Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Allicton School Committee for Thursday, January 27th, 2022. I am Bill Hain of the Chair, but may be to confirm that all members and persons anticipated in the agenda present can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Here. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Ampe. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. In the affirmative. Dr. Holman. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Ms. Fernandez from the ADA. Yes. And I don't see this accident at the moment. She'll be here soon, I assume. Tonight's meeting of the Allicton School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with the act signed into law on June 16th, 2021, that extends certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency. The act includes an extension until April 1st, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The governor's order, which is referenced with the agenda materials on the town's website, this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as a reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom, is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast at ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record for the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those people, persons are not required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and persons watching an ACMI can follow the post agenda materials, also found on the town's website using the Nova's agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. No one has signed up a particular public participation so we will go directly to the superintendent's entry plan. Dr. Holman. Thank you. Give me a minute to share my screen. You should see my slides, yes? Great. So it is my pleasure to present to the community members who are watching and to the committee, the findings from my superintendent's entry plan. If the committee and community recall, I had shared with everyone right as I had started in July, on July 1st of 2021, my entry plan, which included a lot of activities that had actually begun back in February of 2021 due to the transition contract that the committee had negotiated with me when I was appointed and gave me a lot of opportunities to get to know the Arlington community very well over the last several months. And I've really enjoyed that process. So tonight my goal is to share with you, first to remind you of the process that undertaken over the last several months and also to share with you some of the initial findings of that entry plan process. I wanna emphasize that the goal of the entry plan report is not so much to lay out specific initiatives that the district needs to undertake or even to define priorities because that's going to be the work that happens next. Really the goal here is for me to uncover and share with all of you some of the things that I've noticed, the themes that have emerged and what has come from the data that I've analyzed over the course of the last several months. Some of that data I will share with you, certainly not all of it. There was a lot to comb through and what I do share in the report is something of an executive summary because I think to really unpack all of the things that I think we're going to work on over the next several years would have been a much longer report. And I imagine if you didn't wanna read many more than 30 pages. So the full report is in your materials for tonight. I'm going to go over a little bit of my methods process. I'm gonna talk about the four overarching goal areas that the school committee has already defined and some key strengths and potential future directions or opportunities within each one of those. So student achievement, staff excellence, professional development, resources, infrastructure and educational environment and operations, communications and stakeholder engagement. So to start, what I did over the last several months was a lot of focus groups with Arlington students K through 12 at all levels. Lots of family listening sessions with families. I had messaged these out to families and many families showed up to me. Hey Liz, I think something's gone weird with your screen. Do you wanna just unshare and there we go. Are we back? I got the overview. Is everyone else got it? I fixed it. Yeah. We're good. Thank you. Thanks for flagging that for me. Okay, so at least 20 focus groups with the students seven with families, seven with staff, one-on-one entry meetings with administrators, visits to the schools. I visited every Arlington school, many of them several times. It's been wonderful to visit the schools. It's my favorite part of my job to go see what's going on in classrooms. I also looked at the climate and culture surveys that were conducted in fall of 2020 and fall of 2021. We also did a round of surveys in the spring of 21 but those didn't have nearly the same sort of level of participation. And so I was really looking at the two surveys that we had done that had gotten the highest levels of participation. I took a look at achievement and accountability data for Arlington public schools, not just this year but over the past several years and several reviews and audits of the school systems as well as budgets, financial reports and other reports. And the full litany of things that I looked through is also included in the entry plan and a list there. So from there, like I said, I've organized this report around the four overarching goal areas of the Arlington public schools. So I want to start actually with the words of students as we look at student achievement. The focus groups with students have really been the highlight of my last few months. I don't intend to stop doing them because they really have helped me gain a good understanding of how students are experiencing school. And I'd like to talk about the strengths that they named. Students across Arlington talked about how much they love their teachers and feel valued and cared for by them. They shared how their teachers help them when they are struggling with something and do not give up on them and continue to encourage them to keep trying. They shared how much they love opportunities to show and explore their curiosities and their passions and their interests and really highlighted moments when their teachers have given them opportunities to explore something that they chose that they were curious about and really wanted to go learn more about. The most memorable learning experiences for them were the ones that combined disciplines into projects with tangible outcomes, including they talked about performances, presentations, interactions with the community or projects that they could take home and share with their families. And our students really feel like they're held to high standards by their teachers, that their teachers genuinely know who they are as people and they talked about their favorite teachers as those who got to know them as people. One student shared an example of a teacher who made it an assignment to set aside 15 minutes of time to have a conversation with the teacher and set the time aside as part of that as a way of getting to know their students and they felt like that was a really powerful instance in which they could tell that their teachers cared about not just who they were academically but who they are as people. We also have some opportunities in the area of student achievement. We've had significant and pretty persistent gaps in achievement amongst certain subgroups, particularly our high needs students, our students who have IEPs and our students who are people of color. And we have declining achievement in mathematics and this is particularly notable throughout the pandemic. Though we exceeded targets in 2019 and we have been given academic targets for the coming school year. 2019 was the last year since the state reported accountability data. The pandemic has definitely had an impact on and time on learning in mathematics is not even with time on learning in ELA particularly at the elementary level. So that could be something that we take a look at in the coming year so that we can make sure we continue to exceed targets in mathematics alongside that 2019 trend. Gaps in specific areas of ELA achievement also stood out, particularly for certain subgroups in particular vocabulary and informational text comprehension are areas of concern. They have been when we've disaggregated MCAS findings and they are also highlighted here in the slide. This slide shows reading assessment performance on the fall 2020 and fall 2021 IREDI assessment, which is a formative assessment that we conduct multiple times per year at the elementary level. And what you will notice is that from 2020 to 2021 in the areas of vocabulary and informational text comprehension, we see our students have slipped. There are fewer students who are performing at or above grade level in third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade in these domains. And there are some curricula that are designed to meet the demands of the frameworks in these areas in order to prepare students for increasingly complex informational texts in the upper grades. And as I shared in the findings report, the curriculum that Arlington Public Schools currently uses has not been rated very highly in these areas. And so it may be something for us to look at as part of a collaborative community conversation in the coming years. When it comes to staff excellence and professional development, staff professional culture in Arlington is extremely strong. It was really encouraging to see that staff are reporting improvements in wellbeing as we've returned to pandemic teaching and learning. I won't say post pandemic yet after the Omicron situation that we just went through, but it is encouraging to see that as we return to in-person learning, as teachers return to classrooms, they're seeing their wellbeing improve and their investment in their work improve. Teachers expressed significant esteem for their colleagues and appreciation for time that they spend collaborating both with administrators and with their teacher colleagues and families and students talked about how wonderful Arlington's teachers are as I talked about when we were talking about student achievement. Teachers are expressing a desire for and so are families and students, some improvements to particularly professional development. So teachers talked a lot about having an opportunity for more meaningful and relevant learning opportunities and more opportunities to design that professional development in collaboration with administrators and their colleagues and to be involved in decision-making processes and planning processes when it comes to curriculum changes or school improvement planning, they really wanted to be involved in that. And families agreed. They noted that instructional consistency is something that Arlington Public Schools could take a look at and improve. And they said that if teachers across roles, across special education departments and across disciplines and across grade levels had more opportunities to work together on common goals that they believe that instructional consistency would be improved. Families raised instructional consistency is an equity issue as well that particularly impacts students with IEPs. For the resources infrastructure and educational environment priority area, our families noted that they feel very supported by a safe and high quality school system. They appreciate that Arlington Public Schools has put significant effort into building up libraries, improving learning technologies, prioritizing fine arts, making sure that we have a rich program of studies at the high school and students can follow their passions and engage in extracurricular activities. They would like, they shared more access to after-school programming and for the district to continue offering and improving access to extracurricular activities and diverse coursework at the high school in particular. When it came to opportunities for resources infrastructure and educational environment, a major resource need for the public schools has been and will continue to be. It has historically been and continues to be a focus on improving the salaries of our professional and paraprofessional staff so that we're more in line with neighboring and comparable districts. This is something that you all talked about as well when we talked about budget priorities for the coming year, last time we met. And furthermore, APS staff, students and families talked a lot about how important it is going to be for us to recruit diverse professionals and leaders in the coming years that will better mirror our student population. These two areas of opportunity are things that I see as and many of the stakeholders I talked to saw is closely linked to one another because competitive salaries are more likely to attract diverse and talented staff from neighboring districts. And so if we're going to diversify our staff, it's also going to be important for us to have competitive salaries with neighboring communities. And when it comes to operations, communications and engagement, the collaborative relationship that we have between town and schools came up in several interviews and has been evident also in the work that I've been doing my early collaborations with town commissions and elected officials. The town has passed multiple overrides that have directly supported education in the building of a beautiful new high school. Town departments have collaborated with the schools both proactively and in crisis situations. And I've had a front row seat to that. We've had excellent collaborations with the Health and Human Services Department that I believe are directly creditable to the fact that Arlington has the highest pediatric vaccination rate in the state and has continued to for the past couple of months. Those collaborative efforts have earned Arlington a reputation not only within Arlington but external to Arlington for inclusive and collaborative governance and that extends to the schools. Families talked a lot about being willing to and their engagement with school PTOs, DIG groups and school councils. And in a lot of those conversations also expressed a desire for those groups to be equitably distributed across all of the schools, equitably attended across all of the schools and easy to access for families who wanted to participate in them. Families also expressed areas for growth when it comes to operations and communications. They said that they wanna be asked not only for their feedback in the surveys that we do but also for partnership. They want to be part of the decision-making process. They want to be included as partners in their children's education. They also expressed that they hope actions will be taken based on their feedback or at least for there to be follow-up in response to shared feedback so that the administration will take in feedback but also share what they're doing in response to that with concrete actions that are visible to families in their daily lives and in their interactions with the schools. Multiple families, students and teachers expressed that those with resources have an easier time accessing collaboration and engaging with the schools in Arlington and that for dual working families, communication and collaboration can be challenging to access. And so with that in mind, they expressed a desire for the schools to work on transparency in messaging and initiatives, share things early and often and as concisely as possible, make communications available in multiple formats and convey necessary information and clear action steps that families need to be taking. And to partner with families as much as possible with two-way communications and opportunities to meet with teachers, meet with administration when they have concerns. So those are, that is a very high level overview of some of the findings that are outlined more comprehensively in the larger report that you all received in your materials. And with that, I will stop sharing and take any questions from the committee. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Any of the members have any questions or comments that I'd like to share with Dr. Holman? Mr. Thielman. Thank you, Dr. Holman. That was very helpful, comprehensive. Thanks for taking all the time to meet with so many different stakeholders in the town. I, you know, the student achievement, the opportunity slide was, brought information that I hadn't seen in a while or maybe I missed. And that was the percentage of students performing mid or above grade level in third, fourth, fifth grade in reading assessments, especially in vocabulary and comprehensive informational texts, comprehensive literature. And I'm kind of wondering where, you know, what you're thinking is and how you're thinking of addressing it because some of the percentage are, I didn't see, I never saw break broken out this way before. Maybe I missed. I may, I will start answering this and I'm going to ask Dr. McNeil if he wants to weigh in because that chart that you're looking at is one that he actually developed and has done some analysis on. And I'm very grateful for that because it was the stuff when it comes to this instructional improvement. What I will say about that particular chart and what it's conveying is that it's conveying two things. One is that there is an area for improvement in the domains of vocabulary and comprehension and informational texts. It's also conveying that there have been significant improvements to phonological awareness, phonics and high-frequency words, which are foundational literacy components that the district has worked on comprehensively over the last several years and has done a lot of really spectacular work around. So it's showing that the work we have done has been really strong and that the domains that are left for us to look at and consider are those around vocabulary and the comprehension of informational texts. And those can be addressed through how the literacy curriculum is organized and what literacy curriculum you are using and how it builds informational texts into what students experience every day alongside narrative texts. And so one of the things that I highlighted in the report was the fact that we're currently working with the curriculum that in these particular domains has been critiqued by various curriculum organizations that do audits and analysis of ELA curriculum resources for schools. So that could be something worth examining further but this analysis also shows the 2020 versus 21 against one another. And that was actually, I think the reason Dr. McNeil did this analysis was to look at how are we doing in fall of 2020 when our students were in a position where they were in hybrid or remote and how are they doing in 21? And so Dr. McNeil, do you have any other pieces to share about what you're noticing in that data? Because he did that from ELA math across grade levels across domains. Yes, thank you. So the data that we use and I already, a lot of that went into how we looked at the various standards that we're gonna focus on for this year. So we can make sure that those standards are highlighted within the units of study. And as Dr. Holman alluded to that, we are actually in the process of having a discussion the other day, looking at our current units of study, looking at what Desi, the various resources, literacy resources that they have recommended and look at the reports and be able to compare and contrast them. And so we're in the process of putting together a task force in order to look at those resources so we can understand exactly where we need to shore up and how it's related to the curriculum choices we have in place right now. Okay, thank you. I mean, it just, it seems like we have a higher percentage of children than I would have thought are below grade level in vocabulary, comprehension, informational text comprehension and literature comprehension. So I thank you very much for pulling that data. I think it's good that we know it. And then obviously the talent in the buildings, the teachers in the building and the leadership of Dr. McNeil and Dr. Holman have to sort of figure out a way to address it. Thank you for that report. Thank you. Is there anyone else at this time? Mr. Cardin and then Ms. Morgan. Thank you and thank you, Dr. Holman for again, meeting with so many groups and doing such a comprehensive entry plan in the middle of a pandemic. So it's quite a great accomplishment. I just had a sort of a question and comment. The safety data was from the family survey. Was that the panorama survey done last spring or was there one in the fall? That was the one that we just did this fall. Just in the fall, okay. So just passing on a comment that I actually just saw on Facebook actually that you presented as 92% being safe but the other way to present it is 8% being at least somewhat unsafe. And I think our other data shows that we probably know the populations that are feeling unsafe. It's minorities, LGBTQ communities. So I do think with our social emotional initiatives that's something to keep an eye on as well. I just wanted to pass that on. Thank you. Agreed, thank you. Ms. Morgan. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. Dr. Holman, can you remind me? I'm like frantically scrolling back in my email and I feel like you told us this in maybe July. What's the timing for phase four? Because I appreciate that this is sort of more of a readout of what you've seen. And obviously, like Mr. Thielman, I'm ready to talk about Lucy Calkins whenever we're ready to talk about her. But I appreciate that. I respect the part of the process that we're in. So what is the timeline for the sort of phase where you're gonna give us some of your recommendations? And I guess I'm asking for that because in my head, I'm reconciling that with where we're at in the budget process. That's a great question. So right now, the next phase of this process, the phase four would be the inclusive strategic planning piece that we've secured a grant from AEF that I've shared with all of you for. Or we did get delayed on our timeline for that compared to the one that we shared with AEF, obviously, on Macron kind of put things on hold for about a month. So we're now in a position where we're about to put the RFP out for that so that we can get a facilitator in who can do the inclusive strategic planning work with members of the community. As part of that, I can share with that group, both this report and what my recommendations would be so that they can use that to frame both their dive into some of these data and their building of some priorities. And then from there, some initiatives that would be part of a comprehensive strategic plan that would be going live in January of 2023. So the next, the big next step is in March for us to get that committee together to get the facilitator in place so that we can begin the convening of that committee in April and have them have set a vision and major priorities before the end of the school year because the goal would be to then write that plan in the fall. Does that help? It does. I mean, I guess the question and again, perhaps it'll be a situation where that plan, maybe goes live in January of 2023, but it's sort of funded in FY24. Yes, but I would also say that, we have not planned the FY23 budget with any of, we've planned the FY23 budget with these findings in mind. These are things that we've, a lot of these things we've discussed at length, Rod or Dr. McHale just referenced that we just had a meeting the other day about the literacy work that needs to happen and some auditing work that needs to happen. And so I would say a lot of the things that we know we need to get working on are things that would be funded as part of the FY23. It's that the specific initiative planning would, yeah, be funded in FY20 as part of the FY24 budget. Great, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Hader. Thank you. Anyone else? Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Homan, for this comprehensive plan and for your quick summary. I just wanted to comment on one. So I especially enjoyed hearing about the recommendations for the communications because I feel that's something that families are, families have been concerned about for a long time and I feel there's already been significant movement towards that just in the time, in the past few months that you have been doing the very directive, very directed, transparent communications. And I look forward to that continuing. One thing that I wonder though is when families say they want to be a partner in education, I feel like I wonder what they mean by that. And I also wonder if everyone means the same thing. And if we're meaning the same thing when we say, because I know I've had one family come to me and say, I do this and I'd be happy to come in and teach my son's kindergarten about it and that just wasn't gonna happen. And so, and to me, I think that's what, she was trying to be a partner. And so I guess, I guess I'm pushing for as this goes forward, I think we need to have clear understanding, partner is too broad. We need to understand what people mean when they say that and communicate that too. So that's all. I can I respond to that. In the context of, so I did probe, people said, what does partnership look like? And I think in the context in which a lot of folks I was speaking to raised this particular area of improvement, it was in the context of a challenging set of interactions that they had with the school or with a particular staff member or in trying to work out an IEP disagreement, for example. And they said, and it wasn't only families with students who have IEPs who shared this, it was also families who have struggled with their child feeling discriminated against based on a classroom interaction or their child feeling bullied by another student. And what they were saying was, we really, when we raise a concern, want to feel as though we have been hard and we want to be part of building a solution together with the school. And we do not wanna be in a position where we feel as though we're told what the solution will be, but as though we've helped in building one out. And so it was more in the context of, it's not so much in the context of bringing new things as or into the schools that don't exist there yet. It was more in the context of when a conflict arises. How do we respond to that? And some families shared really spectacular experiences resolving conflicts with the schools, but there were some sentiments that maybe that was inconsistent or that families didn't always feel as though that happened. That's really helpful, thank you. Ms. Ekston. Thank you. Echoing the thanks for this really detailed and comprehensive report and the amount of time that you've spent gathering all of this information. I just wanna expand a little bit on something that Mr. Cardin said about the safety piece. And I thought about that as I was reading this and in another place in your report, you talk about how students' connections with their teachers and their sense of belonging is a precondition to their academic success. And then we think about who are these 8% that don't feel safe in our schools. And as Mr. Cardin pointed out, we can sort of make some assumptions and some of those numbers were shown to us at the CIA subcommittee meeting on Tuesday. And so, again, I just think about who is that 8% and then we look at the achievement gap and think about there are so many pieces playing into their academic performance, if you will, and making sure that we make sure that they feel safe because that is going to be one of the first steps in making sure that they're making academic progress. So just highlighting that you're bringing all of that together. And so continuing that we're going to think about that. And then the other thing similar to some other people, I was really excited to see the thoughts about the ELA curriculum and looking at how we're going to support the gaps in that. And I was also really pleased to see the progress that's already been made with some of the early grades and the work that has been brought into APS already. Thank you. Mr. Schleckman. Yeah, I want to, excuse me, thank the superintendent for a very comprehensive report as a educator, I've seen a lot of superintendents come and go in my workplace. And I've never seen a report come through that did such a good job of capturing what's happening within the district and presenting the foundation of a vision for how we're going to move forward. So I just find this to be highly commendable and I'm very impressed. Thank you. Ms. Morgan, did I see your hand up again? You sure didn't. Okay. Thank you for confusing. Thank you, Dr. Holman. I really appreciate your work as everyone has said. We all set to move on. Good. For those of you members did not see it, the monthly financial report is being postponed because Mr. Mason is not here at the time. We're now going down to superintendent's report. Again, Dr. Holman, you're gonna have the whole meeting tonight. All right. So I'm going to share my screen again. You should see the current COVID-19 rates and numbers. I do have to apologize. I don't have this week's Arlington data pulled yet. That's usually something I do on Thursday right before our meetings but I didn't get a chance this afternoon. So we do have last week's data for Arlington and I'm guessing that this week's has gone down because the schools have gone down pretty significantly. I will be going and pulling that and updating the dashboard as soon as possible. These rates right now, we have some cases that have come in today that I have not added to the dashboard again but we are seeing a significant decline in rates of COVID-19 in the schools tracking right there with the community and it has been wonderful to have more of our students, more of our staff back in schools this week and to be returning to a little bit more of our routines as usual. I did want to share some revisions that we have done to the APS testing program. These were messaged out to families earlier this week. There are a lot of adjustments that have been made due to a new testing program that was announced by Governor Baker. I believe it was last week. So the changes are listed here and I'm just going to walk through them a little bit and emphasize a couple of things that we really need families to do. We appreciate any help encouraging families to get these steps done and we will be issuing some reminders to families to make sure that we get through these steps as well. Our goal in the new testing program or the revised testing program is to focus on surveillance and response as opposed to focusing as much as we have been on rigorous tracing and testing for close contacts. Part of the reasoning for this is that we have a very, very low number of cases that we actually identify through contact tracing and testing of close contacts. And even in those instances where we do find cases, we're often able to track them outside of the schools. So it's not worth the efforts of our nursing teams. It's not worth the continued efforts of all of our staff to continue to do rigorous contact tracing and test and stay because we're not finding cases that way. COVID-19 including Omicron is not spreading in schools and in controlled environments with high quality ventilation. And so the adjustments include a continuation of weekly pool testing in all schools, which we typically do towards the beginning of the week, a continuation of symptomatic testing in all schools whenever a student is not feeling well if they're presenting with symptoms of COVID-19, we will do a test right then and there, send them home if it's positive. Implementation of new at-home testing once per week for all consented staff and students. This piece is really important. Staff and students need to consent to this new at-home testing program. This consent is separate from the consent for pool testing. We still have your consent for pool testing, but it only applies to pool testing. And so we need families too and staff to re-consent for in order to receive the at-home tests once per week. And what will happen actually is that the tests come in kits of two and staff will receive two tests for two weeks time. So they would take one test the first week and then they would take the next test the next week. And then the following week, students will receive their tests. So every other week, staff will receive two tests. Every other week, students will receive two tests. We're asking the students take those tests and staff on Thursday morning before coming to school because then we will have two touch points for testing during the week. We will have an early week pool test and we will have a later in the week at-home antigen test. Families may also use the at-home antigen test to symptomatic test if they become symptomatic in between the time periods where they're supposed to test and they still have tests available or they can use it for tests to return. And we do have tests that if they have not already arrived on our loading dock are set to arrive in the next couple of days, which are additions to these resources, which we can use to deploy if families need additional access to at-home tests and can't get that access. We will also be continuing surveillance and tracking of cases and monitoring of trends. We're not going to stop paying attention to where COVID is in our schools simply because we're not doing the contact tracing and notification. We always pay attention when we have multiple cases in a room, particularly if we have multiple cases where students are sitting near one another and we continue to keep an eye on those. Sometimes we'll do follow-up pool tests. Sometimes we'll do additional antigen tests just to make sure that we're not seeing instances of school spread. We'll be discontinuing test and stay. This is a stipulation of the state. If you're going to participate in the antigen testing, you must discontinue test and stay. We will be discontinuing centralized tests to return at Arlington High School. This will be replaced by the use of the at-home school distributed eye health tests for tests to return. And positive individuals will need to continue to need to stay home. Negative individuals will be allowed to come back in between days six and 11 or six and 10. We are asking the families to report their test results on a form that is posted to the district website. And we will also be discontinuing contact tracing. So those are all of the changes. There are a lot of changes to keep track of. If you have any questions about the adjustments, please don't hesitate to reach out to your school's administration, to our offices or to the your school nurses office. A couple of additional updates besides just stuff related to testing. The Arlington Public Schools, this is very exciting. We were surprised to learn that we were awarded $350,000 grant from the state, from DESC in a competitive grant related to supporting students' social and emotional learning, behavioral and mental health and wellness through multi-tiered systems of support. This large resource is going to be used to support social and emotional wellness through the course of this year, including some responsive classroom training for teachers who have not yet undergone responsive classroom training. Some additional staff just for the rest of this school year and additional mental health supports that we have proposed as part of the grant. This is to be expended by June of 2022. So these resources are only for this school year and we will be doing our best to make sure they are put to good use. And we certainly have the needs presented. So we're really excited about that. Gibbs and Arlington High School are also to be used as polling locations in the April, September and November elections. Many of these elections are occurring on days when we do not have students in Gibbs and Arlington High School. I know there are space considerations and I've already spoken with the administration at both schools to make sure that we can accommodate that these schools as polling locations for these elections. I'm also looking forward to sending you more information once we can work out all of the details about a potential partnership with Brandeis University to help with that teacher excellence and staff professional development item that we just talked about as part of the entry plan report. We're looking at a teacher leadership graduate program with them and they're considering holding some spots for Arlington teachers and we're working on the details of how to ensure that we can provide the resources for our teachers to participate in this. It's a great program that's not focused on teachers wanting to become administrators but teachers who want to be leaders and be teachers in their schools and partner with administration on important school improvement planning and other initiatives that improve student learning. So we're looking forward to that and as soon as I have more details about it I can share more. We had an Arlington High School Project forum on Tuesday of this past week. It was not hugely attended but there were some attendees there who asked some questions about what traffic would look like, what the move would look like and some excitement and got to look at some pictures of the new building which is coming together nicely and is looking absolutely wonderful inside. So that was a great opportunity for families to learn more and we will be posting the recordings to the Arlington High School Building Project website. I also have an update to your enrollment figures in your packet for this week and wanted to draw your attention to the fact that we are at 6,002 students as of the 25th of this month and that that is an increase of 161 students since October 1st and notably 40 students since the middle of December. This was a bit of a surprise when we pulled the numbers this month. It looks as though we've had a number of students come back to the Arlington Public Schools or enter the Arlington Public Schools or move into the town. We haven't done an analysis to figure out who exactly these 40 students are or the increase of 161 since last year but it is a notable increase. So I wanted to make sure that you were aware of it and that's all I have. Happy to take questions. Does anyone have any questions from the board? Mr. Carden. Thanks and thanks for the update, all the information. So the new protocols that timeline was driven by the state, we kind of rushed it out. We've been getting a lot of questions. I'm sure the principals have as well. Jane answered a bunch of them on Facebook for people. It probably would be helpful to do a follow-up communication next week maybe when there's more time with some of these FAQs. I can pass on some of them but what are we doing with athletes? Are they gonna have to test twice a week? Are we really gonna continue pool testing and antigens seems better at getting symptomatic individuals? Lots of questions about where we're going and what exactly the details, some of the details are. So thanks. It would be helpful if you have some of those FAQs, if we haven't included them on our list of FAQs at the end of the document that outlines it. If you could send those along to our team and then we can figure out a way to make sure we message that out. Any other members at this time? Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Thank you very much for this. I was just wondering about the enrollment. I wanted to be sure, are we tracking decreases in enrollment as well as we are tracking the increases? So it's definitely a net 40 ahead. There's not phantom students who have withdrawn and we don't know about yet. No phantoms, that's net for sure. Awesome, thank you. I was just wondering what the distribution was of this enrollment across the system. Is it all elementary, all high school, spread out? That's sort of my question. Yeah, so I'm gonna share the screen again. One more time, it's kind of hidden at the bottom here and I put it down pretty quickly. But since the 11th of December, 16 of those are at the secondary level. So Gibbs, Audison, AHS, and I think about 12 of them were actually at the high school. So most of them were at the high school. And then 17 of them were at the elementary level. One was an out of district increase and then six of them were pre-K. The magic number for us is the October one count. So if at some point, as we look down the rest of the year, we can compare our enrollment to the October one reported to the state because that's going to be important for us in terms of talking about equity between what has been reported for the calculation of our foundation enrollment and what we're actually experiencing as a platform for what we're going to expect next year. We're 161 students over where we were on October 1st, according to our first report. And the spread, because if they're high school seniors, it's not gonna matter, but if we see the bulges, you understand what I'm saying? Because we're gonna end up with having to deploy resources differently than we were thinking of previously. And to make the argument for funding for next year, it's where are they and how are they gonna fit in? Because if we're absorbing 40 kids into the high school is a different story than if we've got 40 additional kindergarten first graders. I can't share that only one of them was a senior, only one of these 40 since the middle of December was a senior. Okay, you understand where I'm coming from on this. So I don't have to carry on any further conversation. Anyone else? Dr. Ami. Thank you. I'm sorry, Dr. Holman, can you bring your slide back up? I'm confused because it says 10, 30, I'm sorry, 10, 120, is that? 20, oh, sorry, no, that's me, 2021. Okay, okay, I thought it was 20 and I think Mr. Schluckman did too. So that's why we were thrown. Okay, that's all, thank you. Dr. Holman, I have one quick question. The polling, is it gonna be in the new high school or the old high school? The old high school in the gym or a gym? Thank you. Any other questions this time? Okay, thank you, Dr. Holman. We're going down to Ed Coe, Lee Settlement. You all had a copy of the document. That document represents almost a year of negotiation with between Ed Coe and the company that owned the building. The lease had several years still on it and so the negotiation ended up with the figure at the top of the page and then reduced and Arlington's assessment. I will attempt to answer any questions while you're trying to have the vote to approve this amount of money. That's it, Dr. Ampe. So this is a fairly significant reduction in what we were potentially expecting, correct? Yes, if you look up at the top, the actual settlement was for 2.1 million dollars. There was a sweep account money offset. They've applied 750,000 to that and other members coming in and finding all the money into the settlement. It is considerable. Considerable reduction is one of them. Yes, thank you, I'm sorry. Considerable reduction from what we were expecting. Yeah, okay. No, thank you very much for all you've done with it. Mr. Hanner. Yes. So you're looking for a motion to approve the school committee's acceptance of the lease settlement. Is that what we need to do tonight? Yes, what we're gonna be doing when the discussion is over. Yes, our proportion of it, the 90,000 plus. I was just gonna put a motion on the table, but if you know, I can wait. Just a moment, I wanna get everyone a chance to, I miss Exton. You may have just answered my question, but so the prepaid amount applied to the lease has already been applied. And so our assessment is the 90,000. Yes, yes. Okay. Anybody else? I will entertain a motion at this time for the Allington School Committee to pay their assessment of $90,714.10. So moved. Is there a second? There is a second. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call vote. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Dr. Rampey. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes, unanimous vote. Thank you very much, everyone. I will keep you appraised on any further developments on the edco dissolution going forward. We are now at the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine. It will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 22161 in the amount of $566,161.11. Regular school committee minutes meeting minutes, January 13th, 2022. Is there a motion? Move. Is there a second? Yes, there's a second. Thank you. We'll call vote. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Ms. Dr. Rampey. I'm staying. Dr. Morgan, I mean Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes, unanimous. Set committee and liaison reports. Project Dr. Rampey. Nothing, just a moment. Okay, I'm gonna have to talk really quickly because I have to go pick up a daughter from a meet. Just, I'm sorry, I, there. Okay, we don't, I don't have anything to report for budget itself, but I, since I wasn't able to be at last week's meeting, I mean the meeting a couple of weeks ago, I just wanted to mention what my priority for the budget was. I concur with a lot of the ones I heard you folks mention, but the one additional thing I wanted to say is actually my highest priority for FY23, which is ensuring that our in-district special education services are appropriately resourced to the level and breadth of our students need, including staffing and equipment. And I don't know how to check if there is a mismatch, but I just, I hope that we are looking at that. And Ms. Olmer that you are advocating as strongly as possible for whatever needs you feel are not, it could be filled better. I'm not trying to say we're not doing anything right, but anyway, that's, so that is my priority. And then in terms of budget, we, I expect we'll be meeting in the next couple of weeks, but don't have anything scheduled yet. Thank you. Community relations, Ms. Extin. Thank you. We have another school committee chat on Saturday during the snowstorm on January 29th at 11 a.m. Mr. Heiner and Mr. Cardin will be hosting and we especially invite families of color to join us and hopefully the power works so that this can happen. Thanks. Thank you. Do you want me to report on the chat we had on Tuesday? When I did that, when I did that now. So Mr. Thielman and I had a weekday chat on Tuesday. Ms. Extin and our committee had scheduled that to give an alternative to parents who might not be able to make it on a Saturday. So we did have two parents attend and both did say that the weekday was easier because they didn't have the kids around. They both expressed questions about the heterogeneous initiatives and wanting more information about what the next steps would be, when there would be opportunity for parental input and things like that. Jeff, was there anything else that you noticed? That was the topic, that's what they wanted to talk about was the process for making decisions about heterogeneous groupings at the high school, yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Curriculum Instruction Assessment and Accountability, Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So we did address heterogeneous grouping initiative at the CIA meeting. I don't know that we have a definite plan on when there will be parental input, but that was part of the feedback that some of the committee members gave to the administration was that there should be more communication about what the next steps would be and when that would happen. There is a document on Novus, if people are interested, the links aren't available. The links aren't, there are links to other materials within that document that aren't working, that we'll have to figure out a way to post. But Dr. Janger did present about the work of the study group, they've met four times and they are doing a literature review meeting with the different, the next step is to meet with the different departments that are involved. And so there's more work going on. And again, the committee gave some feedback about different ways the process might continue. We also received a report on the Panorama Survey, some interesting, they do a sort of a heat map of areas where different subgroups are noted, notably off from the average. So again, there's some interesting material there for people who weren't able to attend. Thank you. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy and procedure, Mr. Schleckman. In our email today, we received a copy of the memo that Doug Hyme, our town council sent to the select board pertaining to Shirtliffe versus the city of Boston. As you're aware, when we rewrote our banner policy, we had the town council work with us to write the policy so it conforms to the current thinking regarding issues of government speech and ensuring that we can maintain control over our facilities. If there is a Supreme Court decision that does not align to our present policy, we'll need to come back and look at it. But at this point, our policy is aligned to the current legal thinking at the time. So be aware, watch for that and we'll see what the Supreme Court does. Thank you. Allington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. Yeah, so we had an excellent, Dr. Homan alluded to this, we had an excellent, or mentioned this, we had an excellent forum the other night and Dr. Homan and I and a member of our committee had a chance to tour the facility last week, I guess it was maybe two weeks ago now. And it's really, it's spectacular. I mean, it's really just, I think when we get the chance to walk through it together or apart or we do that, I think people are just gonna be blown away by how beautiful it is. So it's on time, it's on budget. Our next meeting of the building committee is Tuesday, February 1st at 6 p.m. on Zoom. And if you wanna tune in and get an update on where we're at, we hope you join us. Thank you. Any liaison reports at this time? Any announcements? I have one announcement, the Rotary Club of Allington, a week from Saturday on February 5th, we'll be doing a polar dunk raising money for polio. And the chairman of this committee may not be in the next meeting because I'm gonna be part of that polar dunk. Anyway, moving on. Are there any future agenda items? Seeing none. The school committee will be entering executive session and will not be returning to open session. We will be entering executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and our non-union personnel, or contract negotiation with union and non-union, which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which you've held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. We'll call vote. This next one. We need to make a motion. I have, thank you. I will entertain a motion to enter executive session. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Thank you. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Dr. Ampey, Mr. Thillman. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. I will yes, too. Thank you. Mr. Segment. I vote in the affirmative. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Hanna says yes. We're moving into executive session. Thank you, everyone.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel. My name is Jack the Bustler. I, Shinobi, today we are back with some more One Piece in the last two. We got a big info dump in terms of Gold Roger and also we got, I mean, I guess an info dump on Zoro's new blades. We'll have to go back and watch again. There was a lot of information. We got to see a more in-depth look into Gold Roger's execution. And now it seems like we're going to have a big standoff between Luffy, Buggy, everyone this episode. Hopefully we'll learn a little bit more about Smoker as well. He's kind of intriguing. This guy's perspective and like, I guess his, his perception of who Gold Roger was and how he sort of looked up to him even as a Navy member or I guess officer in that sense. We're going to hop right into it. If you need a channel drop us up. Hit that big bell so you don't miss any future episodes. So without like on this one, let's just hop right into it. Pretty far back actually. See how long the recap gets. This is actually really far back. Oh, okay. That's actually it. I mean, I'm genuinely, oh, this is whenever he was already launched and running back. It makes sense. He must be dealt with at once walking to see. He's like, bro, I met him. Oh shoot. Did he just call this man, daddy? Is this still Pete and the police who are Riley brothers? Oh, did he like a bounty hunter? And his name is daddy. Come on, man. It looks like a cowboy. Gifted snipers? Whoa. That's sick. Oh. You have Carol. Okay. So Carol's his daughter. That was a little bit of info. Daddy Masterson. His name is actually daddy. He used to be a sniper for the Navy. What happened? Oh, maybe cause he has a daughter. Does he say daughter? I already forgot her name if I'm being honest. Carol. Carol. Sounded like Spongebob walking. I think that's sound effect. Oh, he lost them. I'm guessing that's why it was Buggies, man. Dude, now we have a new player, daddy, in the entire picture of everything. Oh, shoot. We're about to see him pop up. He's a sniper though. What would he do close range? They're about to see a show. Sell our buddies. See how this man works. Oh. Oh, he's got that quick draw, baby. I like his, his like mutton chops and all that. Bye. He is cool. I like him. Yeah. Oh, Zoro knows him. Daddy, the parent. What is his title? Hey, there's Usopp. What, he's got a kunai back there? Top class sniper, dude. I didn't really thought of Usopp as a sniper, but I guess he has his slingshot. Yeah. Oh, my. Those are high end. Those got to be expensive. He's gonna get robbed. He left all his stuff outside. Latest model. Does he have any money left? How did he not spend it all? Oh, who is this? Bro, his teeth. Oh, she's so small. Oh, how rude. Oh, she seems spoiled. She seems hella spoiled. Don't you dare disrespect Usopp. Oh, my. Wait, maybe this is Carol? Oh, friends with a Navy captain. Maybe this is Daddy's kid? This episode has thrown a lot of names and whatnot at us very quickly. 300. OK, dude, she doesn't buy it. Why are you saying this? Wait, isn't it Luffy? Oh, no, Luffy has the bounty, but he's in the picture. It is his kid. He probably overheard the whole thing. Oh, he's going to cry. Oh, that's a sweet spot. That's sweet. Oh, no, he also just screamed out about a bounty. Oh, God, dude, that is that is bloodlust. She's going to tell him about the bounty. Oh, he's going to be like, I don't see you. Those are nothing compared to Luffy's. He sees him. He sees him in the picture. He's going to see him. The thing he's been bragging about this whole time, how he was in the poster, it comes back to bite him. Oh, no, you can't know. You got a kid, right? Yeah, bro, she's standing right there. I'll find him. Oh, true. They seem strong. I don't know about stronger than Luffy. Oh, daddy, the parent. Oh, that's his. This is everything. Carol's is everything. OK, you got it all wrong, Usopp. Oh, no, he's going to overplay his hand. Also, that's not really his style, it seems. That seems like a little too technological. It's not technology, but it doesn't fit his style still. Oh, no. Bro, give him a gun. Usopp is going. I made this strapped. Oh, even Usopp knows of him. Oh, my God, dude, how do you even manage that many guns? Well, our boy better draw faster or he could just run. I don't know. He needs to learn his lesson eventually. Oh, there's Nami. Bro, the whole town's hearing about it. Greatest gunslinger. Oh, shoot. I like how we've already found this insane swordsman and now gunslinger. She knows. She knows exactly how he could have gotten himself into this situation, too. Sometimes Usopp, sometimes. Oh, man, save me. I don't know how it happened. The little girl just standing there. Well, it was nice knowing Usopp for the time. There's just no outcome to this. Usopp does not win. I'm sorry. You better figure something out, buddy. Duck or something, I don't know. Either that or daddy just feels bad for Usopp. I hate it.  I hate it. He could probably shoot through the... Oh, he definitely knew what he was shooting to. Oh, this is even more awkward now.  He saved himself, but he killed his ego. Counteractive to what he happened in the whole thing with the fish man. A man's on his hands and knees. Maybe not. Oh, my Usopp. Even Nami's like, why did I? Why did I get in the way? Shameless. Oh, he heard that. He was like, no, sorry. Oh, dang. OK, there you go. Wait, Usopp's dad. He knows. Yeah, he recognized the name. And we don't know enough about him. Saved? Did he know Yasuo? Were they enemies? Were they friends? Oh, no, is he dead? Oh, no. Or have they dueled? Maybe he, like, lost to him. Insign was his name before. Now it's daddy because he's a dad. Dude, Usopp's dad looks so badass. There's Shanks crew. He hit his arm. He lost to him. Oh, my gosh. Probably one of the only people he's lost to. But he let him live. He probably has like insane respect for Yasopp. So inherently he's going to for Usopp. Oh, man. Now his reason to live is his daughter. Oh, he already had his daughter at this point. Yep. Oh, so he was daddy. OK. So he was a part of Shanks crew. I don't understand. We would have seen him, but he's got to be dead, right? It's like this is the moment that made him quit the Navy, like near death. But I was about being a pirate. Wow. And it cut deep because he actually lost. He probably never lost.  Dang, dude. Dude, Yasopp is so badass. He actually beat him. Yeah. Yeah, for real. Mm-hmm. Usopp's like mad. Maybe sad. Maybe sad that he wasn't able to stand up to and fight daddy. He seems like a genuine guy. He just cares about his daughter and Yasopp changed him. Yeah, that's why he's crying. He can't leave or let the name down. He won't either. He will and he won't kill him. And if he wins, he's going to let him live because there's no way that Usopp beats him. I'm sorry. I don't know if I should have more faith in him or what. Either that or maybe it'll get like... Oh, okay. They're not actually like dueling. They're going to have like a aiming competition.  Oh my gosh, please don't miss Usopp. He's got this. He has... He's shown that he has good aim, even from far distances. Like it's going to turn sideways and it's going to miss because of that. Yeah, he can have a good shot if he's not too nervous. Maybe Carol will step in. There it is. That's the shot. His life literally flashing before his eyes. It's delayed. It's just delayed. Yeah, she is going to step in. What? Oh my gosh. He's cracked. Let's go. He's got a disappointment. That's so sweet. And so, Yesopp probably is still alive. Like I said, wouldn't he be with Shanks Crutham? I don't know. That goes too. And the respect of Carol. That is a cool guy. I like him. Bro, that is so wholesome. She was so spoiled and had no manners in the beginning, but she seems so sweet. That is so fricking sweet, dude. My gosh, what has Sanji been up to aside from... There's... Is everybody getting back story? That was a packed episode. That felt like a lot. We got so much like rich history with Yesopp. I mean, we already had a general idea of who he was, just like a pirate in general. But now we know he held the respect of this guy, Daddy the parent, who is supposedly one of the best snipers in the land, maybe even the world. And I'm glad Yesopp was actually able to live up to his name. And I said Carol would step in. I actually expected her to. But he didn't let us down. He does have a good shot. I said he's shown that he has a good shot. And now I guess we're being teased that Sanji is going to get some fat back story. I don't know. Let's get an episode 51.  Oh, oh, okay. We've not seen her before. Oh, thank you. What? Harman, the number one cook? Bro, what is happening? First apprentice Leo? Why his face like a Minecraft character? Jose, what is it? What is this dude?  But I guess Sanji has been approached by the number one cook in East Blue. This is just so out of nowhere. I'm not shocked that that's the first thing he says. I like that she's heard of him. Harman. No, not Milady. I like how she uses a frying pan though. Bro, she's been looking for him for 10 years? Yeah. Did the other guy's nostrils are throwing me off?  It's like her own personal bounties. Now she's here to challenge him. I'm surprised he's never heard of... Wait, has he? He said Karman, but she had already said her name. Oh man. That was delicious looking meals. Oh, well Sanji's built different, so. Oh, is he like the last? Oh, he was in the paper? Oh, did she challenge Zeph? Oh, word, word of mouth. Dude, Patty Incarnate. Good times. I miss those guys. And she found him here out of anywhere. What? Okay, dude. That's quite an exaggeration. 10 days to 10 years? There's a cooking championship? Darn, I really thought Buggy was gonna find Luffy this episode, this is quite the detour. Oh, that's how she makes her exit. What is happening? Oh, she's... Okay, she's just cracked out of her mind. And it's also a woman that is an insane cook. It's a perfect match. Oh, he's not going. Okay, this is Buggy's crew, right? Panda, in the background, I saw him. I will never miss another again. They actually lost him, dude.  Yeah, I guess because there's so much Navy here. Yeah. Luffy just kind of walks about. He doesn't care. Smoker seems like quite the opponent. He's right there! Dog! How blind is Buggy? Wait, Luffy's gonna say he doesn't have any money either. Oh, the swallow sound. They're both slamming their tables.  It's perfect. Beautiful, free money from the sky. Oh my gosh, there's just no way. Dog, Buggy, look up! I don't even want him to find Luffy in them, but it's just frustrating at this point. Oh my, you can't be serious. You can't be serious. I can ask the same about you, Buggy, honestly. I can't, dude. They're so dumb. They don't deserve to find them at this point. Oh shoot, is the cooking competition starting? That's a lot of fish. A lot to work with, too. Does he just get ingredients to use? Fresh as fresh can get. Why does the fish look like that? Like, it looks like a human. This dude is enormous. Oh, West Blue. They caught this morning, too. You must be new here. Have you heard of the all blue, sir? Crossing ocean currents. All blue is out there. Got a big one? This guy is so nice. The back of his hair looks like a fish, too. Oh, what in the world? Oh, elephant bluefin tuna? It has like tusks. It's like, I don't believe you. Is that like a super rare fish? I'm guessing. Oh, he read about it. Dude, he's starting to actually get to experience the world. That's what he left the restaurant for. Gem of the ocean? Oh, man. It's from South Blue. Oh, that's when that began. Oh, so the only one that really took it seriously was Zeph, probably. The others just kind of saw it as a joke. Yeah, it's like a big stepping stone to him finding the all blue. It was like seeing these insanely rare fish do exist. Like it could have possibly come from the all blue, maybe. Oh my gosh, that has to be so much money. There is no way you have enough. That's a rare fish, bro. A prize for the competition. Oh, no, he's definitely doing it. Are you kidding me? Like, can he just use the ingredients here, though? What is this guy's eyebrows? Yeah, he's definitely participating now. Oh, it's game time now. What's her name? Won't be disappointed. What did he realize? That it's the same cooking competition? I'm honestly surprised. I guess he doesn't have a lot of pride in becoming the number one chef. He just wants to experience the world and find the all blue. This is so cute. Dude, that thing is enormous. Wait, that looks way bigger now. It's a bracket! Nami's still carrying all her stuff around. Oh, man. Dude, Sanji ain't even nervous, bro. He's just chilling. I don't like those two. They're creepy, man. Carmen, that was her name. Oh, gosh. Oh, Sanji. Sanji plays so cool guy, but women just ruin him. They just completely obliterate him. You're embarrassing me. He always says Nami. Dude, Usa's goggles look so cool. Aw. Bro, my man Sam is off one. He is off one. Well, can I be a judge? That's gotta be so good. Shoot the lead. He's just broccoli, bro. Nah, he just wants that fish, bro. He just wants the opportunity to cook it, I see. That's a dream for a good chef. He's gonna like time lapse. I'm guessing it's gonna time lapse the whole competition until it's just Sanji versus Carmen. Yeah. Oh, wouldn't be shocked. They can't focus on these randos. You already know the two best people here. Yeah, there it is. My man. Dance and cooking skills. Oh my gosh. Hi. All right, here it goes. What is he gonna make? So dramatic, dude. I mean, she's got the skills, obviously. She wants to be number one. Oh, they're just to distract. God, dude, watching Sanji cook is like watching Gordon Ramsay at work, baby. They're like his fan club. Oh my gosh, it's beautiful. It's like a dance. I mean, she literally dances, but cooking is like a dance. It's an art. He's living it through Zef's stream. He's monologuing and she's dancing in the background. Okay, I need a kind of a general idea of this. And then grand line is just straight up a line, okay. Red line is vertical. Oh, being mixed in together. I see. I probably should have gotten that from context clues, but it is what it is. Yeah, that makes sense. South and West together. It's so adorable. Zef would be so proud. Oh, look how it keeps going back and forth between everybody's dream and their motivation and everything. It's not taking like big gaps in between each. We touched on Usob last episode, Zoro's new blades. It balances out really well. God dang, dude, he's so slick with it. Come on, Sanji. They're fighting for different things. God, hers looks good too. The crowd is so high, bro. I feel like it's gonna be neck and neck. Oh, he won for losing. It's crushed her. Wait, it actually was 10 years? Oh my gosh. He is, maybe. He doesn't even have to announce it. Hey, chill, brother. Oh, I just kicked him. Hell yeah, I can't respect for her. Putting her ego aside, respecting Sanji's skill. I can't believe it actually has been 10 years. That's crazy. He won the fish.  God dang, dude, it is enormous.  He's already planning it all out. We gotta get back to the whole Luffy plot. I don't know if nothing happens to the fish, and they're actually able to get it back on the ship. No! It's either Smoker or Buggy's crew. Oh no, someone's gonna catch it. Oh no, they're splitting up too. Okay, he got it. I'm like as worried about his hat as he is. Now probably not as much, honestly. It led him back to where he wanted to go. Uh-oh. It's going down. It is going down, actually. His crew. I don't know what to be more afraid of. I mean, Smoker's a really strong guy, obviously, but Buggy has this entire crew and her, which we don't know anything about yet. He's about to see them all rolling up. So optimistic about it. He's like, he died here. I liked these two episodes. It wasn't at all what I was expecting. I mean, obviously I was expecting the entire showdown between Bluefee and all of them. These two, we actually got a lot of focus on both Usopp's backstory with his dad and Sanji kind of bringing that dream back up, not letting us forget what's driving him, what's motivating him. And it did both of them in their own singular episodes and just like that's it. It felt like kind of fluid in a way. And I hope this show kind of maintains that sort of pace in terms of not letting us forget what all of them are fighting for.  But still, it just needs to keep a sort of tab on those sorts of things so it doesn't lose all the passion behind it. But guys, that has been it for episodes 50 and 51 of our One Piece Watcher. I hope you did enjoy. Be sure to drop us up on the channel if you're new. Again, we're gonna be posting one piece. I usually do it like two to three days a week on the channel, two episodes per video most of the time. But with that being said, I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day. As per usual, I'm gonna catch you in the next one. This face.


And we are now recording and welcome to today's CPD webinar session and I'm just handing over to you, Alexander. All right, thanks very much Debbie. So, first of all, apologies for any background noise you may hear. There is builders outside my building and replacing the cladding. So you may hear the occasional drilling or shouting. So I hope this is not, I hope it's not too much noise. So, I'm Alexander Mikroyanidis. I work at the Open University in the UK. And my specialty, my expertise is in technology enhanced learning. I've been working for more than 10 years on different European and nationally funded projects that have to do with different aspects of enhancing learning through technology. And specifically with specific focus on personalized learning, on lifelong learning, on open education and open educational resources. And more recently I've also been working on blockchain technologies and their applications in education. So within this webinar we'll see, I'll talk about a specific project that I'm currently working on, which is called Quality Chain. This is a European funded Horizon 2020 project. And within this project we are looking at different ways of using blockchains in education and employment. And my involvement in the project has to do with lifelong learning and specifically facilitating lifelong learning through the use of blockchain technology. Right, let's go to the next slide. So what is the general motivation behind this work? It is a fact that the education model today is quite centralized. Education is controlled mainly by educational institutions that provide certification mechanisms that provide quality assurance. But this is not sustainable in the sense that a lot of learning increasingly happens outside the brick and mortar lecture halls. It happens within communities of like-minded individuals or by contributing to projects and initiatives in the real world. Learning is also far more international than it used to be. There is the need for students, for example, to travel to different countries to improve their employability prospects. And this causes different problems when it comes to recognizing learning achievements across borders. And also in our society we live in a networked, digitally empowered world. Especially this is quite obvious, especially these days during the pandemic and the post-pandemic era. Where the achievements, knowledge and skills are not... The education providers do not have the remit or the means and capacity to cover all the wide range of activities that the learners engage with, which attest to these achievements and skills. Right, so this is our vision towards a more decentralized education model. Where the awarding and validation of qualifications does not occur exclusively under the management of an education institution or an employer. But the ownership of the learning experience and its outcomes is transferred to individual students, teachers and peers, at the same time without compromising on the safety, security and accessibility. A few words about what is blockchain. This is quite well known in the context of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin. But blockchain is a lot more than that. It is a cryptographically secure, shared and distributed ledger. Within this ledger each block aggregates a time-stamped batch of transactions and is identified by a cryptographic signature. All these blocks are buck linked so that the chain can be traced all the way back to the very first block created. And in a nutshell, this ledger, the blockchain, contains an uneditable record of all transactions. So this is essentially what the blockchain offers us is an immutable and instantly verifiable ledger, which is not controlled by a central authority but is equally distributed and shared among the different nodes of the network. Right, so a few words about the QualiChain project. As I mentioned, this is Horizon 2020, a European-funded project. It started two years ago. We are currently in the third and final year. We have 10 partners, both educational institutions and also public agencies in countries like Greece and Portugal, where we are investigating how decentralization and how blockchain technology can help with different aspects of employment and recruitment in the public sector. So the project objectives are generally the creation, piloting and evaluation of decentralized solutions for storing, sharing and verifying educational employment qualifications. Within the project, we are assessing the different kinds of impact, technical, political, socio-economic, legal and cultural that these decentralized solutions can have on education and also on employability. So within the project, we are targeting four key areas. The first one is lifelong learning. The second one is smart curriculum design. The third one is public sector staffing. And the fourth and final one is human resources consultancy and competency management services. Within these four key areas, we are conducting pilots, which I will present right now. So the first pilot has to do with university process optimization through smart curriculum design. This is led by the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. And this pilot aims to optimize the university operation and curriculum design, as well as facilitate the validation and verification of skills and qualifications of both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The goals of this pilot are first of all to provide analytics and recommendations so that the curriculum of a higher institution in this case, the NTUA, can be redesigned and updated based on the skills gaps identified in the job market and also based on the feedback from students and staff. And the second goal of this pilot is the student accreditation and also lecturer validation and recognition through a trusted, immutable and secure blockchain ledger. So within this pilot, we are building an ecosystem where students are being awarded with blockchain badges, which are immutable and secure. And at the same time, they are also providing their feedback and recognition to their educators, to the lecturers through blockchain badges. The second pilot has to do with staffing the public sector and we are looking at a case study in Greece. This pilot is conducted by the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection, a CEP, which is the main authority in Greece for ensuring the transparent and quality assured recruitment of public servants. And this is done in collaboration, this pilot is conducted in collaboration with the Hellenic Parliament. So this pilot has the following objectives to provide personalized candidate notifications for job vacancies by matching individual profiles with available jobs in the civil service, to validate academic and professional qualifications of individual candidates, and finally to improve the efficiency of the recruitment process in terms of time and credibility. The third pilot of QualiChain has to do with again staffing the public sector, but this time in Portugal. So this pilot is leveraging QualiChain in order to staff the Portuguese public sector. And at the core of this approach, we have the Phoenix EDU system, which is used in Portugal very widely by universities that want to provide a digital alternative for certification to their graduates. So this is a platform, Phoenix EDU is an academic management platform that supports full program and course management and includes the issuing of certificates or diplomas to graduates in Portugal. So this integration of the Phoenix EDU system with QualiChain allows the diplomas issued by Phoenix EDU to be automatically inserted into our blockchain, the QualiChain blockchain, so that the Portuguese public administration can have access to all certificates issued by Portuguese universities and in order to ensure the authenticity and integrity of these diplomas. Right, the next pilot has to do with recruitment and competency management services. This is again a case study in Portugal and specifically in the region of Madeira, where we are targeting the, we have partnered with a government agency that is responsible for health personnel administration in this Portuguese region. So the main goals of this pilot are the support of the implementation and coordination of human resources management policies in the health sector, speeding up the recruitment process by validating the CVs of applicants, facilitating the selection and mobility process using semantic matching methods in order to pair job opportunities with the best candidates, and finally to perform identification of gaps in the skills of employees and suggest training for skill development. Finally, the last pilot which I am leading on behalf of the Open University has to do with lifelong learning and how blockchain technologies can support lifelong learners in their learning journey and also in advancing their career. The objectives of this pilot are the award of lifelong learners with transparent and immutable educational accreditation. And on top of that, we want to offer lifelong learners with personalized recommendations so that we support them in reaching their personal or professional learning goals. The stakeholders of this pilot are mainly lifelong learners. These are learners that pursue learning throughout their lifetime for either personal or professional reasons. And also educational institutions. These are institutions that provide education or training services either paid ones or free. This is the main use case we are looking into within this pilot. So we have the lifelong learner who studies online courses. These can be paid or free courses such as open educational resources and MOOCs. And at the same time, the educational institution is offering these courses and is also offering smart budgets. These are blockchain-based budgets as a recognition of the learning achievements of the lifelong learners. So the lifelong learner has a personal e-portfolio which is based on the blockchain and this portfolio contains their smart budgets. These budgets are immutable and instantly verifiable accreditation. And they also contain the key skills that the learner has acquired. So on top of that, we can provide by using this information from the smart budgets, we can offer personalized recommendations about jobs that match the skills that the lifelong learner has already acquired or courses that will help the learner acquire additional skills in order to progress their career or reach a personal learning goal. So in the next slide, you can see a mock-up screen of the job recommendations that we offer within this pilot. On the top half of the screen, you can see a map view of job recommendations. These are jobs that are recommended to the learner and are a full match to the skills of the learner. And on the bottom half of the screen, you can see job recommendations for job openings that are partial, that the skills required are a partial match to the skills that the lifelong learner has already acquired. So for these job recommendations, the learner can be offered course recommendations. These are courses that will offer to the lifelong learner the missing skills, the skills that are required to progress their career towards the job of their preference. So within the past two years, I have been engaging the community around lifelong learners, around lifelong learning, and I have been eliciting requirements from groups of learners, of educators, of researchers and practitioners within major educational technology conferences. So in the next slide, I will show you some of these, some of the findings that have emerged from this consultation exercise. First of all, these are four major themes that have emerged and reflect the major challenges associated today with lifelong learning. So the first theme has to do with immutable formal and informal qualifications. So this theme has to do with the aggregation of both formal and informal qualifications that can be easily validated by employers and also educational institutions. The second theme that has emerged has to do with lifelong learning pathways and micro-credentials. Specifically with the need that learners should receive guidance in building lifelong learning pathways and acquiring micro-credentials in order to achieve their learning goals. This is quite important, especially in the current situation where we are moving in a post-COVID area, in a post-pandemic era, but the job market is still quite fluid and there needs to be flexibility in upskilling or reskilling of lifelong learners and job seekers. And this is what micro-credentials offer and we are looking into specifically how to offer this flexible accreditation in a decentralized way using blockchain technology. The third theme has to do with career counseling. Again, this is quite crucial regarding the job market crisis and the fluidity of the skills required and the current trends in the job market. Job seekers should be provided with a comprehensive overview of the job market and the latest market trends so that they can adjust, they can plan accordingly their lifelong learning journey and seek the appropriate learning opportunities to acquire the necessary skills. Finally, a major theme that emerged has to do with data ownership and privacy. This is quite important. It is a need for learners and job seekers to own their digital identity and their e-portfolio data and to be able to control third-party access to this data, who can access it, for how long and in what ways. So these are the major themes we have identified within this pilot and we are working towards implementing, towards addressing these requirements and implementing them within the tools and within the platform offered by the Quality Chain project. The next steps of this work, as I mentioned, we are currently in the process of launching an online platform which addresses the requirements that I mentioned before, not only specifically about lifelong learning but also regarding the other pilots of the project that I mentioned earlier. For example, public sector recruitment, competency management services and the next step will be to pilot this platform, engage stakeholders through dedicated workshops and also through other opportunities and online channels, for example, open online courses and webinars. Finally, we want to collate and publish all the lessons learned and best practices that we have acquired from the development for this. I hope it doesn't happen again. So finally, we want to publish and share with the community, the lessons learned and best practices that we have acquired from this project and from engaging stakeholders and piloting the Quality Chain decentralized platform. So one last thing I would like to mention is that we are organizing a special issue on blockchain-based decentralized solutions for learning empowerment, education, re-engineering and public sector transformation. This will be published in the new Elsevier Journal, Blockchain Research and Applications. So the call is already open and it will be open until February of next year and it will contain not only work related to Quality Chain, not only work conducted within Quality Chain but also external work. So if you are interested, if you are working on this area, please get in touch with me. I am the leading guest editor for this special issue. If you would like to get more information about this initiative. Thanks very much everyone for your attention. You can see on this slide the main ways to follow this work on the project website and also on our social media. And now I will be happy to take any questions. Thanks very much for that, Alexander. That's really interesting.  It's unfortunate timing really because it depends on the part of the building they are working on. They are not always outside my window but they have chosen this moment to come right outside my window to do their work. So again I am really sorry about that. I hope it wasn't too distracting throughout the presentation. Oh bless, it was already a little bit. No problem. So thanks very much. Does anybody have any kind of questions or maybe just some kind of comments that perhaps we could just have a discussion to see if there is anything further you want to know? If you haven't got your mic you can pop something in the chat as well and we can pick it up that way. Or are we just sort of having a think about it at the moment? I can't see anything in the chat. It doesn't look like we have any questions at the moment. I suppose yeah, if something... I'll be available to answer any questions offline as well if someone wants to get in touch. As I said, yeah, this is an ongoing project so I'll be happy to receive any feedback and please do get in touch or stay in touch with the project if you'd like to learn more about our activities. We are doing several workshops within ALT conferences. I did a workshop last month at the OER Educational Conference and I'll be doing several sessions in some other conferences later this year. I hope there will be an opportunity to do another workshop at the ALT conference in September. So hopefully I will have a chance to talk to ALT members again in some future events. But do get in touch if you'd like to learn more about this work. I can already see a question in the chat from Santel. Do you think many more institutions will get on board with blockchain for learning and education? It's still early days. So there are several research initiatives happening across Europe mostly at an experimental piloting scale. So I'm already aware of a few cases that institutions have actually deployed these technologies in real life with their students. For example, the University of Nicosia in Cyprus have already been awarding blockchain-based certificates for quite some time now. At the Open University we have been part of a national project, the Institute of Coding, where we have been awarding blockchain-based certificates to our students and also to the students from other universities, from other UK universities that have been part of the project, like the University of Bath. But again, I must say that this is quite an emerging topic. So there are not a lot of cases where there is a real deployment with large accreditation in higher education. I think we are still at the level where we are building the infrastructure and we are conducting experiments with different use cases and different scenarios. But these paradigms, these technologies do hold a lot of potential, so I do expect to see much more uptake in the coming years. I can see another question from Caroline regarding the scope for more micro-cudentials to be provided by educational institutes to meet the missing skills identified by the system. So, as I mentioned, yes, the micro-cudentials and general flexible accreditation towards reskilling or upskilling is one of our major goals. And we want to, within Quality Chain and beyond Quality Chain, we want to help lifelong learners in this respect. This is also part of the mission of the Open University to give new opportunities to mature learners, to give a second chance to someone who wants to change their career path or improve their careers. And so this is also a goal that we have not as a Quality Chain project but also as the Open University. And you may be aware that we have already launched a micro-cudentials program together with the future Learn MOOC platform. Right. I hope these have answered your questions for example, and Caroline, if you'd like to add something, please type in the chat or you can unmute your microphones. Are there any other questions or generally any comments you would like to bring up? I hope they're quiet. That's typical. There's some great questions in there for everybody for posting those on there. Did you say you were going to let us have a copy of the slides, Alex? Yes, I'll be happy to send you the slides afterwards. Yeah, that'd be great. Send them to me and then I can ask Christina to get them out when she sends the recording to everybody then. All right, great. Awesome. Well, thank you ever so much. And if there aren't any more questions or comments, then I think we'll call that done. But thank you very much. Thank you, it's really interesting. And thanks everybody for your comments and lovely feedback there for Alex in the chat for a very interesting and must be watched anywhere this, I think. Lovely. All right. Well, thank you very much. Oh, there's one more comment on there from Jacqueline. Did you see that there, Alice? Yes, I can... The question has to do with blockchain-based digital credential system that the Institute of Banking in Ireland have introduced in collaboration with the University of College Dublin and Deloitte. So I'm not aware of this initiative but I'd be happy to learn more. So please, Jacqueline, please get in touch. Both as the Open University and as Quality Chain, we are open to collaborations. You can see on our website that we are on the Quality Chain website that we have launched partnerships with some projects and some European initiative. So I'll be happy to get in touch with the people behind this initiative that you mentioned, Jacqueline. Thanks very much. Lovely. Oh, that's great. Really, really helpful. Lovely. OK then. Well, if we're all done, we'll close this down a little bit early and you go and get to have some lunch. Great. Thanks so much for coming along and thanks for giving up your time today to do this. Thanks everyone. It's been great. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye. Jacqueline, I'll make sure we put it in the email for you when it goes out. So thanks ever so much for that. Take care, everyone. Bye now.