the spot But just to think through and perhaps the next meeting or something just We have a student rep. So when it comes to student voice, you know, just thinking through how we can access Our student rep for that You mean right now No, I said perhaps at the next meeting. I do not want to put him on the spot No, that's good. No, I I got I just I was just twirling on miss mcdowell I had a question. I also um That thank you for this great presentation. Um being absolutely new on this committee I had no idea that this was going on that um that that was the focus of that professional development. So I'm just very impressed with the work that you've put in and and what was accomplished. Um I Did have a question and it kind of builds on on the both of your comments Earlier is how are you and I think you kind of answered it Is how are you how are you measuring impact beyond sort of the pre and post survey from this from the people Who participated and it sounds like maybe connecting the dots between sort of a longitudinal analysis of student perception and experience is One way to do that, but I just would ask the question more deliberately. How how are you Anticipating you're going to measure the impact overall on The environment and the experience of both staff and students within the school over time So that's a great question. Um One way that we've started is through the professional learning communities that were established shortly after So many of the teachers have joined those to Discuss their practice share their practices and open their classrooms to others to come in and just see if there were changes So that's one thing and I've been invited in many of the classes to see what's going on. So That's something that yes more systemic and and plans on how to look at that and address that will will have to take place But you know, that's just one way is through the professional learning communities So I think just something I didn't share earlier when I was talking about the climate service is the attention is that Our plan is to do them annually. So to your point of the longitudinal data It's not just like plop we're doing this in spring of 2018. It's actually to track changes over time So this is going to be our base mark here our baseline year. Excuse me And then the reason to do it every year is that we can then see impact And I think, you know, if we could it was here just want to perform her School members, he would say really what you want is multiple years Not just two multi years of data to see trend lines and then to make adjustments It's not just for the sake of we've done it in an accountability measure Certainly can function at that as well, but it's actually another data source to say Wow, we're seeing a difference here. We're not seeing a difference here We then need to adjust our planning for professional development So it's a feedback mechanism. I think frankly most importantly It's going to do more as a feedback mechanism than it will do for anything else because if we don't it's a sign of how we're doing And if we get all students to respond and we have good mechanisms, unfortunately for Mr. Dinsmore and others They're a captive audience But it's really helpful to get that on an annual basis and the nice thing is the students change, right? Gradually over time, but if the questions remain the same we'll get a pretty good understanding of how our students are experiencing our district Thank you So, uh, are there any last questions or comments on this item that we move Forward in our agenda. Can I just add that in addition to what he said about students experience in our district We'll also know how staff and all our members are experiencing our district Thank you. Thank you very much again. We look forward to the next the next one I shared that by the way if there are apart from We're going to talk later about one way in which school committee can engage with students, but If there are Issues or there's something that you think This that you as the representative of warrant Bringing information to the committee We have a set agenda the set agenda always has given topics And so you're sort of on the hook about whether you want to talk about that specific topic If there is something You would like to including responding to the question that was raised doesn't have to be that could be anything If there's something you would like added to the agenda where you have an opportunity to discuss with the committee something You can also contact the superintendent myself and We can put something on the agenda. So I'm not putting you on the spot I'm literally saying there is in fact a direct opportunity the challenge with the set agenda is The question before you is do you feel like speaking about the specific thing that's on the agenda? I'm also saying you have an opportunity To bring voice to other things if you want to the committee and if I hadn't said that before I should say it now Thank you. You're welcome item four warrant review It says budget warrant review, but I don't really believe that I think you're talking about the warrants we sign, right? So we should relabel that Um, I don't know what it's called financial warrants or something Everyone leaves for sean It's more like they want to go home and watch this on television. This is a popcorn moment, right? You need to wait Is this a fake one? Yes, this is a fake one Thank you Huh? Oh, there are there's a stack of them right here a huge stack of Well, this is the real That's the real thank you very much. So so it forgive me forgive me uh sean, but um Just if there's any context without belaboring it feel free to offer it sure meeting in other words Don't assume prior knowledge like people have been to the meetings before and know what you're talking about right So we started talking about the warrants several Um months ago about how to make sure school community members feel confident when signing the warrants. How do I So warrants are something that we have to sign In order to be able to pay bill execute paying bills Required by state law that the school committee has to review That's what i'm talking about introduction. Yeah, but what is this thing we're doing? This will happen on this will happen on friday more more informal Um, so a warrant is just a listing of our bills that have been vetted The service has been provided and now we're ready to make payment And so all payments before they go out have to be signed off on by the school committee The one caveat is sometimes utility bills if there's a timing issue we get the utility bills out because We don't want power to be turned off or something like that But that's what a warrant is it's just a listing of our bills that have been vetted Um gone through our process and now So at the last meeting we talked about resources. Yeah Just brief intro so but the reason why we're doing this whole thing is because we get these at the beginning of the meetings We just sign our name It's in the natural question is well, what am I signing? You know, is this a state law should I be going through it if i'm going through it? Am I looking for and thus we lead to mr. So we have now a process by which we're trying to improve our group education process on signing warrants so At the last meeting we talked about Trying out two new approaches going forward One is some sort of summary document which upon further review. I think exists already in the warrant I wanted to go through that explain it to and the second is Me highlighting unusual expenses in the warrant Which I've tried to start doing there's not everyone has unusual expenses. So you may see it in some and out in others But literally highlighting unusual expenses calling them out And then if there's a follow-up conversation that can happen as well So when I copy this a page got missed, but it's not the important page if you would go to page eight In your warrant this page will exist in every warrant that goes in front of you And it's called the warrant summary So it's going to be a quick orientation. So what this tells you it just groups all of the invoices that are being paid by Fund and also by department and it also has a available budget column because one of the questions was When we sign something to know if we're going over budget, you know, sort of between quarterly budget reports, how are we doing? So farthest to the left is the fund. So just you won't remember this but fund 1000 is the general fund If we were paying something from a revolving fund like our facility revolving fund or food services It would be a separate fund number and I can explain that as it comes up There's some accounting just our internal accounts next to that If you go over to where the words are that gives sort of the breakdown of what we're paying for So at the top where there's no available budget next to it, those are basically all the withholdings that we pay Monthly so it's not actually coming out of the district budget It's something we withhold from an employee's check and we send out so You'll see retire retirement withholdings, insurances Um There's some court legal stuff life insurance So again, those are things we withhold based on employee elections And we send those out and we sell the sign even though it's not technically the district's money Below that where you do start seeing the available budget those things are coming out of the school budget And it's grouped by so telephones water utilities Transportation you'll see a few negatives So sometimes negatives are okay and sometimes they're not Um, so for example the little negative for the the superintendent group there That's sort of a timing thing. We do we've been trying to do the transfers quarterly when we present you the quarterly report So sometimes there's going to be a little timing thing. So if it's small amount, I wouldn't stress about it The bigger numbers there the negative 222,000 so our transportation system for the those are transportation accounts Our transportation system is we pay for out of the region and we build back the elementary schools three times a year And that's Pellum elementary Amherst elementary But also leverage shoots very elementary because we provide their transportation As well So those accounts are traditionally over budget throughout the year because we only build back three times a year Based on actual expenses. So those again made a little note there build backs pending Build backs is a term we have when we use when we're billing internally either our district or lever or shoots very elementary So again, this is the summary I think this war not a great example because there's so many like withholding payments in here But you can use this to kind of gauge. Are we over spending a certain department or category? Um, and if you have any questions about it, we can follow up on it Um And yeah, so that's that and then there wasn't really anything unusual in this particular warrant To call out. It's mostly transportation health insurance and withholdings, so But I just wanted to use this one as an example and going forward again I'm going to highlight things that are unusual or that could be perceived as unusual and I think that summary is probably the Cleanest way and I can always I can make adjustments to some terminology So if there's something in here that doesn't make sense in terms of like, what is that it's unclear to me If you let me know I can try to make those changes in our accounting system to make it a more Something that you can comprehend better because sometimes there's like It's split into different pieces for simplicity's sake At the bottom one says RET teacher group in you know, I could change that to retired teacher group insurance So people could read that better questions This is the start Try it out and see how it goes and then we can come back to it So as again for educational purposes, there are On wants to be signed For the Amherst school committee meaning the elementary school committee the Amherst Pellum regional school committee And also for the Pellum school committee. Is that all those old we have here, right? So the Pellum school committee so when you look at this Beautiful folder There are different color-coded folders in there and there's usually Our meetings here. There's more than one folder of interest unless here Lucky enough or unfortunate enough to be from leverett and shoots In which case you only have one folder to look at And they're in those warrants. There are accounts payable warrants Which is essentially what I just went through as an accounts payable warrant And there's also payroll warrants, which is just cutting the by the bi-weekly pay to staff There are additional questions or comments. It's not comments and we have the editorial eyes right now Any questions? So thank you Sean This is the ongoing saga with this this issue Um, I appreciate seeing the the summary. I think You know while helpful to see that that this exists Um, it still doesn't necessarily address the concerns that we had raised before that that I've raised previously Which is you know the time to sit down and ask questions and go through this You know and as we are going through the process even at tonight's meeting of signing the warrants We're still just circulating papers and not really, you know, having an opportunity to talk with you about it so Is there a chance for us to see this summary before the meeting or is there some other Way that we could, you know potentially address this Yeah, um I would say in most cases we can send the warrants out ahead of time And we'll say before a school committee meeting There's usually a push to get a warrant done because school committee meetings only happen Sometimes once a month. Um, so there's sometimes where there's a warrant being done that day that you wouldn't have as much advance notice But in Many of the warrants we could send out ahead of time as soon as they're done scan them and and email them To you all Is is most of the warrant like 80 plus of it like all set like a week before the school committee meeting? well Not necessarily. I mean we so what we do is we get batches of stuff together and then that batch is entered into a warrant Thought where you're going is 80 percent of warrant sort of predictable recurring Stuff which it is again. It's health insurance Um, instructional supplies, uh, that's the majority of what's on every warrant But I'd say it's not always in every case. It's not always done that ahead of time like that anything further The good news about this topic is it actually never goes away. So if you don't have a question now Uh, you can just come up with a question next time. I'm serious actually I mean it's in particular one of the reasons why this has become a topic of interest Is because it is a perennial role It's a permanent role of school committee members And so it really this has come up a lot because if you don't feel comfortable with what you're doing Or if you feel like you don't understand what you're doing or if you have questions about it This is one of those few things like setting the budget or hiring superintendent Which are like absolute jobs. There's a lot of the rest of the stuff we do that essentially is essentially Uh, voluntary activities by the school committee in which we take on the task of discussing something This is something like we have to do So if you have questions, I'm just saying don't try to be funny about this. I'm saying seriously So if it comes up in the future, we'll talk about it in meetings. We'll refine it. We'll work on it We'll improve it. Mr. Devin So just a last sort of creative thought to try and address Mr. Erdogan is this concern is So if you maybe got on a cycle I don't know if this is realistic or not Um, a self-imposed deadline of a week before So you obviously wouldn't catch the expenses that are happening in the week coming up to school committee But if you just sort of gave yourself that deadline such that it was producible You could then either email it out or invite interested school committee members who are concerned to say, you know I want to come in and meet with you and and make yourself available Or someone in the office. Um, so that there's there's some sort of a time lag between You know 95 to 100 of the warrant is done You know exception cases And the time when we have to sign it. Yeah, we can certainly try to do that I'll talk with the council payable staff one of the problems with at least the elementary school is Our we only have a half time So we have a one and a half accounts payable person So we have somebody who's always doing region and palm and the Amherst persons flips back and forth between payroll and Amherst So Unless there's something super urgent and the week when that person's in payroll If there's not really much going on with Amherst accounts payable So it could create some weird Timing issues, but I'll meet with them and see if there's a way to sort of Again, do it early And just put it out there so people can come in again always welcome to come in anyway To to review what warrants are there if you come on the day before school coming to me And I'm sure there will always be warrants there to Sit and review so so I want to move forward just because it's after 10 o'clock. Let's just say you want to bring up We sign every document in each folder Yeah, if it's for region or for Amherst, you could do either one of those Yeah, I mean should I not not could not could And you're welcome to sign any of the ones you want But for requirements, we need three signatures for Amherst warrants and five for region warrants So if you see five signatures on a region warrant, you're still welcome to sign it But in terms of being approved, it's approved at that point. Okay, right Uh Close and active accounts vote Yes, so a few meetings ago we did this with revolving funds. We're not doing this with student activity funds. So Student activity funds are kid money. We set up Accounts and we manage those accounts for them, but it's all money that is raised by students in the high school or middle school in this particular case Um, I gave you the full list of our student activity accounts and their balances I believe it was as of the end of march Just so you could see all the things our kids our students do there's quite a bit But the ones that in particular I'm asking you to consider closing are the ones in red There's a high school chart and a middle school chart Because it's student money. It's not like revolving fund where it closes out to like the general fund and e&d Um, it stays student money. So what we'd be asking you what I'm asking you to do is to close this out to a student activity account That's used probably the most broadly by students, which is the field trip account So each school has a general field trip account and that's used to support field trips in particular The students have difficulty paying for a field trip. It helps subsidize the cost of the field trip So for the high school, you'll see from pretty much all of them. I put closed to field trips account There's a few that are class accounts that we're trying to get in touch with that class Because if we can disperse it to the class the person's in charge of that class they can take that and use that to do reunions or Whatever they do for that class But the rest of them would close the field trips and even those ones if we can't contact the class leadership We would close to the field trips account And so that's the same for the middle school and the high school And is there is there a motion some place on its own page? I thought so. We're at the very back of that So, um Uh, can I ask you a question? Sure selfish question? Yep. Are you having trouble finding the class the leadership of the class 1980 class? We might be you know I am not the leadership of the class 1985 by the way Not now nor ever probably but um, but the point is i'm i'm uh, I am a member of the class 1985 I in fact happened to know Uh, who not only one of the most active alumni members is locally as well as also the class president Okay. Yeah, so actually the liz hey good the teacher Seriously, I do like if you're having i mean this if it's up to them to disperse it I can connect you. Yeah, I'll I'll I'm a problem solver. That's what I did All right only if you know that they're still going to use that I'm like a student reunion or something like that class reunion It's up to I'm there. I'm connecting you Also, I'm doing is connecting here. Mr. Densmore. Um, I I don't know if I'm allowed to say this but I just have a suggestion Of previous class president. Um, I got it. We got a get from the the class that just uh, Um, Graduated and I was wondering if maybe if you can't find the leaders of these classes Maybe you could consider instead of giving the money to field trips. Maybe to the current classes Yeah, I mean we could certainly um, I mean so I spent a lot of thought and I got so Complicated that I said I think simplest is best. Um, but if there's a simple way to distribute those funds Um to other accounts that I'm open to it. Um, we could make the tweaks here You know originally I was like proportionately to all the other accounts and then I ended up putting like three pennies into some accounts And it's just good and overwhelming. Um, but we could say You know distribute it evenly to each class of at the high school for example um, the only thing I did think about that a little bit that might be unfair because like High schools have four years to raise funds whereas the ninth grade's only had Has had less years to raise funds. So I didn't know if like equally made sense but If you guys want to consider a change I'm I'm open to it. It's not as long as it stays do that money And it'll get used. I'm on board with it So this is a change we need to make now Okay, so you could I mean you could just modify it to disperse the class leadership close to field trips or disperse to the class of accounts and then I can Have one of those options and I can explore doing that in a way that makes sense Can we make it even simpler? Yes, what's the simpler side of it? For the class of 2011 1985 and 1993 presuming you cannot contact anybody That they get dispersed equally amongst the four high school classes coming in the building Okay So first off we actually probably need to make a motion and then we need to make a move to amend So if you have the back of your sheet the motion says move to transfer residual funds as noted above to the field trips accounts at each school That really the motion Yep Okay, doesn't have to be I moved to transfer residual funds as noted above to the field trips accounts at each school. Is there a second Second it's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? For example amendments being up to the offered I would like to offer an amendment That's the money from the class of 2011 class of 1985 and class of 1993 Distributed equally amongst the four current high school classes If you can't find the current class leadership Any class leadership Second the amendment as fully stated Okay, could you read back the the amendment? I actually cannot I Could restate it To move the money from the class of 2011 1985 and 1993 Equally amongst the four current high school classes assuming mr. Magano cannot contact any member of the student leadership of those classes Now to second it by mr. Denley Second Okay, it's been second moved and seconded. Is there further discussion on that? Motion Does this satisfy mr. Den's more suggestion? It does. Okay, good Anything further seeing none? We're going to vote on the amendment by the way first not the main motion The amendment as read all those in favor, please signify raising a hand by Carries unanimously. We're back on the main motion the main motion Is to move to transfer residual funds is noted above the field trip accounts at each school except as noted and Is there any further discussion on this? Seeing none all those in favor signify raising your hand Carries unanimously Thank you number six Policy first reads so again as we've stated earlier We typically have the practice of reading a policy and discussing it Adopt suggesting, you know fee giving feedback for changes as necessary and then voting on a policy in a subsequent meeting Yes, I think we usually have a second read to Well, okay, you're right. Sorry second read In a third read if we need to too, I'm sorry. It's late. I apologize So who's who from the policy group is going to? spread so the first policy is JQA food service collections, so we approved this leave last year and so Before you are two amendments or two kind of additions in red that were Brought to us via the food services director. So kind of some needs that He saw that weren't addressed in the in the current policy So the first one is That Not allowing students to charge a la carte items So if they don't have the balance to cover a la carte, then They wouldn't be allowed to charge it So with the exception of milk and a la carte items I think Sean maybe can help too, but I think like this is like bags of chips water Which we're I think they're working on a workaround for bottles of water so that there's glasses available Or maybe someone else gives more more information about the all car items, but not not the main meal basically And the second is That faculty and staff would not be allowed to charge more than one meal Is a current practice that they can charge more than one meal microphone Both of these are reflective of current practice Past practice is not always the case with that one in particular We have some staff that have balances higher than one meal, but the current practice since it wasn't in the policy This is consistent with our current practice. Okay How do they're anything else? Not on this one. Okay. Um, is it on this? Um, I just have a question about the a la carte items and you guys may not have this information. I don't know but I guess I'm I'm thinking about students that don't necessarily eat the whole meal, you know Like the entree whatever it is that day, but their lunch consists of bag of potato chips or something like that They don't have the money to buy it Are we effectively shutting them out of lunch? Only if they're if they're only going to eat the bag of chips I mean again, we encourage kids to have a lunch every day and the lunch is free So it's I mean it's not free, but it's we allow students to charge the lunches. There's no cut off there So, um, I would say only if you're only in the instance of the lunch is actually the bag of chips But I think in that case we encourage the student to get a full lunch If that yeah I have reservations about this. Why are we doing this? if If the kid doesn't have money I thought we we created a policy last year where we're not penalizing people for their choices Right. So our current policy allows Students to have breakfast and lunch the question is is there sort of unlimited charging to You know about water juices chips, I mean It's up to you, but I could see the situation where I could just say if I I could see an instance where if there is, you know, and it's out there then What is the sort of incentive or I guess that's the school lunch program again is is built Um In some way it's main mission is to serve lunches and breakfast But the more money the program loses the more money the operating budget also has to subsidize the lunch program Which takes money away from other areas of the budget. So I understand your position, but I I think it's punitive If somebody wants to eat a partial lunch, they should be able to eat a partial lunch Mr. John So a question of her clarification My understanding from my kids and might be incorrect, but that they actually have many choices for the What's considered the lunch In addition to the a la carte choices and that the a la carte choices tend to be What I would classify jump food. Yeah, it's cheetos pop carts multiple choices That would still be Covered and not prohibited. Yeah, in particular at the high school. There's lots of choices The middle school is sort of in the middle at the elementary school. I think they have two or three choices Um for the lunch, but I think you're right that the a la carte items are typically Again bags of chips popped hearts things like that So I have um two questions, which is if My understanding also is that if you're on a free or reduced lunch that a la carte Items are not included in that. Anyway, that would be out of pocket expense Um, so that would I mean that's sort of what this is getting at right now the the policy is silent on that So sorry, so I think maybe I missed your question the free and the reduced lunch program doesn't cover a la carte items right, so okay, and then The second one is our a la carte It offered at both the middle school in the high school or just the high school Um, technically technically anything could be considered a la carte. I mean you could go up and grab one Fruit if you're not getting it was a full lunch. That's considered a la carte um But the majority of the a la carte a la carte items are at the high school. That's where there's sort of Uh and the middle school. There's actually both have racks of chips popped hearts things like that So I guess to clarify the question about a la carte. It's not just the junk food It would be also if somebody just wanted a sandwich and right The milk and the fruit and what constitutes Yeah, I mean, I think that it gets into tricky area because if Um, if somebody just gets a sandwich, it's not a reimbursable meal. So we do encourage students to get a full reimbursable lunch because it really would It really makes a big impact on the financial aspect of the program if So it's just by one piece of the lunch as opposed to taking the whole lunch While it's still their choice It would make a big impact on it So mr. Demling and then mr. Dornis So I've given this is a first read. This is appropriate level of discussion. Um I think what the information I would want and the following readings are getting clearer definitions it sounds like You know the general principle here is a good one that if a kid Wants a partial lunch that's appropriate for them and they're Making some sort of decision about the categorization and we should understand what that That is so we so we need better definitions of what is what are we talking here? Talk about lunch partial lunch and exactly what is the are the a la carte? I guess it also like a little more Just narrative description from food services about what the motivation for this this was. I mean, I can imagine cases in in my head of you know The the thrust of of this food policy, which you know This committee worked a long time on or I think all very proud of Has had some some national recognition. Um Is you know the the principle of that is not just to You know have kids come in and eat pop tots anytime they want but they don't need it That's not the that's not the drive but you know, we wouldn't want to You know clean up and tidy the policy and have unintended consequences I can I can prepare a list of all occur items. We said on us Yeah, I mean I completely agree with that. I think that um, just having some clarity on The definition here would be incredibly important because my initial reaction when I read this was that we were Now sort of back peddling on where we were before right and you know, even that if that's not necessarily the the intent I could definitely see why you know Even families might potentially see it or read it that way And I also would want to get more information just about budget impact because you know that the concern Um, I hear what you're saying about that, you know, money has to come from someplace And if it's you know, money that's being spent here and not being recouped that that potentially could then impact our other budget areas But at the same time I remember us when we were having this conversation even just about Uh, collecting, you know unpaid Or collecting on unpaid balances The money we were talking about was such a small amount. So You know if we could have a sense of what we are talking about here like as a food services program been Documenting the amount of money they've been losing on a regular basis because people are taking it from mallocard Or is this just a concern that they have but it's not really You know just getting clarity on that would be really helpful before we we make a decision like this I think it's a couple things. I think some some of the concerns I've actually heard are from parents Once we when we put in place this new policy, we get a lot more calls, which is good. That's what we were trying to do Some of the concerns we hear are if he owes money, why are you letting my kid accrue more debt To buy these things because a lot it may be a case where the student has lunch But they see a bag of chips or they want something so there so there's been some input like that from telephone conversations, but I can give you more It's hard to it's very student specific. I don't know if there's a report in our system that will sort of look at How many times these items are charged, but there might be so I'll take a look great. Thank you So are there are there further comments from people who haven't spoken yet? Have you spoken already? I did. Oh You don't have to I'm just asking Ms. Kacinski I guess my input for the policy committee would be I think I can understand the desire you know To limit extras So if I've gone through the line and I've gotten my full lunch I can understand not going back and getting a cookie. That's maybe not really necessary to have a healthy lunch So I can kind of see that but I also I want to make it very clear that we're not penalizing somebody who maybe knows They don't have money to buy their lunch and they're buying the sandwich instead of the full lunch that they're not going to eat And then penalizing them for them like that to me feels very inappropriate. So somehow if we can separate The add-on junk food from I'm just buying a smaller lunch today I think that's an important distinction and not only in the policy, but in how we communicate that No, I think it's a great idea. I think it'd be instead of Carving out milk is acceptable. I think it'd be easier to carve out the items that may not be acceptable Because I think they'll make sense when I bring the list back. So I think that makes it normal I think that makes enormous sense because I think that when I when I read this It struck me the same way that was mentioned previously that we we did We did two things last year that I thought were very important One was improve our communication and outreach directly to parents and guardians It's basically saying if there's a bill that's owed we want to make sure we're we're not we're not focusing on the kid and saying we're gonna You know Make your life difficult. Basically, um, we're going to try to communicate better and also I thought one of the things I really liked about it was we talked about You know interacting with parents and guardians on a regular basis and not just when there's a big problem And on a very regularized basis and I thought that was also wise So that was one half of it and that's on the side of saying You know, we need to balance our budgets And if there's an if there's an inadvertent reason why bills aren't being paid We want them to be paid If there's in fact a problem that could be remediated maybe with free and reduced lunch We want to guide somebody so they can get support that they need In a non stigmatized environment that's you know, very private and everything like that for the for the parent or guardian But we're also along with that was the idea. We weren't going to be penalizing and picking out students and sort of diverting them in ways that Felt like some sort of food shaming around their circumstances. And so I just think that as it's written It's just I'm not going really what's been said before but I'm saying is more strongly next I do feel very strongly about this We made a really great advance last year And so we need to refine this language In ways that can sharpen up what we're trying to do And then I think we should get before we vote on it We should try to get broader feedback on it to make sure that that the perception of how what we're doing with policy doesn't seem like we're Basically reverting to status quo mandate. Sure. And I'm not saying that's the intent I'm saying I want to make sure that it's well understood. It was what we're doing. We have third thing. Sorry I apologize. So one third thing on it too is While we're reviewing the policy I'd love to know whether collections are up and whether there's demonstrable evidence that communication with parents and guardians has worked Because even though I said a moment ago. Oh, isn't it wonderful. We're doing it. You might tell me Yeah, that's great. Eric, but that was nice in a theory, but it's not actually having any demonstrable effect on collections So I'm all all in favor of learning based on evidence. Sorry. Is it mcdonald? Please? Um, it's a combination question and comment. Um, so Again, this is based on my anecdotal feedback from my seventh grader My understanding is that there are there is some food that is available for free Sort of a lot of times fruit is available for free and I'm not sure if that's sort of by policy or there's a Like food exchange. Like I don't want this from the lunch and so I'm going to put it So maybe that should be part of the make that there's a a community table that Because again a full a full lunch that is reimbursable But so when we sell lunches to students actually all students there's a federal reimbursement piece to that But it has to have all the components If not, then we can't claim it for reimbursement So there's a most schools have a table set up where if there's something in that full meal that they don't want They can put it there and other kids can Take it they want usually fruit Not always No, I was just wondering if that was part of the if that was already embedded in policy that that's sort of uh It's not I would say it's actually been encouraged somewhat by desi because they see a lot of schools are doing that Anyway, um, but it's not sort of a formal thing that they say like do this Uh, so unless there's anything else otherwise we'll move on since we have more to do Okay Okay, the second Policy we have for first read is a new policy called student activities. So this This is brought to you kind of At the request of our new auditors Who are wanting the school committee to vote a policy? around student activity funds so Mr. Mangano has A student activities handbook that he will share and it's Very thorough and there's a lot of detail in there about how they manage the accounts um and so This policy was taken kind of from the introduction to that handbook For us to vote because it's a I think our auditors Maybe in an ideal world would want us to vote the entire handbook um They kind of seemed not really appropriate for a policy to have be voting something that specific So, um, they're they're also fine with us voting this. This is why this is here Um, and then the handbook will be shared so you can take a look at what's in there questions What does this do just codify a policy? What does this accomplish does two things? Um, so one thing is I could not find record of the school committee adopting the law that allows us to have student activity accounts Probably because it was done Decades ago So one of the things in that policy is that it you formally accept adopt that law so that we can continue to operate um The other thing is student activity Accounting around student activity accounts is very specific Um, it's one of those areas that there have been some well-policized Fraudulent embezzlement type activities and other areas of the state And as such desi has really in recent years Pushed the need to really have robust Procedures around student activity accounts. There's very specific rules about you have to have two Every school has a savings account a checking account You can only spend from the checking account all the money goes into the savings account in order to transfer between the two You have to have a series of approvals So all that sort of stuff is outlined in this manual which was actually pulled from a desi Sort of template and then modified for our school district So again, I'll send you our existing manual that we've been using Since 2015 with some updates to it So you can go through it And this but it's very specific to student activities separate from our regular operations And this paragraph incorporates those rules Yeah, essentially, you know, we talked about this the policy itself Should you approve the whole manual or sort of approve the superintendent Create adopting a manual And I think there's pros and cons of each but one of them was if there are future changes You know, if we want to slightly tweak like the the level that Each school can have in their checking account would that then have to go through the whole policy process? Again to make a sort of a small revision of that nature So I think the way the policy so can be subcommittee leaned was to make it more at the superintendent's approval level But that's sort of why it's like that Any further Questions or comments at this point? Seeing none will move on Regional advocacy MASC day on the hill Whose item is this? I think it's share Then who am I recognizing You must start and I'll yeah, sure. Um, so Regional advocacy covers a lot of things but the two items that Mr. Dain is and I working on a lot in the last few weeks are 100 fully funding 100% regional transportation by 19 and beyond and establishing a commission to evaluate Our regional schools are funded and governed by regulations and such Mr. Steinberg is here. He gets a big cheer Um, so so what does that mean? Um, so we we sent some letters on this and we've talked about this a little bit before but there is quite a bit of Advocacy from regional school districts across the state I think probably part in due part to the the state auditor's report from last october that That talked about a lot of these things specific to regional schools Um, what what you said regional has kind of been the initiator of a lot of the online presence. And so we've Spoken with them. Um, and so uh, one thing that we did recently is we reached out to all regional school districts that shared representatives with us particularly our representative cooler And we had a meeting with representative cooler class friday with uh, I think we had six or seven regional school districts represented a little more than that. I think it was almost 10 Okay Yeah, 15 plus people a lot of superintendents school familiar as it was it was actually really great to like meet people From our area who are engaged on the same issues and um, You know, I thought it was a really productive meeting on on several fronts One he was very receptive and very knowledgeable about the issue. He's the vice chair on the houseways and means committee. So Given where we are in the state budget cycle Is the houseways and means committee budget is being released tomorrow It was very timely. Um, and he gave us some really specific actionable information, which is the Ways and means committee budget gets released and then there's this very short window wednesday thursday friday of this week for amendments to be offered and cosponsored um, and then during next week during vacation week all those And I think he described over a thousand potential amendments. So a massive number get um Sort of uh, smushed down informally and then there's crazy budget week a week after that Anyway, so it's a it's a high time good time for us to be advocating on that. Um, and so We've been we've been working with um the organizers of uh, what you said group to uh Forget some materials together and basically get advocacy in terms of people calling the representatives getting into cosponsor bills We've also reached out to our representative Goldstein rose who's who's on board with supporting these? and so Yeah, that's kind of like the Snapshot overview if you want to pick it up from there Yeah, so um, just to add to that a little bit is um, so as peter mentioned that we have a very small window of Advocacy and action that can take place Our representatives. I think don't really need to get moved at this point. They're on board. They've said they're you know But I think if there are uh contacts with other regions other districts other legislators across the state that any of us have Um, you know get on facebook get out with your social networks You know get out to all your other networks And share the news of um of this advocacy that's taking place because it's incredibly important ends up impacting School budgets in so many different ways. Um, I'm also looking at our student representative over here Um, if you know, there's spreading the word I think among students about the importance of regional transportation funding having the state fully funded a hundred percent And just activating some of those networks across the state would be also incredibly important again Not with our legislators. They're on board But it's other legislators across the state that that need to be um activated on this as a facebook page There's other ways for people to plug in Um Should I go on to the mass day on the hill? So as I mentioned at our last meeting, um The massachusetts association of school committees has an annual Day on the hill, which is a sort of advocacy training for school committee members And for other folks sort of connected to school committees And education here in the state and the commonwealth and um, it's a great day for learning and educating But also for meeting with legislators in boston We last year had taken advantage of the date and the opportunity to organize Several students from from amherst regional high school and take them to the mass day on the hill And then also I had helped set up myself and and mr. Wamanee cage and helped set up some meetings with some of our other legislators while we were there and also Well, the students actually and had had a great time. They were able to you know, sort of experience them and they had never experienced before They got to meet staff and they got to meet legislators Like mr. Goldstein rose and uh, mr. Cool actually was in those budget meetings that week and wasn't able to actually meet the students But his staff was so I I think it's a very valuable experience But again, I don't know that the mask day on the hill in particular. It's a great experience for students It's not geared towards students. It's not, you know, it's it's made for school committee members for other adults But I think the event or creating a similar type of event for ourselves In taking the students up to boston and having them meet legislators is incredibly powerful and useful Um, and so I think that the question that I want to post to the committee is a are you guys on board? Does that make sense? Should we try this again? Should we do it again? I'm happy to volunteer again to do it We had a great time last year and then B, I think it's probably to dr. Morris About whether or not we can still go the same route that we did last year You know with the family center and maybe also enlisting the support of our state of our student representative To reach out to the wider student community and helping select students and you know and get folks on board And then it's just a matter of selecting a date that would work for for everyone. So We're done. I didn't have a thought. Um, just in terms of Capacity of people and trips to boston and all that. Um, so last year I think you worked with the family center on the cause box group So the cause box conference, which our students are going to again this year, uh, fortunately it's in boston, which is a very It makes lots of things easier And so I just wonder since there's going to be a group of students going to boston anyway, could we link up Some of their experience because they'll already be there just in terms of travel time and time away from school day and It's a little later in may so that's a little complicated perhaps for some of them if they're Um seniors, um, but it's before graduation Um, but it may be just if the stars aligned It's probably beyond the we can't meet with you because we're in budget season from the legislator point of view And our students will already be there, which I think eliminates one variable that was as I recall a little complicated last year Like they're staying this hotel like right it's it's it's a that's all planned. So Perhaps I could show you that information with you and then we could take some next steps That's so you're looking for feedback from sentiment to the committee, right? Yeah, I think is you know thumbs up thumbs down. Does this sound like a good idea can Um, and then you know if there's anyone else that wants to to participate and you know help organize But I appreciate that dr. Morris. I think that that's smart thinking the logistics are already set up why not take advantage of that and again, we're not Uh, you know limited by this particular day, you know that that mask is setting up So we can pretty much select any date that works for us Anything further great update by the way, that was very interesting and very helpful Next So we have a custom which you may have seen in the past That we have to vote to accept gifts to the school district And in fact, they have to be enumerated Specifically is there a member of the committee who's an alum Veteran, excuse me who's interested in demonstrating good practice and form and making a motion To show our new members how it's done Depends how complicated the last names are I'm gonna call it misc since I'll move to accept the gifts as follows florins bank To support the hs florins bank 2018 scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars Shirley and i'm sorry for the last name Muskemerki To support the leo p Vininald scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars The pelham pto to support the staff breakfast on three nine for a hundred dollars the fort river parent council to support the staff breakfast on three nine for sixty five dollars The arps pgo doing business as crocker farm pgo Stet to support the staff breakfast three nine for sixty five dollars the amherst regional high school pgo To support the staff breakfast on three nine in the amount of a hundred and thirty dollars the ar ms pgo to support the staff breakfast on three nine for the amount of sixty five dollars Leader home centers providing 1671 various paint samples for the summit academy Estimated value of three dollars and ninety nine cents a sample The french steric comic books to support the arhs world language programs various 13 books estimated at $200 for a total of one thousand four hundred and twenty five dollars. So a second It's been seconded by mr. Manino. Is there any further discussion mr. Demling? Yes, three dollars and ninety nine cents per sample The total is the dollar amount correct Because that's an in-kind donation. They don't the company estimates what they believe it's worth We do not We don't recognize that value Okay, so we don't need to recognize that value Astro comics that's pretty cool. And this by the way is leo vinho Who was a former french teacher at the high school? In honor of leo vinho who i studied french with for a year in high school Anything further? Saying nothing all those in favor accepting this is read. He's saying the private is in hand It is unanimous. Thank you very much Let's do this quickly For school committee planning. We have further regional advocacy What's special education legal counsel discussion? So I have an update to share our current special ed legal counsel is Looking to perhaps have a different relationship with the district I'm speaking code intentionally because I think I don't want to I don't know how to describe this Well quickly, so you don't have to yeah because this is for a future agenda right right So it's trying to explain upper a model shift that you know, we'd like to share with the committee And it doesn't have to be necessarily at the next meeting, but it's just we need to do with the spring. Okay Okay, great Do you have any other other thoughts? Yeah, there's a couple others. So sc tf goals. So you saw miss cunningham list that schedule So looking at the two policies perhaps coming back. There's also two more policies that are ready for first reads Something that I just want to mention. I know it's late. It's just that I do want to come back and offer an update around the middle school principal search There's some things as it relates to employment and my role that I have constrained somewhat I can share and then there's other things I can't share and I'd like to Be able to do that next time in a little more detail And I was prepared to do tonight when I acknowledge The public comment that we heard and my interest in and all of our interests having licensed Administrator at the middle school next year, which we will have when students return and I can put a little more detail on that the next time we come back Great. Are there any so this is also by the way time in and this is not the only opportunity you have to influence the agenda at any point Frankly at any time you ever want to meaning like three in the morning if you wake up and think about it You can write an email to myself as long as I'm chair and whoever's chair in the future Or to the superintendent, but typically go to the chair or both Um around an agenda item, but this is also a space on the agenda That's more public where if somebody wants to bring up an item they want covered on the agenda They can mention it But since there's so many other opportunities to do so no one feels they need to compel to keep us here any longer If they don't want to sure doesn't work Um, I do I feel the need in one case. Sure Because miss hey good who's the activity director at the uh high school Asked me to um bring up to the school committee that there's usually um along with the student rep There's a a time about once a month when a school a member of the school committee comes to the high school and meets with some of the students there So I would be one and Abigail probably would be another during the school day And miss hey good asked that that could happen. Um I think that the last week of april and the or the first week of may is what teacher she suggested So she asked me to uh ask you guys to pick a time and a person to come to the high school Okay, and but the time is in the last week in April or the first week in may. Yeah one of those Okay, so that gives us a few days probably to work with on that right we could probably pick the time based on the person and the week, right? Okay, um We I think the one thing we can do is we can commit that someone will come I will happily do it if I have the time to do it Um There's any other volunteers who could join the happy pool of people who'd be willing to do it. Mr. Demling All right, mr. Demling and myself That happy It's too late for me to come up with my usual ridiculous comment or retort to that Okay, yes Um I'm wondering if uh somebody could send out the graduation dates for the high school as well as summit academy So we can put them on our calendars. Oh, that sounds great That's something that you do list Just as you know, but probably for the next two meetings at least superintendent evaluation Absolutely. Now. This is not an exhaustive agenda absolutely Just to clarify since it has to be posted tomorrow morning the agenda that the group would want posted for friday morning Friday at noon, excuse me friday at noon is going to be on the unions the So we're not right because because of the vote tonight. We're not talking about and we're not talking There was some discussion about superintendent evaluations. We don't need to anymore. Okay Right I think that's true great Thank you. I just want to make sure that we had it posted Accurate I'm just trying to think um If you want to see the evaluation instrument And not vote at the same meeting But be able to vote it before you use it That might put us up friday If we want to vote on the 8th to use it on the 22nd You might want to see it on friday. We don't have a meeting on the 8th If you want to I'm just saying if you want to I guess we could send it out without discussion And if you want to look at it one meeting and then vote on it the next meeting Then I think we would need to look at on friday vote it on the 8th to be able to make it Live on the 22nd Is that right? I Am happy to put it on the agenda So let's put that on the agenda for friday Review no, I'm not Any expression on my face is just the time of the evening. It's not any comment or editorial on the quality of your comment Um, really it isn't uh, great. Let's put that on the agenda We'll do Anyone else have any other motions they want to offer at this point? Is there a second for them? We'll do adjourn Can't not the spitzer you got to say something. Oh, you did. Oh, I thought you're both not so I first saw a vigorous nod I'm like no you speak up all those in favor We're adjourned And thanks to amber's media. Thank you very much for sticking with us


Welcome to the conference. My name is Justin Pettit and I'm a senior staff engineer at Google. I work on Istio and Google Service Mesh offerings. One of the most exciting projects in recent memory for Service Mesh is the Ambient Mesh data plane which we launched last year. Ambient Mesh brings the traffic management, security, and observability of Istio in a sidecarless model that makes it easier, safer, and cheaper to deploy Service Mesh. Across a cluster, Ambient Mesh uses less memory and CPU than sidecars. It is also no longer necessary to make complicated resource reservation calculations which makes Istio easier to deploy and it frees up node level resources since each pod doesn't need to allocate a proxy to handle its potential peak usage. This translates directly into cost savings of 90% or more. Keep in mind this slide shows a small three node deployment so the dollar amount will be quite substantial at a larger scale. Here we see a traditional Kubernetes network with a CNI and a few pods running on two nodes. With a sidecar data plane, we would need to modify the pod specification and restart the pod for each workload that participates in the mesh. With Ambient Mesh, we replace the sidecar with a node level component that handles the Zero Trust MTLS encryption, L4 policies, and observability. Workloads that wish to participate in the mesh are left unmodified and their traffic is simply redirected through this component. At the time of the Ambient announcement, we created a reference implementation in Rust called Ztunnel. This was done to make a fairly portable implementation that could be integrated with many existing CNIs. When L7 policies are used, the L4 component securely redirects traffic through a waypoint proxy, which is a full proxy that can handle the L7 requirements of Istio. Similar to the L4 component, the Ambient Reference Implementation provides an envoy-based waypoint proxy deployed in its own pod to handle L7 policy enforcement. The waypoint proxy is deployed in the customer's cluster and managed by Istio. While an improvement on traditional sidecars for many users, it still introduces another layer that must be managed and provisioned. While this is a great way to deploy Ambient, we've always had in mind that this Ztunnel functionality could be baked into new enhanced CNIs. This brings a number of benefits, fewer moving pieces, fewer redundant resources, and a cleaner integration, since there can be overlap between CNI and Istio functionality such as service resolution. Some work has already begun to add this functionality to existing popular CNIs to allow them to integrate with Ambient Mesh. We imagine a future with a clearly defined Ambient L4 interface to allow multiple implementations to interoperate. We will similarly define a standard interface for securely connecting to waypoint proxies to allow alternative implementations. One could imagine alternative waypoint proxy implementations with custom functionality and scaling mechanisms that could even run as managed load balancers that run outside the customer's cluster. As you can see, there's been a lot of exciting discussion around Ambient Mesh and its components, Ztunnel and Waypoint Proxy. These are really just a reference implementation. It's a good option to deploy Ambient Mesh for existing Kubernetes deployment, but it's still another layer users must manage. We envision a future with different interoperable implementations and Ambient becomes a design pattern for service mesh as opposed to simply a discreet set of components. These alternative components that we've been discussing, an enhanced CNI with Ztunnel functionality and a managed waypoint proxy, mere existing components in most cloud providers. By extending the capabilities of the CNI and making use of a managed load balancer, we can provide Istio Ambient Mesh without introducing a new layer for the user to manage. It becomes the responsibility of the cloud provider to maintain and scale the service mesh so users can focus on building their applications. Finally, we expect even greater resource savings because Ambient can leverage the provider's resources instead of them being deployed as part of the cluster. I hope this presentation has given you a glimpse at some of the exciting plans we have for Ambient Mesh going forward. Thank you and enjoy the conference.


So you're trying to use Anki, you're trying to use flashcards to help yourself get better grades, but right now you just want to pull your hair out. What should you do? Talk about it in this video. Let's get to it. All right guys, welcome to the MD Journey, a channel completely dedicated to helping you succeed on your medical journey with left stress. My name is Lux, I'm an internal medicine physician and resident in training. In this channel we talk about everything medical journey related, including studying productivity. And today we are going to be talking about how to make Anki work for you and make sure you don't fall for those common pitfalls that most med students do. Let's get into it. But before I forget, consider hitting that subscribe button and checking out other videos on the channel after you're done with this one, putting out two videos just like this on a weekly basis and make sure if you do enjoy the video that you hit that like button down below. Now I made a few videos on Anki, one specifically showing you the technique that I used in medical school, as well as one that kind of shows you how to use it faster. But in this video, I want to give you a little bit of an overview as well as answer some questions that you guys keep asking me in the comment section. Now first things first, I want to talk about two tips that I've given in previous videos to help you explain how to use Anki more effectively. Now, the biggest question and kind of comment that I get is about somebody who has loads of flashcards left to review and it's becoming overwhelming. It's been hard to kind of be consistent with your flashcards. So the first tip I'd give you on how to use Anki better is to kind of have a mental or actual physical timer involved in your flashcards.  But essentially, instead of just saying, well, I'm gonna have to answer this flashcard and then I can move on, give yourself a very brief timer, maybe like 10 seconds and saying, can I answer this flashcard or not? Because I found through my own experience as well as working with other med students through coaching is that you find the most benefit from Anki cards actually come from making the mistake. So if you have a flashcard that you're not exactly sure how to approach, instead of spending two minutes trying to answer, it's better you probably spend 10 seconds and saying, I don't know it, let me look at the answer and move forward and review. And to avoid falling into a trap where you're spending excesses amounts of time just for one single flashcard, have either a physical timer on your phone or a mental timer where you say, after 10 to 15 seconds, if I don't understand it, I'm just gonna look at the answer. And then when I see the answer, I'm gonna give myself 10, 20 seconds to review and then click that one minute button so I can see it again pretty soon. And so just to hit it home, imagine if you had two students, one who is spending about a minute per flashcard or even more just to make sure they perfectly get all the information and a second student who is giving themselves a timer about 10 to 15 seconds. Student A will be able to get through all the material and maybe have a comfort for their initial phase, but unfortunately their retention will go down. If you compare that to student B, they're gonna have so many more opportunities for repetition. In fact, what you'll find is that student B will notice that the easy topics maybe they repeat and get right on their first try or maybe their second. And that way they can spend the remaining months of time dedicated specifically to things that they're weaker on. So student B not only will have more repetition, they'll also have better ideally retention. And finally, in a bonus, they'll have more time dedicated to their weaker topics compared to student A who's spending about the same amount of time regardless if the flashcard is hard or easy. Now moving on from timing, tip number two on how to use on key cards a little bit more effectively is to try using screenshot tools to be able to kind of expedite your creation phase. Now I've made videos in the past, I'll link them down below, but basically it takes us so much time to actually create the flashcards. You wanna expedite that process as best as possible. So if you're using a PowerPoint slide or if you're using a syllabus or if you're using an online resource to create your on key cards, maybe see if you can actually use a snipping tool or a screenshot tool on your laptop to just be able to replace the typing of the questions or the actual answer of the slide. If there's a PowerPoint slide in your lecture that basically explains what you would have typed anyways, might as well just go ahead and screenshot that and use that as kind of your flashcard. It's a great way to say do I know everything on the slide or do I not? And if you're interested in a more step-by-step approach on how I use on key, then I'll also link down below access to the MedVault. And one of the many different things that we have in this free library for you on the MD journey website is basically my 78 step process that I use in med school, including how I used on key. Next, let's transition to some things that I get questions about all the time, which are my on key settings. Now, if you're unfamiliar, on key basically has its own default settings on how it goes by its space repetition algorithm. But if you click in the option setting of any deck, then go ahead and choose how many new flashcards you want, how many review flashcards you want, and basically kind of what period of time would you want if something is very easy versus something that you were having a little bit of difficulty on. Now, spoiler alert, nine out of 10 times, I'm usually not gonna make any changes to the default settings that on key gives me, usually it does the trick. Now, a few times where I will make some adjustments if I have a deck that's remained, such as like if I'm setting for step one or step two, and those on key cards are just enormous in terms of the deck size. And so I wanna make sure that I'm able to get enough of the new material as well as review as possible. So then I will go ahead and kind of change the numbers. You know, 20 flashcards every day and new material for a thousand plus flashcard deck isn't really realistic. And so that may change that to 50 or more depending on your capabilities. Or if it's a really small deck, but they all have a lot of pieces of information, then maybe I'll change that number to 10. So it's up to you on your preference level, but I usually just kind of stick by the defaults on majority of the things for Anki. Now, if you are using my step-by-step method on how I used Anki, one of the things I do use is kind of a cramming method through Anki to review old flashcards. Now I wanna make sure that I'm gonna reviewing an old lecture, I'm not just kind of getting the weak points, but I'm also getting some things that used to be my strength and I wanna make sure they stay in my strength. So actually go to the custom study option. And if you click down here, study by card state, you can actually say all cards in a random order. And basically it'll show you every single card that needs to be in that deck. And that way you can make sure that when you're reviewing all the flashcards, both the easy ones and the hard ones will show up at once. And so if you're somebody who is ending up with a really large review deck of old cards that you need to review, usually when I'm reviewing an old lecture for an upcoming quiz, I'll use this cramming function that way when I say I'm studying chapter one, I'll review all those lectures from chapter one, not just the ones that Anki will recommend on that specific day. Now, one of the features I do enjoy using is a stats function above. Now, if you're going through a very large deck or if you're preparing for an upcoming exam, sometimes it's important to kind of understand how many flashcards you still haven't gone through. And so I like to go down below. And so for the step two deck that I have downloaded, actually have 2,000 cards that I still have left good to go through if I was studying for step two. And so this is a great way of being able to understand do I need to increase how many new cards I'm shown in a daily basis, or do I just need to do more flashcards on a daily basis? The stats function really helps. Now, as we're kind of diving into the settings, one of the related questions that I do get is should you download the apps on your devices? Now, for Android right now, Anki's actually free, so the answer for that is definitely. But for Apple devices like your iPhones or your iPads, there actually is a fee. And I think the last time I had to pay for it is about 20 to 30 bucks, but it's a one-time fee. And the question is, should you have to pay that or should you as a beneficial? I honestly recommend that if you do have an iPhone or an iPad to go ahead and just spend that one-time charge to make sure that if you ever do have your iPad or your iPhone near you and you're gonna do those flashcards, you can do it without having to wait to get to your computer or your Android device. Or you can just go ahead and get an Android device, but I know you Apple lovers won't like that. But with all jokes aside, I did like to go ahead and buy the app on my iPad, and I would use that app for my rotations as well as in-between classes. And so to wrap up this video, I wanna share a few other techniques you can use to really make Anki more effective as well as increase your retention when using the flashcards themselves. So the first thing that I would recommend doing is to work in focus intervals. Often we'll say I need to do 200 flashcards a day, which individually may not seem like a lot, but if you do miss a day, then doing 400 flashcards the next day is kind of a little overwhelming. And 600 cards the following day, if you were to miss two days in a row can basically just done deal. You're not gonna do it. So the best way to actually process getting through as many cards as you've assigned yourself is to try to break it into many focus sessions. So maybe you find that you could do 25 flashcards before kind of starting your day or having breakfast or going to class. Doing those 25 flashcards may only take you about 10 minutes to do, but you're already about a fourth of the way done if you were assigned yourself 100 flashcards in a day. So if you have these mini focus sessions throughout the day where you're able to do it during some downtime before a meal, after a meal or before some transition in your medical schedule, you'll be able to get through a lot of flashcards without feeling like it's overbearing or that you're doing tons of flashcards in a daily basis. So each seem like a very manageable task and it's much likely for you to do those individual small mini tasks instead of that big task in one sitting. And so our focus intervals can help you take a lot of flashcards and make them more manageable. One of the questions I do get is how to go about your review. Now we talked about the cramming function to be able to see all the flashcards in one place, but one of the things that many students have issues with is just the flashcards starting to gather up and not really knowing how to approach them do you use the flashcards that Anki recommends or do you just go through the lectures? Now personally, I like to have all my lectures assigned to a specific day of the week on when I review them. So for example, if lecture one was today then the second time I would review lecture one would probably be over the weekend and then I have a specific day of the week coming into an exam day of when I would review it for the third or fourth time if I'm allowed to. And I would specifically assign an hour block or 30 minute block depending on my comfort level for that lecture to review those Anki cards and use that cram session. Now how I go about scheduling the various lectures throughout my schedule before a week of an exam really varies from what most people do. Most people will probably start from the first lecture and move down chronological order, but it's very easy to get overwhelmed because it's been a while since you've learned that initial material and then as you get towards the end there's also a likelihood that you'll forget lecture one for the second time. So what I actually like to do is kind of go from outside in approach. So if my first day review I would have had enough time to review three lectures I wouldn't just do lecture one, two and three I would actually probably do lecture one and two as well as the last lecture of that block. So if there was 20 lectures for an exam I would do lecture one, two and 20 and day two I would do lecture three, four and 19. This way I'm getting a little bit of old material and new material that way my confidence is kind of there and not beaten up by old material that I may have forgotten but I'm also making sure that each topic is being covered with a little bit of a variety the same way that it would show up on exam day. So if you're struggling to figure out how to review your flashcards for Anki for an exam I encourage you to maybe get away from using the flashcards Anki gives you instead try to basically assign specific times of the week coming into an exam for a specific lecture trying to use that custom option to see all of your flashcards in one time and maybe also using that outside in approach to make sure you're seeing each lecture in a very authentic way. So those guys are the tips for this video on how to use Anki better to make sure that they're more effective but I know you guys probably still have questions about Anki so make sure you drop them in the comment section and while you're down there go ahead and also consider checking out some of the free resources including the MedVault which is a full free library of resources for all your medical journey as well as some of the books and courses that we have for you on theamdetraining.com and if you somehow made it to the end of the video and you still haven't subscribed then go ahead and support the channel and your boy by hitting that like button and that subscribe button or putting out two videos just like this on a weekly basis but with that being said guys thank you so much for watching as always I appreciate your support thank you for making it to the end hopefully I've been a little help to you on your journey thanks for being a part of mine I'll see you guys in the next one, peace.