Welcome, today is Thursday, December 15th, 2016 of the Arlington School Committee. Before we get with our regular program, Dr. Buddy wants to make an announcement about tomorrow's school, as it's very cold out, she wants to tell us the plans. The plan right now is that we are going to have school at the regular hours. We've looked very carefully at temperatures. The difference between seven and ten is about four degrees. Winds do go down, but they don't go down a lot. So parents should plan on having their children in school, and we would encourage parents to make sure that the children are, if they're going to walk to school or standing at a bus stop, that they are wrapped well. I expect that a lot of parents will drive their child to school. And if that's the case, please, when you pull up to the school, drop off and leave quickly, because I expect to have long lines there tomorrow. But as I've said in the past, on days that were there's some issues around snow, this is another example of a situation where parents are going to have to use their own discretion. If you feel that the conditions are unsafe for your child to come to school, then what you need to do is call school, let them know your reason. It will be an excused absence, but it will be an absence. And it's possible that this could change. I don't think it's going to change, but if it does, as we've done in the past, it'll go out on School Messenger, as well as be available on the media. And our website. Great, thank you. Are there any public participation? No, okay. So first, today we're continuing the session of a budgetary request. Today is about middle and high school and special education requests. We're going to start with the middle schools at, that's right. Okay, start with the middle school at Audison. And AEA. And AEA is doing their thing, yes, sorry. Thanks. Great. The Audison community appreciates and thanks the school committee, Superintendent Bode. Can you just introduce yourself? I know, we know. Good evening. I'm Eileen Woods, the interim principal at the Audison. Great, thanks. The Audison community appreciates and thanks the school committee, Superintendent Bode and Assistant Superintendent Cheson, for supporting the important work of educating our Audison middle school students. In addition, we'd like to thank the Arlington community for the continued support through the Arlington Education Foundation and the Audison Parent Advisory Council. This academic year, the 1,215 Audison students and faculty have benefited greatly from the additional staffing to address the needs created by enrollment growth. And I highlight five key areas, two additional eighth grade cluster teachers who have enabled us to maintain a smaller class size, which ensures that teachers can give individual feedback, differentiate curriculum and build supportive classroom communities. An additional 0.6 physical education teacher, which has lowered class size, ensured locker room safety and met required planning time for the PE staff. The 0.2 family and consumer science teacher helped balance the core sections with other exploratory departments. The need for an additional full time nurse has helped meet the needs of daily visits from over 60 to 90 students. The additional needed class sections due to increased enrollment and exploratory classes have helped students to be more successful learners. So we thank you for those. This year's budget requests are framed with input from Audison teachers, administrators, leadership team and department she is. Our key levels are quality teaching, academic rigor and individualized student learning. As a transitional leader at Audison this year, the work has been centered on looking at supportive culture norms, structures, models and systems in place for teaching and learning at Audison. We are fortunate to have at Audison a talented teachers who have strived to do an outstanding job in a school that is at maximum student capacity with space limitations. Quality teaching means investing in and developing educators to provide students with powerful teaching and learning along with support staff that prepares them for college, career and citizenship. Academic rigor is achieved by implementing consistent standards aligned with curriculum supported by high quality instructional resources. An individualized, personalized student learning means, ensuring that each student receives targeted data informed instruction with appropriate social and emotional supports. We do realize this is a challenging budget year and we are mindful of looking at our resources in a different way. But wish to frame minimal needs for the 2017-2018 academic year for Audison learners. As you know, this is a very special, very critical period of a student's life. And our students endure more changes that they will for the rest of their lives. They are changing physically, sexually, mentally and socially, emotionally in every way. Their minds change from childlike to adult. Not so much in what they think, but how they think. There are more important changes taking place at this age than in any other time except for the first year of life. And so this gives us a unique opportunity to support them with this development. With these unique needs in mind, the highest budget priority for Audison is aligned to the system goal of social emotional learning. We are requesting a 1.5 adjustment counselor social worker. This increase will help to support the needs of students in regular education, special ed, ELL learners and students on 504s. With both the adjustment counselor known as guidance and the social worker, we are looking at developing a structure that helps our students who are increasingly affected by many social forces impacting their role as students. We look to be proactive in developing intervention strategies to increase academic success, assist with conflict resolution and anger management, help students develop appropriate social interaction skills, and assist students in understanding their role in the greater community. We hope to continue to provide professional development to staff with essential information to better understand factors such as cultural, societal, economic, family, and health, affecting students' performance and behavior. This additional staff will help us to put in place a more comprehensive collaboration between adjustment counselors, social workers, grade level cluster teachers, special educators, ELL educators, and support staff. We are also requesting funding for professional development that will help with achieving the district and school's social emotional goal. This year we had five educators attend the responsive classroom six to eight workshop to look at middle school practices. At the middle school level, these consist of responsive advisory meetings, investing students in rules, brain breaks, small group learning, active teaching, student practice, problem solving, and structured reflection. We need to examine middle school responsive classroom strategies and others such as mind up, strong kids, and second step to determine the best practices that accomplish this goal for our learners. Artisan teachers are eager to take on professional development opportunities. We want to support teaching assistants with more training and to look at how they support our learners in special education, ELL, regular ed programs, and students on 504s by looking at the schedule, the structure, and models that are presently in place. We look to establish a committee of special educators, ELL educators, in regular ed to look at programs, students needs, schedules, and placement for the academic year 2017, 2018. Teaching assistants allow artists and teachers to provide increased opportunities to learn. More time to spend with students and on academic tasks and increase stability to assess learning and provide meaningful feedback. Teaching assistants are the lifeline to classrooms and assisting teachers. The classroom is a dynamic place, coincidentally changing based on the complexity of students and the multifaceted components of the curriculum. Developing problem solving and thinking skills in students takes time for teachers to collaborate with students, to bring out and enhance the ability at deep levels. The main focus of curriculum initiatives is individualization and differentiation. Teachers work hard to understand each student's level to enrich and to review our practice. They need to be able to provide time for students to engage in quality lessons and get in-depth feedback on their assignments. As a result of differentiation and individualization, come developing varied groupings which teaching assistants can support. In these small groups, in-depth understanding is developed through academic experimentation, discussion, and project-based learning. All these groups need physical space in an inclusion classroom. Class size also impacts teachers in how they engage student participation in each of these activities. The present eighth grade class is 22 students, while in the sixth grade it's 24 to 25 moving upward, which will be the case with the incoming sixth graders, given the increase of about 40 more students to the present enrollment. Teaching assistants help support all students, particularly in large class sizes. Middle school is an important time for students to explore their interests. Our exploratory classes offer avenues to do this. The additional FTEs for next year as we look at minimal increases are the following, 1.2 in world language, 0.2 Latin increase. There are 66 students enrolled in the sixth grade Latin class. It is highly likely that most of these, or most or all of these students, will continue with Latin next year into seventh grade. We are currently running two sections of seventh grade Latin. If we keep two sections next year, the class average will be high, 0.4 French and 0.6 Spanish. French enrollment in the French program at the middle school has doubled with no staff to offset the class size increase. Our eighth grade French class average is 27, and our sixth grade Spanish class average is 25, and our eighth grade Spanish class is 25. So we anticipate continued high levels enrollment in both languages. The 0.4 in visual arts is sent in on enrollment growth to support the work in art, especially the digital lab for eighth graders. The 0.2 DML, Digital Media Learning, Computer Science, to expand the offering beyond sixth grade. The 1.0 reading teacher is to support students needing specialized reading instruction, and students who are on individual educational plans. I want to highlight support and support the resources needed for artisan. The Latin textbooks, digital subscriptions, the current middle school Latin books are in very poor condition. So we propose purchasing a class set with online textbook access. The visual arts supplies, while enrollment has grown, funding for expandable art supplies has remained static, and the department has added a digital component to the curriculum. We are requesting an increase for expandable art materials. We request new science textbooks and digital subscriptions for grade six. Full implementation. The music department would like ten more risers and three keyboard pianos. In closing, I just want to say that it is an exciting time of change for the artists in middle school coming up. And I know that with change brings great opportunity. As we begin to discuss the possibilities for teaching and learning at the sixth grade Gibbs, and we continue to discuss how to best support and engage the staff and the students at the future seventh and eighth grade artisan as well. In both schools building a link to each other through leadership collaboration. She had best practices, curriculum alignment, open communication, and teacher capacity will only benefit all middle school learners in the years ahead. Thank you very much. Thank you. Questions and comments? Yes, Mr. Heiner. Will we be able to, is it the time now to ask questions about that chart? Are we going to wait for that? The chart is basically representing the requests. For all of them. So if you want to hold off until after we have all the presentations. I say right now we focus on questions about autism. I have a general question, I'll wait. It deals with the whole thing. I'll wait. Okay, questions. Yes, Mr. Schliffen. Okay, as you know, we're about to divide your school a year forward. What is your thinking in terms of budget and setting up the school for the fiscal 18? For what we're budgeting for in anticipation of the split in fiscal 19. Have you thought about any sort of structures in place and how to, are there any budgetary things we need to be doing this year in order to anticipate the following year's split? Well, my sense is that some of the things that are being requested this year will probably not be funded. So if in fact that is the case, then they would go on to the physical, it would be fiscal 19, I guess, right, because we're going into 18. Planning for 18, yeah. So it would be fiscal 19, yeah. So, I mean, I think those discussions that as you bring your, an autism group of teachers and administrators together, that they would be looking at the needs as repurposing autism in terms of the space and how it's going to function, that would be my sense. Yeah, I mean, I think the whole committee recognizes the fact that next year because of the number of students you're going to have in the building is going to be a challenge because the building was built for 950, 1,000 and then you have a second challenge during the subsequent year of splitting them into two groups. And I just want to make sure that anything we can do in the planning process at this point that will help to facilitate the opening of the Gibbs is at the top of our list. And so I think that that's an opportunity for the present autism to also be working simultaneously as a committee comes together to have a committee coming together for the autism to be really looking at you know, how it's going to be repurposed, what are the needs, you know, in terms of, you know, instructional resources that would be needed in that academic year. Yeah. Mr. Reathers, did you want to speak to this issue? Did you want to speak to this issue? Is this okay? Come up to the microphone. Yeah. Yeah, I, in addressing your question, Mr. Schlickman, Dr. Schlickman, I specifically thought about that with respect to my request for the sixth grade curriculum materials, thinking that as the sixth grade teachers move to the new building, they're going to be quite distracted with all the new things of setting up things and that it would be much better for them to get familiarized with a new curriculum while they're in their old familiar habitat and then be ready to move and ready to roll with that so that they could then focus on some of the other issues. So that this, my request for the science curriculum materials was specifically directed at trying to beat that move. Okay. Thanks. Okay. But I didn't, I set up a poor president, haven't I? How many people want to speak to this issue? Thank you. Sorry. This, the, the, the request for the point two in DML, which is the computer science is in reference to this also. So what I'm trying to do is, if sixth grade, which is the current grade that has DML moves to Gibbs, in terms of transitioning, I wanted to use next year to start to establish something in both either seventh or eighth. That allows, when we do split, that we can actually have programs in both schools that have a year to establish. So the point to ask is for that elective that will allow us to use next year as the place to develop it to prepare for that transition. Great. Thanks. Okay. Additional questions, comments? Drowsman Bay, you look. This is the question I don't want to ask. I can tell from how you phrased everything in here that you're aware of our budget issues. For those listening at home who didn't tune in last week. Unfortunately, our revenues look about equal to our needs just with the regular budget next year. And we don't have much money at all over and above to fund all of the needs. And so now I'm going to ask is there any ranking of things that you could give us or any because the bottom line is this year, we're going to have to choose pick and choose among what we can fund, what we can't fund, what we hope to fund in the future. As I said last year, last week, it's really helpful to us that you're putting down all the needs because this is going to help us with budgets going further into the future. But for this year, it's unclear how many of these needs will be able to fund. And it would be helpful to us to hear from you, which are higher priorities, which are lesser priorities. And if not, then we'll have to make our I mean, with in conjunction with the superintendent, everyone will have to make our best judgment. So the highest priority would be the adjustment counselor. That would be the highest priority, because I think the social emotional piece for our learners is really a high priority. And as I said, knowing that the budget, this is, you know, challenging you with the budget, that I think it's important to educate people around that there are more needs and that the with the understanding that some of those may not be funded until the following academic year. Could you speak to why it's a 1.5 position that you're asking for? Well, the point five social worker was really to support students on under regular red. And there's a number of students under regular red on 504s, and even students in the classroom that can be supported with social emotional mental health needs. So is just me counselor just different than a guidance counselor? No, I call it just my counselor, but I the same. I think, you know, it's known as guidance. So okay, I try now. So Mr. Cardin, I told us that he'd be late. And he's just walked in. I so I acknowledge Julian keys from AA is here as well. Other questions, comments about Odesson. Yes, Mr. Thank you for the presentation. Kathy, we're definitely going to be hiring a principle for the Gibbs for next year. So whoever we're going to be hiring a principle for Gibbs this year, this year, it's going to be an internal search and it'll start in the fall of 17 she or he will. Well, be part of the planning process. A lot of planning will occur during the summer. I think we'll get some committees started during the school year. But generally speaking, when we do a serious curriculum work or planning, it's often summer work, because that's when there's more concentrated amount of time. So it would like that person to be part of that planning person. That's why it's internal because if you hired a principle for Gibbs right now, Gibbs doesn't really exist. And there's interest to I might add. But it'll be an FY 18. It'll be an FY 18 position. Yes, personal beef. The title be Gibbs principle. Yes, they won't be teaching or doing something else. No. Okay. Oh, they would be teaching. I mean, they wouldn't be doing something else. It would be a full time position as Gibbs principle in 1718. No. Yeah, that's what I won't be in 1718. No, it will not be. No. Okay, so that's not an 1819 when it opens. Okay, 1819. But it's 1718, the individual be doing something else. Yes. Okay, then they'll be they'll be freed up a little bit. Some of their their time to prepare for the Gibbs. Correct. All right. And so so next year, you're asking for 1.5 FTEs, social, emotional counselors, and then in the curriculum area, 1.2 in world languages, 0.4 visual arts, 0.2 DML, 1.0 reading teacher. So I got that right. You got that right. Good. Thank you. Thanks for working me through it. Yeah. Okay, so I want to understand. If we don't make the world language hires, the visual art hires, the DML hires, in particular, what is what does that do that to our to those classes for next year? They'll be high. What does what does high mean? Does it mean high high in the high 20? Yeah, like 29. Yeah, moving upward. Yeah, 29 plus class in those classes. If we don't make the hires, if we do make the hires that goes back down to 22 or so or 21. Yeah, it goes back.  So I mean, and this is not a, so the social, emotional hire is a higher priority for you, Dr. Woods, than this physician? It is. Yeah, it is because I think it affords us to really look at the structure. Okay. And how you wrap services around the classroom and support teachers. So you wouldn't want, okay. Yeah. The reading teacher, you listed that as a priority too. And can you just talk about, you know, why you think that's a priority? What are the needs in the school? That is a priority to give specialized reading instruction to students who are on individual educational plans. So it's really supporting their plans. And also students who need reading support and specialized instruction. Is there some different programming? Is there some data to support? Sorry, is there data to support? I mean, is there a higher number of students that are not at grade level in the in the odyssey? Yeah, there are students who need reading support. And they, you know, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be, you know, they, I want to say, they're, they're not at grade level. Yeah, not at grade level. Because it would be good to know it because you know, I don't want to speak about individual students, but we've done an analysis of all the students who really need reading support. Because if this is a priority, it'd be good to know the data. So there's, there's like X number of students that are at grade level. Yeah, and we know who needs that support. Yeah. Yeah. Miss keys. And that's becoming more and more on students coming up. Yeah, just remember speaking to the microphone. Sorry. The percentage or the number of the number of students has gone up with the percentage of students who need reading support has gone up. Okay, we just have more kids. Yeah. And we haven't had more teachers. So there's not time in the day to schedule more kids into reading, right? I don't think the percentage of kids who needs reading support has increased, but the number of people, more kids. So the number has gone up. That would be helpful data to have. So, you know, several years ago, X number of students needed reading support. And now, next year, we anticipate that this number of students we need readings for that to be very helpful data to understand. Okay. So, thank you. Mr. Heiner. I just want to clarify one thing. You mentioned the reading person. Is that reading person or persons necessary for both people on IEPs and not IEPs? Yes. Because I just want to make the distinction. We're required, but budget cannot dictate whether we can or we cannot support the IEP. So that part is a fixed number. So if that's needed, it's going to happen. That's right. I just want to make that clear for everybody. Thank you. Actually, I just have one question. The thing one thing that struck me is your request for additional training for teaching assistance. And so that wasn't, and I was wondering, I know that we don't pay our teaching systems very much. Do you see additional training as being an attractive thing that we could offer? You know, we can't pay you very much, but we were giving you some training to help you with your next steps. Yeah, I do. I do because they're because of the programs that they're supporting. And I also think that it's important when they go into the classroom that they know exactly what is expected in terms of what they're expected to do. So beyond just, you know, hiring them, I think there's a piece that we need to continue to do is to support them. Got it. Yeah. I do think it would be attractive because, you know, they're worth much, much more than they receive. I mean, as everybody in this room knows, we do not pay people as much as they're worth. Right. Right. And so we have to find other ways to show them that we value them. Right. Yeah. And we do value them very much. I like to refer to them as the lifeline of the school because they're supporting in many, many different ways. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. I think that's it. Does anyone else? Okay. Great. Thanks. Thanks. So it's the. Yes. Okay. Did you want. Oh, I thought you said they were going. No, I think they're going at the end, right? Yeah. No, we were scheduled at the end. Yes. I was trying. As you can see this evening, we have a number of our curriculum leaders and our special education coordinators. And maybe this might be a good time to introduce, you know, special education team. Yeah. Yeah. So I was actually, that was going to lead with that, that I'm Alice Nelmer. I'm the special ed director. And tonight we have with us, turn around, but still look at speaking to the microphone, we have Chris Carlson, our out of district coordinator, Lynn Bennett, our high school special education coordinator, Stephanie Griner, the middle school coordinator, Elizabeth Loge, an elementary coordinator, Joyce Schlinger, who's our early childhood coordinator, and Craig Haas, who is also an elementary coordinator. So good evening, Dr. Seuss and school committee members. We'd like to thank you for this opportunity and hope to use this time to briefly highlight our priorities for the upcoming school year and answer any questions you may have about the areas of identified need. Again, so much of what else we'd like to begin by thanking you for your support of previous requests. While we were unable to realize the full requests, we do understand the challenges faced last year and again this year and meeting the many needs across the district and within our department. And we recognize that the out of district Tuitions have become the main driver for this year's budget proposal. And for this reason, we have limited our requests to positions we believe will have a direct impact on reducing those costs. As people have mentioned and we continue to talk about the enrollment growth does have an impact on our department as well. While similarly, our percentage of students receiving special ed services is been consistent. The percentage of a greater number is a larger number. So you can see in the figures we provided how we have been growing steadily. Last year we did request 4.0 FTEs for learning specialists at the elementary level. We were able to fund two of those. So this year we are asking to remain to fund the remaining 2.0 positions. And that's based on our analysis of student placement data in our in district programs at the elementary level. If you look at the figures we provided, you can see that there has been consistent, relatively consistent growth, especially over the last three years in the referrals to our in district programming. And you can see where our current enrollment is in each program in the third figure we provided. I think it's important to note that the Stratton program has three classrooms. The Dallen program has two classrooms and the Brackett program has two classrooms. So you're looking at subseparate programming that can go up to 12 students per teacher. However, we have space limitations. We also know that two, so adding another classroom isn't an option in some of these buildings either. So we really believe to kind of stem the tide of referrals. We really need to put the supports into the home school where students can be served in the least restrictive environment. And we're requesting that we get the additional 2.0 learning specialists so that the Stratton and Bishop school will also have three learning specialists. We do currently have three learning specialists at Brackett, Hardy, Dallen and Thompson. And at those schools we've been able to do some of these things that we think will really have an impact on student needs. We have greater co-teaching models. You know, when you work at two grades versus three, in some cases four, you know, you can have that connection with the teachers. You can have the time for the planning. The elementary principals talked about last week that need for a schedule to allow for common planning time. Well, part of common planning time also allows for special educators to service students through the inclusion model. If you have three kids or, you know, three classrooms at fifth grade that have, you know, special ed services, but they're all having math at, you know, the same time or different times one educator can't support all those students in that setting. So we've also been able to do more RTI response to intervention, which keeps kids ultimately out of special ed, ideally, at the schools where we have more learning specialists because they are part of that intervention team as well. The other requests that we have, I believe you will hear echoed at both the district level and specifically at the high school, but it speaks to Dr. Wood's request, our second request is to create an administrative position to oversee the implementation of the many social-emotional learning initiatives. We have across the district as well as oversee the supervision and evaluation of guidance counselors and school social workers. Whatever that title for that person be, whether it be guidance director, director of social-emotional learning, that speak up. But what's important in that role, we believe, is that we know, again, that the, you've heard this echoed by the AEA, by the elementary principals, by Dr. Woods. I'm sure you'll hear from Dr. Janger that the social-emotional needs of our students are not only, you know, becoming more complex, but we're seeing more students with them. And we looked at our data for the out-of-district placements and over the last three years, we've had 58 new placements, students that have gone out of district and 31 of those were to address social-emotional needs. 26 of those 31 were at the middle and high school level. So we really believe that this position is important to help coordinate the efforts across the district. We did recently receive a safe and supportive schools grant which will lead to the implementation of safe and supportive schools teams at each building. But we really feel like we need somebody to help drive that work, to facilitate, organize that work, and to, you know, allow for consistency pre-K to 8. So those are our two requests for this evening. We thank you for your time and consideration and if you have any questions we're happy to answer them. Yes, questions comments. Mr. Hinner. I'm just looking on that chart where it says expansion of SLB, SLCB summit program. It says one, a 73,000, two for 25,000. Are they two different types, two different positions? I actually am looking to Dr. Bodie and Dr. Chess and I believe what you're seeing is what the request is expanded last year. Right, right, and it says expansion. I'm just looking at this, they look like the same things. Once those teachers and once this teacher assistance, teaching assistance. Thank you, then look to the left, I look to the right. Thank you.  Okay, Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So we've gone from having, recently, it's five years ago, just one learning specialist in the elementary schools to three, but I wonder if with only 270 students at Pierce, if it's really justified to have, I understand that the coverage is much easier when learning specialist only has to cover two grades, but with 270 students, is the caseload there really, can you really justify having three learning specialists there? We're not requesting three for Pierce, we're requesting one for Stratton and one for Bishop. Oh, okay, great. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Thurman. So it's a three FTE increase the two learnings, do I have that right or no? Are you looking at the budget worksheet that was... No, I'm looking at the area. We're requesting 2.0 FTE for learning specialist at the elementary. Plus, the current staffing at the building from two to three. Okay, all right, that helps. Thank you. And then the second request of the administrative position. Yes. And so who's overseeing all this? Is that you are doing that now, Alison? Somewhat. You know, I'm doing it my best to support the efforts across the district. Okay. And so... You know, the director of guidance is a stipend position shared between a number of people right now. I'm taking, I think, pieces of that. You know, then there's... Prior to Cindy Bouvier retiring, she reported to me. Okay. And Cindy did a lot of stuff, is it? She did some of it, yeah. In this paragraph? Okay. All right. And so now she's... And I think there's newer things that, you know, we've added to people's plates, you know. Again, in the effort to build capacity at the school level, ultimately, but it's going to need someone to drive and organize that work. I used to be always opposed to, like, adding administrative positions, then I became an administrator. I have a good idea. All right. Yeah. Dr. Ray. Well, to that point, I mean, it is a good point to ask you, is this a brand new position? Right. It isn't, it isn't. That the job that was actually done by Cindy Bouvier, who was a directorist. We've never really filled that position. Tiny pieces of it, she still does, but it's been spread out among other people. And we'll hear more about that too, I think, from Dr. Janger. But it is something that as we do this work, and this year, as you know, we have the grant to look at what we're doing, what our coherence is, and some action plans.  It just isn't. No, I get it. I mean, I can't disagree with that. So, was there a chance that we would save some small amounts in stipends by bringing an administrator in? That's one of the things that we took a look at this afternoon. It would be some small amount. There are some stipends that we could put towards that. Okay, great. A little bit. I know it wouldn't cover the whole thing. I was just curious. Other questions, comments? Yes, Mr. Carden. So, I'm not sure if you've seen the summary sheet that Diane prepared. I don't know if we've already covered what that is. We've been skirting around it, but we haven't been going into it. So, it does seem to include the requests from last year that were unfunded. But your summary does not discuss those requests. So, are you still requesting those items? I think, you know, as Dr. Allison Ampe has been, you know, driving home, I'm aware that they cannot fund those. So, if you're at what would be the true priorities, would be those new stuff. Okay, great. Thank you. Well, they're actually neither of them are new. They are carryovers for last year, but the ones that we highlighted tonight. Great. Thank you. So, Dr. Jane is going to be here at 7.30. Okay. So, should we continue? We could do the AEA. He's walking right now. Oh, yes. Okay, great. Thank you. I don't know if AEA or Ms. Tugolecchi, who is here for athletics, wants to talk about. Did you want to do that? Sure. Want me to go for the athletics? Great. Thank you all for the opportunity for us to share with you how the athletic department is doing under the umbrella of the high school and come to you with our request. Just to update you, athletic programs have continued to grow on and off the field. They've been doing really well, qualifying for nationals, state finalists, lead champions, and off the field they've received leadership and sportsmanship awards, which has been a huge initiative of ours and expanding it to an educational athletics program. Just today, we are notified by the state association that Arlington was chosen to have three seats on the student ambassador board, which is the small group of about 20 student athletes that represents the state of Massachusetts. So, Arlington will now serve as ambassadors and other schools. So, we're really proud of our student athletes for that. This year, we're coming due with dude for the support last year and with the same ask as last year. So, last year with our ask, we were asking for 906, 965, and we were able to get partial funding for that. We're still facing the same demands and growth challenges as we were last year. And so we're looking for us to close that gap of having previously underfunded programs coupled with now growing programs. And when you look and analyze the reason for that increase, it's primarily comes down to fixed costs, which are rising costs of transportation, facility costs, and rentals. We have improved maintenance investments, which we think better protects them. We have longer seasons from success and we have more athletes participating. And we also implemented a full-time athletic trainer to support the growing needs for safety, training, CPR certification, and on-site assistance. So, like I said, the support from last year has been huge and making growth and progress towards being where we need to be to run our current programming. But due to the fixed costs that I just mentioned, which comprise a majority of our overall spending, you know, we're looking to meet that final ask figure. And what happens is that the things that end up being cut and impacted when also many of our costs are fixed are things that are really felt by the students and the coaches. So it's, you know, it's equipment. It might be cutting back on games and trying to figure out bus rides and really asking them to pull back where they can, which everyone has been doing a wonderful job of. But, you know, currently we do run at a lower budget than our competitive schools who field the same number of student athletes and programs.  So, you know, we do greatly appreciate their efforts. And the last thing we do just want to note is that, you know, what what we're trying to feel there is an educational athletic programming research supports that through educational athletics in partnership with an education, communication skills are improved, teamwork is improved, confidence is improved, social-emotional issues are down, dropouts are down, graduation rates are up, disciplinary issues are down. So, you know, for all those reasons and just the history of this great community here, what we're coming to you for. So, thank you. Questions, comments. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So, there have been an increase in the budget, the fee revenue have not really seemed to have gone as it might be. So, more being funded out of the regular budget, which we want to be supportive of. We do have data about, or if you can get some data about what levels are in other towns that you mentioned. Certainly that would be helpful in us being able to support the level of funding or even increased funding. Yeah. And we do actually, I've worked closely with the business office to do all of that and to look at all the different ways that we can manage our budget most efficiently and be mindful with our resources. So, we do have those figures of other communities. And we have to look a little bit deeper at them in terms of some don't have to pay for ice time, which comprises one of our major costs. Some might have different transportation expenses, which is huge for us. So, I have those details as well, which can provide a deeper insight than just the figure. Absolutely. Yes, so if you can send things along that would be great. Sure. Yeah. Questions, comments? Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Mr. Janger, high school. Sorry, I was just in time. We were just we were a couple of minutes before. Never happened. Ready for yourself. I know, I know. So, wasn't sure whether folks had a handout version? Sensibly no, but of this. So, should I pass this down? We have an online version. So, we have an electronic version. Yeah, we got that in time. Five pages. Yep. So, if anybody wants copies, I brought copies.  So, thank you for having us up here again to discuss this. I usually take this as an opportunity to just talk a little bit about what's going on at the high school. I know that at this point, our budget situation is dire. So, we really try to keep to sort of the major issues that we want to talk about. So, I think every year it's important to kind of give an overview. Right now, we're roughly 1,300 students at the high school. It goes up and down on a daily basis. In this, I know it was 1,303, because that was the last consistent number. The really important thing to realize is that that number has been growing pretty consistently over the time I've been here. Over the last three years, we've gone up by about 80 students. We expect to go up by 80 students between this year again next year. So, as you can see, that rate is accelerating. And depending on whose estimates you look at and what kind of an attrition rate you think we're going to get, we expect to continue to go up at that rate and be near 1,500 students in the next three years. And so, when you take into account the overall condition of the school, which as we recall, is 400,000 square feet, we use about half of it. It's in relatively poor repair. That's why we put into the MSBA and are currently in the middle of the new building project. I always remember the number that when I came here, which was that we did an audit of the facility and found that to repair or replace everything that was broken or past its usable life would be $40 million to start out with. And as you can imagine, we haven't put much of that money in over the last three years, so I imagine the situation has not gotten any better. That is all as sort of a ground rule, sort of a basis to put in context the fact that in spite of that over the last three, four years, Arlington's performance has continued to be high and actually improved. We are still a gold medal school on U.S. News World Report. News Week calls us one of their top schools. We're a top STEM school. Washington Post calls us one of the most challenging schools in America. I'm not sure how they calculate that, but they do it. And every time I saw those things, it's important to sort of just realize how well we're doing with such a difficult situation. And I think it's really important to give the teachers in particular and the rest of the community a huge amount of credit for being able to kind of squeeze that kind of value out of the staffing issues that we've got, the facilities issues we've got, and to still give that sort of result. It's also important though anytime you do well on any of these rankings to note that the rankings are just that. They're based on certain measures that are easily observable and they don't really capture the reality of a school. One of the things that's really most value about Arlington High School is really our emphasis on all kids, not just the ones that necessarily do well on the test scores, but all students making sure that all students are successful and really trying to educate the whole child. So jumping ahead, having put that all in context, I suspect you don't want to go on for too long. So the simple version of this, the back of the envelope is this. If we're going up by 80 students and those students are all taking seven classes, you would need, I did the number, make sure I get it right. What did I say? I said 5.6. There it is. We need 5.6 teachers just to staff that with an average class size of 20 students. So we've made this same request every year for the last three years. And every year for the last three years we've gotten about half of what we've asked for at best. So that continual not keeping pace continues to put pressure on us in a number of ways. The simple version, which we use just as a way of having a somewhat consistent measure is looking at large class sizes, but that doesn't really capture at all. If you look at our science class sizes, those are 31% of those classes are 25 and over as you see. History 26, math 21, English 20, world language 20. But one of the things that doesn't capture is our efforts to support students who are more challenged. The way we achieve those class sizes in the first place is by piling more and more students, I'm sorry, more and more students into the classes with more independent and more easily managed students. At the same time, we also have class sizes at the other end for IEP classes and classes in curriculum B that we try to keep smaller. Those class sizes in order to keep some of these numbers down have also crept up. So when we're looking at these class sizes at the top end, we're not necessarily capturing that. So there's a bigger effect that goes across for everybody. It's also important to notice that our elective classes are at their caps. We cap things like fax, wood shop, computer science, because we have a limited number of stations that students can work at. When those students can't get into their electives, they're not taking classes. They have fewer opportunities available to them. They have less flexibility available to them. And so this continues to be an issue. The trends that I describe here, rising enrollment growth, chapter 222 requiring us to support students outside of school, higher levels of social activity that we need among students which continues to grow every year that I'm here. And this is not an Arlington phenomenon. It's a national phenomenon. It's not something we're doing to our kids, or if it is, it's something we're all doing to our kids. The need to stay level one requiring us constantly to close the gaps which become vanishingly small and the evaluation requirements, all those pressures are not going away. As our staff creeps up, and our number of students creeps up, all of those continue. And so what's interesting about all of this is we've listed here what we think our staffing needs would be to sort of keep basic enrollment and to fill basic classes. In spite of that, and in spite of recognizing how little we have, when we ask our staff, when we ask the administration where they would put their effort, they have said consistently, and why I'm going to say it now, that we would start with the Dean. And to be honest, part of the reason why we start with the Dean is because when you have those social emotional struggles, when you have the larger class sizes, one more section of English teacher makes a big difference to kids, but it doesn't service everybody. And those pressures and sort of keeping everything running smoothly are something that people are looking really importantly for. I'm not specifically asking, I will say that we also do support the request which I think has been made by pretty much everyone who's come in here, that we really do need to coordinate social emotional learning across the district. So depending on how that's done as a guidance director, a director of social emotional learning, I know that's a larger conversation. But awarding those services across the different district is going to make everything move more smoothly, is going to make it easier for us to manage the numbers of kids that we're still going to have and the needs of kids. So that put aside what we are currently asking for in terms of staffing. And let me put this in context. What we do is we look at every single kid and the numbers of kids in classes and pipelines of kids and we estimate the numbers of kids and the retention of kids on spreadsheets going back multiple years and looking specifically at kids. So when we're looking at, for example in math 8.4, we have looked at how many kids are going to be an algebra one. And how many sections that require is if they're going to be this many in honors and this many in that curriculum A and this many in curriculum B and this many in a small cohort class for special education and realize that we need one more section. If we were simply looking at the overall picture back of the envelope, we'd say 5.6. What we're asking for here as a total is only 4.8 because that's what we see we can do. All those numbers get tracked continuously throughout the year and there are multiple points at which we are adjusting and fine tuning both what staff we have available, what skills we have available and what specific kids we have. That said. So in math we're looking for a 1.4 in English for 1.0. Social studies 1.6. In science, biology and physics. And some of this is limited to be perfectly honest by lab space and places we can put the students. And then in world language, I promised Ms. Ritz that I would point out that it's 1.0 in French-Spanish so a French-Spanish teaching position and a .2 Mandarin. And the reason why she's asking for those in particular is because in order to allow, particularly in Mandarin but in other programs and in French, we've had growth in those programs. As we have growth in those programs, the students are wanting to move up to higher levels. If we don't have the sections, the students can't move up to higher levels. One of our fears is that that creates a kind of a spiral where if you look forward and realize you're not going to be able to take the 3 years of Mandarin or the 3 years of French because those classes aren't going to be staffed appropriately, you're going to make different choices. And so in order to keep all of these programs going, I've listed here for collectives, .4 in family and consumer science, .4 in visual and visual arts, and .2 for internships. More importantly, as I said, what we're really looking for is a 1.0 to be able to respond to the fact that the kids are going to have to go somewhere. We don't necessarily know until we take the requests exactly where they go. We know that last year we had 80 students who couldn't get into family and consumer science. It's a good bet that we could fill four sections more, but we're asking for two. We have every expectation to think given the size of our enrollment in our classes that we would have growth in that area and we have ways to staff those. That's why we specifically said those. And then I would point to the internships and learning beyond school. One of the ways that we're going to enrich our students experience and frankly do it in a cost effective way is to give students opportunities to learn that don't require us to have a teacher sitting in a classroom. Right now with a .2 we have about 40 students who are doing internships. We've moved that forward fairly slowly. If we wanted to really push in terms of having more students in their upper grades do internships, capstone projects, work, study, and other out of district, out of school activities as part of their day we would need some more staffing. We wouldn't buy that. We wouldn't sort of buy the .2 if we could do it with existing staff and we would see that based on enrollment. But that's a push that we wouldn't be able to undertake if 150 kids wanted to do internships right now I couldn't staff it so we would need to be able to figure out how to do that. So moving on just to give you an idea of things we're doing you can all wave if you get boarder going too long. One of the big focuses in the district I know this year is social emotional learning. I had a big section on that last year I moved those things down to the bottom and talked about new things we're doing this year. This year we've done a large group of enrollment activities around social emotional learning cultural competency suicide prevention gender identity we have more planned going forward. We just plan today our mental health awareness state which is hopefully going to have a lot of that sort of activity and training going on for students. This year our transition program which if folks are aware for students returning from long-term hospitalizations or absences we had a challenge that we have many students with chronic or complex health issues who don't transition back to their classrooms they need that ongoing level of support in general education they don't necessarily need specialized instruction through special ed what they just need is a place where they can keep up when they're not able to go if a student has a medical issue and they have to take a period out but they don't know which period it's going to be in they need someone to get their work for them and support them you need that in an ongoing basis a program with expectations limits and goals that supports those students going forward and shortstop being a place that students do the traditional transition as we used to talk about it another initiative we've done this year which is an outgrowth of our two-year effort to look at student climate and student culture as the AHS voices united we had 11 teachers trained over the summer to run trainings with students we've run two of them now we're hoping we'll have a full day training looking at how do you address issues of bullying harassment, bias and degrading language the trainers sort of first focus on empathy then they focus on understanding the differences in relation between intent and impact and then they look at the ways in which students can intervene to change the culture one of the things we've realized when we've done focus groups and talks to students is they find Arlington to be dangerous they find that they trust the school and they like coming here nonetheless there is a continuous and unfortunate level of very unpleasant very damaging discourse that goes on amongst our kids it's not just our kids it's not only within our school but on social media and elsewhere the difference between intent and impact which kids understand say what's the impact I couldn't go to school for a day the difference between intent and impact is important and having students understand that and work to make that behavior go away is something we don't see we don't see it as teachers we can set a goal we can talk to kids we can connect to kids we're doing that sort of relationship building through advisory and other activities but we can't be the one who says as I said the kids that's not cool we have follow-up meetings we had about 40 of the initial 50 or 60 come to a pizza lunch and it was great we asked them what have you done differently since you've been there I kind of figured they'd say well, not much but they were all really inspired in terms of saying I'm reaching out to other kids I'm trying to get my friends involved I go sit with other kids at school I go through the day differently we have so we have more of those going forward so that's pretty exciting and the advisory program continues to grow we're getting better at it usually it really takes about three or four years before we weed out the bad activities and the teachers know how to do the good activities well and they sort of believe that it's going to be a success and again it is something that I think we need to really credit the teachers going into an activity used to be a 15-minute duty where you can create papers take attendance kind of keep them quiet we've now made a duty be that for 25 minutes you have to engage with a group of students that's energy consuming in a really busy day it's 25 20 more kids who are in your head as somebody you're responsible for and worried about and then last but not least sort of a lot of work has been done on digital technology this year we launched our BYOD initiative and it's really remarkable and I really appreciate the support we've gotten from the school committee the capital committee and AEF who has made an awful lot of this possible with that support we've trained teachers we've gotten more and more facilities throughout the building we've been able to pilot teachers having connected classrooms and so in it's only been three years that our teachers have had a reliable MacBook and a reliable projector in their classroom and at this point Google Apps for Education as a platform has been adopted very strongly throughout the school almost every teacher has at least a presence on Google Apps and one of the things that I take as a diagnostic I hadn't shared this with Laura we've finally gotten computers into old hall and that's only happened in the last week and the kids all of a sudden they're not leaving old hall anymore because there's so much connected instruction going on that suddenly now becomes a very useful place for kids to go so all of a sudden we have 20 seniors who won't leave old hall because they get the computers first the seniors would never stay in old hall before so I'm going to skip over a lot of these other things you can read it here and then I just do have to make a pitch I started with the building which is a bit of a wreck but we need to remember that it's not until 2019 that we're hoping to break ground on a new building and then that building is going to take I don't know two to five years to build depending on how the architects plan to do it at the moment we have 1,300 students in the school we have 85 roughly teachers and another 20, 30 staff there's a lot of people right now who come to work and deal with the building that I expect to be freezing cold tomorrow in some sections and boiling hot in others and it's going to be important that we make a commitment to really sort of deal with the quality of life of those teachers our teachers work extremely hard they're really committed and honestly they're extremely resilient around the things that happen we just now just joke about the skunk or the holes in the ceiling but it really is an ongoing issue we have pipes that failed we lost three or four classrooms just a few weeks ago they're replacing those pipes and closing the holes in the wall and moving us back into facts and art all of those things really interfere with people's instructional time so we know maintenance and facilities are doing their best but it's very difficult for them when we go to them and say can you fix this and they say with who's money and we don't have the $10,000 that it's going to cost so I think it's important to however it is you budget it because I don't budget that amount I didn't ask for it to realistically budget for unforeseen repairs that have to happen quickly in the high to keep it all running and apparently you've already spoken about athletics so I'll stop there Yes, yes Thanks Questions, comments Mr. Slickman Yeah, I when I read this I looked at the building is an issue and I'm not quite sure what the question is or how to approach it but I do want to make sure that you're able to run school in this building for the next three to five years is required until we are able to transition to a new facility with the move of the custodian with the building and maintenance over to the townside and the agreements that are happening there what's happening with the building and what barriers are we encountering or you know it's being raised as an issue is there something we need to do are we working things out where do we need to be That's fair Dr. Buddy How it works is that we do have a rental account which is the well from which we draw funds for unexpected emergencies and for example at Addison right now we have talking about heat we are going to either need to replace three or one depending on the size of a heater on the roof because we have no heat in one section of the building that's going to be 50 to 60,000 we have part of the auditorium that needs and that needs a heating unit as well so these things happen on a regular basis it's not just the high school but the high school given its condition always has something the facilities department is the group that unfortunately one of the things that has happened this fall is the person who's been in charge of maintenance has left the town and so there's been a process of trying to fill that position they've also hired and just started two weeks ago Ruthie Bennett is no she's still here yes she is that's a hierarchy and in fact I thought we had shared with you the org chart for facilities department I think we did the beginning I think there's another year but another year it hasn't changed there's an org chart for facilities and Ruthie Bennett is of course the facilities director we have an online process called schooldute but what happens is it's a priority of time sometimes for people I think she would feel that she's understaffed and underfunded to reach out to all the needs that exist and there are every building has something that seems unique and often costly I think Ms. Johnson is just coming back from capital as we look at even trying to work with capital on some big projects but sometimes there's studies and everybody wants the studies to come out of the school budget so we're working this out I think we've got very good working relationships with central office and facilities to figure this out but I think at the building level that because there's so much that needs to get done it's the queuing of this is problematic Yeah I can understand instructional stuff and how many teachers need against the schedule but I'm not quite sure how to make this work from our seats here within the budget process Well I actually want to Diane talk a little about this in terms of the fee that you had and something we're underneath to think about going forward with the terms to facilities Diane You know basically before Ruth came on board the all of the money for facilities maintenance was sort of under me with Mark Miano and my instinct being extremely low to overrun the budget if we had to do it we did it if we could wait we did it got towards spring like okay we can start doing this we can start doing that we can paint this we can paint that and likewise I mean since you never know what's going to come up and you have a finite pool of money you are going to delay projects that don't impact health and safety you know there's never enough money to go around so you know to be able it's an aesthetic problem it's a another kind of problem if it's health and safety we do it that's not a problem but you know acoustic I mean I know the music rooms at the oddison have wretched acoustic tiles I mean that's not quite health and safety it's certainly a good thing to look at and the use of the building revolving reserves has been used to front load the projects at the design for the Thompson but they're a little anemic because that's still in process so I would say that the budget is sufficient to handle health and safety it is not sufficient to handle aesthetics or you know and I don't mean to say that lightly you know really the aesthetics of a room really impact learning there's no question about it but you know and how much do we really want to invest in the aesthetics of this building my feeling just me not an educator you know what we need to do to keep it safe but we're not going to make it pretty Mr. Heiner is he when does he he is health and safety thank you unless it's like July July it's not health and safety I'm not pushing AC in all the rooms sorry no but heat but heat absolutely like you know we have heat pump things you know sometimes we'll nurse a fainting piece of equipment thank you a couple questions first you talked about the push to have students in like internships and other out of school and I can certainly see that it's helpful having fewer bodies in front of teachers and stuff but I wasn't wondering currently we don't do it just because of that or even I mean that's like a slight side effect can you talk about the benefits to the students in started with the expectation that we were trying to get rid of kids so we didn't have to educate them the idea of learning beyond the school walls was something Dr. Bodie and I have been talking about for years is something we wanted to build to making the senior year something that was more engaged with the community that was more engaged in life long learning that's both a budget impact and can be a positive sort of win-win for students and for us the simple answer is that the more we are able to and frankly technology helps a great deal with this but the more that we are able to have students connect to the community connect their learning to real life experiences and then ideally the way you want to take advantage of that is bring that learning back when we're done we'll be sending that out to everybody finding ways to more consistently have that experience then be something that comes back into the school is really powerful not just for the kids who had the experience but for the sophomore who looks and says you know oh you know in two years like right now I'm sort of writing you know an okay essay and reading some papers and understanding the political system but in two years I could be working in a senator's office helping them figure out their you know their legislative agenda which has happened with our students our students are kind of remarkable when they come back and you hear the things that they get to do and the things that they are considered to be significant contributors on you know at MGH and senator's office is working for law firms so those are very powerful learning experiences both for the students who have them and then for the other students who get to make a connection and I also think you know the more we think about one of the things about technology now is it really flattens our ability to reach out into and connect to the world you know it used to be kids would write a five paragraph essay and the two people would read it would be them their mom and their teacher and no one else would ever read that thing ever and the reality is kids can write pretty meaningful things and they can now reach out with those things and if you write a good essay that actually means something you may send it off to the guy who wrote the book and then that becomes a really not just a powerful learning experience but a real legitimate learning experience they become creators of knowledge and so that kind of connection is something that we need to do but we as teachers are not used to it either so having the teachers even see the experience of the students brought back into the school which is something we're only just beginning to do is also helpful. So actually it's a great future meeting if we can arrange that at some we'll bring along there's a bunch of other people Ms. Cotson-Dakas Yeah that would be great and also the folks from community down at Edson has been helping out with that and we have some intelligence as well Yeah that'd be great awesome great yes Dr. Elkin sorry yes so then you missed when I said earlier that basically we have no extra money I heard that which thing would be your preference if we can only fund a few or things I mean I have to say respectfully that our first priority has been a dean I'm always a little nervous about saying our first priority has been a dean because the implication of saying that is that we can get by without a teacher and then what happens we get neither a dean nor a teacher the reason that's our priority is because it enables us to kind of keep things running smoothly as I've sort of laid it out here as much as you can give us towards the necessary teaching FTE to be able to smooth out and to provide the class we need the better and to some extent I know sometimes because we ask specifically we get specific you know okay we'll give you that 0.4 and that 0.2 but if you're not giving us all of it it's actually helpful that you give us some flexibility and how we use what it is we get because I know I'm getting three I do a different shovel than if I know I'm getting two neither of them are good situations to be in but it's helpful to know in advance that's helpful thank you who else so I have something quickly so one thing I want to point out is that there is a category that's not quite health and safety but it's not quite aesthetics which are restrooms I've heard from people that students don't feel comfortable going to the restrooms there's doors to the top of because that is that's both has a social and emotional effect on students also has a physical effect on students potentially even though it's not an immediate health and safety issue but then I actually I actually underlined security I know I saw that I just wanted to point out that sometimes there's categories maybe it's not like you're not going to freeze but it's still a significant problem it's not just purely aesthetic I have a question can you what dean does for you you know just sort of what would a dean be responsible for? we started with a don't do I mean the deans are the first line of coordination around I mean first of all they're monitoring students attendance but the monitoring students attendance is the way that they keep their pulse on which students may be falling through the cracks because getting the kids to school is the most important thing in knowing the kids who aren't so they're first they're monitoring the students attendance but then they're disciplined the attendance and the support teams so more than anything else they're the ones that become the first line of the relationship that they're going to build with the student the plan that they're going to do with the student they're running between guidance and harbor and everyone else to make that program work we hope that all the kids have relationships with the students but the students who are most challenging and the students who are students who are on a first name basis with the deans and both ways and it's not a disciplinary relationship it's a positive relationship although discipline may be part of it in a given day just you know day in the life of the dean they're going to come to school they're going to be checking attendance they're going to be figuring out the kids that they're concerned about whether they're here whether they're not there they're going to be meeting with angry parents and happy administrators there they may well be going to a part of our student support team where all of the social work guidance and other support staff get together and problem solve about students who need support and then out of that they may be leading smaller teams and organizations they meet with me and we talk about every kid we have an issue with the kids that are out of school and kids that are in school for students that are out of school for various reasons which is a population which is constantly changing and often has students that may not come to school but still need to be educated outside of school so those students they may be working where they're at part of that conversation then in the midst of that they go down to the lunch room where they or the TAs but they try to make sure that they're down there also to see kids to make connections with kids and then if there's any emergency during the day dealing with kids which invariably is a question on that so that's what Deans are Great, thank you and then I've left out everything they do in the midst of all that the teachers are calling them for various different kinds of support They carry that tape around with them So if the teacher is out sick there and they're finding out whether they're sick they're making sure that they know where the teachers are they know where they're supposed to be going they're supporting them with kids if they're having difficulty with kids they're coaching them what to do with them Right now our Deans have 650 kids on their caseload which is really important but then slips between the cracks so they oscillate back and forth and we're doing all kinds of things to support them we have more TAs doing that we're doing trying to do things more technologically we're working with the staff there's a little sense of things we do to try to spread that piece of butter a little bit more across the toast Great, thanks anything else Mr. Hanner Before or after the AEA presentation my question's on the chart Questions on the chart I think let's do that now Go to that chart I have a bunch of questions Okay, okay so this is for Ms. Johnson maybe the chart that we which is the last year's request and this year's request sort of merged together is that right? Right Yes Call it one First question is was one unfunded mandate it's way at the bottom and I'm curious it says district-wide elementary math coach I didn't know the state it was mandating math coach now? They're mandating that we close the achievement gap Right Okay, so I just saw it as math coach I mean try to keep ahead Mr. Coleman Do you want to add something? Oh, you have to speak to the microphone though if you talk, sorry It's a minor thing I just I thought it was a little quirky I wouldn't I wouldn't put a lot of credence into the check marks yet because we haven't refined that at this point we're still compiling it Last year we weren't rolling this out in such a draft form It just struck me That was a minor thing Yeah, no in full transparency that was a residual from last year just one that wasn't unfunded so it's kind of rolled over so I don't know if those boxes have changed from year to year I'm sorry I didn't mean to say Wrong My really serious question is the unit cost for teachers 73.5 That's our average The concern with that is looking at the teacher's contract if we're hiring positions it's basically looking at positions at beginning anywhere from step 11 under the bachelor's column or step 8 in the the farthest one over I'm just talking about hiring right now And we budgeted an average because we're going to hire and Rob did a great job with this this year we're going to hire the least expensive highly qualified person we can but there are positions that are extremely difficult to fill where we hire at the top of scale I appreciate that and that balances it out at Special Ed some of the Special Ed positions are reading teachers I mean those are the high ticket ones I'm not questioning the concept I'm just seeing an increase of four to five thousand dollars almost each year going forward and that's why I'm asking these questions So I take from the average I'm hearing it Thank you Questions? Ms. Darks? I had a few Wait where did Nova's go So I guess my question on that spreadsheet was that and I think you may have just answered it is that it seems like everything a lot of things that were asked for tonight are not on there I don't believe that's true I didn't see anything on athletics No, athletics is in there but it's from the prior year it was funded so it was part I don't see it in there though I think it's line 51 it's high school yes it's line 51 athletics 121 okay and so according to this we funded nothing in 2017 oh no we founded so where are all the green items all the things they're gone we funded them they're no longer consideration for 18 they exist in the budget already so can we get those as another page I guess is my question because it makes it look like we didn't fund anything absolutely we were trying to focus on that which had not been funded carry it forward and you know it's you have to make a call and we just made the call to leave that stuff off or the portion that did not get correct so if something was partially funded we moved the partial is here the unfunded portion okay but I just noticed like here the special Ed asked on this spreadsheet for 2018 is only for 5 teaching assistants on the sheet on the sheet well because there was a lot of things not funded last year oh so everything else is all the things that are colored from that have carried from last year unfunded so I guess we need another color maybe that is stuff that is rolling for this year that they have everything that's colored is rolling everything that's for all of this stuff that rolled so everything that was in last year that wasn't funded got rolled whether or not that continues to be a high priority we rolled everything right because it was expressed to me in budget subcommittee that was very important is to build a database of that which we have not yet been able to do absolutely but I can't from this does not reflect what Ms. Elmer said it does not reflect what the is of the high school like the all of that stuff is still I don't feel like it's in here and I just wondered how much more work was going to be done on this I understand this is not a finished product that's what I was getting at it got out a little fast for my taste okay all right so there is more work that's going to be done Dr. Allison Ampey from budget wants to we haven't seen it either but we're going to talk about real specific so we can I mean I love this I just as they were talking and I was trying to compare it it wasn't matching up and that was to say the presentation meeting is going to be very different potentially than what than this type of document right it's going to be we're maybe your months ahead anyway but we felt that this was a useful document to be looking at and to express to the community what the need why we're asking for different things we can fine tune if things are no longer current top needs you know I think we can pull those out and put them somewhere else we're not the supplementary page right actually one thing I think will be very heart wrenching this year is how many of our highest highest priority needs we probably won't be able to fund right and that will be heart wrenching right so we can say this is like absolutely the core top top and it's likely we still can't fund them all and that was going to be very hard yeah Mr. Thoen so the bottom line is the total proposed increases for FY 18 4.48 million contracted cost increases and I know this is just estimates at this point no the 1.85 is a hard number that is a hard number okay okay the out of district tuition increases the 1 million that is my recommendation for what we need and there could you just what's the history behind that what's the history well right now we're about 750,000 over our out of district tuition line budget and it's very early in the year and we've done the analysis very carefully it looks like we're at about 800 right now for next year but I have no faith that things won't change as we go through the spring which is why I'm recommending a million dollars is any special ed reserves in either town or our own coffers and so we're running thin so I feel like we have to build a pad and 200 is 200,000 is the minimum pad that I could stomach now obviously it's your decision not mine but I recommend a million dollars and the additional revenue of 3.17 million so basically there's about 320,000 dollars to play with to play with that's not a lot not a lot of money and if we want to the the building rental fund has traditionally been used to offset operating costs in the facilities budget it actually paid for utilities if we want to truly set that money aside so that it isn't part of regular day-to-day operations then we need to backfill 250,000 into that budget so if we were to do that the money's gone yeah basically so you know that's you know and that probably won't be the highest priority when that's the only pool of money we have to work with I mean you know reserve teachers the VA's that we always need all of the needs that you've heard of from the last two meetings you know pretty much we don't have to lay anybody off that's the good news and we can cover our out-of-district special ed expectations but pretty much if we want any reserve teachers that's we're done yeah yes Mr. Heiner I'd like to compliment this chart I think this chart says a lot especially with the four columns to the left they filled out going forward that first column the enrollment growth I think is very important for everyone to see showing the effects and going forward so thank you everybody that's involved oh it's a group project believe me okay great anything else okay we are 20 minutes over but we'll hurry along we've been pretty good thanks thank you very much next is the AA yes AA good evening my name is Chris Dangle and I'm a very happy English teacher at the high school on behalf of the high school staff I really do appreciate this opportunity to address a couple of issues that are increasingly on our minds the first pertains to the glaring lack of administrators in the building and I'm very thankful that Dr. Janger pretty much hit 90% of our wish list which is a great thing now when the third dean was removed from this building five years ago the faculty just did not really understand the implications of that decision we actually thought fleetingly that it could potentially work with two deans we were wrong completely wrong when three deans five years ago govern this building things ran surprisingly smoothly it really really did each of the deans was responsible for roughly 350 students which to be clear was tough enough to be honest with you now the two deans that are currently working here are responsible as Dr. Janger stated for 650 kids that is a huge number that's actually double their workforce as a five years ago so what was a busy job then is in many ways objectively unrealistic now it's just not it's not wholly feasible and in the end the students are really the ones who lose out and Dr. Janger did a really nice job of echoing that students are not able to form personal connections with deans who are just really very busy and often times exhausted which needs to be echoed what's more if one of the deans is absent which clearly does happen for understandable reasons that leaves one dean in the building so if a crisis should occur which clearly does happen then a dean is called forth to deal with a serious issue which can take up half a day which realistically leaves portions of the school unattended for most of the day so that's a precarious if not unsafe scenario to further complicate the situation again I don't want to repeat too much Dr. Janger did an awesome job about that there are 1,300 students that you know clearly at the high school close to a hundred of which are from recently established alternative education programs within the last year or two now these kids as we all understand are far more complex they come here with emotional and cognitive challenges the likes of which we have just not seen before the deans are mainly responsible for these kids in fact I'm told by many reliable sources this role alone is a full-time gig it's a full-time job so you lump that into what the deans are doing two not three and you can understand how complex that role is for these reasons we respectfully ask that we or that you help to reinstate a third dean of the building it just makes practical sense secondly again this is an echo an echoing of what Dr. Janger mentioned but Arlington High School has been recognized by local magazines and newspapers as one of the top 25 schools high schools in the state something we should all be immensely proud of the teachers are we're grateful for it we're grateful for the acknowledgement but we do feel that in large part that is a direct result of quality feedback personalized instruction that we give all of our kids it's the reason I love my job and I rely on it that ability that one-on-ones personal connection these are world that's where learning really does happen so as Dr. Janger again mentioned classes as you well know are on the rise so that is a clear threat that's too strong that's a it jeopardizes our ability to provide direct personalized instruction and to be honest with you it renders teaching more of a survival game that a proud customized craft which should be mentioned and that is why we respectfully request additional teachers to maintain our ongoing academic excellence for all of the kids every single one and I think it's very very safe to say that we are all here for the same reason we want our students to be safe we want our students to be happy and indeed we want our students to be productive supporting these two vital and highly reasonable requests will secure a stronger healthier education for everybody involved so again we would appreciate your consideration for an additional dean and understandable additional teachers thank you very much great thanks questions comments Mr. Schlickman so you're a very happy teacher and I think we're thrilled to hear that can you tell us why you're so happy for every single imaginable reason I love the town I love my colleagues I love the students in this building they are grounded hardworking motivated just good good young people they make our jobs a genuine pleasure I love coming to work excellent thanks questions other questions comments great thank you very much they should introduce themselves oh I'm sorry yes please introduce yourself thank you you have already I know yes your name's Alicia Majet I teach chemistry at Arlington High School great thank you hi everyone I'm Juliana Keys I am the AEA rep but tonight I'm here representing Audison Middle School thank you so much for giving us a chance to share our thoughts about the FY18 operating budget we are getting ready to squish for one final year into Audison as a six to eight middle school it's sort of bittersweet thinking about that people are excited about new opportunities to come but sad that our colleagues are going to be splitting up our needs are few but they're significant and I feel listen to this and find a way to make it work in order to maintain the support our students need in this very large school we need an increase in staff that supports the social and emotional well-being of our students this means that we need an additional guidance more qualified TAs whether that's through higher pay to recruit better candidates or better training for the TAs that we have who are good people and working hard and we need more special education teachers and social workers our special ed program teachers right now work with multiple grades they're often working with multiple clusters in each grade and we've added the cluster to each grade in the past years so that has increased they're pulled in too many directions to support all of their students at an acceptable level the large population in our school combined with the increase in students with social and emotional challenges means that we need more staff to best educate these children adding more program and inclusion TAs would also help support our students and staff and I just want to kind of explain I never thought I'd be the one sitting up here saying we need more guidance counselors and special ed and social workers and all of that goes up by from 25 to 27 that's a pain that's a pain it means the kids get less time if I have a student who has significant needs call the student Bob Bob is not real I'm not compromising anybody's privacy here Bob is not real and Bob does not show up to class I call the special education teacher they say they should be there I call the social worker they're not interested in the phone I call the nurse's office Bob's not in the nurse's office well guidance counselor they're not answering the phone because they've got a kid in crisis down there I finally call the main office and have Bob paged the main office calls me back five minutes later saying did Bob show up it's not the two extra kids in the class that make it challenging it's the 10 minutes that none of those kids were learning because I was trying to find Bob this is why we need more special ed staff more social workers more TAs so the kids you know when Bob finally shows up oh he was sitting outside the guidance office you know this is the kind of stuff that makes the job challenging this is why we need more support in those areas we realize that this is a tight budget season and that next year both the Gibbs and the Odyssey will be getting considerable investment so we want to keep this year's request modest however we respectfully ask that you recognize that our special ed and guidance counselors are working beyond capacity at this time and take steps to remedy that for next year thank you thanks and qualified TA what you meant by that most of our TAs are working in programs with students on the autism spectrum students with significant cognitive needs or students with severe emotional or even traumatic backgrounds and they're coming in off the street never having worked with those populations before so some training as to what that means and how to deal with students who have challenges like that thanks did you sorry I cut too short did you want to add something to no I think I would stress what Chris Dangle said I would call myself a happy teacher here as well and I think I really appreciate the level of professionalism and how I'm treated like a professional and how you all take what our ideas you take them very seriously and I've worked in places where that's not the case so it's it is a wonderful positive thing and I live here in town so I really do love the investment in the schools because my own kids are going to coming up through these schools as well I already have two of them in the public schools so I'm a happy teacher and a happy parent great thank you thank you I just want to make a statement if I may this is the second time the AEA has come before us and both times the AEA and the administration have been aligned in terms of their discussion they're both seeing the needs similarly and it just demonstrates what a fantastic team of teachers and leaders we have in this district too who collaborate well together and are standing in a significant chunk of common ground and I think that the AEA's priorities this year were very and very thoughtful and I'm very appreciative for what they brought before us yeah it was good to have them so I just want to say that we're looking to get school committee feedback when we come back in January so we need time to digest all these presentations before we give something but I just want to throw that to you I was just going to point out that last year was the first time I think that they had come forward with budget requests participation this is the first time that we've had the AEA come as an item on the agenda and I think that it was a good thing to hear from them oh absolutely yeah yeah I'm glad I did they asked and we said yes so yeah well we suggested that they be I mean they asked if they could come but we suggested that they be put on the agenda right yes I think it's very important to hear how much in sync the teachers are with the administration that showing the collegiality and the needs together yep okay of course this is going to be a big decision so yes it's going to be very difficult and of course one of the things that we look at and we are looking at very carefully is there anything that we could trim somehow to free up the funds and we are going to take more hard we are taking a hard look at and we'll continue to take a hard look at it we'll talk to the the AEA too have them make some suggestions and I think that we all understand the constraints we have and so how can we best prioritize and problem-solve what we need but as you can see what can happen is if we partially fund or somewhat fund this list will just continue to roll forward in terms of what we do and I also just want to say besides the fact that we are all pretty much in sync there's a lot of communication teachers and administrators and what is needed I think that's to be really applauded in terms of what's going on in our school district and in our schools they our teachers are really quite amazing they really are in terms of you know pressures certainly in this school but even at the middle school there's different kind of pressure in terms of space and they're always stepping up to do it you know and I just think of a recent thing what happened in Stratton teachers just stepped up and they know what to do and they help out so it's really quite we're very fortunate to have the staff we have great questions for you actually first thing I don't think we have this on Novus the presentation you have the presentation what you don't have is there's like three slides that were added oh no I don't have any presentation oh you took it off because it was too big okay but okay but we'll get that I can upload it later you can upload it we do have a hard copy that we can look at it's all along and there's as I said I added three slides with graphics and so because of that it was too big okay Novus if we upload it in a PDF format it'll probably upload to Novus so I'm just going to talk very briefly about our major curriculum and technology initiatives to give everybody an update we have a major implementation in the investigations curriculum in grades K and 1 FOSS is a science curriculum that's now been expanded to grades 1 through 5 we are expanding our workshop model in elementary classrooms to include elementary reading as you can recall the Lucy Calkins writing program is also done in a workshop model we are in the process of redoing social studies curriculum for grade 5 it will be much more focused and we're piloting integrated social studies and literacy units that were developed by staff over the summer that's to give students more facility but also to help elementary teachers who are trying to fit all that curriculum into what is a relatively short day and we're working with at Audison and in the high school on the social studies scope and sequence of the curriculum and we're also working at the high school and the middle school level on the examination of the readings that we do in English language arts to make sure that we have the correct balance of diversification of readings before they move on so what are we doing to support these initiatives we have three literacy tutors that are paid for by Title I and three math tutors that are paid for two of them are paid by Title I and one out of the general budget in a minute I'm going to show you a couple of slides on iReady which is a new adaptive assessment that's being piloted in math at Pierce and ELA at Bishop that's more something that's done by hand we've had a formal course in supporting instruction for our teacher leaders that's been going on all year that's being taught in concert by Linda Hansen who's one of our instructional specialists and teachers 21 we've had extensive PD for our literacy lead teachers our literacy specialists teachers to have 15 what they call PDPs or professional development points in order to recertify themselves in dealing with ELL students and meeting the needs of special education students but these were also extremely popular courses that we ran last year and the vast majority of these courses are blended learning so they may have one or two set of journal articles that people have found to be extremely helpful in this area and the last thing is PD to support tier one supports in reading at the elementary so we've focused a lot of our supports in reading for tier two and tier three tier three is almost exclusively special education students tier three tends to be a mix of special education and regular education students our literacy specialist because of her background is both of a grade one and a grade four elementary teacher she's only been out of the classroom one year and because of the work she did before she came to this district she had been out of another district she's really been able to help our classroom teachers in the tier one so looking at the students diagnostic reading assessment the DRA score what can we do for our classroom as well as outside of the classroom for those students so this is a sample of the I ready report and the only thing I want to call to your attention is this is a classes report and it shows for that teacher what percentage of their students or what number of their students are one year below less than one year below so basically on target your areas that you would be looking at in terms of reading and this is from a fourth grade classroom and so teachers were able to get this information and then they were able to see the average scale scored for those students and then they can drill down and they can look at the individual students scores in that area and then it actually the teachers that we have that are using this at Bishop have been very very excited about using it and find it very helpful and they are also able to extract portions of that to share with parents during parent teacher conferences. Where does this data come from? Students take an assessment that takes anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes depending on what grade level it raises the bar for the student if the student is not getting a lot of questions right then it will make it easier for the student it allows us to actually see what grade level the student is at at that point and it's sometimes referred to as a universal screener so we can see all the way from the kids who are behind to we have several students in English or math that's correct yes that's correct this is a sample of an I ready report for an individual student I redacted the student's name but you can see where they are in terms of and the specific levels in the areas of mathematics geometry measurement and data number sense and operations and algebraic thinking and so again teachers are able and then the margin of error which is very low for this test and it really allows us to drill down again for the student that's taking the math assessment where they need to go where the teacher needs to go next with them and the thing that we did was that we did a correlation analysis of the math scores from last year's park for our fifth grade students and a correlation analysis of the ELA scores for the ELA and we saw something that's in between 0.72 to a 0.75 range which is pretty high for the first time these kids have taken the test so that means that we're able to look at it and fairly accurately have a good handle on which students will have difficulty with them MCAS next generation it also allows us to we can sort of we have to wait until the end of the year to sort of get an idea about how the students would do on the next generation we'll be having some indication I'm also able to compare my results with my colleagues the assistant superintendent in Bill Rica and the assistant superintendent in North Reading and we're able to look at what their results are as well as ours so that that will allow all fourth grade students to take the MCAS 2.0 which it was originally called now it's called MCAS next generation online those Chromebooks were also purchased at the middle school so that all ELL students can take the access test which is the test for English language learners also online this year we implemented as you know a BYOD program based at Otterson and two elementary schools and we have presented to the capital committee regarding our animal request and have received favorable results so one of the questions is with all this technology expansion and I know we've heard in the past that not there's uneven implementation going on and so I want to introduce the people that are ready to jump in right from the start and then we have our early adopters those are people that once there's a few people around them then you'll see what they call the chasm and we'll talk about that in a second and then we have what we call the early majority and as you see when we get to that point it says that about half the staff is at the same place and then we get into the late majority events this week sponsored by the massachusetts personal learning and ed tech consortium and this chart was shown and they said to move people or to get that that group of people within a school to move from those who are early adopters to expanding to those that are the early majority is the most difficult to get that when people that are either innovators or early adopters or early majority it's a lot easier to get the people on the other side and I think that's what we're experiencing now at some of the schools and that's why we're getting this unevenness where there are some teachers that have really jumped in with both feet and as you heard at the high school teachers at least have some amount of presidents but we have people that are hardly using it at all the same thing exists at the middle school I would have to say that this is less the case at the elementary school but we've had iPads in the elementary school for five years now so I think that's one of the things that we're seeing so what are the supports we're doing to try to help with that chasm this past summer we had a tech a university an annual thing that we've had is that we are also offering teachers who would like to do work during the vacations from now until the end of the school year to redo curriculum maps or to update curriculum maps showing how technology might be incorporated we're offering teachers that stipend to do that we recently had an ed camp at Otterson which was extremely successful an ed camp is where teachers come together the schedule is three 40 minute slots and these are the rooms that we're going to use and teachers were able to put what they wanted to learn about or talk about on a sticky and put it up on they could propose and then they would go to the rooms and they would self facilitate and I don't know did you want to it worked out really well I think we kind of branched beyond technology but that was good because there were things people can take an iPad and move it around as if they're actually looking around sites around the world so I'm excited to try that in my classroom so I guess and the last thing is that we've added some additional staffing at Otterson to support teachers and we've increased our internet capacity however the state is projecting that what we need for internet for the future will be one gig per every thousand students although we have more than some people have we have way less than what they're projecting that we will need David Good is in the process of working with his staff we filled out some state questionnaires we're going to be sending them in and there's a possibility that we would get some additional funding the other thing we're looking at is we were able to see through this process what other districts are paying are getting some of them are paying more than we're paying for the same thing and some of them are paying less than we're paying for the same thing so we're we're investigating what that is interesting yes Mr. Heiner did you say one gig of memory of internet capacity internet capacity for every thousand so for us would be for save six gig yeah and we don't have no we're like that half a gig we have half a gig we have half a gig Dr. Allison if you want so we need ten times what we currently have that's what the state is projecting right now this is not immediately they're saying for the future a lot of that has to do with video because video takes up a lot of bandwidth and we are seeing that the more video our teachers are using the more bandwidth we're starting to use and we're doing network traffic yes can we get any of that through ACMI and the renegotiations aspect of it I believe that that would come through our the ISP ISP is RCN and that's been already negotiated it's our but but that was negotiated with that in mind the last thing I want to just bring up this is being part of Maple World one of the twelve what they call which are the districts that were invited across the state because of our work and personalized learning which is supported by technology but not exclusively with technology one of the things that they said at the presentation that I thought was really interesting is that in Massachusetts we rank if we were to rank ourselves as if we were a country we rank in achievement number one in Nape in 2014 which is the national assessment of educational progress so Massachusetts would be number one but if we look at Massachusetts closing the achievement gap we would be number 48 so the personalization of learning and the use of technology to better meet the needs of all students is important because of that disparity that although we are performing well there is a percentage of our population that is not performing well and the use of technology allows us to sort of scale up personalized learning because we've heard all night and we heard last week that classes are 25 27 28 30 and for a teacher to be able to personalize learning for every student in that classroom without the assistance of something to help us ramp up to scale is almost impossible does that come with additional funding from the state the professional development there is some professional development yes I will say people is a desi privates learn launch and desi coming together in a partnership but that chart that you saw about adapting technology in a school or a school district you can just take that same idea in terms of a state and Arlington is one of the early people early districts that have sort of moved in this direction we're still on a continuum too but it's a mindset that we're trying to move toward in terms of personalizing instruction both for the achievement gap but also that level of engagement that we've heard a lot about social emotional barriers for kids to be able to learn our theory on this it's certainly supported by research it's the more we can even move into this area we may be able to gain the engagement of some students that might not be as engaged and you sort of gotta be here in school and you gotta be doing something in order that you're going to be learning so it's also a hook that we would use that would be helpful you know the kind of work that you see one of the things that we see in pockets we certainly see this at the kindergarten believe it or not across the board is creating goals and when you have when students can see their follow their own progress that in and of itself has some motivation some teachers actually create little portfolios in their class so the students can monitor what they're doing in different skill areas so we're moving that direction we're certainly in the process but what we've come to understand is that we're more there than many other districts so we're on the early end of things and the idea across the state is to create the professional development and nurture the districts are doing it so that we become models for other schools to come and learn what we're doing so the technology to support teaching and learning we've heard a lot is that the students loved it they were saying to their teachers when are we going to do this again because as they're taking the test every so many minutes it shows them this little video like a cartoon or something that they do play like a little game and then they go back to the test and so it sort of rewards them you've heard about the blended learning mini courses we're expanding the data that we have in baseline edge which right now we've put all last year's park data in there so a teacher can sit down and say show me students who did not make the DRA benchmark who also did not meet the standards in park and it will actually bring that up for them and they can see the demographics for those students how many are special education how many are ELL students how many are in 504s we have been sharing videos of classroom exemplars for literacy giving us great feedback about that it really helps teachers to be able to watch a video a lot of times teachers are a day behind the person that's putting up the videos so they're putting up a video this is what I did yesterday in my class this is what worked this is what didn't work and then a teacher who might be early into the Lucy Colkins program will watch that video and then do it the next day in their class we're done we're done I think this is the future okay so we're going to be meeting with teachers regarding our technology plan an opportunity for feedback right now we're looking at whether we should change the devices at grades four five and six and what devices we should continue to purchase for seven and eight there will be two community meetings one is going to be with vision 2020 which is going to be called to get some feedback from parents on the instructional technology plan and other members of the community we're hoping to expand the computer science curriculum in the next school year as you heard people request that we'll be having a parent and student camp for students who choose BYOD I think that was one of the things that we really were not sure that we really thought the students were more prepared to do BYOD and so we really thought that we could use from as one evening in the summertime so that parents can see how we use computers and how students can use their device and for students to know how they could use their device even if their teacher is not incorporating that as much in the curriculum how they can use it for their own self curriculum leaders are working on vision of the student as learner and how we want to do it partial is from things like student engagement student center learning we're working on that and so we'll do to find what steps are necessary to get at those visions and so you'll be hearing more about that in the spring Mr. Harden Thanks so it sounds like you are refining or redeveloping the technology plan that's vital because I developed one long time ago but it's still unclear where we're going like from 6th grade we're all 1-1 and then 7th grade it's totally hit or miss they go for using technology unless they want to use their device at elementary schools you know at elementary schools you know some of our schools are 1-1 some of them aren't some of the lower grades are using iPads and then suddenly they're switched to Chromebooks so it does seem like we're all over the place we need to have a long range plan of where we're going to go so I would strongly encourage you to do that and talk with parents as well because you know certainly for you know my son was in an 3rd grade class where it was 1-1 and there was a lot of mixed reaction to that whether that was appropriate at that early where we're going are we headed to 1-1 for middle school and high school is that our goal if that's our goal how are we going to get there are we going to impose a policy that people have to bring a device unless they can meet a demonstrated need like other towns have or are we going to continue with this hit or miss you can bring one if you want but what does that create in classes where a few people have it but the rest doesn't so certainly I think we need to be very more strategic it's been our policy to try to pilot things so that we can get a sense of what the acceptance level will be with not only with the teachers but also with the parent community so that's why initially we allowed BYOD at 6th grade because we knew we had 1-1 so if a student didn't bring one there was one that was provided for them this year when we did BYOD at the middle school we had 350 parents that did that but as I said I one of the things that they also stressed at the maple conferences that we need to create an environment where it's okay to take a risk however I totally agree that we're poised right now to redo our technology plan and get a better feel for it and that's why I want to have a parent meeting as part of that technology plan I hope that we're going to be working with businesses that are five years old and we have to replace them all and if the funding stream isn't there I don't think we should be I mean we should be trying to get it there if we see that that's the need if we can't make it I think for us to be having tech plans that we can't fully fund that's a big problem we're going to have technology budget for three or four or five years out and up to this point we have an agreement that we would you know what the replacement cycle would be the difficult part is that the enrollment and the need and the desire for people has gone faster than we expected so if we looked at what we had for devices when we started down this year replacement cycle that doesn't mean we throw things away because we certainly don't do that but the number of devices that we have in the district has ramped up so fast and the desire for teachers as you heard from the elementary teachers that was one of their highest priorities from the AEA that it's become difficult with the same amount of money to replace and so that's one of the reasons for that because that would help us through that process thank you Mr. Hinner any thought of dealing with the technical people that are in town to try to partnership with businesses and stuff tech companies and stuff to get either donations or directly involved Burlington does a lot of Burlington literally has connections with computer companies in the town and so well we have had people from the community that are in the tech field as advisories and that they actually set sort of where we were going with the computer science electives and stuff like that I just want to caution is that Burlington actually has a line in their budget of a million dollars per year that they do from their own operating budget for technology vast majority but I do have a really interesting question I think it's certainly in the vision going forward is that the high school is going to be one to one that that is by the time that we get the high school rebuild that is going to be in fact we may even be behind where we should be at that point but it's one line item as part of the project, that line item is probably going to be insufficient. And high schools that know that that's a direction they want to go, and I think that there'd be unanimity here that that would be a direction we should go, are probably going to have to supplement that. And districts that have done that, it's been in the tune of a couple million dollars. Now relative to the cost of the whole high school, that's not significant. But I just alert you to that, and actually saying this to the community as well, is that I think that when we get to that point, which isn't going to be that far off when we have to go for an override in the high school, I think that that is something that we need to make sure that we have the additional funding for so that we can go. Now, it could be that we will be able to implement some of that even earlier, but that is part of the plan going forward. Yes, that is an update. And I just add that it's not a one-time buy. I mean, the first time we're buying it, but then we have to be scheduling in. You know, we can't just buy it once. That's the problem. Many districts then go to a leasing model, but they have to, as you said before, you have to know that the capital stream, and we have very small amounts that we lease that's not funded by capital. But you have to know that that stream, that funding stream is going to be there. But in order to afford that many, and also to keep the technology current for the same amount of money, many people have gone to a leasing structure. And also, many districts have also gone to parents having to pay for maintenance fee. So I just want to talk to his parents. I have a middle school and a high schooler. We have devices for both of them, but they chose not to bring them. And I think because they feel that there's no use for them, they're not being used in the classroom. And for us, I know unless we have a reduction in the amount of three ring binders my kid has to bring, adding an extra piece of weight that's not going to be ever used in the classroom. Yes, she could bring it out and use it on her own, but the teachers never are requesting it. That, I think, is that gap that feels like. And I do think that there are other parents who would have the financial means and be willing to buy devices for their kids if they really felt like they were integrated into the classroom and felt like there was reduction in the binder requirement. I have to say, those things is, I mean, these are not huge kids. And those are big binders that they have to carry around. So I mean, I know we're in transition, institutional change is hard. I suspect that in a few years, kids won't be carrying those big binders. I hope that's true, but I just know that I think that's a barrier from my perspective as a parent, yeah. Okay, thanks. Anything else? Great, thank you. So, Superintendents report. Well, this won't be that lengthy. So one of the things that we've agreed is we'll have a quick update where we are with the different schools. The Thompson School is moving forward. They're already starting to seek fencing and some of the work that's being done. I can't tell you what date they're going to actually put the first shovel in the ground, but it's coming very soon. And hopefully it will thaw again on Saturday. But one of the things that we will be notifying neighbors about when we hit the schedule is it's probably going to need to be some Saturday work, but as we've done all along when we have some big change, we know something will get a letter out to them. But I've been and the town manager been reassured this week that the architects and the construction company feels that we can meet our timeline. So I'm glad we have the modulars in place as we approaching winter just to see how that all works out. But I remain confident on that. With respect to Stratton, that is remaining on schedule. We've actually had a meeting this week about F&E, which is furniture and equipment. And looking at and trying because a lot of the ordering has to be done as you can understand earlier. So there'll be a reach out to teachers to get some ideas. We have been funding Stratton over the last few years, every year a little bit more money toward furniture. And so we're going to continue to use that furniture. So what that will do is we'll provide some additional space to do some other work. Probably be along the lines of technology, but we'll let you know about that. That's going well. I will say one of the issues that we're going to face tomorrow, just as an aside, it's really not about the construction schedule, but we built these breezeways, which was the best way to do this to connect the modulars to the school, the cafeteria and the gym. They are not heated. They are wind barriers completely, but they're not heated. And I have to say having been in them last week and the principal reporting to their cold. So it is a little bit of an issue for tomorrow. So we have a plan going forward for what we're advising about dressing tomorrow. That's the problem in terms of the winter there. And you just can't put heaters in those breezeways. They're just really not going to be effective. It's just a waste of electricity. So that's a challenge. So I hope we have a mild winter as we go forward. May I just add? Yes. Permanent Town Building Committee will be meeting in this room next Tuesday night at 7.30. The major topics are all the ones that Dr. Boadie just. So if anyone has an intent to come, it won't be at the town hall. Is it on all the buildings, or is it just on the trend? Right now, the Permanent Town Building Committee is dealing with Thompson, Stratton, and Gibbs. Those are the topics. Those are the buildings, yeah. But it'll be here one time, not at the town hall. It's 7.30 Tuesday night. Good to know. Well, Gibbs is going forward. We've worked out, I think, a plan now that meets all of our needs in terms of all of the different programming and special education, ELL, reading, et cetera, et cetera. So the floor plan is there, which now allows the beginning of the costing out. And so we had a meeting today for the first stage of that, and so far so good. So that will be, we're really staying on a very strict timeline for that. So I'm feeling very confident that we will meet the goals of opening in 18. Do you know when the next presentation to the community would be? We haven't set the date yet, but, you know, we thought, it would be this month, and actually it could be, but it would be next week. And so we decided that next week is probably not the best time to do it. And frankly, I don't have any nights free next week, so that has one issue too. So we're going to schedule something after the first of the year. So in January? Yes, and then we'll get the advisory committee. I have to get the teachers to work on that piece of it. Well, Juliana and Jason and I will talk about that. But the advisory committee really won't have any need to be advising until we get later in January. Some of the work that's been going on right now is not the work of the advisory committee. It's really into the bones of the programming and the layout of the floor plans. And the high school, we continue to move forward. Next week we're going to have the first building meeting. It's really basically just to give the committee an overview of the process, because I think people are on different levels of understanding of what is involved in being on this committee, what's the process, what are some kind of timelines. So it's really informational. The first meeting is next Tuesday. And what is the time? It is in the evening. It's in the evening and it's here. Oh wait, didn't you just say that the permanent time building was meeting here? Oh, that's at 7.30. The permanent time building is at 7.30. And this is at 6.00. That's right. And it was to pull the two together. And that's why permanent town is here, because there's some members of permanent town that are on the building committee, and it was just made it easier. Right. And the school enrollment task force is on Wednesday. And the school enrollment task force is on Wednesday in the same room. And there's concerts and other wonderful events happening all week as well. All week. Right. That's all the good news. So that's sort of a quick wrap up of where we are. Now the other two things that you have in there, you have the official certified copy of the DESI certified enrollment numbers. And that's there for your information. As I said last time, it turned out by coincidence, the number was the same as it was in one of those recent charts. I think that has changed since then, but that will happen all the time. Then the other, it's really not something I want to talk to. It's just in your packet it is the newsletter from EDCO just to keep you apprised of the work that's going on in that collaborative. I will say that it is, in terms of our use of EDCO as administrators and teachers, we continue to use the professional development. And I think that the roundtables that we participate in many, many job functions are just terrific. In fact, we're going to add a couple of roundtables in which Karen Fitzgerald probably is going to participate. So getting the people who are the secretaries to the school committees together, because they have a lot that they need to talk about as well. So we're always looking to see where can we create professional opportunities for different people with specific job functions. So all is going well there at the moment. Great. Questions, comments? Nope. Okay. Great. Great. Is that it? That's it. Great. Thank you. Consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted with one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests. In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Approval warrant, warrant number 17092 dated 12-8, 2016, amount of $497,701.57, approval of minutes, school committee regular minutes 12-8, 2016, approval proposed, Arlington High School performing tour New York City, May 19th through 21st, 2017. Excuse me. Yes. I just need to ask Ms. Fitzgerald, is this warrant the one I'm on? No, the warrant. Oh, okay. That's one being signed there. Okay, fine. Thank you. And the warrant that I'm on though? Yeah. We have to pull it out and you have to abstain. I'll pull it out. Okay. So I'll pull that out and we'll vote on the other ones. Any other pullouts? Okay. Okay. All those in favor of the two items, please signify by saying yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Then the items pulled out, the warrant, all in favor? Aye. And I'm abstaining. Okay. Okay. So that's it. Now we want to go on to the policy that we saw last time, teaching about alcohol, tobacco, and drugs for a second reading. Mr. Heiner, do you want to? I would defer to Mr. Schlickman on the procedure this. Do we take a vote at this time or do we just seek any more questions? We vote. Okay. Second reading. I would move that we accept the policy as presented. Second. Okay. Mr. Heiner, seconded by Dr. Allison Ampe. All in favor? Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Obscene? Okay. Unanimous. Okay. Subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget. Dr. Allison Ampe. Budget. We'll meet on January 10th. Great. At 6. Here. Okay. So we did, I know that you reported on this last week. Quickly. Yes. So we had our first, this was what we put up on the table at the kickstand. It just said, so people knew why we were like sitting there not talking to anybody. It would be pretty weird if we're just sitting there. We had a very nice conversation. So we had this, I'm happy to make this for, if anybody else wants to do this. So my idea was, and Jennifer and I just decided we would pilot it as community relations members. My idea was that we would do it on the first Saturday of every month for an hour from 11 to 12. And I made sure that I am available. So I am happy to be there. But my thought was if we started, and we, I did it, we started in December because that meant that it easily meant the math worked out that each of us, if each of us does two weekends, we're done. But I'm happy if people don't want to do it to step in. I made sure that I was available on any days. But so, I mean, like I heard you say last week, a lot of people stopped by, told us they appreciated the fact that we were doing it. No one had anything they wanted to talk about. But even the people at kickstand thought it was a great idea. They didn't think we were going to be there long enough. And I thought, well, it's our first try. It's our first try. We'll be back. So I don't know if we need a motion to... I think we should vote on this. Yeah, a motion to decide to do this. And then if it passes... For this year. For this year, if it passes, then you would send out a doodle where people can sign up. Yeah.  Oh, yeah, yeah. And you can always let me know. Like I said, I'm happy to be the backup. I can do any and all of the weekends. I can establish this. We can actually do maybe an even better job, even though the job that you did was fabulous on advertising it. Just sort of send it back. Yeah, yeah. Like I totally forgot the list. Like the Arlington list. We got it in the paper. We got an email out to the parents, but we didn't hit the list. And so, yeah.  So I would do it next time. Right, right. So... Move to do it. Okay. So motion... Mr. Hanna, move to do it. I like it. Do you want better language? Move that the school committee holds, school committee chat hours from 11 to 12 on the first Saturday of the month for every month, January to June. All members to sign up for two slots. Okay. And let's make it clear that this is a trial year, and then we'll reassess it after. Seconded. Okay. Seconded by Mr. Heiner. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. You're going to get buttons. From town meeting.  Jennifer and I both wore buttons. I wore my campaign button, but anything just so that, just so that you just have your name on there. Just so they can tell you apart.  They might know. They might know. Right. Right. And we don't, probably in January because I know that hopefully some of the work on the dashboard will be done. We'll start talking about that again. Great. Good. District accountability curriculum instruction and assessment. Well, we had sort of a