Hello, I'm Len Cardin chair of the Allington school committee. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Thursday, October 24th, 2019 Dr. Allison ampy is not with us tonight and I don't have a teacher. Oh, sorry a a rep Jason Levy Right there. Hello. We don't have we don't have our high school rep tonight So first item on the agenda is public comment. We have one person signed up Lynn costar mit clausterman if you could come up to the table, so people at home can hear you and you can have up to three minutes Resident of Arlington for over 30 years Two kids out of three went through the school system here, so Around for a little bit tonight. I wanted to ask about getting on the agenda at some point possibly discussion of my AA sanctioned sport called alpine ski racing Arlington, that's the only my AA sanctioned sport that they don't have currently And so we've been my daughter is a junior here at the high school. We've been Trying to form a club team we have actually for the last two years the first year we had nine kids Last year we had 12 kids. It was a mix of boys and girls So I have a lot I could say but I know I have three minutes, so my husband prepared something for me Go through this really quickly because he actually can consolidated everything nicely here Okay, so I'm here to open the discussion on a proposal to add alpine or downhill ski racing as a varsity sport at the high school The school principal and athletic director encouraged us to petition the school committee to see if the school budget could be amended to include funding for the sport We have talked in the past to Melissa and to Stanley last year and also obviously dr. Janger a number of times on this I represent a community of families that have been organizing successfully running the club alpine ski racing team for the past He said two three years, but it's really just the last two years as a result of these efforts over 20 AHS students have been competing for the past two years as a team in a club run out of Blue Hills So we were able to get a slot at Blue Hills And they were gracious enough Belmont stepped out of that slot, so it opened it up Belmont ended up going to in the show the slot Unlike other club sports at the high school because downhill and cross-country skiing are officially sanctioned mi Sports the only competition opportunities for skiing are in the mi AA leagues Ski east down at Blue Hills has graciously allowed the Arlington team to compete in order to get traction But because we are not an official AHS varsity team Arlington faces some restrictions such as not being eligible for end-of-season state tournament race ski racing We did have two kids qualify last year for the states. They couldn't go to them because we're not a sanctioned in my varsity sport We have met with the past athletic directors and the principal of the HS to petition to have skiing considered as a varsity sport They have been supportive in us continuing as a club team But do not have the budget to add it officially as a varsity team at the high school They recommended we petitioned the school committee for consideration to be added to the school offerings Ski racing has been a high school sport in Massachusetts for over 70 years. It's been an mi AA sports since the formation of mi AA nearly all the surrounding towns near Arlington and sharing Sharing similar demographics offered as an option to their students including Belmont Winchester Lexington and Waltham The experience in those towns is that once the team is recognized this they quickly fill spots And it's not atypical for There to be more than 30 or more men and women that join the teams BC High is in the Blue East league They have over a hundred boys on the team Notre Dame Academy. They have quite a few girls I can go through if I have a second on some of the others but Winchester started their team not that long ago I think about five or six years ago, and they're up to over 40 kids. It grows every year The sport itself while competitive also enables athletes to virtually At virtually any ski level to participate, which is true of the 12 students last year only three had prior ski racing experience We would like to present more formally at an upcoming school committee meeting or subcommittee meeting and are looking forward to the discussion If that's possible, great. Thank you So we don't you know, we don't act on Public participation later in the meeting there is a opportunity for members to discuss future agenda items and I did you know as I said in the email to somebody email me about this That okay that We do have a new athletic director and we are checking with him to make sure that he has a chance to review this before we put it On the agenda. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Should I stay through the end then? You can watch from home if you want I mean it's gonna be Somebody's somebody suggesting that requesting that it be put on the agenda if they so want to It might be referred to a subcommittee, and we'll let you know if it is referred to a subcommittee I do have a PowerPoint if you want additional information right now or I could email it to you Len Probably email it to Karen. You may have to Karen. She'll get it to us. Yeah Thank you, thank you So we did have our student rep join us Mr. Moore Congratulations, I was received notice that you were appointed the permanent rep. So thank you for for joining us Do you just want to introduce yourself and? Bill can you pass your mic down? I Got your name wrong last time. I apologize. So if you could tell me your correct person My name is man drop more I'm a senior at the Arlington high school And I'm on the student council as a senior class rep Great welcome, and if you have any Any when we're discussing something if anything you want to chime in just to signal me and I'll Call on you. Thank you. All right. Thank you All right, so next is appointment to the transportation advisory committee Yes, so we continue this great tradition of a tremendous amount of activism and interest in town and joining committees So every time there's an opening we get tons of applications This time we got five really qualified applicants, and we had a chance to interview each of them and We were just very impressed with this one The committee what I think was unanimous and in recommending you and also just being very impressed with your qualifications And your thoughtful response to many of the answers that the questions that we asked And so we would like to recommend what we voted to recommend to the full committee her nomination So if you want to come up and introduce yourself What did the president know My name is Laura Swan and I was a professional engineer in California I've since been at home with my son in elementary school and I volunteered primarily because I wanted to put these skills to good use for my community and I mean, that's why I started in civil engineering in the first place. So Yeah, I'd be very excited if you guys nominated me Great. Thank you. Mr. Hainer. I move the appointment I noticed there's you went to school in Arizona as well. That's correct.  Yeah, so that's where I grew up Yeah, I can imagine because you're now a hearty parent and you live in East Arlington the streets and in the whole Transportation systems very different It's it's wonderful. It's actually one of the reasons we chose to live where we live. Mm-hmm is Wanted Alternatives to simply driving everywhere. That's kind of how I grew up was you drove 45 miles per hour past all your neighbors And all the kids got to school in buses and it did not allow for the same opportunities to meet and form a community if people live that far away and if they don't Pass each other on the street to say hello One of the things I love about this town, so so you've obviously looked at the Patterns at the hearty and you know about the signal that's going in what else are your thoughts concerning how we can make things better for both the students going to school and And for everybody else who has to get around town. Oh goodness that was actually one of my questions for this committee was if you wanted this position to Reach out to say PTO's and school councils to see if they have feedback on how their students are getting to school or concerns that maybe even aren't Maybe making their way up like they don't know who to talk to at the city or if you simply want The issues that percolate up to school council to then be taken to the transportation Well, it's sort of an interesting thing because My condo association put something before the the tack which just got adopted by the selectments So there's a lot of people sending recommendations and requests but we do have quite a bit of things that go through that are safe roots to school and school related and they talk about them a lot and I don't know that you have to go and make a formal alliance to go meet with everyone Sometimes just appearing in a PTO meeting or having a chat with the principal can Give them the opportunity to know who they need to talk to Who with the city? I know that we have a new principal at our school party miss parrots and she is she's wonderful and You know as a new person and as a newcomer to the town She wasn't quite sure who to talk to about like the light signal or other certain Things that affect how students get to school. And so yeah, I was like that's a town engineer like You know that to me that seems obvious because that's my background in engineering You go to the town engineer for certain things, you know, oh, this is would be public works or streets So I'm hoping that maybe putting a face or reaching out to people will Collectively it's a beautiful thing, but understanding. I'm sure you figured this out from living here for a while that Massachusetts town governments particularly those with a representative town meeting operate very differently In fact, we're extracting a lot of free labor from qualified people on the tack Which would normally be done by a town engineer. So anticipate sitting in a corner watching cars go by I've done that too The good old counts. Yes. Thank you. Oh, so actually your question makes me even more excited about having you on tap I have to say And I'll tell you how I always see committee roles. I do see them as a liaison between the community and administration or town governance or something like that And I don't think there's any constraints on who you can talk to and who you can gather information from I think that makes you a great committee members. Always you're not rude or disrespectful or you know You're just talking to people and I think that's great. I think I definitely encourage that I have to say that tack or is very well respected in town So that you will find when you reach out to people as a representative tack you to you get a lot of respect So go ahead. So If you would like to talk with the principles, it might be a good idea if you and I have a conversation and then we can introduce you to them and figure out what the Communication pathway will be You're having you're having being in hearty. You haven't had chance to talk to miss parrots But it would be nice for the other principles to be aware of your position and we could figure that out That's true because sometimes schools also have a particular plan or a particular way that they want students to say arrive and dismiss and Sometimes just talking to parents. They aren't aware of these things or you know, they have their own opinions about What they would like to say versus what the school thinks is the safest or best practice Great. So I actually got my start on the transportation advisory committee. That was my first volunteer role in town Well in town meeting at the same time. So it is an interesting bunch. You know your skills are very Well, very good for the committee. They're definitely our other civil engineers and people who know transportation So I you know, I do think they have a They're sort of an advisory committee to the board of select Select board so They do have a mechanism where things have to go to the select board first. You can't just bring things up to the tack so so the liaison role is important but Talk to them before you start going out and seeking seeking But yeah, definitely definitely with the same roots to school, they've been involved So that will be helpful as we we look at other schools to And we did it we did it project at Dow and but not all of the schools have had that program So that would be a definitely a good role for you to play. So thank you for stepping up and volunteering All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Any opposed or abstentions unanimous? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you All right next we have the buffers Like to welcome Marilyn Salvis again this year to give us an overview of the results of buffer zone decisions this year and I'm gonna leave You know, she can invite me to chime in as we do this We spend a lot of time in my office going through Buffer zone decisions. They're not made lightly They're made very carefully in terms of enrollments in different classrooms at each one of the schools So I'm sure there's gonna be some questions on this but right now Salvis would you like to begin? Sure? Okay? This year We opened up enrollment in January and We delivered we 859 students to power school to the the different schools in all the grades between January and September so we had Now a lot of people leave to and then you have the graduating class So the enrollment difference at the beginning of September and one of the things I gave you was the class size list Which was done for September and I gave you this year's and last year's and The class size list is not The official numbers that go to the state it's you know, the the schools put the kids in classes and we count the the number of kids in each class and we put that monthly to The central office here and when we look at last year in this year the All of the grades are different, but they're only the total enrollment is only different by one so the The size of the schools the size of the Student population did not change a whole lot What it doesn't make sense I Was actually surprised when I looked at it and I think that when we if we compared October instead of September Is probably a difference? I think that's a typo Versus 5 9 8 9 yeah, yeah, there's 99 difference It's not a lot different. It's not a lot different, but it's not one we had 119 of the kids that Parents made a buffer zone choice on got there their first choice in 30 students got their last there their second choice Everyone that has a sibling already in the school automatically gets put into that school so We have when we're looking at making placements we look at who lives in the the zone That's not in the buffer and then immediately we add the siblings and then everybody else gets decision-made so 79% 79.8 were placed in their first choice this year Last year we were closer to 90% getting their first choice. So it was not our We look at it as a success rate. It did not go up The slide showing the 119 kids getting their first choice is In the packet I handed you but it's not on the screen And you can see that those are all grades and a lot of times there are siblings that come in so we'll get more than one kid in the family that's placed in the schools But The slide that shows all the all the buffers own placements is nearly impossible to read from up on the screen Which was the reason that I I gave you the handouts anyway So One of the things that we looked at was if they were how Big the the classes would be if we didn't use the the buffer zones so the the white is the the actual and the gray is If everyone went to the school that they would have gone in before buffer zones and What I just realized that I didn't do is these are in the same order was I didn't put the headers on it So it's you know Bishop bracket Down and Hardy You know alphabetically across the top like it is on the class size report So alphabetically from Bishop to Thompson Let me add the titles to you and send it to you and we can we can send it out This is something that Kathy asked me to do when I was in the office with her this week and I Didn't realize until I looked at it right now that I didn't have the school headers on the top of it Let me just comment on The data that is here. I don't know but can you see it up there on the screen? Not really I think one of the more dramatic of the of the kindergarten placements this year was at Bishop if we had had the We just had placements on the old district lines we would have 27 in each class kindergarten class by employing the ability to buffer zones to move some students to different Schools that are part of their buffer zones. We were able to keep the class sizes at 24 When you get the state and you can really look at it You will see that the effect is somewhat of a little bit of a tweaking that goes on And in fact some class classes would have been smaller If there had not if we had not moved students into the school so it has gone both directions some classes have been made smaller and some larger but the the The goal is to make them more equitable. I will say that Last year was a little bit more successful. It just maybe it's just the way students were Placed last year How they were distributed in the first place? I really should say how they were distributed in the first place Lent with some buffer zone decisions to pretty relatively Equitable classes this year that wasn't as much the case We still we have class sizes the kindergarten that are 24 which is just pushing the edges of what we'd like to see but we also have you know class sizes that are 20 so there is there is a little bit of a range is not it's not An unacceptable range, but there is a range still So the goal is always to maintain as best as possible equitable class sizes Among us among our schools Now you're having the kindergarten because Upgrades is really more of a little bit of a tinkering and for the most part if we were to say most Students that come in up at other grades have probably a higher percentage of placement than they would a kidney garden a First-choice placement. So if you go forward we use this data as as to look at whether It would be helpful to expand buffer zones to expand them in certain areas versus others and that's something that looking at right now I Not prepared to come back with any kind of recommendation yet to the subcommittee, but it is an active It's an active research project going on right now So I have a couple of questions. So I had always been under the Impression that we use buffer zones to help equilibrate class sizes or cohort sizes and So if I get confused when I see things like, you know, there were There were fourth and fifth graders that were in the Bishop stratton buffer that were placed at Bishop instead of stratton and So to me, I don't know why that would happen because you've got 74th graders at Bishop and 64 fourth graders stratton plus maybe a couple of SLC kids that are never on this chart But I don't know why you would put a kid at Bishop If the cohort sizes are much are smaller at stratton and the same for the fifth grade and then So that confuses me and I see a few of those that happen and the other thing that I think is is tricky to reconcile But I I would like to hear more of the theory behind it is that we shifted a bunch of the bracket down in Buffer kids into kindergarten at Dalin some of them were probably siblings, so they needed to go there But we're doing that because this year we have a K1, which is okay But what happens is by shifting all of those kids in then, you know We have the situation where in second grade those kids were part of a K1 two years ago And there were kids pushed into Dalin to do that and we've got 73 kids over four sections Which I would say is not ideal right those are those are kind of small like I don't love seeing sections of 17 I mean, I would love to have a kid in a section of 17 But as a school committee member, that's hard for me So I so my first question is why are we not using these buffer zones in the upper grades to balance? cohorts across different schools and then What can we go one at a time? So yeah The answer is that we do Sometimes there are some mitigating circumstances and in those situations the principles are involved in those discussions and There are good reasons for it, but the answer is yes. We do do that. I think one of the challenges Well, let me see what's your second question because there is a challenge with the kindergarten placements the way We're doing it right now starting so early. Okay that my my other question had to do with How you're managing the K1 at Dalin and how that drives the buffer zone placements because I can see looking at the K Having a K1. I can see why you would want to send those five Dalin bracket buffer kids to Dalin right because you have room for them in kindergarten Because you've got a K1 class, but then you create a cohort of 70 That may or may not be able to stay at three classes as they go through does that make sense? It does and we think about that quite a bit that the the principal of Degman and myself The of all of the buffer zones that was the one in which There was Reaching back out to parents who did not get their first choice That does happen. Also people can put on the wait list one of the challenges of the Early identification of schools back in January February is that just to some extent you you we look at past the past would happen, but it's sort of hard to know how it will play out this year and That is one of the challenges, you know it in the ideal world if you really wanted to maximize it You wouldn't do any buffer zone placements until you know June But realistically that is not real for families because they don't want to wait and I understand that they wouldn't want to wait For very practical reason and that's after school care So there are built-in constraints and challenges with this and It's at best a Tweaking of what we have it does have it it does make a difference Can we make can we do something better and have different timelines to even improve that those are all considerations Let's just really quickly just so what what I think you're telling me And I think it makes a lot of sense is is that when those kids were shit sent to Dalin instead of to bracket Right now. I'm seeing 70 and I'm saying it's a little high But those kids could have been kids 60 61 62 63 64 at which point We would have been saying good plan sense 60 and 61 and 62 because we don't you know Then you can have class sizes of 22 22 22 across. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's exactly It's you make decisions in Early on that you can't really have a crystal ball to see what the effect of those decisions are too much later Any other questions? So if you get that situation, let's say that we put somebody in school a Because the enrollment slow Flip We do and surprisingly at that point they say no Which is most often the case because they've already gone to the school They may have because sometimes those conversations happen in the summer. So they've already met their teachers at that school you know Alright, so step one observation from me when I mean that When the buffer zone policy was adopted one of the concerns was neighborhood cohesion and The numbers I've seen Particularly in the bracket Bishop bracket area Hightens my concern because it does seem like It does seem like we're flipping year to year from sending kids over to Bishop or sending them to bracket And so sort of instead of having a trend where we're gradually You know, I think the original idea was to gradually shift people away from bracket because that was full But now it turns out the Bishop is false and now we're from year to year We're flipping back and forth depending on the year And that is breaking up the neighborhood cohesion because One year all the kids are being sent to back bracket and next year they're all being sent to Bishop and vice versa. So I Guess that's another factor. You have to balance, but I think as we look at How well they're working and whether we want to expand them We just need to think about that idea of having Every year having the kids go to a different school Right, and that's actually I think they make a very good point on that and I'm Agree with you. It's a it's an issue and it actually where it comes down and very practical is When we have students that are in a an apartment building That have some students going to one school and some to another how do you break up the walking? You know groups to school and I think about that very carefully too Not to break up some natural groupings of students You know the parent can't pick them up. They can call their neighbor. It's those are really important Things to consider and so I think that this is something we can have more of a discussion at perhaps in a subgroup as we think about this In terms of how we want to move forward Great. Thank you. Thank you again for the all the detailed data Thank you. All right next up more data I'm cast report dr. McNeil Joining us is the miss Paul Salvin who is our data specialist as well as a math coach at Hardy has been very much involved for a number of years and helping Both get the data but also get the big picture of what the data means Okay Good evening. So I do have here miss Paula's Oseblant Oselevin who is our district data coach and She's also one of our math coaches. So she splits those two responsibilities I do want to start off by saying there was a question about looking at why certain subgroups or a certain groups of students didn't perform at a certain level and getting deeper into the standards and looking at the item analysis I will say because of the size of the Data points that we're covering tonight. I can come back at another time in order to cover that type of information, but it will not be included in today's report because of Just the enormity of all the information that we're trying to provide you So that can be we can discuss that in a subcommittee. We can come back and discuss it at a full committee If you just let me know, I'll be happy to do that. So the objectives for today's Presentation I am going to look at and try to answer some of the questions that were brought up At the last presentation We're going to review the achievement levels again just what those categories are Looking at student growth percentiles We're also going to define that again very quickly and then we're going to share the subgroup results at the last presentation I shared the aggregate for each one of the grade levels across the district And so now we're going to delve in and desegregate the data and look at the various racial and ethnic groups Gender groups and as well as students with disabilities economically disadvantaged EL students EL and former EL students and Then we will open it up for questions and comments So here are some of the questions that were asked at the last Presentation What are the goals and criteria used to determine accountability levels for schools? Why did the state incorporate a new accountability system and Was there an increase in the percentage of 10th grade students failing the ELA and math next generation mCAS when compared to the legacy mCAS So in the first slide you'll see that these are some of the goals of the new accountability system And I just want to highlight bullet number three that it was one of the things that I think that is They've done very well is that now we're looking at the cohort of the lowest performing students the lowest 25 percent and We're forced to do that And I think that's a good thing because we want to see the Achievement gap between our highest performing students and our lowest performing students Notwithstanding their subgroup status And then you can read what some of those other goals are Then I wanted to look at some of the just I didn't define what those indicators are and as we look at our Accountability status so for the accountability indicators for non high schools You look at the achievement the student growth the English proficient language proficiency and an additional Indicators which include chronic absentee at absenteeism And that's defined up there as well So these are these categories are looked at at the students as an aggregate and in the lowest performing group So when you look at the accountability report, you'll see it's divided between two columns one column you'll have the points that you achieve for Achieving some of those targets they set for each one of those Categories those indicators on one side and then the other side they will have it for the lowest performing students And that's how you acquire your points And this is the weighting of those various indicators You'll see achievement is 60% and you'll see how it is distinguished So if you do have an EL population of students, it'll be one Column or one percentage and then if you don't have an EL population of students Which is determined by the students performance on the access test EL students take the access test and then you'll they'll get a Level and then they'll determine how those students are moving towards English proficiency So you'll see how the weighting is adjusted if you do have a EL subgroup of students and if you don't and you have to have at least 20 students in that particular category In that subgroup in order to be or in order to be counted as a EL subgroup Excuse me. Is that 20 physical or 20%? I'm sorry 20 like 20. Yes. Yes, 20 students. Yes And so this is these are the accountability accountability accountability indicators for high schools and This is for all schools in Massachusetts. So you have the achievement student growth high school completion rate the EL proficiency status and the additional indicators And you'll see how that's defined in that category and Then you'll see the weighting for the high schools And again the same thing stands as you look at the EL and subgroup so a question was asked when comparing our Warning and failing or not meeting for ELA and math And when comparing the 10th grade students the performance of the 10th grade students on the legacy When compared to their performance on the next generation Because last year was the first year that our 10th graders took the online math or ELA and math MCAS and which is the next generation so you'll see that the you'll see be able to compare the the percentage of students who are who Achieved warning or failing and if you look up there, you'll see in 2017 in 2018 was the legacy MCAS and then in 2019 was the next generation And so we performed pretty much the same and We actually distanced ourselves from the state as you see that there was an increase in in the percentage of students on the ELA that Received a not meeting status And then looking at it for math you'll see where there was a slight increase but the The distance between us and the state has remained the same so However, we still want to look at that and make sure that we get that down to zero So these are the next generation achievement levels. I just want to review them again as we get into subgroup So you have exceeding meeting partially meeting and not meeting and Then the student growth percentile So we're going to review data for the achievement and the student growth percentile So we're not going to go through every slide in detail. However, I am just going to point out an overview as we look at the achievement slides and What pretty much remained constant from every slide is that you know, depending on the grade level and the subgroup that they The majority of the time we outperform the state But when you look at the ratio and ethnic groups, you'll see that there's a disparity between the performance especially with our african-american and Hispanic and Latinx Latinx Latinx students You'll see that there's a big discrepancy as you compare their performance to The all of the students subgroup So that's something that we need to look at and then another thing that I noticed as I looked at the various grades Is we see our female students in ELA outperforming our males And I was talking to a colleague of mine and I was thinking about the racial and gender makeup of our teaching population and and it's You know largely white female So I don't know if that has an impact on our female students saying, you know, that's a positive impact on them So they're able to Achieve at our late. Yes So what I see for the third grade and this the graphic that I need to understand this and I might just need to Like draw it myself is so it are our Meeting and exceeding for all students in third grade jumped from 68 to 73 percent this year. Yes Yes, which is not in like that's a that's a big significant increase did our eight did our Did our subgroups Rise did rising tides lift all boats or no? So did our achievement gap? I guess what my question is did the did the gap grow? this year because The all students group did better than they did last year. Do you see what I'm saying? Like I don't I guess what I don't see is The sum of the subgroups the 34 and the 41 and the 39 and the 48 and the 55 those five subgroups How did that? achievement gap for 2019 compared to 2018 So you can look up there and you can see in the slide Yeah, so let me just go over the colors if I think I I'm understanding your question So if you look at the top, you'll see the blues for the 2017 Okay, so you can see How each how the progress that each one of the subgroups made From starting back in 2017. I put three years of data up there So your to your question it depends on the grade level It depends on the grade level that I didn't see a trend but the trend that I did see is That there is a gap between our African-American students our Hispanic and Latinx students and All students and our white students So when you look at the various subgroups and then you and then the next slide you'll see where I broke it down between economically disadvantaged Students with disabilities EL students high needs and EL and former EL EL students. There's a gap So that is the trend that's going from slide to slide now. I Did not go into the information in order to you know, actually I did not equate the The the gap that is there between You know 2018 and 2019 to see whether or not every You know what that discrepancy is but that that can be done It just would be interesting because the the difference between all students and African-American students in 2018 was 40 percent the difference in 2019 was 35 percent Right that to me Seems like good news. I mean not great news, right? Because we're still only at 38 percent for our African-American students But the difference the Delta Changed and I think that's what's hard for me to see with these I can't I can't I have to do the mental math on the Delta for each one of these and so that's That that would be interesting to look at for each of these These groups and then the subgroups and the next sure absolutely I mean we want to take this data and we want to rip it apart and we want to look at every data point So yes, you do bring up a very good point Yes, the the point you were making about gender before I just quickly went ahead and looked at the math ones It's not as broad at the lower levels But and the other factor is I don't know how many I don't think we have very many male Elementary teachers At the lower groups, but I mean I didn't know if that was something to compare me Which is something to look at I think I think there is an identification issue that that is a positive thing in presentation Male to male female to female And that's something we you can't change, but the math did not seem to be as as broad Separation as the thing I saw it to and something we need to look at Exactly, especially as we talk about diversifying our teaching force We're not only looking at it from an ethnic and racial standpoint viewpoint, but we're also looking at it from a gender viewpoint like we want to have Individual our students to see people that look like them in From the classroom, and so it's it's something to consider. Thank you. Yes, sir You look at the gender breakdown in informational text versus literature Because that tends to also sway on on gender and Wondering if that was sort of sort of what was really contributing strongly to the female Performance versus the male performance. Yeah, we do have that data I don't have it here to present but we do have that we can look at like as I said before we look at the item analysis And we can look at the questions and we look at the standards and so that revolves around this the information of the Fiction and nonfiction text. Yeah, I mean there there are instances where you've got classrooms that are spending, you know a greater proportion of time on fiction versus nonfiction and It teases out within the data and if you see Some real differences within the data coming from classrooms or grades It's an indicator that you do want to tweak the reading material the kids are getting Levels, yeah, absolutely make a very good point so Just overall as I flip through the slides You will see a discrepancy like as I stated before Between our subgroups and all students and our white students So when I went through and I looked and tried to observe the things that jumped out at me That is something that jumped out of me and that is a trend That has remained constant with each one of our grade levels So each one of the slides I've I've created a slide for race ethnicity and gender And the other subgroups now when you don't see Data for a particular subgroup that just means that we didn't have enough students in that particular subgroup where the results were reported So I'm going to jump to Just So Miss Morgan when you asked about the performance over time this slide, I think will communicate a Little bit better about how all of our subgroups have performed over the last three years on the next generation MCAS and you'll see how there's the at the and these are the scaled scores So this is not the percentage of students that are meeting and exceeding but these are the scaled scores So you'll look at the average scaled score over time and grades three through eight for ELA and you'll see how the each one of the Ethnic and racial groups are Represented and you'll see that again as I stated before the trend that we see is our Hispanic and our African-American students are Not performing at the same level as the other subgroups So looking at 10th grade. I wanted to point out that last year as I stated before that the 10th graders took the ELA MCAS online the next generation ELA MCAS online for the first time So that's why you only see one year of data and so we compared how we did to the state So we're going to use this piece of data as benchmark So we're going to compare ourselves as we move forward As we look at how we're improving or not improving And you'll see again that trend of African-American students and our Hispanic Latinx students When compared to all and our white males and you'll see our female students at the 10th grade are still outperforming our males And then this is the other subgroups and you'll see But you will see in all of the categories. We did outperform the state So looking at the growth percentiles This slide is very hard to see So again, we're looking at our grades three through eight ELA data and Just to I know you can't really read the scores But when you look at the moderate growth you want to between 40 and 60 percent is considered moderate Anything below 40 percent is considered low growth and then anything above 60 percent is considered high growth So when we look at our subgroups and in grades three through eight when you look at the Ethnic and racial groups You'll you can't see it up there because it's very hard to read but all the groups Had moderate growth Except and and our African-American students again are showing are at the lower end of this category And so we need to continue to look at how we can Impact their achievement and growth so if they're moving at a at the same rate as the other subgroups then on this slide we're looking at the Economically disadvantage for grades three through eight and you'll see on the left-hand side Is our 2018th growth results and on the right-hand hand side is the 2019 and so again for a non economically disadvantaged and our economically disadvantaged they both Had moderate growth For both years However, our economically disadvantaged students are at the lower end and this slide is showing our students with disabilities when compared to students without disabilities and Our non disabled students with students with disabilities and again, it's pretty much the same trend Scoring and moderate growth and as I point out in my first presentation We want to be on these quadrants on these charts We want to be in the upper right side because that's high growth high achievement And so that's where we want to continue to move and this slide again moderate growth But this is showing our EL EL student population when compared to the non EL moderate growth This slide is showing our high needs and non high needs again moderate growth and gender Which is moderate growth as well So the next slide is tenth grade Economically disadvantaged and again all the and all the subgroups as we scroll through them You'll see that we scored in moderate growth and so that that was pretty much the the trend that we saw with the Student growth percentiles for ELA In all of our grades I'm going to pass it over the mic over to Paula and she's going to go over our math results Good evening So I'm going to go through very similar slides the data is slightly different For the math, so we have the data by grade But as dr. McNeil pointed out, you know It really does fluctuate grade to grades for some of these subgroups the numbers are so small that you're going to see that Variance at the grade level So I'm going to jump ahead. It's there for your reference, but I'll jump ahead to the slide that has the trend and scaled score So this is grades three through eight combined So now the numbers of kids we're talking about is bigger a little more stable and we're looking at their scaled score over three years It's important to note the the vertical axis over on the left That's really zoomed in the scale on MCAS goes from 440 up to 560 But in order to see those Lines at the top there are so clumped together I just zoomed in but it's important to note that this may make it look a little more drastic than it is because we've zoomed in but as you can see all of the groups Except for the African-American group have shown improvement over three years Where the African-American group has dipped and then was sort of steady between those last two years So the gap has at this grade for these grade levels widened a little bit so We're going to look at these slides here, which again are hard to read and I think it's the big picture that we're looking at here So again, we have grades three through eight combined and as Dr. McNeil said we want to be in the top right corner so when we look at this data by race ethnicity our Asian students multi-race students And white students are those three bubbles up near the top And you actually can see that they move over closer to that top right corner Whereas the African-American the yellow bubble at the bottom. It's sort of staying the same. So everybody's growing But because of that those top three bubbles, they're growing further So the gap is widening everybody's moving But not quite at the same rate If you look back at 2017 which if I had put that up here This would be too small for anybody to see but if you look at 2017 it really does fluctuate a little bit So we're trying to sift out the just sort of normal Fluctuation from what's actually happening and it can be hard to do even with just three years of data Especially with such small numbers for some of these subgroups But I will say in this case the gap from the lowest subgroup to the top subgroup in 2018 that gap was 46 points and then in 2019 it widened to 54 points and As I go through the other subgroup comparisons, that's the one group where we see it widening from one year to the next So the next group by economic status It's hard to tell here, but the gap actually does narrow a little bit from 2018 to 2019 again both within that solid middle growth in the gap narrows by disability status This narrows slightly from 48 points to four sorry 48 points to 46 points. So really slight narrowing And this is actually still at 46 points one of the widest gaps We see after that racial gap that we saw on the first slide and By high need status which again it combines the students with disabilities or or economically Disadvantaged or EL students if there any of those they're in the high needs category And this gap narrowed by five points from about 43 points to 48. Sorry 43 to 38 points So the gaps narrowing there and our English learner status Again the gap narrows from 40 points to 34 points. So for all of these we're seeing that gap narrowing Except for that first slide that we saw by race ethnicity I'm just curious the growth seems almost consistent. Is there do I assume you look at the cohort themselves? To see if there is a difference in other words From one year to the next that a particular cohort may have a little bit more going for them than the other ones The what I've seen is the consistent growth each year Not to take anything away from the school of the the staff or anything, but Could it be that cohort itself? Well, this is solid growth And I think when you get down to individual cohorts So by grade level the numbers of students get to be so small that you see much more fluctuation But not a particular that I've seen a particular cohort over time Just that you start to get in a little more of the the noise the statistical noise. Thank you This is I just want to comment on maybe it's not probably yet So so when I look at this what what is sort of Worry some is that we are highly achieving district and we're used to performing better than the state, right? And that for african-american students, especially in math it seems We're not performing better than the state and for a district that prides itself on sort of doing things, right? We're not and and so And seems to be a special problem math and in science as well And so I think we have to think about what we need in terms of resources and tension stuff like that You know, it does seem to be an issue in english, but it seems to get a little bit better You know after third grade so but math feels like You know a real issue here Mr. Thelman Could you just maybe talk a little bit about when the when the faculty and staff see the scores For african-american students what the what the conversation is about and kind of what the conversation This is about three years trend theory or three years What are you guys kind of saying internally about how you plan to Think about this or address this Well, that's a very good question. Um So I think that that's where we have to get into what we're doing in order to educate staff about culturally culturally responsive instruction and looking at how we are reflecting on our own implicit bias Looking at our curriculum. We did write a I did write a a ef grant this year and They fund they're they're going to fund Us to get to have an equity audit of our curriculum and instructional materials to see How and where we need to improve in that area And I think that that's one of the things that teachers are asking for as well as is Now that I've reflected on my implicit bias. What type of tools do I have? And my repertoire of skills to address this issue And so we really need to look at instruction And and delve into discussions about How we're meeting the needs of all of our students so This has definitely sparked more conversations. I've had plenty of conversations with Dr. Bodie All of my colleagues about What we can do in order to increase our knowledge about Um teaching african-american students, you know, because it struck me it was interesting to see the trend for latinos The line was going up But the for african-americans went down slightly or stayed the same way down slightly so that's sort of a I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I'm not in the room with you guys making these decisions, but Somehow something's clicked with the latin-american student population or at least there's been some noticeable gains So maybe I don't know. Maybe it's a possibility to study what went right there or think about what went right there Well, one thing I think that we need to do is that we have to do a better job of actually collecting Qualitative data from our students to understand what their experiences are And there are different types of data that we have been looking at from the state Um that has allowed us to do that and we need to just be more comprehensive and and Talking to them about their accumulated educational experience here in irlington starting all the way back when they're in kindergarten And giving them a voice to tell us this is what we need And I and I think that that is something that we need to continue to to improve upon And I think that data will also lead us to helping us to understand how we can Reach our african-american students and not just our african-american students, but our african-american families Yeah, right. So we need to be more engaging with our families from different populations And we need to because we need to get them into the Conversation as well so that we can develop partnerships one the last I I don't I don't I'm I'm Just speculating so Don't take this. I mean I I wonder sometimes when I when I ever see it whenever I see a trend like that in any group if you know I you know to what degree The number of IEP special education data that's sort of how that influences that and I don't know Absolutely, I don't know what to make of that. I don't have enough information to even react to it But I that's the question I would ask if I were in these meetings. Absolutely how many students are on IEPs Um How many students are not getting services Who maybe should have earlier on in their educational journey? I don't know but that's kind of that It seems to me. That's kind of like what you probe As you said so when I see a trend like this I think that that leads me to believe that we need to look at our tier one instruction Yeah, and we talk a lot about interventions and tier two and tier three instruction or tier two and tier three interventions But I think that we have to have a better focus on our tier one instruction because that's when you see a trend Yeah, you see a trend you see students that are being referred to special education at a higher rate for a particular subgroup That means that we're not doing something at the tier one You know level and so there's things that just today I went to a conference on leading with equity and access and looking at udl so universal design for learning And seeing how we can adopt those principles in our instruction and it also goes to our core values Right, so if we we need to take ownership for all of our students And so we need to have that understanding and also build capacity with our general education teachers Right and give them the skills that they need Instead of saying like oh this student needs services I'm going to send them over here But I need to be able to as a person who has Who's in charge of professional development to see what types of professional development I need to provide for our teachers so they feel confident and have the skills that they need in order to reach those students So it's like looking at our tier one instruction And seeing and seeing how we can improve upon that. Yeah, I mean it is a very it is very complex And I don't I don't mean that I don't mean to you know You can't boil this down to a tagline or something It's it's it's it's very complex requires a lot of analysis a lot of reflection by faculty and staff But people doing the work in the classroom with the kids With the actual practitioners so At a high level I just wanted I just kind of to get a flavor of what you guys are thinking about and talking about inside the faculty So that's helps no we've had conversations along those lines And I thank you for bringing that up because this is something that's there in the data We need to Tease it out and then we need to address it and we can't talk around it We can't talk through it. We have to directly talk about how race is impacting our instruction. It is it is complex It is very complex. It is complex. It is no there's no like quick easy one word solution. I appreciate for a solution. Yeah, yes Okay, thanks this morning and I think Tagging on to Jeff's point. I hope that that you will look at with these the sort of same cohort year to year and try and and find some Trends in in how those same groups behave School year to school year like I was doing some math here and it looks to me like an ELA The achievement gap from the third grade cohort last year to the fourth grade cohort this year African-american students narrowed the gap right the gap narrowed third to fourth grade it narrowed fourth to fifth grade It narrowed fifth to sixth grade and then six to seventh grade it blew up It was third it grew by the gap. So the difference grew by like 13 percent Right. So why did that happen? Was there something in that cohort or these small like are they small? You know to your point are they are they just so small that like a couple of kids coming and going are going to have a Huge impact. That's possible Um, but it seems to me like if we're going to talk about an achievement gap We want to display and talk about the data When we're talking about that delta like I don't want I want to talk about the difference Between all students and african-american students. I don't want to talk about Um, I want to compare those differences as opposed to compare the performance. Does that kind of make sense? Yes a little bit Yeah This is um, I just want to point out that uh confidence in math, which is really important Is basically established by third grade right so people are kids are already thinking themselves as math kids or not math kids Right, so it feels like the work has to be done in these early grades similar to with reading Right that and and math is this weird thing That's the one thing that people don't feel shame in saying that they don't they're like, oh, I don't know how to do math Right People don't say that about reading they don't say I don't know how I read right But they do say that at math they serve already identify themselves as not math kids And so I think this is the question is Why is that happening to kids in those early grades because that shows up by third grade? It's already there And I will say that we have over the past few years two or three years We have adopted a new resource right so investigations 3.0 So I think that we are seeing some of the benefits of having that particular resource because it really looks at Not only just coming up with the answer as you're you know solving a math equation But it's looking at how like looking at the various strategies that students utilize And then looking at how they're Displaying their thinking So we want to look at not just coming up with one way for solving a problem But also looking at various ways. How can you think about this differently? And so that particular resource is That's why we selected it because it's also aligned with the state standards And so I just want to point that out that that resource the last Um Grades that adopted that resource was last year was fourth and fifth grade And so now that we have it fully implemented in grades one through five Then we go back and see okay Where do we need to go in and provide some supporting professional development that job embedded? And then we also have math coaches that we've Employed over the last few years so and we have math interventionist So I think that our math director matt Coleman has done a great job of looking at this systemically And now we just have to look at where we need to provide the support for teachers And just one last comment for me. It's going to echo, you know, mr. Thielman's thoughts I mean, this is basically still new data, right? And you've only had it for this this set of data is relatively new. You've only had it for about a month Right. I don't know how much you've communicated to To the administrative team or or the faculty yet But I think the message, you know, for me the chair of the school committee is that this is something that is serious The performance of our african-american students is is not improving So it's something that we need to focus on as a team There's a lot that you're doing and I appreciate that But I think the message needs to be that, you know, it's not it's not listed specifically as one of our goals But this is new data And as a result of this new data, it's something that I think we all want to focus on Absolutely. Thank you for that And if I could just respond to mr. Seuss's comments about about math perceptions And that's one of the things as an elementary math team we talk a lot about and we Bring into our professional development teachers and every time we're meeting with teachers to really help people understand the importance Not only of the curriculum But the way that we are implementing the curriculum and how that can either Confirm someone's identity as a math person or not and really talk that up and we've talked a lot with families About that and how math is taught probably differently than how they learned it in school And so it's something that is definitely on the forefront But we can always do more work in that area and we keep working on it And I think reaching out to families it makes me also wonder about are we really reaching all families when we Invite them into the schools and they can come in during the day How many families can come in during the day and how many families that just doesn't work for so the more We can think about that as dr. McNeil said we just finished that three-year rollout of Implementation which is a great starting point, but we know there's still a lot more work that we can be doing So just to finish up these slides you can see the English learner status. I think I mentioned did narrow and then By gender as someone pointed out earlier we see the gap Is is much more narrow here than we saw in ELA In math and in fact it flipped So I think in 2018 females were ahead by three points and then in 2019 males were ahead by one point my sense is maybe They're just going to hover right around each other, but i'm not sure so we'll see And then we have the the data at tenth grade So at tenth grade we have again, you know, um, there's so few students there that Had a growth score that we only see two bubbles on the race ethnicity On the graph, but if you could read the data underneath which you can't There's still a racial gap from the highest group, which is the white students at 84 Median and exceeding to african-american at 54 Percent so the gap there is 30 points which is more narrow than what we saw at the elementary and middle school grades But there is still a gap there Same thing with the economic disadvantaged And then again the gap with the disability status. That's where we see one of the bigger gaps at grade 10 Between the disability status And then the gender gap a little closer So looking at our science technology and engineering results Again, I want to point out that Last year was the well not again, but the fifth graders took the online next generation science technology and engineering mcass And so that's why you only see one year Of data is because we're going to use this as our benchmark And as you can see In most of the cases We perform better than the state But looking at our african-american students And our asian students in this respect They did not perform better than the state And then this is our subgroup population Economically disadvantaged students with disabilities el high needs and el and former el's We perform better than the state, but you see when compared to all students There is a gap looking at our eighth grade And all of the subgroups except for our african-american students They perform better than the state And then looking at the other subgroups They outperform the state, but the trend is there where there's still a gap between their performance and all students So the reason why you see more data on this 10th grade slide Is because the 10th grade took the legacy mcass, so we were able to compare the 10th grade performance over the last three years As you look at their performance, they either equalled Or performed better than the state For all the subgroups But when you look at their performance when compared to 2018 It was somewhat stagnant for our african-american students And then if you look at the other grades of You know I'm sorry the other subgroups You'll see that some subgroups did a little bit better and then some subgroups Did not And looking at the subgroups to other subgroups You'll see that there was an improvement From last year And if you look over there at the el and former el's Last year was the first year that we had 20 students enough students and even to even look at those results But in all the subgroups they did outperform the state And they did show an improvement for all the results that were reported Then last year So just as you know a few of you make comments and I thank you for your comments But some of the things that we are doing Is so two big things that we did last year One because of the override we were able to Restructure our elementary schedule So that principals would have more time to meet with teachers on a weekly basis And also to provide great level teams Times that they can meet throughout the week with each other And so one of the expectations and one of some of the feedback that I have received this year From our coaches our literacy and math coaches That those meetings are being co-planned between the principals and the coaches And that they are looking at data and they're are looking at the subgroup data and they're looking at student work So they're giving it they're getting an opportunity to do the things that we want them to do on a regular basis Before when we just had the early release Tuesdays with which you know They had common planning time every week, but it wasn't during the week And and I look at this as being real time because you can the coaches can come in there Into the school and that they can work with the teachers on a lesson and then they can go meet with the teacher during the common planning time That they have To debrief about that lesson So I think that this is going to give us an opportunity to have that job embedded professional development that we've been pushing for and And improve the relationship between the coaches And the teachers and so they can get an invitation into the classroom Other things that we've done is we've implemented and improved our District-wide data bank last year we piloted it And it's a tool that we use to collect all assessment data So we have three years of assess of i'm sorry three times a year We have we collect formal assessment data at k At the k through five level But we also have expanded those conversations to talk with the curriculum leaders about how this can also Be taken and expanded at the middle school level And and i've able and i've able been able to have those conversations To have our curriculum leaders and other content areas to identify areas to identify various assessments that they would like to have Put into our data bank and so the data bank will provide our teachers With that assessment data It's very organized and then they can look at trends As they compared the performance of individual students to the class how their class compared to the district Right so they'll and the mcast data is in there as well. So we have the Local formal assessments that we give throughout the year as well as our state assessment data And we're looking to expand it and include behavior data as well So we're looking to Expand the use of the data bank at the secondary level and see what types of data we want to put in there And that can include a progress report data attendance data So the sky's the limit and the reason why we chose this particular Platform is because it's it's we can customize it to our needs And I and as I mentioned before we're going to have an assessment equity audit Which will assess our curriculum materials For stereotyping negative images of various Groups such as african americans, hispanics And and also looking at all the social identifiers that our students might use to Define themselves and make sure that that that they're represented in those curriculum materials And Yes, that audit. Did you just mention will that include the libraries as well? Yes, great. So all curriculum materials And I've already had conversations with our We just you know, we do have now a certified librarian. We've hired one And I met with her and stacey kitsis who was the high school librarian and we had a meeting and we're talking about now that we have In our budget line items to purchase library materials We're talking about how we can strategically utilize that that funding to make sure that our collections Are diversified and they're representative of the students that are in our in our school and Representative of the population out in society So we're trying to be very strategic with that funding. It's not a lot, but I think that we can definitely Make strides in providing more equity as as students check out books that's where they can see Main characters and authors that look like them Questions One last one then I'm going to drop this because that's no, it's fine, but I you know, I'm It it occurs to me without being without being in the room with you folks That you you might say well, you you might say any and I'm not saying this is a school committee Directive but you might say look our goal in the next x year or two is to Um perform better than the state Have our african-american students perform better than the state because I think an expectation of the town of Arlington is that Our kids are going to outperform the state sort of a You know an expectation a whole desire and so maybe maybe maybe that's sort of okay How do what do we do and so you just focus on that question? What do we do to make sure we outperform the state? Maybe that's too narrow? I know maybe that's too narrow of a question But I just throw it out. There's something you folks may want to Bad around on a meeting is that is that Would that help guide our work would that help? Us think about more support that can be provided would help us think about how we apply You know a greater rigor to some of these students. I don't I don't know I don't know because I'm out of the room, but I just throw that out there as a maybe I appreciate that but I think that you know, I want to take you one better I think that as we look at our african-american students not just performing well on the test Yeah, I want to improve their educational experience and so we want to be able to understand Where are we not connecting? Yeah, right and and we have to really look at this and it is very complex Because you're not just looking at what they're exposed to within the district You're looking at the exposure what they're exposed to out in society You know representations of themselves in the media Right and so it's it's very complex and it's it's entrenched in our society And we just have to call it what it is. It's institutionalized racism and it's been done over time And so because of this We have to not only combat what you know, we have to be able to understand how we can combat that within the district and in our teaching practices and so We have to understand and not make assumptions Based upon the color of anyone's skin of what their goals are. What do they want to achieve? How can we enhance their experience? How can we get to know them as individuals? So that we can understand how they learn because we can't clump them all into the same group They're all individuals just like anybody anybody in this room And we have to understand what drives them And we have to have conversations with families and understand what the goals that parents want to have They have for their children. So it's it's very complex. It's going to take time And we have to be able to identify Ways to do this without blaming or shaming And we talk about white privilege and we talk about all those things and how we can use that to our advantage and raise the awareness To understand that it's there And so I think that that is very complex I think our teachers work very hard and it's not a knock on them But I think that we have to understand what we do well And the things that we need to do in order to Enhance those things that we're already doing well and and really look at what we're doing That's not so you know, that's not that doesn't give us the results We're looking for and take those things and discard them and replace them with things that do work Yeah, thanks Mrs. Just two points. One is that MCAS scores are not a be-owned and all they're just a dipstick, right? You know that just to see how we're doing So that having that as a goal can still be a goal The hope is that underlying that is you know genuine progress And the other thing is why it's so disturbing to see us perform worse in the state Is that there's not more institutional racism in Arlington than there is in other communities across the state, right? Or more sort of or fewer representation. Well, there might be I mean, that's the thing you're looking at There might be fewer representations in the in the in the materials and so that is absolutely something but but but certainly You know Other towns and communities are similar to Arlington in the in the sort of largest society and that's why it's sort of Concerning to look at why what's going on in Arlington and And a lot of times this is just oh, we haven't really reached out Enough, you know, we haven't sort of identified Problems early enough, right when we saw somebody struggling And so so just I just want to make that point, sir Well, I think that and I think that we have to understand how we're responding to students when they are struggling So what are the things that we're utilizing to for intervention? And when and when is that happening? So you bring up a very good point So like I said, it's like looking at the whole experience of our students and being able to enhance that and so when they feel safe and secure Right and they feel like there's somebody there that's going to advocate for them Then they're going to do better and so there's a big connection there with the se l You know social emotional learning so we have to figure out how we can enhance those connections And make sure that that's consistent across the district great All right. Thank you very much. Thank you Fantastic Thank you Next we have mr. Haynor I'm going to share with us a little bit about his flags for the heroes project from the rotary club Which you can see right outside our window and uh on the Front line nervous in eight and a half years. It's the first time I've sat here Be with me. I want to thank Chair for allowing me to do this. If you may not have noticed if you go right here in the dark the front field has been transformed Just want to share with you the flags fly for a variety of heroes the men women Who are serving or have served as members of the military police officers firefighters first responders parents teachers coaches mentors community leaders Also for your best friend or anyone else I mean, uh, I Wanted we put four up for the military members of our family and I put my wife up there She's my best friend and she's my hero Smani at 9 30. This is what the front field looked like just like that one flag out there We had the students from the workplace program I want to commend them and their teachers mr. Lundstrom and his staff. They do a fantastic job These young people have come out each year We uh, several of us. You'll see a picture of the rotarians at the very end Uh, we'd get about six or eight flags out in about 25 minutes or half hour These young people come out there and they put the other 153 out in half that time and they do a better job of it Real quick and uh, they're they're just phenomenal Putting the flags out the uh, us all the ones were out finding the holes on the ground This is an aerial shot that was taken last year From it. There are 160 flags out there right now on each flag There's a card Listening, uh, the individual hero some of them have a couple some have military different experiences on them Uh, these are the students in front of the school They're a great job And there's the old timers, uh, that were out there So we uh, these flags will be out there from today through november 12th And on november 3rd at one o'clock. We'll have a dedication out front So thank you very much. Thank you bill. Great. Thank you very much for your Tireless efforts in organizing this that year. All right So now just a few minutes on the superintendent review review process So today in novice Uh, there was posted all of the Evidence for the superintendent goals and the District goals I still need to get to the evaluation form which I will get to tomorrow Um, what's the deadline? And I was thinking that the deadline would be two weeks from tomorrow. So november 8th Does that sound all right with everyone? Yeah Mr. Haynor, could I ask you to just give us like a two or three day warning? Of course. Yeah Definitely. Thank you And uh, that will give me time to assemble everything before our Uh Next meeting which is actually three which is actually not for three weeks. So the calendar benefits us This year Thank you Uh, all right next is the budget calendar that's in novice Uh, I think we looked over at last time Uh using emotional proof. That's it. Yes. So Yeah, I think that's the idea. I move approval second Mr. Haynor, just a question and I apologize for not bringing it up the last time. Is there a reason we are Going three weeks from november to the first one to uh, December 12th In other words, we we we're doing back to back in november and I understand the reason for that Yeah, why are we doing back to back in december is because Different people can't make meetings or something. You mean well, we had december 12th and december 19th As opposed to coming in on december 5th Uh, I don't know. I mean when we set up the calendar I apologize for bringing it up at the last minute Uh last year. So Thanksgiving is I think Thanksgiving's late I think when we did it originally a couple years ago The superintendent there were other meetings that were taken place and interfered But I didn't know if that's the same as this year. It is. Thank you. I thought we're meeting. We're not meeting december 5th We are not We're meeting december 12th and 19th according to this Yeah, okay So, I mean if there are conflict meetings there several years ago edco and I'm sorry metco and a couple of other conferences. So In november, we meet the 14th to 21st. Okay. Yes 21st, I won't be there Yes, I mean we can consider whether we need the 21st, but I think we likely do as of now So All right, any other discussion on the calendar? All right, all those in favor. All right. Any opposed or abstentions? Nope unanimous. Thank you The financial report mr. Mason Good evening Tonight you'll have your funding of your monthly reports This will be the first one for this fiscal year this is a report through September 30th 2019 And it's still the same format. It's not an it's not changed. There are three reports included As you're aware there is one for the general fund the town appropriation, which is What the town provides to the schools and what state aid The general fund figures, uh, what you will see is that the revised budget or the original budget as is adjusted from what is What was proposed in our earlier superintendent's budgets because it includes the override amounts And the fincom change in formula that was proposed to the town at town meeting In this report, you're also so the this report you'll notice that uh at this moment we've It's at september 30th. We spend about a total of seven million dollars in actual expenditures And another seven million was encumbered that those uh encumbrances Do not include salaries those salaries were encumbered in october So in october report, you will see that but the projected expenses include those encumbrances because we knew at that time and we've reconciled salaries in That leaves us with this projected balance of about four hundred and forty five thousand but there are We've hired many positions, but there's still some positions that still need to be hired So the funding will be provided in that balance to cover those positions Um also in this report you got you will have your grant report which includes the state In federal grants all grants and federal grants and state grants are being spent according to plan We will draw down revenue periodically through the year as expenditures hit They do show that they have their first initial draws From grant award The final report is revolving funds and as well as we are collecting revenue on spending according to plan I just want to note that We complete this report recently And our new school accountant who's on board helped help prepare this It was his first time around so it was some work, but he did a great job Any questions great? I was going to ask if we were able to hire a school accountant That's good news. Yes, is he had some experience or would He has experience in private sector. Okay. A lot of um investment banking Yep When we went through the recruitment process What we thought about him was that he was very able to communicate clearly He had a lot of project experiences Very technologically savvy Um, and he had a lot of customer support Background was he was doing client support. He was a senior client associate at his previous Employer, so we felt that he was the best candidate for the job. Great. Thanks Mr. Hainer A couple of questions on line item 8123 substitute teacher day to day Uh, you're projecting $42,000 deficit. Am I reading that correct? Let me see eight one eight one two oh three Substitute give me one second. I'm just my computer's freezing um Substitute eight one two oh three. You're saying we're rejecting the deficit Well, I'm rejecting going over to the last column And it said it available budget and it's in parentheses So yeah, yeah, so I'm just That's something that happens every year Is it because we do not put enough money in the This is a consistent thing. Yes, it's happening and I just ask Going forward superintendent everybody We have trouble getting subs. I understand that we don't pay a lot for ourselves. I understand that but at the same time And then the next one down there the next line extended term sub Substitute teacher. I assume That's rather large 97 000. Is that because we have special needs or something that we Weren't anticipating that happens. I can understand that might happen So the the the answer I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. Oh, it's okay But the the extended term sub line there are some positions that Were budgeted previously in there. So but then there are what we're using is In the projected expenses is How what we spent last year? So we there's it's hard to kind of Project the other long-term substitutes that may cover for a fmla from a teacher Being pregnant or whatnot. So I understand I understand that one but the regular day-to-day sub We've always showed a negative number and all I'm suggesting going forward That we might want to make that a little bit bigger Down at the bottom of that page on Longevity I'd like to commend you Uh, you've you've just about cut that totally under control The big one. I'm just curious under the longevity for custodians. I thought custodians Belong to the town and not us So the custodians are we fund the custodian budget we fund any for any of the facility staff that's on in our buildings Based on that $14,000 A lot of people resign and we got new staff. That's why we have a positive number there um We so we don't encumber the longevity and we haven't clearly project that so I will look into that figure well when I made the statement before and I apologize if it came off sarcastic the Longevity under administration and clerical used to be much bigger And I brought it brought it to your attention last year and you've narrowed right on top of it I I mean, I'm sincere about committing you on that. Thanks Thank you Miss Zeus, uh, so I actually had I did have the same question about um Subs, but I think mr. Hannah covered it. Well, um, I'm curious about this custodial snow ice removal So I knew that was the question The projection expenses are four times the original budget amount original budget amount looks way too low So custodial snow ice removal. So once again, these are based on expenses from last year um So the projection is based on what we spent last year. Yes, correct, but the budget is So the but yeah, the budget it was uh, uh based on an average Of the the the data that was known we would only have spent much less in some years Correct. So it was based on the previous budget that was known in expenditures at the time when we created the budget So we'll make adjustments to this and uh, reallocate The the dollars based on where the they're going to be spent when it's time Obviously, it's still early and actually I thought you was going to ask me a different question On that because there are expenditures in that line Which are we're actually inappropriately placed So we are reclassifying them Um, they are it's already been completed, but it will be reflected in the next month's report Sorry, which which is reclassified The same the same line already the same line that you just yeah, yeah Oh, I see. Oh the thousand dollars. You're saying. Okay. Yeah. No, I was just curious that that the expected expenses were four times our budget So that's not um a couple more things. Yep. Um, it seems like we're spending a lot of money on instructional materials and on Textbooks book, which I think is great that we hadn't originally planned to do Um, I also take training education conference and attendance Is that some of that money something that stuff that could come out of Some revolving funds that might have a little Buffer in them rather than out of the regular budget Um, so those are one-time expenses. Those are great uses for those those funds. Yes We'll look we'll look into that I think that was it. Yeah, that's it It's Morgan. Um on the snow and ice just to beat it to death I didn't we didn't we procure some kind of a truck or something didn't we do something So then we took on more of our snow and ice removal or am I like remembering so that could we see some of that shift into our custodial So what will since we did procure another truck this year? That was a plow. Um We will it will take upon more salaries to people that actually man the equipment But uh, we'll see a reduction In contracted services Got it and the contracted services come out of snow and ice. Yes This is a different is a different a different snow removal contractor. There's a different line So you're just basically seeing a shift in that but obviously at a much lower rate Thank you doing it internally. Yes All right, um my turn So I'm confused about the difference between the the original budget and the revised budget. It's the same It's actually the same total amount. So that it doesn't Reflect the override money change. Um, then there's only a thousand dollar transfer. So So is this Is this because you really haven't reallocated money yet and you're planning to or why are there two different columns when they're almost identical It's a good question. So I didn't change the format of the report. Um And so In your previous reports, those two columns were there and those basically identify any transfers that are made in between object codes so, um Example if we need to transfer between Snow over time snow ice removal over time to snow ice contractor services or vice versa You would see it in that transfers columns and then that would update the revised budget but since the override and Um Is part of the budget that is the original budget So if you were to go back and I don't remember the the first number off the top of my head I should have came prepared with that Um, but that that dollar amount was not 71.4 million dollars for your total budget So that number the override and any other adjustments are included In that total budget amount Okay. Yeah, so I mean there's there's two different ways to do this I mean you could just eliminate the transfers and it provides budget column because it's not showing anything Or you could start saying you're sitting down now that we're a full quarter into the year and saying Well natural gas is going to be higher. So I need to move some money into natural gas, right? Correct. Um Is that what you're planning to do or so that's what that transfers columns represents. So if in case that It's to be more transparent right as we move things So if I if we were to remove the original budget and transfer column It may be difficult unless you're really sharp and remember every single number to remember What was the previous report in that budget column versus the current report? So Okay, so you're going to you're going to transfer money as the year goes on Correct, correct. So to in like as you have these questions about certain deficits We will look at different objects to move funding from To and from to actually align with how a spending is actually going to go Okay, great Any else All right. Thank you. And now we're on to the superintendent's report I actually don't have um a lot tonight I do want to mention that I put this report on your desk That's great. Your seats just received it today. This is not certified numbers You just you need to know that but it does give you an idea of where we are and as we talked about earlier in the year We are a district that is over 6 000 students and um We can we expect that that trend will continue one of the things that Mr. Macy and I have talked about is You know, certainly updating our own projections within district, which we will do once we have the certified numbers Um, that's not sure it really makes much sense to do it before then because you have to do it twice But then we're also looking at still and we can talk With you about that is Get a hiring someone to do Some kind of a projection at this point Mr. Mason has done a lot of research in terms of the Vendors and we'll see what we're going to what we're going to propose to you Um But I think that we do need to have that as we go as we go forward trying to plan Um, the second thing is um the high school And I think that that's something that'll be a it's always a a Topic we are at this point Doing a lot of small group meetings. Uh, the architects have been here on a regular basis Several days a week. We have transition meetings. We have meetings with curriculum leaders with the administration because there's a lot of There's a focus on both the interior design and tweaking different things And there's also of course the exterior The building committee is going through a process and we'll be going through a process really has and that not really Totally started yet and which is required by msba to take a look at you know reconciliation of way we could have different savings versus the budget because we are we are Have a vote we have a budget and we're going to stick within that budget But even as we go along through the process, there are some costs that have increased Just even the last couple months. And so how does that reconcile with where we are? And so there will be a lot of discussion about this once we get the next set of estimates in Which will be mid november the committee is going to be meeting quite a few times in in november We are ready for another community forum and we have one scheduled Notice of that it's gone out. We'll continue to remind people that on november 30th Not halloween the night october October 30th Which is next week. We're going to have a community forum at town hall from 7 to 8 30 what is We we plan to have the architect here They're talking about where we are with the design But I think that this this is what makes this form more unique is that we now have for the first time Conceakly construction firm that we'll be presenting And we'll be talking about the phasing of the project And asking questions answering questions about that. So it's a great opportunity to get an update On where we are with the project and After october 30th, perhaps one of our meetings and one of the two meetings in november We could have a little bit more in-depth look at some of Some of the information we have at this point because there's people won't be able to be there but they may be listening at a school committee meeting and So we'll look at some of those design changes Mr. Hinner last saturday night, I Went with my wife for her 55th reunion allington high school reunion And the most consistent talk was uh, how happy these people were and they're from all over the country right now from california down south and everything constantly looking online And the virtual tour and the things of that nature and they're very very impressed More so than I think you guys deserve, but uh, no That visual tour is amazing And I kept I finally it's quiet about I said well look, uh, let's plan on the uh, 60th reunion in the new high school So you got to have it done in five years I thought it was for the 50th reunion 55th or 55th. Oh, okay class of 64 Um I have here In my notes, um, the last thing is the update on athletics Because we have There it is. All right. Um our athletic program is Doing very well and um, mr. Bowler gave me some updates, which I think is um I'd like to share with all of you because we have um Some firsts this year in terms of qualifying for for post season field hockey has qualified first time since 2009 Golf has qualified for the first time since 2015 And boy soccer has qualified now for the sixth consecutive year And girls soccer for the ninth consecutive year. In fact, I Saw one of our soccer girls soccer players earlier this morning. We were talking about the season and um Oh, she said oh we qualified a long time ago That was great, um So the boys girls cross country girl swimming and cheerleading will be competing in their middle sex league meets next week and um The boys girls cross country and girls swimming will be competing in sectional and state meets in the next couple of weeks So they're doing quite well. So congratulations to all these students. We're very proud of you and good luck in post season On to the consent agenda The following items 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 for approval warrant number 20070 dated 10 15 2019 total warrant amount 2648660.21 Minutes for approval regular school committee meeting september 26 2019 in october 10th 2019 Have a motion Second all those in favor. Yes. Any opposed your extensions? unanimous All right subcommittee and liaison reports Uh, kirstie is not here policies and procedures. Mr. Schlickman. We met yesterday. Uh, we Discussed meeting agenda Uh, and we uh, also discussed some of the items brought forth by uh, Dr. Seuss One of the things we're going to be proposing is You get minutes in a full report of the recommendations and where we're going to go Some of the things we're going to discuss again later But one of the things we will be recommending is to Change the policy on meetings to go from 20 to 19 Scheduled meetings per year as that would seem to be easier for us to plan Noting that we can't add and delete meetings during the year But as a rule to get to 19 seems to be where we want to be we tend to struggle to Count put it put the 20th on the calendar great all right Uh curriculum instruction assessment and accountability We met today. We went over the superintendent's two of her Goals for the 2018 Oh, now i'm going to get this wrong for the 19 catchy It's catchy. It's it's like in there for the 1920s school year um, and we Planned to bring those to the full committee for the next Meeting Great. Thank you Community relations Yes, we have a meeting scheduled november 6th focused on after school and we're going to have In in house programs come come to c.s great facilities Uh, the subcommittee will be presenting to the hearty pto on november 6th and the pierce pto on november 13th Uh, what has gone on what is going on and what is planned to happen in their schools? Great. Thank you Legal services nothing at this time building committee anything else to add nope. All right calendar committee The doodle hasn't gone out yet. All right Okay election modernization committee also mrs Yes, I was there on tuesday Had some lively discussions. Uh, the focus was on crafting questions to ask um during for envision arlington survey about um Accessibility and access and interest in elections Great superintendent search process. Mr. Schuchman Uh, we'll be next monday great any liaison reports Or announcements Nope. All right future agenda items Mr. Heyner, I don't know the correct procedure, but uh, what the person brought at the opening meeting Whether the superintendent or take it to the coach to find out The cfo, uh, what it would cost to have an additional sport added to the Some sort of communication on that going forward It's it's been being it's being discussed. Yeah, so she asked for it to be put on a future agenda. Right. Yes So when I'm making the official request, yeah, so hopefully before the budget Development meetings We'll be you'll be able to present or have The athletic director or mr. Jang or whoever you want to come back and or or send us some information Anyway for first, okay Anything else? All right Uh, so now we have executive session to conduct strategy sessions In preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel Or contract and negotiations with union or non-union Personnel in which have had held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect Conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation In which if held in a meeting open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted Uh principles contract discussion I have a motion to go into executive session. So move Second, okay. I roll call mr. Heyner. I this is yes. I'm in mr. Schuchman. Yes. Yes, and I'm also yes All right