expect yet, but I'm going to go ahead and start with the introduction to the remote meeting while we're waiting for some of our friends to join us and then come back to the member access roll call. So good evening. This open meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends a requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of this meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment for this meeting. The Arlington School Committee is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All of the materials for this meeting accept any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard and we recommend the members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless I note otherwise. Before we do attendance, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. I will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until I yield the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote taken to this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. As a preliminary matter, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Ms. Eksten. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. I don't see her. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. In the affirmative. Mr. Hayner. Yes. And I'm Ms. Morgan. I am also here. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dr. Bode. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Ms. Elmer. I don't see her either. And then Ms. Nolan from the AEA is here. Can you can hear us? Can we just make sure we can hear you? Hi there. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Hi. Hi. And then I see Ms. Franchi is here. Can you hear us? Yes, I can. And we can hear you. And Ms. Peretz is here. I'm looking around at my boxes. You can hear us. Can we hear you? Yes. Hello. Perfect. I'm looking to see nobody else. Okay. All right. So we are going to go ahead, because it's 635, let me just quickly check in with Dr. Allison Ampe and see if there's, and otherwise we can go ahead and get started. So Ms. Franchi, so the first item on the agenda is public comment. We did receive some emails that were sent to the full committee that are in the packet. There was one email that when I followed up with the gentleman who sent it, he requested that it be read as public comment, which I will do. So this is a comment from Mr. David Levy. And his comment is the district is currently planning for three potential scenarios for the fall, one back to normal, two partial opening, and three full remote learning. I also suggest the administration specialize these three scenarios for three distinct student groups, one elementary, two middle school, and three high school. There may be overlapping strategies between all three, but there are also significant differences in learning capacities, curriculum, and parent oversight. So that was the only one, as far as I know, that wanted to be read out loud. And I see Dr. Allison Ampe, can you hear us? Yes. And we can hear you. Excellent. Okay, so that's everything that we have for public comment. So the next item on the agenda is the fall reopening update. Dr. Bodie. Can you hear me? Okay. I wanted to mention that Ms. Elmer is not going to be able to attend tonight. So with respect to fall planning, there's two parts to this presentation. I'm going to give you an overview of some of the highlights of the call the superintendent's had today with Commissioner Riley. And we have Dr. Susan Franky here with us, who is our director of nursing. And she's going to talk about some of the safety protocols that we have been discussing. We'll have them placed for the fall. So one of the things that the commissioner said when he opened his opening remarks was some very good news for Massachusetts in that we are one of only four states in the country that are on track to containing the COVID virus. So that that is very good news as we're sitting here in mid-July. At this point, the Department of Education and the governor are continuing to encourage the option that as many students as possible are brought back to school in the fall. That is the the full reopening, though they couch it with saying as many students as possible to be able to come back. Some districts are going to have space issues, budget issues that that may make that more difficult. There clearly still remain some uncertainties as to what will happen in the fall. And of course, the the major one is should be see a resurgence in Massachusetts. And we just really won't know that for a while. But there are other practical and budgetary issues as well. It does not appear that the state budget is going to be completed this summer, as waiting to see what the tax revenues will be and really what what kind of aid they will get from the federal government. So as Mr. Leedy mentioned in his public comment, yes, there are three components to a plan for every district. One component is bringing back as many students as possible. The third the second is a hybrid plan where you have some students in part of the week or every other week. And other students come the following they alternate. The third component is the full full remote. And the plan for each of these three components needs to be submitted to the Department of Education by July 31. The commissioner has asked districts to wait until early August to make some final decisions for the fall. Just waiting to to see again to eliminate as many of the possible possible obstacles that could happen for your plan. In Arlington right now, we're in the stage of actually measuring rooms. The Department of Education has created a calculator which is help it's really more of a a check on the measuring that goes on. One of the things I think all of our schools are finding is that there's not as much uniformity as you would think between the size of classrooms. So we're getting a complete grid on what the size of all the classrooms are and how many students they can have in the room using the three foot distance. The type of grid that we're using is not a rectangular grid. It is a grid in which the deaths are on a diagonal which actually gives more of a sense of space than he would in a rectangular grid. And possibly in some cases, not all cases, it allows more deaths in the room. So we are at that stage right now, but parallel to all of that, we are also planning around all three of the options that that were required to give a plan for. And certainly one of the things that we also are potentially considering is, is there a different plan at different levels? And that is something that we would have to address in our plan if that was the case. So one of the other things that we learned is that next week, there's going to be a video released which I will make available on our website to all parents and staff and the school committee from the medical community on safety issues of reopening. We learned that the transportation guidelines as they had stated earlier will be released in August. However, some preliminary guidance is that it'll be three feet apart on the bus in terms of the number of students that can travel on the bus. And all students, both kindergarten and first grade will not be, not that they're exempt right now, but it will be mandatory that all students have a mask on the bus. There will be guidelines in terms of cleaning the bus between runs, and all of that will be coming. But one of the things that was important, I think, for districts that rely on transportation, we are very fortunate in Arlington that the vast majority of our students do not take a bus to school, at least a school bus to school. And that if a district needs to have double runs, there's going to be potentially some give on terms of time and learning hours. As you know, there are two requirements that districts face. One is that we have to complete 180 days in school year. But in addition to that, different levels have to complete a certain number of learning hours at the secondary level. In Arlington, it is 990 hours, and at the elementary, it's 900. But one of the things that the Board of Education in June voted is that if the governor were to declare a state of emergency, or there were some exigent conditions in terms of the virus or something else that we're not even thinking of, the commissioner has the ability to modify the school year and to modify time on learning. At this point, there is no modification to the number of school days required, and there's no modification to the number of time and learning hours. In terms of further notices, extracurricular and sports will be coming in a couple weeks. Next week, an FAQ will be on the Desi website. I'll create a link and send it to everybody, and that will be updated regularly. One of the things that actually was something that I had asked this question before, and there's been a modification on the answer, and that is the issue of a remote option. I think that the Department of Education and medical community realize that there are some students who would be too risky for them to be in school, no matter what in-school model we had, and may need to remain out of school, and that may be true because they live with parents or grandparents that also maybe have a fragile medical condition. So the state recognizing this is allowing districts to have a remote option for students because we are required to provide education for students. There's a lot more that we'll have to look at in terms of this, and that is whether what the time frame would be. There's a lot of issues around it, but this is opening the door to that possibility. The other thing that the state is doing is they're also looking into a management learning platform that districts can subscribe to for students to engage in learning remotely that would be self-directed. So that is one possible option for the direction the district go, but we can also potentially create our own remote learning option, and that's actually something that we are in the process of doing right now. The other thing that the Department of Education also encouraged districts to not do is to do any assessments in the first few weeks of school, and that's a conclusion that we had pretty much come to as well. That has to be a really a focus on adjusting back to school and some review SEL issues, but the Department of Education will be creating some assessments that could be administered later in the first month or early in the second month that will give us an idea as to where students, where they are in terms of benchmarks. And then there's going to be other guidance that's coming along in terms of sharing materials. We've already begun talking about that as well. And then mass breaks. We have a little bit more information today, as you remember last time we said that they were going to have mass breaks during the day, and the question is where would they happen and what would be the conditions under which they could happen. And they can, you have to be six feet apart, so they're encouraging, of course, outdoors to do a mass break, but if you did indoors, you have to maintain the six feet. The same thing with eating lunch. If you're taking a mask off, then you have to be six feet apart during lunch. So that's something that we will be looking at. And then the last thing I'll say before I'd like to invite Dr. Frankie to talk is that we still are going to need some more guidance from doctors in the Commonwealth about the safe way, if there's any way, to have band and chorus this coming year. So that is still a TBD as we go into the next few weeks. So those are the highlights of today's conversation with the commissioner. And the plan is that we'll be having weekly meetings from now on. I just don't know which day they will occur. They have been in different days over the last few weeks. So if this is fine with you, Smorgan, I'd like to ask Dr. Frankie to let me see if I can see. So there you are. Dr. Frankie, could you talk a little bit about the health safety conditions that we've been putting in place and what we continue to expect to do? Okay, so the guidelines came out from the state as to what we're going to need to bring these kids and staff back safely. We're pretty much on target with everything. We've ordered quite a bit of PPE. Some has already come in, such as face shields. We've ordered thousands and thousands of masks, both pediatric and actually the PD1 just went in today and adult size and gloves, gowns, lab coats for the clinicians. I'm trying to think of what else. Gosh, we've ordered so much. In terms of wipes, sanitization wipes, those already came in in the spring. We were really on top of that when everything happened. So we have a decent supply. I'm sure we're going to need more. Just want to look at my notes real quick here. So we're doing really well in terms of the safety guidelines in the nurses office. One of the things that we need clear guidance on and has been posited to the commissioner and that is we were told that there needs to be an isolation room, which is fair and reasonable. There should be. But then the guidance did state that the room should be separate from the nursing suite. Those conditions would be almost unattainable under the current circumstances in most districts because we have most of our nurses office have a couple of rooms, albeit they're small, but they're fine for isolation purposes. But one has to be triaged in the main nursing suite and then put into just like if you were going to a doctor's office and your triage and like sometimes in a small area and then you run into an exam room. Similar, we would be able to provide something like that. But if it's going to have to be separate from the nursing suite, then who's going to watch the kids when they're in a different area? So that's, as I said, has been posited to the commissioner who I believe from what I was told would give us an answer on that at some point soon, I hope. In the meantime, the rooms that are isolation rooms, they are being refitted with new doors so that we that they're safer. They have windows in them so that we can see the children because I don't it's not safe to put a child in a room and not be able to see them with a door shut if they're very sick. So that's PPE, that's isolation rooms. Teacher and staff training will have to be done and there's a lot written up on that already, but it's not going to go yet because I fear that there's going to be amendments to that before before we start the school year. But that is in place. Just look at my notes real quick here. There will need to be amendments and policy amendments such as related to health and illness because right now as it stands, a child only needs to be fever free for 24 hours before returning to school. And under the circumstances currently, that's really not reasonable. So it's my question would be instead of having to rewrite all the health policies, could we just create an emergency amendment that directs people to CDC and DPH guidelines, which are already in place for the most part, you know, we could have that information available. So I wonder that if we could do that, or do we have to rewrite all the health policies. The research is pretty decent that it's coming out saying that children do not contract this as easily as adults and do not spread it as easily as adults. I will say though, I do have a little bit of a concern because flu is really bad this year. Prior to us going out after COVID hit, we had quite a bit of influenza Taipei in the district and given that this particular pathogen is a little bit more virulent, I do have some concerns about that. So the policies and the procedures that we put into place have to be somewhat robust and upheld. But I do think that the three foot distancing that the from a scientific perspective, the three foot distancing is fair and reasonable in the schools. Does anyone have any questions on what I have given so far? So I think what we'll do is once you're done, we'll do a round of questions for you and for Dr. Bodhi. Does that make sense? Dr. Bodhi, did you have more besides this presentation as part of the fall reopening update? The only thing I would add and the summer is not here tonight to talk about it, but just today, special education guidelines were released. So she has said that she would speak to that at the next meeting. And Dr. Frankie, were you done? I was, yes. Okay, great. So Ms. Ekston, thank you for the update and thank you Dr. Frankie for being here. It's nice to hear from you about some of the things that have been thought about as well. I'm wondering if there's been any talk about sort of an increase in hand washing stations, just thinking about if classrooms don't have sinks or can you speak a little bit to that Right, right. We did look into, I believe it was the director of facilities, Jim Feeney. We did talk briefly about portable hand washing stations, especially when kids are coming in and outside in the fall. At the time, he didn't know that that was reasonable. By the way, I apologize, I have guests and there were children outside my door playing. So if you already background noise, my apologies. And the other thing, and this may sound a little odd, is keeping bathroom doors open because we don't want kids actually touching the doors so much. But it's really going to be use of classroom sinks and bathrooms at this juncture. There are no plans at present that I am aware of that include more hand washing stations than what we have. Can I add on to that? We have bought a lot of hand sanitizer and stands because at the elementary level, the rooms do have a sink. But at the secondary level, that's not the case. So we're just going to have to rely primarily at the secondary level on hand sanitizing. And to add to that, we've already have, the medical orders are already signed and in place for the upcoming year to include use of hand sanitizer. It's actually had to go into the medical orders. We did that before the state gave the guideline, but that was part of the guidelines that came out. I think that's my only kit. So I can ask Dr. Bodie questions about just the other non-health and safety thing. Has there been any thinking about what this is going to look like in terms of substitutes and maybe I'm trying to getting too far ahead, but I'm just thinking about sort of funding for that or are people going to want to be substituted? Well, the answer is yes. We've been thinking about it. We're actually more optimistic this year about the possibility of substitutes. We have a lot of college students that are going to be at home. We know that unfortunately there's a lot of people who may not have their positions back in the fall. So I think that there will be a larger pool than we've experienced in the last few years, but there is, we have to make sure that anybody that comes into our school has the training that is necessary, all the PPE equipment that's necessary and understand what our protocols are. So, you know, unlike maybe past years, while we may have more people, we also have, we have to think about how that will happen if somebody's coming in. They just simply can't come in without some preparation for being there. Go ahead. Thank you. Mr. Carden. Thank you. So I guess first a couple comments. So I'm glad we are working to prepare plans that meet the state guidelines and not trying to second guess the guidelines that were endorsed by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Association of Pediatrics and also on the national level by the National Association of Pediatrics. I know some of the other districts are, we're not medical experts, the state and medical associations are. So I'm glad that we are, at least for that plan that they're asking us to prepare following those guidelines. Now certainly the situation in Massachusetts may change and we may need to be more conservative than three feet, but I'm glad that we are at least looking at what a three feet and planning for what a three feet separation rule will allow us to do and hopefully if things stay low we can implement that. The other comment is also about communication. I think the initial guidelines came out two weeks ago and I don't think there's been a parent communication from the district yet. So I know things are still very early, but I think at least saying that we are working to develop these three plans. They're due July 31st. We have a lot of work to do. We will be having, you know, another survey or more opportunities for parent feedback at some point. I don't know if that's going to be in late July or when, but giving the community some sense of, you know, what we're doing and why and when there will be a chance for community input in a Q&A session. There's, you know, there's lots of questions that are flowing in. You saw some of them in our emails. I know we don't have answers to 99% of those questions, but people need to know that at some point they're going to have a chance to ask questions and get answers. So hopefully we can lay out a plan to do that and communicate it to parents. I guess my only question at this point for Dr. Franke actually is for protection of teachers, I didn't see anything in the guidelines specifically about that. I know Dr. Bodie mentioned that there should be, this wasn't in the guideline, there should be a six foot fetus, six foot space for the teachers. But I'm wondering if we're looking at, you know, what we're looking at to protect our teachers, our teachers, you know, are we giving our teachers face shields and 95 masks or how are we going, you know, with six foot separation? What's our protocol for teachers or is that still evolving? Some of it's still evolving. And it's quite interesting because I, you know, I work in the medical community as well. And in my colleagues, when we see a patient we wear a mask and we might wear a lab coat and that's our protection for the most part, unless we're in a COVID unit or somewhere where it's higher risk. We're actually going to be protecting the teachers better than we protect some of our own clinicians. So we do have face shields, there was a thousand ordered, they're reusable, they're anti-fog, so that they're a little bit more comfortable. So we do have those. We are looking to demo some larger masks that are see-through and anti-fog. And we are, we have masks for the teachers, we're going to advocate people have their own. I mean ours are just sort of the general medical masks. So we have those available too. Is not necessary this juncture to be wearing gloves unless someone is actually touching children, whether it's a speech pathologist or an occupational therapist or special ed, but otherwise the hand sanitizer, which someone asked a question of whether that was as efficient as hand washing. No, it's not, but it's still good. So yes, we plan to protect the teachers as best we can. And in regard to what their comfort level is, I do think that six feet is fair and reasonable to ask them to do that. But similar to reading the paper from Harvard on school reopening of Harvard School of Public Health, it's going to be a very imperfect situation and we'll do our best. But yes, that is the plan to make sure that the teachers feel comfortable and protected through all of this. And that's actually a great worry of mine too, is I want teachers to come back feeling safe, not being nervous about it. Great, thanks. And my other question for Dr. Bodie is I know we're still, you know, the tools for doing the classroom seating arrangements have recently been released, but do we have any sense at all yet what our capacity is looking at? Is our typical room going to hold 20 kids? Is it going to hold 24? Are we going to have to, you know, I understand we have some rooms that are smaller and those may need to be relocated to cafeterias and gyms and whatever and libraries, but for our average room, what is the capacity looking like? Well, like the preliminary information I have received, let's talk about elementary, is that it's looking very positive. It's certainly at five of our schools. I haven't gotten the final data from two others that that we probably are going to be able to manage class sizes so that we that students can be in the classroom. I personally don't like the idea of classrooms being used in the gym as an all day because one of the things that is going to be true in the fall is that you're going to have a cohort of students if you are with all day and you are we're going to minimize as much as possible significantly limit the intermixing different cohorts of students. So that's something that I want to have a very comfortable learning environment for students and staff as we go into this year. So that's something that we're all talking about and considering in these plans as well. The at the middle school, we're very likely are going to need to hire some more teachers so that we can make sure that the class sizes are such that they are the number that can be in classrooms. So one of the things that is still not entirely clear is when if students can move to another room. Right now, I believe that the guidance on that is no. That students will stay pretty much in their own classroom unless they go to a place where they can do take the masks off or they go outside for recess. We have to rethink lunch now with the six foot distance. But as a result, we may have extra classrooms that were used for some another subject that we can create another say another seventh, eighth class not like half seventh, half eighth, and then maybe another half if not a full cluster at Gibbs. We are looking at that right now. We will be making a decision about that very soon. At the high school, it's a little bit more difficult because we have 1400 students. So I can't really comment on that yet. I know they're working very hard to take a look at how they can do it because one of the things that is going to be true at the high school is we can't really have them in the same cohort all day. It's just not going to work because at any grade level, you can take a course that a senior might be taking. We're not thinking of restricting choice on educationally for students. That is going to make cohorting a challenge. We're looking at options on what we could do there. I can tell you more as we get over the next week or so. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you. So I guess my first question, so my understanding is that the state's R value today ticked up above one which means we are I mean just barely by 1.01 but that means that we're no longer under control. It's starting to grow a teeny bit with each case. I'm concerned about that happening at this point and then looking you know we haven't even full on gone phase three and what thinking ahead to the fall what I've been wondering is what I'd really like is kind of an experiment where we put kids in classrooms under the conditions we're asking everybody to go back to in the fall and see what happens. I understand there's lots of reasons why we can't I mean just we put some kids and see if it see what the infection rate is and things. I understand there's lots of reasons why we can't necessarily do that but what I'm wondering is are there any natural experiments happening where this situation is being set up for us. It doesn't have to be in Massachusetts it could be in other states and what's what are the results happening with these right now the best I and is someone looking for these things and following them and trying to trace down what's happening. Right now the best idea is that I have our camps there's a number of summer camps and some of them are not reporting good statistics for what's going on. They aren't necessarily following the guidelines to the extent that we are I mean that that are being prescribed but they also have a lot of time outdoors and stuff. So I'm just wondering who's somewhere in this state is gathering data about what's going on especially with regard to children in a quasi-educational setting and figuring out what's happening in terms of COVID transmission. Well I could try to answer that a little bit. So I think they're looking actually at other countries such as Denmark that have gone back. I know there are certain provinces in China that have gone back and then there were some cities that had to pull back out of school again. So I think my understanding as the Department of Public Health is probably looking quite closely at this. That's my hope. Are they? Well that's a I would like to think so. I would like to think so. I know that Mass General came out with a paper with a lot of resources that just came out a few days ago and a lot of studies on it. But anything I mean this as you know doctor this is in its fledgling state in terms of what we have for research. I just I feel like it's not clear who's got a hold of the problem and who's doing something about and also communicating out and listening to questions like mine as to what's going on and the thing about the other countries and stuff is that they're doing a better job of tracing and containing and all of that so it doesn't necessarily relate well to us. I agree with that. I also wish that there's somewhere that school committees can be asking questions for help. I mean not you know I'd like to bump it up over your head to the Department of Health or what I mean not not our Department of Health but the state because I feel like there's so many things that were not being told that aren't being communicated. I looked at the Mass General stuff it's unless I sit and go through all of the papers it's not that helpful and it's not clear how closely all these papers apply to our situation and I'm just I don't feel like I understand who is really trying hard to do all this. I mean I know that there's like groups but I just I don't feel like it's being well communicated and it's just not as clear that there's actually a head and stuff. So okay so that's one question and then another question is for what I understand the situation that we're talking about whether it's as many whether it's option one or option two this is going to be a very very different way of teaching than our teachers usually use like very very very different and I'm wondering what I hope we're already doing hope we're already doing PD for remote learning and stuff but it feels to me that this the option one and option two when the kids are in school what are we doing for PD for teachers teaching under these conditions because it's like the antithesis of what we've been trying to provide to kids and it's just I can't even imagine how difficult I mean I can imagine it happening but I can't imagine the kids staying engaged I can't imagine the kids staying seated especially the younger ones and I just I'm having a hard time with this so well you're correct that this is a very different teaching style than our teachers have been used to what we've been encouraging and they have gone to school for and have been practicing for many years we know that and I think that yes there's going to be required some training and in fact one of the things we have to think about too and it's it's a practical thing but you know what our evaluations are going to look like this year because you know the things that we have looked for are not necessarily going to be the kind of behaviors you would see in a classroom in terms of group work we're not going to have group work one person meeting the other day so this is going to look like 1950 again yeah yeah that's true the so there is certainly a recognition of that and but the the bottom line value is that regardless it's better for students if we can and it's safe to be in school learning than in a remote option particularly even younger kids because it's so much more difficult we'll talk about the survey in a few minutes in terms of the feedback we've received on this this issue so yes we understand that and I think it's going to be helpful to teachers when we finally you know decide this is what we're going to do this these are going to be the parameters in which you have to teach during the day and then you the uncertainty of it I think is something that is a little frustrating and for everybody but it's a process and the one thing that I said last time but it's true is that we all have a hard time with uncertainty but once you can get the final you can at least start moving toward it but even in this situation once we pick a final a plan to go forward with it could change and it could change a couple weeks into school there's so many so many possibilities here but yes to make a very good point and and that's that's accurate that's all Mr. Thelman thank you so I have a couple questions Kathy Kathy answered actually one of them about intermixing cohorts at the high school and the challenge of that that I think it was Eisenhower who said that the the plans are useless but planning is indispensable when you go into battle and I I think somebody should check the actual quote and Paul can check it but so I think that it's important to try to bring students back it's and teachers back it's important to have the best plans that we possibly can put together and it's important for everyone to understand that we're going to be pivoting and changing and modifying the plans as we go along as Kathy just said you know if you read about and I don't I don't mean to make a I don't mean to make a comparison between an ICU unit school but if you look at all the COVID precautions that were put in place back in February March in hospitals they've now been modified tremendously over the past several months because OR heads and ICU heads across the country shared best practices people in the field found out better ways to do things and I think there's a value and I don't want experiment with kids but I think there's a value in trying something being as careful and cautious as we have having a plan having everybody understand the plan will be modified and changed as they move along and then having educators gather and share what they've experienced well we did this this day we did I can't teach without the mask I can't teach without the mask I'm able to keep the fourth graders mask on for so many hours but not more than 45 minutes at a time or more than 38 minutes at a time I don't know but over time we've got to try these things and we've got to be willing to modify and you know I think we have I think we have to be able to live with that and we have to expect the district will do the very best it can to create a plan that will be followed understanding that it will be modified and there has to be built into the program that has to be built into the practice of the teachers and there has to be time for this for sharing the best practices time to give feedback time to talk about what educators have learned about how to do this model so that's I'm going to preface it by that by saying that the I guess I heard am I to understand that at all likelihood we will not have gym classes in the fall um or that's not clarified yet um no I don't think that that that would be a conclusion you would necessarily have um there could be classes outside of course that's limited to good weather yeah they're in the gym they have and doing any kind of activity and we're going to have to limit the kinds of activities just like there's going to potentially be a limit on what types of sports can be played currently this summer some sports are okay some are not you can have practices with ice hockey but you can't have games you can have tennis but you you can't have basketball those kinds of things it depends on the contact it depends on the potential for you know particle projection so it could be the gym would be a little bit P would be a little bit different um this year and that's going to take some planning as well but no we I I think that at all levels our students want to participate in something but it but some things won't be as possible okay my my other question is um or maybe this is for Sue or you know like what's the thinking Ben or the conversation's been about what happens if a child or a teacher contracts COVID how is that what what are the what are the options I mean because if is it mean yeah so definitely it's curious to know yeah no it's a good question and so it's a tight protocol it'll probably be very similar to what we've done before although with the research it might be modified a bit a little bit so it it it depends which building it is you know elementary versus high school of course yeah but um if a child let's say gets a positive diagnosis then we're looking at hot you know having those kids quarantine possibly quarantine for two weeks as well as the teacher or teachers I'm not sure that the protocol that the Board of Health put out or the DPH put out will be changed that much in relation to quarantining um and isolation um and then it's cleaning the classrooms anything on a larger scale in terms of the building I I can't speak on that at this point um but it's going to be very similar protocols there's also self-certification protocols in in place now for summer and there will be both for students and for teachers and saying I don't have a fever I haven't been around anyone with COVID I don't have any symptoms etc etc so those things are already in place and they'll be tweaked a little bit more but they're pretty robust now um so yeah it'll be pretty similar and do you I mean so that and I get how it can work at an elementary school you know we did it already with one of the schools and so we kind of I understand that the question is at the high school when you have I mean if you have a student who is uh in multiple classes multiple levels interfacing with students all over the building I I just I'm just curious I mean I'm what's the thinking been so far well actually the commissioner addressed that a little bit today but it's just simply saying you're going to get more guidelines in August because it's you've said it's evolving and and it probably will even once we're back in school as well so yes they're planning to give us that information um and we'll follow those protocols but you're right high school presents a challenging situation if we're going to allow kids to take the courses that they've chosen and that's the plan currently um but yes that that is an issue of how we do the contact tracing and we're talking about such a large number of students what the consequences would be my last question relates to the high school as well would you consider reducing the number of collectives and course offerings is that something you would that happen is that is that actually is going to happen somewhat already there's a there's been a practice in many courses in every department that you can choose which way if you want to take it for honest level you want to take it for curriculum A level and you sign an agreement as to the work that you would do to get the honest level so I think that we'll see a little bit more collapsing of that exactly in that way just again a little bit more minimizing I'm not sure it's going to happen in every course but um I think it depends on the numbers that again it's it's the high school schedule and the sections are determined by student choices so it may not be practical to collapse take that way but yes that's kind of thinking is going on and then final question I'm sorry Jen I don't know why I said this last question uh you're if I want to make sure I understand uh Jeff Riley's the commissioner's position and that is that it is possible to have um parallel remote instruction taking place so some parents could opt for parallel remote instruction while other children while other parents opt to have their kids in school that's correct okay so he's now in favor of that yes I think that the number of students that might have fragile fragile conditions themselves or in their family the reality of that is that we have to be able to provide an education for those students as I said the state may go to a learning management service that we could do a subscription for but uh I think collectively in our district we would like to do our own okay good some parents may just opt for that option but it may may not be for health reasons it may be just for because they're on it uncertainty and being uncomfortable with the protocols that are in place they so that may happen would you there's so there's limited enforceability if somebody says or you're gonna yeah I I think that that that will be that will be very difficult to determine unless we require some kind of um doctors doctors know but um we haven't gotten that far yet I think today we've been thinking about this as an option and in fact we can talk about the survey results and we're gonna have to we're gonna have to resurvey people once once we know what we think the plan is we have to then resurvey and see where people stand because I think it's important for for the parents to know this but I think absent this is what we're planning in the fall I I'm not I think this is not going to work for my family I will say that right now what we are doing in district is trying to develop a plan whereas many students and it can come back to school in the fall we are we we're developing a hybrid plan but our efforts are really more towards the students coming back at this point we will also have a remote plan but I don't I don't see necessarily it could happen that we would have to delay the start of school and everybody and be in a remote situation it's just hard to know I think the more likely possibility is that we start and we have to go into remote we need to be prepared and that's one of the reasons why I think the remote option is a good option because we are going to have a really strong coherency between our classrooms in the district and the remote and the remote it's not going to be like the remote we had last year it's going to be much more synchronous okay thank you thank you Jane did we lose Jane we did so I get promoted for a couple of seconds go ahead Paul okay first of all is a point of order we've got somebody using the q and a or the chat feature uh and I just want to emphasize to people who are attendees that this meeting is subject to the open meeting law so we can't go there look at it or respond to chats or questions uh that are coming in electronically outside the meeting um this is I look um first of all we do know that there are going to be school districts in the United States that are opening sometime in in August so we should have some kind of data available to us from what's happening elsewhere in the nation although the problem that I'm seeing right now is this has become so politicized that it's tough to trust anyone's data because you've got folks who are either absolutely dedicated to opening school under no under any circumstance and then some folks who think that we should just keep it closed until we have a a vaccine and I want to make a scientifically based decision and not a a a political one and it's difficult if we don't have a reliable source of information about what's going on it's particularly disturbing to see the the huge spike in cases elsewhere in the nation uh and because we do have the capacity to move around the United States this could be back here uh without us knowing it for a couple of weeks as we're starting school so I'm very very anxious and nervous about how we move forward Dr. Bode first of all you said we're going to get a video from the medical community who is this medical community and and what should we be anticipating um I don't have a lot of details on that I think it's from the pediatric association maybe from researchers I I don't know we just know basically what I told you okay um secondly I've seen an email people who might opt to not register for school and uh withdraw for homeschooling for the year and I would urge people not to do that and I hope that we as a district would put out that kind of a message as our enrollment in the 2020-21 school year particularly on October 1 is the defining factor for our chapter 78 and the 2021-22 school year and if we have a drop-off in students this year we will have a drop-off in funding for next year and that I think the message that we need to send out uh and send it out strong is that we will be there and support students in uh regardless of whether or not they feel safe coming into the buildings in September and we need them to register we need them to participate with us and we we want to be there together as a community um my next question is definitely in terms of funding we are spending a lot of money on modifications and supplies uh where do we stand in terms of that element to the funding notwithstanding the uh chapter 70 money that has not been determined uh up to this point where do we stand with respect to the budget to fund the the extra costs we incur is that is that your question yeah basically how are we paying for this stuff for all the extra things that we need to buy and do and how much of this is being reimbursed and and how much of this is being a burden right now I'm gonna put Mr. Mason on the spot in a second but let me just say um that that the money that comes in through the COVID uh that we have submitted we submitted an um documented evidence in June and there's another there's another opportunity in August a lot of the um technology that we bought and the PPE that we're buying uh can be funded through that now that money however cannot be used for any kind of salaries so let me let me make a pause here is because this is a going to be an ongoing problem and this is going to be something updated on a regular basis it doesn't have to be a big report a one pager of how much extra we're spending what we anticipate spending how much we have applied for and how much we've received a very simple one pager for every meeting of sort of a COVID financial report would be very helpful because I think that we really need to keep track of this because what's obvious is is we've got federal and state officials telling us that we need to reopen but they're not putting the money behind it uh and until we have a commitment of full funding uh I I think that we've got to push back on on mandates as well um one one glimmer um with that thing's very positive with respect to this is that the money that was that came through COVID as I said were really for things but the money that is coming now from that $193 million which will be pretty much I wouldn't say it's entitlement but we're going to be applying for the the template will come out next week um is about $225 per student so for Arlington it's a little over 1.3 million that kind of money can be used for um salaries so we can do that uh is to provide that information in fact we we have it because we have to submit that information as part of a reinversal plan and Mr. Mason do you want to say something more about that um yeah I can uh briefly add on I think you covered a good portion of it but um yeah the the funds that that will come in for the grant um will definitely be can be used for more than the flexibility that we had with the CARES funding that we had the deadline in FY with FY 20 expenditures so many of the expenditures that you've we've talked about already um that's including the PPE supplies all of the um remote learning and computer purchases that were been required up to this point and even the software that we're using right now to host this meeting um has been covered uh under a COVID submission um and COVID funds that will be reimbursed to the town um and most of those expenditures will come off of the current uh expended budget that we did last year as a return back to the town um going forward we we do have some additional funds from SODS that's going to be used for planning and other things but mainly this is uh the expenditures going forward uh we'll be able to then be applied again for similar funding that we did it under last year or a couple a couple of weeks ago shall I say and um that should be able to hopefully cover a decent portion of the expenditures that we are incurring that we will incur yeah I'm just saying this is also a moving target and rather than getting an oral report because I'm going to ask this question at every meeting we have but rather than getting an oral report and having to go and figure out and take notes and I'd like a one pager that basically says what category of funding might we get what have we applied for what do you we think we're going to get just so we know what the status is uh I think it's important because we're going to be asked to make policy decisions down the road and a lot of the policy decisions are going to be based on how much money we have and what we can afford to do and so having this information in our hands as we go through meetings is is really an important important part of of what we're doing uh the other I have a question and a statement I'll get the statement out of the way then I'll ask the question so I can mute myself uh the statement is I also hope we are not eliminating at um electives at the high school because those are the kind of courses that we can even more effectively do in a hybrid or remote faction I do not want to lose programming uh and if it requires uh adjustments in the way we deliver in order to make sure the uh programming is offered I want to do that rather than trying to be in some sort of an orthodoxy in terms of of of how we're delivering an accounting to the state and the other question is when this whole thing broke it was pretty obvious although we didn't have the data in front of us I'm not an epidemiologist I'm not on the board of health but it's obvious the fact that we had the biogen conference is an entry point for COVID into the region we have biogen employees in in Arlington and we started to see cases before we closed the I understand that the number of cases and the experiences we were having in town was an important part of the superintendent's decision to align with other superintendent neighboring superintendents to close down before the governor uh moved on the issue I I think the people I would trust the most are the local Arlington Board of Health Arlington health officials in concert with health officials in surrounding towns so we know exactly where we stand in our community with regard to the virus and I hope that without working any kind of confidentiality that when we are asked to make decisions uh that we'll be doing it in a data informed basis and that's sort of where I'm going to leave it with the question of you know how are we tracking things and communicating with this local board of health um I meet every day with the board of health and Arlington leadership we have a standing meeting and uh we we talk about all of the the cases that are coming through that that is tracked on the state system and our Arlington Board of Health people should be very reassured what a confident group of people these these are they do contact tracing um for this for the cases when when someone when someone tests positive for COVID that gets reported to the state that goes on the the state uh system so they are very much aware now are there people that have COVID that are not getting tested yes but and so those people would not be on the state system but right now Arlington has pretty pretty much flat in fact on the town website they keep a run they keep all of that data there for everybody to see but we do in fact you know I bring up questions uh that that we need to answer and they're they're very much going to be uh part of the consulting team as we go through our our process over the next well this is going to go on for months not just the next six weeks yeah I I really have a lot of faith in the Arlington Health Board of Health and the folks who work on the town side uh and I probably have more faith in them than any other source that I could take a look at right now uh it's just all the important that we are communicated with we're appropriate because people ask us questions as well thank you Mr. Hayner first off I'd like to ask Miss Morgan to please stay here you caused palpitations running away I wasn't prepared I'd like to thank Dr. Bode and the entire staff for a phenomenal job you're doing Dr. Frankie especially um during these strange conditions I had a couple of requests most of my questions got answered by uh earlier I'd like to request uh at least a rough draft of what you're going to be be presenting to the state for the next school committee meeting ahead of time for us to just take a look at it what's going forward doesn't have to be the final just a rough draft and um I correct me if I'm wrong did I hear you say that the state has sent out uh preliminary guidelines for special education Dr. Bode uh they're not they sent them out today I haven't had a chance to look at them but they but they're also be on the dusty website I can um I can send you the link would you send us the link and that we just put it on the school committee because I've had a lot of parents asking that and I think it'll uh lie a lot of fears or take care of a lot of questions ahead of time thank you that's it for me um so I had just one comment and um I'm glad that Miss parents is here because she can um potentially relay my comments directly to the uh principal team I you know that the piece that makes me the most nervous about return to school is that some of the experiences and some of the stumbling blocks that I've had especially in um our elementary schools around getting kids out to recess and hand washing and how they just can't wash their hands before they go to lunch and a lot of things that have been really like rigid and very difficult to work with and have required just extraordinary parent outrage anger upset advocacy and have taken a really long time to sort of turn the corner on um are things that we're really going to need to be responsive to when we go back to school in this kind of an environment and given the experience that I've had in elementary school with my kids um I uh I am not totally confident about that I don't I don't feel great about it because you know it's it's it's real reasonable to have uh six-year-olds wash their hands before they eat lunch like it's just it is not an unreasonable thing to do and we've always been told oh well it's just not possible and just can't get the kids through or they don't do a good job or da da da da and um and and I guess I've heard I mean I've had a kid in elementary school for like nine years maybe long time um and I've heard the same tune oh well recess it's hard they can't get their shoes on or oh if there's a little bit of rain and all this kind of carry on and um I I just really feel like this this is the year where I'm hoping we're going to turn the corner on some of that um because it seems like it's so important if being outside we know is the safest you know one of the safest places for kids to be we really need to prioritize that I'm really really hoping that um that it's going to be a different experience I like we've got to have kids washing their hands before lunch hand sanitizer is like it's I guess we got to use it maybe when they come in in the morning etc but like we've got to get kids washing their hands and and I really think it's something that if we train them to do it it's you know they're they're going to be able to get through those lines and I I hope that we can just hit uh you know hit the ground running on some of those things so that these don't become like protracted battles especially at the elementary school level and and we've certainly experienced that I have for many years so um the other piece um the other question Dr. Bodie I guess for you and I appreciating that I I don't think that there's an answer to this at this point but um I guess it's feedback from the community I get a lot of questions about after school right understandably um whether or not after school so I guess maybe the question that you might know the answer to is whether or not after school programs be them the early school program or private programs that are using our buildings are they required to adhere to the same guidelines that deathy has put out or do we not know or no they absolutely are going to be subject to the same guidelines and I've already begun talking with our our director of after school programming Todd Morris they have a lot of planning because it means rethinking what after school is going to be like um again we going back to that the idea of a cohort and the question of how much movement there is going to be be possible but I think that the other issue is um you know the students are going to have to be in classrooms more than more than likely and so we are going to have to get protocols for cleaning classrooms um so that the students that come back the next day have a room that has been sanitized so there's a lot of planning that needs to go on that but I think that parents um would like to have the after school program continue and that is certainly what we are working toward doing and working with them um what those guidelines will be so right now uh mr. Morris is part of our steering committee and he is privy to all we're talking about we will be giving guidelines to the the private after school programs that they must adhere to great thank you and I think a recognition that potentially um some of our you know that that we could see differences but we have always had differences between our privately run programs and those programs that have been part of the you know the district run Arlington after school program um you know I it's definitely something that I'm worried about I don't know if some of our private programs um you know financial structure is going to support them being able to adhere to the guidelines that I fully support we we pulled them to right and so um that's definitely you know I think that's it's definitely a concern um and I think you know after schools is really important um and uh but it's a different it's you know it's different than the school day right so it won't be an option it pardon it will not be an option it will not be an option to not follow the guidance correct okay thank you that's really helpful um okay so um the next so that's that's it for reopening was there anything that we need as we went through I will give you a list of these uh these highlights but um to mr. Cardin's earlier comment yes we've been talking about we need to get weekly communications going up to parents um it's just been not known where we were actually heading but definitely that is the direction we're going and as I said once we have a plan we're going to have to resurvey parents and then there will have to be a period of time where we have some kind of um definitive surveys one thing then a definitive choice so we will it's not really a choice it's it's really has to have conditions with it in terms of we know that we know medical fragility or riskiness is an issue thank you um so the next um item is the parent survey results Dr. McNeil and Dr. Bode and actually before we start I want to thank um Dr. McNeil and Ms. Fitzgerald for providing us with the um the information from the survey I think it was as early as it was yesterday maybe yesterday morning um felt like a long time which was great um really helpful to be able to see that and click through it um and it was really helpful for me in um being able to see it and then I'm I'm really interested to hear what you have to say so thank you very much well we're going to do this together but I'm gonna let Dr. McNeil start and I want to thank him too uh in terms of all the work that he's done on on the survey and looking at all the responses I'll let him talk a little bit about that okay thank you Dr. Bode uh I'm going to do I have the permissions to share my screen so that we can display the dashboard I'll go ahead and try I think I do I do so please let me know if you see my you're able to see my screen can everybody see yeah I see it perfect so yes uh thank you um for that compliment Ms. Morgan uh it was actually you know I really actually enjoyed uh going through the survey because it gave me an opportunity to really understand uh what parents were thinking and you know their experiences as a as it related to this last spring um and then being able to see you know some of the things that they're thinking about as we move forward with fall planning um I will go over the different parts of the survey and then I'm just going to focus on various questions that um had to deal with the curriculum and instruction and you know exactly what I just said about parents is parents and their experience with the remote learning plan that we had in place over the spring uh but so right up here at the top of the survey you can see the the percentage and if you hover you know as I hover my cursor over each one of the pie slices you can see the percentage as well as the actual number uh you know that divides up you know the parents who responded to the survey so you can see you know the proportionality of of you know who was responding and so on the left hand side you'll see the schools and on the right hand side you'll see the grades so we had you know the actual prompts and questions are right here and you can see how the people the different respondents uh replied uh so I'm just going to jump down here to um minimize this over here I'm going to jump down here to some of the questions that relate you know to the experiences that parents had over the spring so um things that I focused on and what I wanted to highlight for the meeting here was looking at the actual instruction if you will so different questions and prompts that you know had to deal with that for instance here the work my child has been getting the remote learning is manageable for me as a parent to support and so as I looked at this question and I saw you know the number of people who answered yes and no I also disaggregated the data to see you know what grades are represented here and how they responded and what is the percentage so it was the lower grades um actually I was I was quite um you know pleased with the answer to this question because uh you know we had the majority of the people said yes the um work was manageable however I was concerned about the percentage of individuals that said no um so I disaggregated that data and the majority of the people who answered no had students that were in the earlier grades and I can understand that because that also correlated with the open responses where parents were sharing their experience and saying that you know they had to support their students in kindergarten first and second grade because of the way that the remote learning plan was set up and so we were using the grids to push out content and the google classroom so they were saying that definitely it was very difficult balancing their work life with also having the increased responsibility for their students educational development so I can understand that um and then going over here looking at uh how many hours a day I was looking at that and you know looking at the majority of the people answered one to two hours uh so we had a certain percentage of individuals ever saying that they had three and a half hours or more and and and our target was to have at least three hours of instruction every you know learning activities every day that the students would be engaged in so I know that we need to do some work here um and I understand that um so looking moving along you know looking at the other prompts uh and looking at whether or not children were able to complete their work without help from an adult or a family member again you know I was looking at the responses and I was just definitely concerned about the people who answered no never um and we had quite a few of them and then we were trending you know lower here at some times to never so I was I disaggregated the data once again and you know definitely looking at the percentage of individuals we were trending uh those parents were trending who had kids at the lower grade so the trend was the parents at the lower grades were feeling more of the frustration as you could probably imagine because they had to support their students um and then looking over here and then so we're going to go to the next page uh and then we're going to look at some questions and prompts there again you have the pie charts here at the top uh and then as you scroll down I was also looking at over here where we're looking at um how parents responded to whether or not they had a positive experience with the remote learning plan and again we were trending towards disagree and slightly agree I disaggregated the data for the disagree and again we're looking at the parents um who were trending who had kids at the lower lower grades so I know that the brunt of the responsibility for maintaining the educational plan you know you know what parents at the lower grades it was you know very difficult um and I also you know can I just interrupt you just for a point of clarification as we're talking about this so that we all understand um there are a lot of responses that are like always comma often always comma never there was one person can you just just I I'm so distracted by those I just could you do you know what that means yes I do so there was a flaw that you know as as always you look for the certain flaws in surveys so on this particular survey we used a google form to collect the information and I knew going into it it was going to be a problem because we had utilized this on a previous survey so parents were the main questions the main I guess check boxes that they were supposed to select were for some of these and I will go up here for instance from on on this question right here my child's teachers have been supportive with helping my child complete their assignments they were supposed to select always often sometimes or never so sometimes you know when people were selecting the different check boxes on this particular prompt on these type of prompts they were selecting two so I don't know if they were thinking about for some for some of my children I have to provide some support but then some of other children that I have in the same household um I'm sorry some of my children are receiving very you know great support or or getting support from their teachers and then some of my children are not getting any support from their children I mean for their children so that's what I'm thinking is how they you know interpreted this question and how they respond that is something I have to think about how we can solve that moving forward so that we can get more clean data but you are looking at raw data and I want it to be transparent that is why I kept it in in here so you know I didn't want to clean it up because I didn't want to give the impression that I was trying to somehow make you know make the survey bias towards a certain way so I totally appreciate that I just want to make sure we all understand it the other one the other piece that I don't understand is the last line okay so this line thank you for these questions very good questions these are the so not everyone answered every question so the last line where you have nothing there these are people that just did not respond to this question so if you add up all the individuals who who responded and selected something so we had 2782 responses to the survey if you subtract the 95 people here you'll get the number of people who actually respond gave a response these are the individuals that did not respond and you could see at the bottom the line at the at the bottom on some of the prompts it varies so not everybody responded to every prompt perfect got it I'm with you now thank you so much carry on no worries so again looking at this question about you know how supportive were teachers doing the remote learning plan you know I was definitely concerned about you know looking at never and looking at some time so I had to segregate the data and in order to determine you know what population of parents were selecting that so again looking at the lower elementary you know parents who had kids in the lower elementary grades they tended to you know the the data tended to skew to never sometimes and so I think you know I'm feeling their frustration and I understand where they're coming from with that so that those are different points that we are going to focus on as we move forward and then I don't want to run on too long but I also looked at the questions down here and just again went through really you know tried to understand what the parents were telling me through the survey and just looking over here you know looking at whether or not the child's remote learning experience was positive you know looking at the flexibility of the different assignments that we were or the videos that we were offering like you know asynchronous versus synchronous and then you know looking at the quality of instruction again parents were you know with the kids who had who had kids in lower grades tended to not really feel that they were getting their instructional quality wasn't where we wanted it to be and then looking at engagement that is something else that was really focusing on to make sure that I was really understanding where we need to really focus our efforts and definitely looking at trying to make the remote learning experience and assignments more engaging I know that there's something that we need to focus on so I'm going to stop right there because I don't want to go on I did go through the open responses but I'm going to allow you know ask Dr. Bodie if she wants to interject anything right here and then I can I can talk about the open responses moving forward a little as we as we go through the survey a little bit more. I don't know if people want to ask questions about this part because the survey was in two parts it was the experience from May 4th through the end of the school year and then we looked at looked ahead at planning for the fall. Let's do the whole let's do all of your pieces and then we can do questions on on both parts I think makes the most sense. Okay do you want me to finish with the open responses I can just finish there I just I just want to say that I understand what I got from the survey about the quality of instruction engagement looking we tend at the trend like I said before the parents who had kids in the lower grades they were the ones that were that are answering in a more negative fashion about their experience and so that is something that I understanding and I know that that's something we need to focus on. So I don't know Dr. Bodie do you want me to talk about the open responses or do you want to talk about the fall planning? Well you could talk a little bit about the open responses the this the the number we had well over 2,000 responses. Okay so you are organizing in groups. Right so I will go through the and so what I want to I want everyone to understand like the different sections of the survey so this is page two we couldn't fit all the prompts and questions onto one page then again as you as you go as you advance you can click up here on the arrow and you can advance to the different pages on the dashboard. The last page is where we had our open responses and so this is where I spent a lot of you know a lot of my time trying to understand what parents were trying to tell us and communicate to us. So we had 2,187 open responses yes I read every last one of them and what I wanted to do is I wanted to understand what the themes were so and I'm glad that I did that so I I look for themes and I coded the responses so I just want to go through the codes right here if a response was you know emphasizing the need for childcare in the fall I labeled it I put it under childcare if parents want us to have kind of like a a la carte and different models that they can choose from different plans that they can choose from that best fits their situation I coded it as choice if it was a comment that really didn't have a focus I put just put comments like miscellaneous so I could go back and read and then I made notes I wrote notes on those comments as well if we got a compliment and people were satisfied with their spring learning I mean remote learning experience I labeled it as compliment if parents were saying like I don't care what plan you use but just make sure it's a consistent plan that stays to saying throughout the year I labeled it as consistent plan if parents emphasize you know what we want to have a full-time schedule kids back in school I labeled it as full-time school if parents stress the health and safety of their children and staff and the adults over everything else I labeled it as health and safety if parents wanted a hybrid model and they said that's the that's what we want I labeled it as hybrid I labeled it as remote learning not effective and those are the parents that said you know what the experience that we had over the spring was not effective my kids didn't get anything out of it this is where we need to focus our attention if parents labeled it I mean if parents had a theme in their response where we're talking about we want to have a remote learning option and nothing else then I labeled it as remote learning option and if parents stress the SEL they want us to really focus on providing their kids with you know the the thing that they missed the most was about the peer interaction and it was like really having a negative effect on their the social emotional well-being of their children I labeled it as a SEL and then parents they were saying you know what we're okay with a hybrid plan or remote learning option and if you do that we need to have more structured classes and we need to have more synchronized instruction from the teachers so you can see what the percentage is and the actual numbers of to the responses and I will do I will give a caveat like this is based upon as any researcher will tell you there's some bias there I'm sure somebody might look at a response and label it a different way so I definitely want to put that out there and as and as you as anybody's done any type of research and you had to code it various responses and through a qualitative you know research survey you know that that is one of the limitations that there is the bias of the researcher so I will you know admit to that but this is where I landed with the different codes I didn't want to have too many codes but I definitely wanted to make sure I got the essence of what everybody was trying to tell us so I'll stop right there okay so could you move it down to the fall planning yes I will go back to those pages yes so here we'll have on page two of the dashboard you'll see where the questions begin about fall planning one of the things we were very interested in learning of course as we're moving forward as we were talking earlier this evening is you know where our parents in terms of what they're thinking is right now for the fall so the first can you just move it down a little bit so we can see that question is it how's that more am I going the wrong way yeah you're going to think the wrong way yeah okay it's actually right there begins with okay right so if the Arlington schools begin with a regular schedule in the fall I'm likely to send my child to school so in that in that scenario just looking at the strongly or agree or agree we're looking at about 76 percent of our of our families are saying that now that's in a very abstraction without even knowing what the plan would what the safety precautions would be or what the plan would be when you look at a hybrid interestingly that number was a little bit higher about 80 percent of the strongly agree and they agree are you concerned about child care if we open with a remote or hybrid schedule and nearly half about 45 percent said they agree or strongly agree I did not take into consideration the multiple answers that people may have given interestingly the next another question about whether you think that your child has enough space for social distancing just slightly over 50 53 percent thought that strongly agreed or agreed that schools would have this would student there's one thing to have the distancing and the other is will you think students would actually maintain the safety protocols of social distancing avoiding physical contact and about only 28 percent under 30 percent thought that they strongly agreed or agreed on that so that that's something that we certainly are going to have to be working on with our students and training them in the protocols that they have to abide by for everybody's safety so one of the other questions we wanted to take a look at was the question if we offered a remote thing we go we offered a remote option because there was a riskiness for the child's medical condition or just you know there was riskiness that would be a problem in their family what we found is that in terms of likely or very likely that they would choose it about 27 percent would choose it with alternating days about 25 percent didn't really change whether it's alternating weeks and then if you compare it to whether they would choose a remote if it was a regular school day the percentage jumped up to about 33 percent so we have somewhere of the quarter of the families that that took this survey our would be very interested in a remote option should that be offered to them the thing is this was represented about 2800 respondents the survey went out to 6800 email addresses so we had a little over 40 percent 41 percent return rate which is actually very good for surveys so as I said we're going to have to do this again as we we have a more firm plan just to get a better sense of where families are going to be but that's that's the results and we were able as as dr. mniel was talking about actually dig very deeply into this by grade level in school just to get a better sense of where people stand on this and that those are the highlights of the survey does anyone have any questions about this or comments miss extend thank you for the survey and for all of the sharing all of it and in detail I have two questions one and maybe you mentioned this and I missed it when you separated out the comments dr. mniel could were you able like some comments might have been about more than one thing did you you could divvy them into those I was trying to do the math of the comments and how many responded or was it a comment went to one topic oh so that's a very good question so yes so I was a one-to-one correlation so as I had the codes I just I read a response and I said where does this fall under these codes and you have to actually read the comments over more than one time to be honest with you really to understand and be you know very secure like okay I read that correctly and then this is going to be coded this way so it's like you know there was if you go I'll go back and share the screen so you can see the survey so you'll be able to see the number over here right on the right hand side you'll see health and safety so there are 480 comments that prioritize the health and safety of the parents and students and let me just give you the essence of that they were saying whatever you decide please use the science in order to lead your decision don't worry about anything else we want you to worry about the health and safety of the adults and the children and let that be the priority as you make your decisions so I guess what I'm what I'm trying to understand is um if they said something about health and safety but then they also said something about they were worried about social and emotional learning did you did health and safety get a tick box and social emotional learning are you kind of no that's a very good question I tried to keep it as clean as possible and so I yes and that's a very good point so when they had like I could not determine where they were emphasizing something or they were making an emphasis or I couldn't determine the theme that's when I just labeled it as a comment okay you know what I mean so so if they were saying we want you to do this you know we want you to consider health and safety but we also want our kids to be back in school but we also want you to have synchronous instruction if they had like multiple things that they were emphasizing I I termed I um I labeled it as a comment and then I made notes on the side of that to understand what is the most what is the thing that's trending through all these various comments and what is the things what are the things that people are really emphasizing and so some of the things that they're really emphasizing is that we want to take in the they want us to take in consideration that we have working parents in Arlington and we need to understand that having them take on a huge responsibility as moving their kids forward in the curriculum is going to impact their ability to provide for their families so we need the more structure so they were just you know making sure that we understood that these are the things that you want we want you to consider I don't know if I answered your question with that yes yeah no I mean I just you know I was thinking about you know 15 compliments but if they said thank you for your hard work but I'm really worried about safety that got put into safety or and though the comments were they're pretty pure people who were just happy they just said thank you very much we got a lot out of the remote learning plan and that was pretty much it and so those are the and and I understand what you're saying and some of the comments they said thank you very much for everything that you're doing but we want you to consider this and so I kind of utilize that the compliments are just pure compliments nothing else they were other comments that had compliments in there but they were like thank you very much but we really want you to consider this and I did that because I wanted I really wanted to you know let parents know or like during the meeting that we're talking now and and I really wanted to understand what they wanted us to focus on so I would put it under another label thank and then my other question we didn't you didn't talk too much about it in terms of the actual responses but something that stood out to me as I looked at it was the level of stress stress and the concern of social and emotional well-being that families had for their students and I just wanted to highlight it because it did stand out for me and then just you know you've been talking about it a lot in terms of the plans going forward but and it's here with number 700 comments or responses to for that to just really be something that is being considered and supported and thought about as kids go back because even though you know parents really want kids back and there's a lot of wanting kids to interact with one another it's going to be really different than what it looks like before and I think we really need to think about how to support students feeling safe and coming back into the classroom in a situation that's going to look really different from what they left in March. Yes I want to say that and there's a continuum there and and their parents are that are worried about the impact on their social the child's social emotional well-being because we have to put these health protocols in place so we actually had parents that wrote in their message in their response that they're thinking of not sending their kids back to school if we have to have the health protocols in place because they feel like the reason that you send your kids to school is to have that interaction with peers and they feel like the the you know the negative impact on the social emotional well-being of their student is more important is they hold that as a priority over the kids actually you know they're they're more fearful of the lack of interaction than they are about their kids contracting the coronavirus. And yeah I I think you know I'm I know more you know early childhood but I just I think teachers are really skillful and they're going to be able to support students in navigating this new school you know environment but still you know facilitate those peer interactions and but I just hope it's something that you know as you're doing these working groups and planning through the summer that it's really at the forefront of of all the work that you guys are doing. Absolutely I mean the the parents really emphasize and I want the whole community to know I understand that they were they were saying like when their kids were not in school they're in the remote learning environment that they didn't have interactions with their peers and that really impacted many of our students you know very negatively so they're really concerned about not only having the interaction but making sure that we are considering how we're going to acclimate kids back into the structure of school in the fall and to spend a you know make sure that we're spending time thinking about how we're going to do that. I would also like to amplify what you just said Ms. Eksten because we have tremendous confidence in our teaching staff to have this be a wonderful learning experience for our students and yes it won't be exactly like it was it'll be a little bit more structured learning that we've had that they've been used to but do I think that they are going to create very supportive classrooms and do an excellent job absolutely but we're and we're going to have to do whatever we can to help support them in being able to do that that kind of work but we have an amazing teaching staff and we know that they will do a great job. Great we're going to go out of order and take Mr. Dilman now and then we'll come back to you Mr. Cardin. I have to go to a conservation commission meeting to represent the Onkton High School Building Committee so thank you Jane for doing that. You know I think I don't really have any questions Rod I think this is good work I would say that when we have a so I heard this already earlier when we have the plan when we have a plan it's going to be important to survey parents based on that plan here's the plan for the year that was let's just say I guess you know we reviewed it a school committee meeting on whatever Kathy said earlier July 31st or whatever that is and then right like right after that that plan needs to get published to the parents and the community and the survey needs to go out and we need to see what people think now that we have a plan and where they fall in it and I think that data is going to be very telling the other point I want to make in this data is you know there's a there's a mixture of there's a there's a you know a segment of the population that seems to be willing to have their kids go back almost you know no matter what as long as just reasonable safety precautions and then there's a whole segment of people that don't want to go back no matter what and so that's why this parallel remote learning option which Kathy is trying to has advocated for successfully at the state level is a I think the right way to go for Erlington so thank you for that I just want I just want everyone to understand that when I was reading the comments I understand I wanted to I actually was feeling what people were when you spend this much time with data you actually can feel what they're feeling and I understand that so those are the things that were prioritizing and I agree with Dr. Bodie and Ms. Ekton that we do have the talent and we we understand this so we are making that a priority and that's the one thing I wanted to emphasize during this presentation that I hear the public I hear what they're saying and these are definitely a priority for us as we move forward yeah and also this is related to my comment earlier in the evening I do believe that teachers with support can find creative solutions and share those solutions across the district and create a set of best practices that can keep kids safe and and teach and and and learning as well absolutely no thank you Mr. Cardin thank you thank you for putting all that together um so more just a couple of of comments um you know one one was just there there was there was some feedback from the community on the survey I'm not sure how much of it made it directly to you Dr. McNeil or Dr. Bodie you know both with the the types of questions and the scale of the responses it was only one disagree and three levels of agree so I mean I think there are some design principles around surveys that somebody in the district needs to learn and you know there's community members who do this as their job to conduct consumer research that can that are you know offered to help there's certainly professional development opportunities but I do think given the frequency that we do surveys we we probably should be a bit better at it then it with regard to this the results of the survey I think you know two things jump out at me one one is is the lower grade levels we certainly knew that that was going to be an area of difficulty um the survey clearly shows that um and I think over the next few weeks for the remote option that we're offering and for the possibility that we have to go remote completely again or hybrid we need to find out what the best practices are for lower grades there are two virtual schools in massachusetts there's virtual schools across the country that do have lower grade levels and they are engaging their students somehow and we need to be connecting with those leaders and finding out how the how they do it so that we can we can apply some of those best practices here in harlington it's it's extremely difficult to keep those young kids engaged without a lot of parental support that's not you know necessarily something we're going to be able to solve but but there are there has to be some learning somewhere I don't know miss pretz if you have any comments on on on where we can get that knowledge um but I think I think that's that's clearly an issue that that that somebody in the district needs to be focusing on so um uh miss pretz did you want to do you have anything you can I would like to I would like to respond to two things before miss pretz says something number one I want to let the public know that these questions are not arbitrary they are field tested questions I understand and that did come out through some of the uh comments but we did not just make up these questions these questions came from definitely vetted sources so I just want to make sure that I'm being very clear with that uh and and let the public know that I know I did get some feedback on some of the questions and I think that's going to happen on any survey that you send out you're going to have some questions and anybody who's done any research you're going to get some critical feedback on a survey I don't know any survey that I've ever conducted through research where it's just been totally okay people have always had some type of you know question about you know this question wasn't really what I wanted it to be so I will say that secondly we are and I'll get to it in our pd plan we are definitely I want everyone to know that we I have taken this information into consideration and we have a lot of professional development that is happening this summer and I will get to that when we get to that portion of the of the agenda but we are you know we're you know I've signed you know teachers up for a course at Harvard that focuses directly on online instruction and I've also we've had free webinars that we have also had teachers attend that was one that happened today or yesterday that is also was sent out by Harvard where we had other practitioners engaging in a dialogue about you know ways to engage students at all levels through online instruction so I understand what you're saying and I just want to you know just solidify the fact that this is definitely something that this is where we're moving towards and this is a large focus of our pd for the summer so Ms. Peretz if you want to go ahead and respond and I can jump in too and I think that there's there's so much that we learned from this experience and I think that it's absolutely our concern that our youngest learners need to do better to engage them if we are back in a remote learning environment and you know we're hoping that that's not true and like was mentioned earlier we really are doing everything we can to make sure that we have those children in school because we think that that's the best experience for them but having said that you know we have to kind of look at the way this all happened and and kind of the ups and downs and the patterns of how this developed and I think that our teachers which we've also touched on really do know how to engage students but what they were thrown into very quickly and without a whole lot of notice was how do I engage students in a remote learning environment when that's not the experience of our youngest children so you know very appropriately our fourth and fifth graders for example were able to go with that a little bit more smoothly because they already had an environment in which they were engaging with their teachers remotely even before we closed they used Google Classroom they had experience with how to collaborate with online tools and our youngest kids just didn't have that because that's not something that we did with them so our hope is that through the professional development that Rod is mentioning you know the teachers are very much engaged in that and thinking about the ways at all levels that if we were to go back into a remote learning environment that our children would be better prepared to do that I think overwhelmingly though in talking to parents and in talking to students and in talking to the teachers while school was still in session in a remote way that it was that social emotional connection that those youngest kids really needed the most and so I think we learned a lot about how to engage kids within that environment so for example at first when we closed it was about making sure that everybody was connected first of all because our youngest kids didn't have computers they didn't know how to get online with spy ponders accounts the adults didn't know how to do that they didn't even know they had spy ponder accounts and there was this huge learning curve for everybody in that way you may remember that at first we were doing things like communicating with email and then getting those getting that training into place so that those teachers could use Google Classrooms so that the children could try to engage in that way and so since that's happened we've had a lot of practice we've had a lot of work together we've collaborated as teams and found another example like having a whole class morning meeting with a kindergarten classroom you know some people were much more adept at that than others at first teachers who felt more comfortable doing that in kindergarten than others or just that the children were overwhelmed from that experience at first and we had to learn that in fact we have to put them in much smaller groups and then even getting them into smaller groups that there are some kids who just weren't going to feel safe in that environment and needed one-on-one connection with their classroom teachers and really finding the time so that teachers could connect with kids and find the ways to connect with kids even though they couldn't be together in person so I feel like we've just learned so much about this and we'll continue to do so and administrators too taking part in that PD over the summer to see how best we can do that because we can and I think it's so true you know what Dr. Bodie was saying about how talented our teaching staff is and that they really do want more than anything else to connect with the children in a safe and supportive way and so I really do have a great amount of faith that we're going to be able to do that and we'll take everything that we learned and all the feedback that people gave us to make that experience better in the you know situation if we have to go back to that again but it will be important to to hopefully if we can do it in a safe way be in school so that we can create those communities so that we can continue them if we have to leave school again I don't know if that answers the question yeah no no that that's very helpful I again I think everybody acknowledges how difficult the spring was and everybody also acknowledges how hard everybody worked to try to make it as good as we could but I think we also need to acknowledge and the survey shows what the 800 people who disagreed that their students had a positive experience that this was sort of a disaster and we have to find a way to do better and I just think we need to be honest that it didn't go very well no matter how hard we tried and we need to find a way to do better and I think the important part there is that it didn't go so it didn't go very well for a lot of people and that we need to do better and we need to learn from that but we also need to acknowledge that there were a lot of really good and strong things that happened so through the whole time of the school closure I was talking to parents on the phone we were emailing we were having calls like this online and even anecdotally talking to people through things like IEP meetings that we had online and hearing that there actually were a lot of children who really did get a lot out of that experience and really benefited from the ability to learn how to manage their own time and learn how to have some choice in what they were doing and connect in a different way and so we want to be able to to pull from those positive experiences too and really think what went well because there were things that went well um but really do better for those people that it did not go well and and really encourage those families to reach out to us when things aren't going well because we want to make it better for you and it took a while for us to get people to really start to share that too to be able to say you know what we're really struggling what can you help us with this and really connect with them on that personal level so but I I absolutely agree with what you're saying is that there was a lot that did not go well and we need to learn from that and know that moving forward we can be better because we do have the the people the talented and very caring and thoughtful people to do that work we just need to support them in doing it and that's our charge. Great thank you no more. Dr. Allison Ampe um thank you for sharing the survey results um I personally would find it helpful to get the survey results cleaned up without the ones that did double comments or you did did two answers and I don't feel I appreciate that you've shown us what the actual data is but to me the message gets lost with all these little blips of you know one person put agree and disagree and and stuff and it'd be nice to see without the small amounts of of other comments I mean they can be put someplace else um and also I'd like to see you know you said that you looked at like where the disagree um comments came from and that you found that they were in lower grades can we get that in some form you know could you make that into a graph for us so that we can see it and also so that we can talk to other parents when they come to us and and say yeah you know this is at least acknowledge that yeah the survey showed what you're telling me or or it didn't and and you know trying to then we can try and understand why you know what's different about what they're saying um and can I can I just uh do one thing miss uh and show you just I want to show you how the the survey is interactive and and you can do this so let me just share my screen again um second can you see the survey now yeah okay so I'm going to go back here and I'm going to show you just how interactive the survey is so um I appreciate your question and so what I'm going to show you is that the way that you can disaggregate I would have to send you the link but the way that you can disaggregate the data so if you want to see how all the first grade uh parents you know parents who have kids in the first grade responding to the survey you click on this pie slice here and then you'll see the survey that you'll see the changes so you'll see these are all the first grade parents how they responded across the district this is how they're distributed in the buildings and then this is how they responded to the various prompts on this page so you can disaggregate the data on each page just by clicking on the pie slice so if you click back on it it'll bring you back to how everybody responded and so if you want to go to a particular question and you want to say the work that my child has been getting through remote learning is manageable for me as a parent I want to look at all the nose so I'm going to click right here on the nose and then you scroll back up here you'll see that there were 986 nose and this is how it's distributed throughout the grades and this is how it's distributed throughout the the schools so you can see that and if you hover your cursor over each one of the grade levels you'll see the percentage of parents with kids in second grade this is the percentage of those parents that responded no to that question okay and then you go back down and you click on it again and it'll bring you back to the full survey okay yeah so that's helpful um I just want to say one more thing that you can only disaggregate the data on each page so as you go to the other pages and you see the pie charts you have to do the same thing that's why the pie charts on an each page okay yeah so um miss Fitzgerald did share with us uh link to the survey so we can play with that yeah but it's also if if we're trying to communicate out to the public it's helpful to have some of this information just not in you know just as their own pictures not as you know we don't want everybody going in and necessarily mucking with the survey um or I don't know maybe you do but but what we're trying to do is convey the story not not just the story that people choose to pick and click at sure absolutely so um and just to echo what Mr. Cardin said about the survey yeah one other thing that came up was that the survey the description for the survey said that was to be anonymous but then it was required to list the email address and I know at least at the start of the survey people were having people didn't take that kindly um I think that requirement may have changed um as the survey went on but it's things like that that make people talk you know you hope that people talk so that they all get interested and go and fill out the survey but when something like that shows up and isn't I mean it shouldn't show up at all right and when it does it makes it look like the survey isn't truly anonymous or you know people get the wrong impression and and that impression then echoes down the lines and uh that isn't a good thing I take full responsibility for that there was a button that you had to push in order to make the survey anonymous I didn't push that button at the beginning that was like in the first couple of hours of the survey but we did not collect any uh email addresses from the survey once I found that that was happening I clicked off that I clicked on the button and so no email addresses were collected none of it is anonymous so that was a mistake I take full responsibility for that okay but maybe we should be running it inside you know with a few test people before it goes out to everybody no I did I did that it like I said before it was a mistake so I did when it what I do just to tell you the process of what I do is I put myself as a person and I fill out the survey myself and that was something I just overlooked I was just trying to focus on the questions and I just take full responsibility for that after the first couple of hours I clicked off the button so it was a mistake it was a human error yeah and I'm saying maybe it shouldn't just go to you maybe it should go to five of your closest friends or in the department just to get feedback on does it or go to us or something just to get feedback on is is there issues with the survey you know like of that magnitude that can be easily fixed so yeah and I again I did send it to other people I've sent it out two or three other people so I did it was myself and a couple other people is again it's something I overlooked human error I take full responsibility okay um that's all mr. Schickman thank you my questions and comments were more or less aligned with what dr. Allison ampy said would have been my hope to have been presented at this point the numbers grouped by age group k to two three to five six through eight nine to twelve because the experiences are very different by gray level but if we get the ability to go and play and disaggregate on our own that'll give me some information that I can use going forward to make an informed decision thank you mr. Heiner thank you for doing this uh that last display of being able to aggregate it is mr. Schickman and dr. ampy said it's it's going to take a two or three hours of my night tonight I really I'm going to get to sleep playing with the numbers I just want to express that I started in teaching right at the end of being the source of all information and getting students involved and I think it's going to be a challenge that I think our teachers are going to do well at but going back to this being a lecturer as opposed to being a person who gets the kids actively involved and socializing with each other it's going to be a difficult task but something I think they're going to be able to do quick question dr. Boat you mentioned before that you think we have the space to put if everybody decides to come back what do we do if everybody does come back and we don't have the the distancing or the spacing to do it well we're doing our analysis with the assumption that everyone does come back okay thank you um so I guess you know for me it was it was sort of interesting looking through this survey and um you know we're three weeks now I think out of school and I feel a little less traumatized having had three elementary kids last for three months and and the survey responses brought a lot of that back to me um and uh you know but it was good to know I guess that I wasn't that I wasn't alone in finding it so so challenging to manage um I you know I I appreciate and and fully support the movement towards bringing as many students back as can safely come and who's who want to be with us and um I'm really encouraged by what we're hearing tonight about the plans that are well underway to make that happen um looking at this survey I I remain very anxious and skeptical about our ability to uh build on what feels to be a pretty nominal beginning with remote learning should we need to to move to that at some point next year um so that you know there's there's a lot of work to be done in that area um I think there was you know it looks like there was a lot of feedback um I I really felt as as a parent and as somebody you know experiencing this from mid-march until you know almost the end of June that that there were a lot of opportunities during that time to take feedback from parents we asked for email access for fourth and fifth graders dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of times never happened um there were you know lots of situations like that we asked for synchronous meetings with with teachers um and that that be a requirement and that was you know no no no we're not going to do that um and so it you know it seems like we've got a lot of work to do on our remote plan I think that the survey is um you know bears that up um I I'm fully on board with with what you know that the focus is on you know return to school and but you know I guess you know it's hard to believe but if if we can pull that off um then you know figuring out how to create a system where we can provide um adequate remote learning options for kids um so that we would have very different survey results um is another just herculean task on top of that so um anyway I um I'm I'm really glad that uh you shared the survey with us I'm really glad that we we did it I think you know we need to you know we need to do more certainly um in in August um early August once the you know once the plans have been um developed and um you know it sounds like obviously this team is really committed to doing that so um that's that's great so thank you so much is there anything else that um we want to say about the survey so I just want to again just iterate reiterate the fact that I agree with you uh we do need to focus on various areas and I'm glad that uh Kate was able to talk about the process that we went through in order to develop the remote learning plan um you know and we you know wanted to focus on like getting the curriculum out getting the the materials out to parents and I just want to highlight a couple of things I through the open responses so working parents I want everybody to know I understand I feel the frustration from the working parents is saying I need to focus on the moving my children forward in the curriculum and doing my job I understand that child care in a remote learning plan will be an issue and so you know how our parents if they're going to go back to work full time if we have to go to a remote learning plan I understand that that's a conundrum that we're going to have to be able to try to work out um you know looking at the the amount of engagement that is something that we are focusing on trying to make the the lessons and the activities more engaging even if the kids come back and you say we have a certain way of delivering instruction that's why we're investing so much in online tools because even if we're in school we can utilize those online tools to have engaging lessons and so we're figuring out how to utilize that because if we can maximize the use of the online tools in a remote learning environment I feel like we can maximize it even if we're in school and integrate those tools into our instruction and then looking at making the assignments meaningful and giving the proper feedback that was another thing that people were saying they were saying the kids were not engaged and they weren't motivated because the assignments didn't mean anything so we are looking at when we come back but that will count for grades and it will be we will focus on providing the type of feedback that students need in order to get the to be able to assess their own work so I just wanted to emphasize that when you spend so much time with the information you want to give the message to everyone that we're not sitting here sitting on our laurels and saying oh we did such a great job what we're ours we're trying to think what we did well and what some things that we have a glimmer of hope that we wouldn't want to continue on and then things that we want to build off of that and then we want to take those other areas and say you know what this is where we really need to focus our intention so I appreciate all the parents who took the time to give us their feedback and some of it was hard to hear because when people are saying things like we didn't care that's not the case I don't think there's one person I've spoken to within the Arlington public schools that was nonchalant or didn't care or there was some type of withdrawal everybody cared about doing the best job and we were trying to do that on a daily basis so I want everyone to know that that it was a herpulean task to go to a remote learning environment it's just like if we all had to get rid of our cars and start work walk walking to work you would probably start off on a certain plan but then as you go as you travel down that path of trying to figure out how to you know you know fill that void you're going to move in a certain direction and that's what we're trying to do right now and that's where our PD is focused on throughout the summer so I appreciate all the feedback I and I another thing that came out in a survey is that Arlington public schools did not arbitrarily on their own decide to just to go to a remote learning environment it was because the health and safety of our students and our adults that are in front of our students and then the governor came out with a plan that shut down the schools and extended it to the end of the year so this wasn't something that was made this was not a decision that was made in a vacuum we did this because we care about our students and we care about the adults so at no point was there a lack of care or a lack of consideration of what we were asking parents to do we were stuck at that place because we didn't really understand how to move forward in a certain manner and as we went along I think we got better at it and I have every hope and consideration I mean every hope and you know I just think that our teachers are committed and that shows because many of our teachers even though they had a rough spring and trying to work harder and trying to deliver the curriculum they have dedicated themselves to joining up and having these discussions throughout the summer and and being involved in professional development so to me that is a indicator of the character and the passion of the educators that we have that work for Arlington public schools so I really see us moving forward in a positive direction I just ask everyone to have a growth mindset because as you try to do something that you've never done before you are going to have some hiccups along the way so we I want to us to work in partnership with the community and understand that we do care we are putting forth the effort and we hear you so those are things I want parents to understand that I'm empathetic to what they're they went through because I'm a parent and I went through the same thing and I live in a district and I don't want to you know disparage the district with what I live in the the district that I live in but I have the same concerns as a parent so I'm living it I'm working it I'm a professional and we have professionals in Arlington public schools where we have many teachers are also living this so we are going to put every put forth full effort into trying to address the things that we need to address from the survey and things that we know that we need to address as professionals in order to engage our kids and give them the best education that we can moving forward in the fall great thank you um so man dr mcneil you just keep going here you're on one agenda item after another so uh summer uh summer pd plan update and I think you've you've given us um you've given us sort of a glimpse of it um and I um so and I and I asked to put this on the agenda so that we could um you know just get a sense of um some of the opportunities that are available for teachers I I am on the um the everyone email list and so I had seen some really interesting things um being pushed out of your office dr mcneil um opportunities for teachers um for this summer and so if you could give us a brief um sort of overview of what that's looking like that would be super sure so um I'm going to start off by saying that we have and I'm just going to share my screen one more time because I want to highlight this very exciting learning opportunity that has uh that we are investing in um and this is what I've been talking about can everybody see my screen yeah so this is a a course uh that harvard is offering it's entitled developing strategies for online teaching and learning and um you will see that there's a registration fee but you'll see that it's a four week course um and then uh I'm just scroll down here to uh some of the logistics of the course how it will be implemented and then these are the major uh components of the course and these are the things that we're going to uh cover while we'll take the course I'm taking the course and I have about upwards of 43 educators from across the district uh administrators coaches teachers who have expressed an interest in taking the course I've actually registered that uh them I've also applied for an aef grant to help with uh paying for the registration fees and I've met with the aef leadership and I've also met with the one of the designers of the course along with the cohort of individuals who are interested in taking the course along with the outreach coordinator from harvard so I'm very excited about what we'll be able to be able to learn and to mr cardin's point yes we know that we need to understand how to deliver engaging effective online instruction and we're looking for professional development opportunities and this is just evidence of that and so I'm happy to also report back to about our experience as we take the course and also as we met with the designers of the course and the outreach coordinator from harvard I I also explored having a partnership throughout the year so we can have um ongoing conversations and being of the tweak what we're doing throughout the year um we also are offering a uh a cultural or anti-racism course that's given sponsored by ideas for our administrators and teachers we have two sessions going that are going to be starting up in a couple of weeks and we have about 19 administrators that are going to take the course and we have about 14 teachers who also signed up for the course we have almost tripled what we've invested in what we normally do for curriculum planning over the summer in order to make sure we understand the you know key understandings that we need to focus on moving forward and how that's going to impact the scope and sequence of each one of the content areas as we move forward in the fall so we have lots of different groups that are that are meeting throughout the summer that includes special educators el teachers and classroom teachers we also have digital learning team that's led by dr bison that department they're scheduling to have a professional development session on how to integrate the online learning tools in many different ways and we're looking at that's going to start some time in mid august we also have various sessions that are going on that are going to focus on udl and online learning that that course is going to start in september that's also being given by that is also sponsored by harvard part of their professional development series so i've already targeted that course and i'm going to send that information out to the district and then we have just you know various we have two synchronous uh teaching uh instructional study groups that are going on one at the elementary level one at the secondary level where we meet every week and we talk about best practice and and we look at research and we have you know i'm planning on having the reps the representatives from the different online tools that we're going to invest in to attend those meetings so we can talk about best practice and how we can integrate those online learning tools into our discussion and then we're also going to you know leverage the experience that we had over the spring and the teachers who have you know signed up to be part of these study groups are talking about the things that they did and sharing best practice across the district so i think that's going to be very beneficial and it's represented throughout you know we have representatives from each grade level and the various support areas and then we have thompson hardy and gibbs who have signed up for the mtss they're sponsoring a pbis academy they will be taking part in that and then we have thompson middle school who's also going to be in the mtss academy focused on social emotional learning and mental health so that along with other you know collaborative groups that are meeting throughout the summer um you know all that is like taking place to summer and then we have another math group of that as we have teachers at the elementary level the k5 level and coaches that are participating in an equitable equitable and effective k5 remote math instructional group and they're meeting this monday and they get together and they met last you know a couple of mondays ago i think and and they're talking about best practice as well so we have a very robust curriculum planning professional development um program that you know teachers coaches and administrators are a part of throughout the entire summer and we're investing uh quite a bit of money into compensating teachers for being a part of this and running the sessions as well as into the online learning tools that we need to be able to implement in the fall i'll pause right there thank you dr mcneal um i'm going to just look and see if anybody had any questions about that i see mr schlickman and that's and dr allison ampie okay uh dr allison ampie just it'd be wonderful to get a list of this i couldn't keep up with all the acronyms and stuff what is udl universal design for learning okay thank you that's all mr schlickman uh i i'm just very impressed by the depth and scope of what's happening and the leadership that dr mcneal is is putting forward and i was going to ask the same question as dr allison ampie did is udl went by me very quick very quickly um yeah it would definitely be helpful to have uh some of this written down in advance and certainly not to use acronyms when talking at us thank you sure no no problem uh and i will i will define the other uh acronym that i use pbis is positive behavioral intervention and supports and then i i i i i i know pbis i know that others might not but uh that that got uh that that i understood but uh if if i'm throwing out uh my pad of paper wondering what udl is i'm sure that you know it's it's a puzzle um i will definitely put together a one pager that has all the different things that i spoke about and i will share it with you that'd be great it really helps for us to have something in writing to follow along with absolutely mr heiner uh that initial course that you mentioned from harvard is that open today anybody wants to pay the bucks well the educators so they they say you know teachers administrators are you asking if school committee members can attend how about an retired school teacher that's interested in how to do it i will i will look into that appreciate thank you anybody else okay um thank you dr mcneil um so the next item is um an anti-racism resolution and this was something that um was brought forward by the masc to define our acronyms because i guess we'd do that now which is a good thing uh the massachusetts association of school committees and it was something that um dr allison ampie brought up uh two weeks ago and is on tonight's agenda um so i i'm actually gonna put put her on the spot for a second just is there anything else that you wanted to share about it dr allison ampie we can't hear you we still can't hear you i'm sorry i can't there's too many things going on um so i saw this as just a small but positive step in the showing the direction that we're trying to go and i like this resolution because it actually doesn't speak just to our district but it talks about all districts in the mass in the state of massachusetts and i think that's important too i mean i think we our district should be taking these points to heart but i think it's equally important to be applying them to the entire state um and i didn't know if you wanted i know that they're i've seen on social media that there are some other activists who have had the i believe it's the black student union who have a list of demands i personally have not seen those demand i mean i haven't seen them forwarded to us and i would hope that we can address those when they do reach us i don't know if they came to you or or to um uh dr bodie but in the meantime i thought i wanted to be sure that we at least have this resolution to talk about and i hope to pass um and that that's all for right now do you want me to try and share my screen and show it um i you know i probably should read it just so that everybody well it's pretty i think i think we want to read it um so and just to answer your question dr alice manby i i think that the um the bsu reading um the email that dr jaynger sent to the ahs community it sounds like they have shared those um with him which you know is as is their their you know their decision and that's that's great um and that you know um dr bodie if you could communicate from us that you know as he as he works through them and if he needs you know input from or you know wants to bring some of them to us you know we're obviously open to hearing and supporting him so um and and our students certainly um so is there um i guess do we have do we have a motion for discussion on this resolution should we do that first does that make sense i'd like to make a motion that i'd like to make a motion that we pass this resolution second great um so discussion mr schlickman uh i am very much in favor of adopting the resolution uh it's been circulating around uh school committees in massachusetts i believe there are over 100 school committees who adopted it this is a