the teams to really think about not what are we gonna do, but what do we actually want to accomplish? What do we want those outcomes to be? From an academic standpoint, from various other data points, the equity audit was very helpful in sort of helping us define these. And then from there, what big picture initiatives and focus areas will lead us towards those outcomes, how do our current actions fit within that structure and how will our strategic recommendations from the equity audit align with those four priority areas in order to help us sort of begin to articulate some initiatives. So the goal of taking this approach is to move backwards from the outcomes that we're hoping for and try to zoom in on some initiatives. Again, we're aiming for about three in each priority area. I would say priority area one is the biggest, it's both the biggest group and it's sort of the biggest umbrella of priority because that's where our academic work lives. And so that group has listed quite a few outcomes that we're hoping for, we're gonna try to narrow those down and then begin to articulate some key initiatives that we wanna focus on. And then like I mentioned at the administrative meeting on the 15th, we did a crosswalk of the equity audit recommendations and our strategic priorities, trying to group where we thought those recommendations would fit best within our new strategic plan so that the strategic plan can really be a plan for improving equity throughout the system across all four priority areas. So I look forward to more updates on that. Ms. Crittle-Thomas and I will be getting information about forums out to the community very soon. We're just nailing down some final dates that we'll be able to engage with the community and do some workshops and answer questions that folks have and get feedback on what they hope to see in the strategic plan. In addition to that level of community engagement, we're also going to be having the strategic planning team, not the equity team, the strategic planning team doing stakeholder engagement as part of their work. So they'll start drafting initiatives and then they'll be reaching out to members of the community, maybe some of you, to ask your input on what it is, what you think of the initiatives that we've thought up, what you think we haven't included, what you think we might need to include. So folks might be hearing from members of the team or setting up meetings with some of the subgroups in the next couple of weeks and months. A little bit of a report on the first few weeks of school. We had the first annual Gibbs Day following a new approach to sort of the first nine days of school. Gibbs teams developed activities to help students get to know Gibbs for the first nine days. They practiced fire drills. They learned where everything was in the school. They sort of came together as a Gibbs community to do a very strong start to the Gibbs year and then that culminated in a Gibbs day that we want to make sure is accessible to all of our students as we move forward and we're gonna tweak it and think about what went well and what we might want to revise in future years. This is modeled a little bit off of an oddison day that we had last year where students had an adjusted schedule on that day and went around to various workshops and got to learn about things that were of interest to them and build community in the school. Our instructional leadership teams have launched school-based planning focused on instructional practice thanks to the support of the Arlington Education Foundation. We were able to fully implement IELTs this year. We're still learning exactly how these work and what kinds of activities are most successful within them but principals have shared and teachers have shared that it's been wonderful to be at the table doing some of the instructional decision making of the school and building out plans for the school for how adults will learn together in order to make instruction better for students. So we're really enjoying doing this work and the shared leadership approach that we've taken this year and it's going quite well. A few additional updates. Website design is still under construction and I would like to sort of remind everybody that while the new website is certainly a little bit more of a 21st century design we are still adjusting things and it was a migration of the content that was on the previous website. So essentially what we got a lot of help with was they took the content of the previous website they mapped it onto a new structure a new navigational structure of the current website. So we're still finding things that might be missing that we need to make sure we get up there. When community members flag that for us we go ahead and figure out where it should go and we get it up there as quickly as possible. Most everything that was on the old website is still searchable under the search function but if you notice anything or members of the community notice anything that you either can't find, find it difficult to find or think should be in a different place please do not hesitate to email us and let us know and we will track it down and make sure that it's up on the website. We are going to continue to redesign and edit the pages and migrate the school websites to new platform and that's going to take place over the course of this year. I wanted to alert the committee and the community to a calendar adjustment. I will be messaging the community about this adjustment following tonight's meeting assuming there are no concerns about it. The middle school evening conferences for the fall were moved from November 10th to November 16th because somehow we managed to miss the fact that those were happening right before a three day weekend and we wanted to make sure that anybody who was going away for the three day weekend didn't miss an opportunity to engage in conferences at the middle school level if they needed the evening time. So we've moved it to the following Wednesday it's that Veterans Day which usually happens sort of in the middle of the week is actually happening on a Friday that week and so we missed the three day weekend and so we're making that adjustment and we'll message that to families. I wanted to alert the school committee that the administration who are participating in the deeper learning dozen are going to a convening in Lexington, Kentucky during the last week of October. What that means is there will be almost no one. Well, Mr. Spiegel will be here but on this side of the table and I will be on Zoom. So I will plan on being there but other members of the DLD team will probably be at events that are linked to the conference. I'm looking forward to joining you via Zoom and watching some school improvement plans that day and Ms. Exeter and I might be trying to make sure that any items that are on the agenda for that day are easy for us to do with a limited number of people in the room. It's the last meeting of October. October 27th. Thank you. October 27th. Our COVID protocols for 2022-23 are posted to the front page of the new Arlington website. We worked collaboratively with town officials on these and built them based on MDPH guidelines and guidelines that came to us from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education earlier this year. We are monitoring outbreaks in the nurse's offices and recommendations will follow any local conditions within each school. If we have multiple cases within a class and we think that that could be evidence that an outbreak is beginning to spread in a class, then we will notify families and maybe add any recommendations to that, which could include, we recommend that you send your student in a mask or that you monitor for symptoms. There aren't hard and fast thresholds or guidelines for how many cases constitute notification and that's in part because all kinds of things matter, including what we know about relationships between students in and out of school, how long there is between us knowing about one case or another case. And honestly, we sometimes know about cases and sometimes we don't until many, many days have passed by, but we are monitoring the situation and will be responding to outbreaks as they pop up and potentially making recommendations to families if there are any other mitigation factors that we think need to be taken into account. Any families who have questions should absolutely feel free to contact their school nurse, the principal or the nursing director, Doreen Crow, or of course myself and we're happy to answer any questions that you have. We have one active administrative search as you are all aware for a chief financial officer that closed on September 16th, not closes that date has gone by. We are holding initial interviews this week and next week and our final interviews will be the first week of October. Mr. Carden is serving on that committee. Thank you for your time. And we have a strong pool of candidates and it's, we'll be certainly updating you as we go. We do plan on doing a finals round that will involve some engagement with members of the community and a finalist task so that we can assess some of their skill in aspects of the job that are particularly critical to the role and I'll be asking Mr. Mason to help me design some of those tasks, I'm sure. The enrollments are updated for you in your materials and I'm happy to take any questions that you have. Mr. Schleckman. Okay, and looking at the calendar because of the movement of the middle school conference night November, I see that the high school conference night is the same night as a school committee meeting and the last time that happened, it was absolute chaos. I would, I would, I would like the committee to think about moving the November meeting to November 10th, not to propose that tonight but maybe by the time we hit our next meeting that we might consider that as a motion to change that date because when you've got all the parents coming down here to go to the high school for the parent conferences, it's a mess for anybody trying to get in here for the school committee. Other than that, I see the need to move the middle school and I definitely support that for you. So this, this 17th, this has been this way since this calendar was approved back in. I mean, we set the conference dates. No, yeah, it would have been on there. Yes, it would have been. Okay, Ms. Morgan. I guess, I mean, the conferences aren't the same as back to school night though, right? I mean, back to, I was here last week for back to school night and it, there was nowhere to park and I parked illegally at the liquor store. Oh, we have to admit that. We do, totally, we do. I saw you there. It was fun. We had a great time. We had a good time. We did have a great time. All of our friends were there. Anyway, so it was just, but it was like, there wasn't any, it was, it would be a tough night to also have a school committee meeting. I don't know what the conferences, if it's like as many people. Mr. Carden. Just a separate question on the enrollment. So we don't have the October first numbers, obviously, because it's not October first yet, but the enrollment increase from last year is much higher than what's in the long range plan. So I was wondering if you've sent that over to the town or plan to send it over to the town? Yeah, so I've already sent the preliminary numbers over to the town. They're going to be factoring that into the long range plan. Thank you. Dr. Allison and Bear, are you okay? Can we dismiss our students? Yes, absolutely. Mo and Tamaki, if you want to go and get homework done or not be here, you are more than welcome to leave. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having us. Thank you. Okay, consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 23056 dated September 20th, 2022 in the amount of 515,178 and 78 cents. So move. Second. Motion by Mr. Heiner. Second by Mr. Schlickman. No discussion. Roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Mr. Garten. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes, that's unanimous. Subcommittee liaison reports and announcements. Before I call on subcommittee chairs, I just wanted to mention that scheduling subcommittee meetings after the hours that this building of the door is monitored was a problem, is a problem. And so we have some options. We can defer to the chair of the subcommittee to decide if they want to hold the meeting virtually, if they want to hold it in a more publicly accessible place like town hall, we could or find a door monitor. We could also refer this to a subcommittee to discuss how we want to move forward. But I wasn't comfortable making a decision that like they had to be remote just because we can't get into this building. I think that we should be able to do our business in whatever way is comfortable for the committee. Members. I recommend we leave it to the subcommittees themselves to make what works for them through the options that you just suggested. Dr. Allison Ampe. I think that we should be talking about it at a subcommittee. I would think community relations because I think this is going to be a problem from now on. I know originally we were thinking it was only this year because next year we'd be able to get into the new school committee room will be able to be locked. The rest of the class school will be able to be locked away. But we need to consider whether we have to provide handicap access from Mass Ave. And if we do, then we need the front entrance open. And so I think this may be an ongoing problem that we need to be thinking about it and it may actually require some budget implications. Mr. Slickman. Thank you. Well, the only requirement is the meeting be handicapped accessible. So that if we're in the building in the back and there's an entryway and we post the location appropriately, there should not be a problem. And maybe when we get open the school committee offices we might give it a different address. Say in the mills, what's the name of the little street there? Yeah, we'll have our own address. We'll have our own address at that point. And there won't be access from, like for a school committee night, for example, there won't be access from the front of the high school to the school committee room. There's a lot of locked doors in between there. That was the intent. Yeah, we were just going to be located today. We'll be driving. Dr. Allison Ampe. That was sort of the intent, but we didn't build, I don't think we have a handicapped accessible route from Mass Ave to the back of the school. We don't need one. We don't? Yeah. I'm not sure whether that's true. So it sounds like we need a bigger discussion on how this is going to, okay. I think for me, just the piece that's important, I think it's really important that we have the ability to have subcommittee meetings in person. I've always sort of joked that they're actually the best meetings because the best things happen. And I would also hate to be in a situation at some point where we are so constrained by that that we are allocating our membership in subcommittees to be like, well, he can't be here. She can't be here until four o'clock and we can't ever meet in person. And this is a conversation that needs to be in person. And so this subcommittee is for these people who have flexibility during like, I don't like that at all. That makes me very agitated. So I think we should talk about it more and figure out a way to allow us to be here. I mean, I'm fine with going to town hall if that's what we have to do. I guess it's kind of weird, but that's fine. But anyway, I think that we, I want to have the ability to have those meetings in person. So that's my purpose. Does someone want to make a motion to refer this to a subcommittee? I move that we refer this to the community relations subcommittee. Which will be good. Second. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Schlickman, seconded by Dr. Allison Ampe, any more discussion? We're going to talk about it virtually or in person. I'm not on the subcommittee, I don't care. Well, and I am, and I'm constrained by the hours of the meeting, so we'll have to have it in town hall. We can do it on the front lawn. There we go. It's nice weather. It's punchy folks, let's call the vote. Okay. Mr. Hanger. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. All right. Okay, thank you all. Reports, budget, Dr. Allison Ampe. Budget will be meeting next week. It's Tuesday morning, I forget exactly when, but you can find it on the website. Thank you. Thank you. Community relations, Mr. Hanger. The school committee chat will be this Saturday, September 24th at 11 to 12, 11 a.m. The grades six and 12 parents will be conducted remotely via Zoom, go to the APS website search, school committee chat for the link. And since we just had a motion, there will be an upcoming community relations meeting. I will connect with my members to find a date that's suitable for a live meeting. Thank you. I'll be. Curriculum Instruction Assessment and Accountability, Ms. Morgan. We are meeting on Wednesday at 8.30 in the morning in person, apparently here in the Arlington High School. I presume in this room, we are going to talk about strategic planning and science camp. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. We met on Tuesday, September 14th, and we talked about two things. One, we got a report from Mr. Mason on all of the playgrounds and there was lots of good news, lots of good progress. And then we talked about a report done, assessing capital needs at the Odyssey Middle School. And our conclusion was that we'll pick up this discussion down the road. Pause the procedure, Mr. Schlickman. Thank you. Just as a reminder, when I was chair last, the elevator broke and they had to send to the elevator museum for parts. So we met for several months at town hall in the select board chamber. And I thought maybe we should take over running the entire town because the school committee is so wonderful. That said, we just got a message from MASC that they are recommending changes to file KCD public gifts for schools. New language to conform to recent audits that have impacted other districts and to correct the cross references within the policy. So there are more or less technical changes. There are a couple other little policy things that we should just tweak. So I would anticipate within the next month or so we'll hold a relatively short meeting to hit those topics. Thank you. Arlington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. We have, we meet next on October 13th. We couldn't meet the first weekend, the first Tuesday of October because of Rosh Hashanah. And we'll be talking about a motion made tonight by the Arlington School Committee. Thank you. With many words in it and two long sentences. This is option two. It's option two. Correct. It's a nice way to say option two. Isn't it, don't we meet on the 11th? Maybe it's the 11th. I'm sorry. You're right. Whatever it is, it's Tuesday night. It's the second Tuesday. Thank you. Will it be in person, Mr. Thielman? Well. Will it be after hours, Mr. Thielman? It will be virtual. It will be by Zoom because the committee seems to want to do that. So yeah, that's what they want to do. The date will be on the town, the Arlington town website for anybody who's. October 11th. You're right. Because they just checked. Thank you. Superintendent of evaluation, Mr. Cardin. We're meeting, a fascinating meeting coming up Tuesday at one o'clock. The liaison report. Announcement, future agenda item. Mr. Heiner. Just want to announce and put on the next meeting additional names to represent the school committee for commissions and committees in town. Please. We will now have a very brief executive session. So if I can get a motion to go into executive session, we will not be returning to open session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect, collective bargaining may also be conducted. So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Heiner. Second by Mr. Schlickman. Roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes.