Welcome, today is Thursday, December 8th, 2016, of the Arlington School Committee. I'd like to welcome Jason Levy, who is the current president of the Arlington AEA. And is there any public comments? No, okay. So next I would like to ask Mr. Remy to come up and we're going to talk about, is that right? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. So actually I want to give some background on this. As I was talking to other school committee members in different towns, it became very clear that other towns get yearly suspension reports. And I thought it'd be a good idea to have an Arlington given how much attention, national attention has been on this issue, the realization that it's a lot more destructive for kids than we originally thought, racial disparity issues. And so it'd just be good to sort of see this data on a yearly basis. So thank you for coming. Are we waiting for? I suspect you guys do have a way to log in and take a look at the data? We have it. Yes. Okay. So I'm just going to go through and first thing I want to point out is when we look at the first main page, what is listed is not the complete scope of all the different race and ethnicity combinations that exist, but these are the ones that show up in the report. So rather than just going down the line and showing you all the combinations that don't have any thing on record. So as you go through, the highlights here are through the secondary school being the middle and high school, there were 80 total suspensions in the 15, 16 school year spread amongst 51 students. 34 of those students were general ed and 17 were special ed students. The next thing you'll see is again the combination of the middle and high school, how that breaks down into percentages where we have, before I even get into that, just a quick background, the first big thing you'll notice is that they're first categorized by either Hispanic or non-Hispanic and then all the potential combinations after that. So our largest pool being non-Hispanic white making up 59% total suspensions, followed by, and there's a big drop off from there, where non-Hispanic black and African American are 21%, then the non-Hispanic Asian making 8%, and so on and so forth. On your next screen, you'll see just the oddison middle school where there were 22 total suspensions across the 13 students there, and you see the breakdown between male, female, special ed, and the total aggregate number of days that were missed amongst those 13 students who were suspended. None of those suspensions were for more than 10 consecutive days. And finally, we have the same breakdown for the high school, 58 total suspensions there across 38 students, 13 male, 25, I'm sorry, 13 female, 25 male, 139 total days missed, and only two suspensions that were of 10 consecutive days. Questions, comments? Yes, Mr. Steeleman. Refresh my memories, are practice to have in school suspensions, or are they mostly out of school suspensions, or what's our approach? There are in school and out of school suspensions, but as it's classified, is any time that is spent outside of the primary learning environment, is a suspension. So this doesn't discriminate between in school and out of school suspensions, just any time that you are not in the primary learning environment. Do you have a rough sense of the breakdown of in school and out of school suspensions? I do not available here, no. Dr. Reddy? Yes. The high school is, I wouldn't venture to say, certainly in the neighborhood of 50-50, the short term ones are often in school. We have it in school suspension room, and the middle school does too. Good. Mr. Steeleman, did you have, I thought you- I'm still thinking. Okay. Mr. Hanna? Going back to the grouping, is that the groupings that are reported to the state? Yes. That is how they appear, and again that is not the complete scope of everything that has appeared. But yes, this is exactly, the data source here is a combination of the SIMS report that just captures all the demographic information for all of our students, and the school safety and discipline report that gets sent out every summer, tracking all the suspensions, what the offense was, how many days they were missed, and the academic plan that was for those days. The combination of the two gave birth to this report. This question may go to the superintendent. The out-of-school suspensions, when is it triggered that we're required to provide education? Is it so many days, or is it? It's after 10 days, but we certainly want to have all of our students stay current with their classes, and if not 100%, the vast, vast majority of teachers have assignments through their websites, and so it's very easy for them to stay on it. But we do provide tutoring, and especially if they're a special education student, we definitely, even in a short term, often do that. Thank you. And as part of the school safety and discipline report, that is included, and I can tell you that they have to report what the ED plan is, regardless of the length of the suspension, and overall, it's typically, like Dr. Bodie said, either something is emailed to them or they are given some work to take with them while they're away. Just follow up on that. Yes, Mr. Hanna. Manifestation hearings. Is that reported to the state, too, when a student is out? Yes. Oh, yeah. That's for a special education student, so if they're going to accumulate more than 10 days suspension that would constitute a change in placement, so you have to determine if it's a manifestation of their disability. So we do record that with our special ed data. We wait for the 10-day mark to do this, for a manifestation hearing? Yes, and contrary to what people think is best practice that they tell you in schools is different than what the attorneys in the law will tell you. You don't do it before the 10th day. I know that you're required to do it at the 10-day mark. But as an educator, I'd want to know if the ed plan is, if the incident or incidents are related to the educational plan in place so that we can make the change. That doesn't prevent you from doing any of that stuff. So you can have an FBA. You can have a team meet to discuss the student. But if you were to meet and have a manifestation determination, say you do that on day six and you determine that the behavior is a manifestation of their disability, you can no longer suspend that student for that type of behavior. So then you wouldn't be able to spend them even for that 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th day now that you've determined it. So that's why you don't hold the manifestation determination until they're going to miss the 11th day. All that kind of best practice around planning and getting a team together to discuss. If you see a pattern of behavior developing, you most certainly should be gathering a team well before you're at 10 days to be discussing what are the antecedents, what is the setting, what, you know, to problem solve. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Dr. Allison Abbey. So I didn't understand why we were given, I'm not saying it was bad that we were given this, but I didn't know the backstory until you discussed it. And so I was kind of looking at it just trying to understand what we were looking at and what we were trying to think about and not knowing. The thing that I've been especially concerned about are the reports that were potentially, or as a nation at large, where certain students are, especially students of color, are suspended at higher rates than their prevalence in the population would suggest. And so that's data I would have liked to have in this report, and I don't think we gave any indication. Yeah, I didn't give any direction, I just said we wanted to. So I do think we want to maybe direct what we want to see in the future, you know, next year. I'd like to make this a year late. I did actually look on the DESI website to try and find some of this stuff. And as you say, it's there. And it has some information, but I can't, like I can't break it down by school or anything. So part of that is, there are, if you just look at the breakdown, you know, we'll say that there are 80 suspensions over 51 students, which then means that there are some repeat offenders. And if I were to dig down any deeper, we're then at risk of revealing who exactly those students are. So the further you go down the rabbit hole, the more it starts to say, oh, now we're talking about. I'm guessing, I think Dr. Allison is asking, we should see maybe a comparison between students of color who are suspended and then what percentage of the population they represent, and then a comparison of those, that that might be useful data for us to keep track of and see if we're making progress there or if, you know, we're slipping or, you know, it's as Dr. Allison mentioned, it is a national problem. So we're not unique in addressing this issue, but it's something we want to make progress on. Absolutely, and I can tell you, I did put this together, between the middle and high school, there are 130 total students that are identified and reported as black or African American of the 2,505 total students in the schools. So when you compare that to what was reported in that report, you can start to get a better picture of percentages then. Right, okay, thanks. Yes, Mr. Slippen. Okay, yeah, I mean, looking at the numbers of the high school, you know, you don't have that many suspensions in the district so that you're not gonna generate a real pattern. So, would I say that things are statistically significant, you know, not really. You know, the rates are higher for males and females at the high school. The one number that bumps up is the oddest and it just looks bad, but it's only four kids. So that if it's four kids versus three kids, I mean, you don't know individual circumstances and that's not an indicator of anything systemic going on per se. So we really rely upon the administration to say and certify that the discipline that we're handing out within the district is fair and equitable, which is certainly a concern of ours. Not a concern in a negative manner, but a concern in something that we care about deeply. We care about equity in this district and we care about treating every student with respect. So the one thing that strikes me is just the low number of suspensions and I think that what the data is telling me right now is that the district is making a concerted effort not to suspend students wherever possible and when you're encountering a 10 day suspension, those are usually for unavoidable reasons and without wanting to go deeper into the data because so few students are involved. I'm thankful to have the report and I'm thankful we've got an administrative staff that is looking into this and taking this seriously and striving for equity in the system. I think again, without going much deeper because it starts to identify them personally is when you start to see what the offense types are leading to certain suspensions. When you see that, like you said, some of it is absolutely unavoidable. This offense leads to this consequence which is going to be this many days missed between hearings and so on and so forth. But you're right, as it is, there are not a whole lot and you look at the charts and you see the percentages but when it's over 38 students, it's gonna look like a bigger percentage than it actually is. I know, because as a former principal, nothing will tear your gut out more than suspending a kid and the first time I did it to a first grader it was one where I had absolutely no discretion in the matter, it was sort of a requirement. I won't get into what happened but it was tough two days for me and we went out to dinner at Not Your Average shows and we just had to decompress that night. It was personally upsetting for me and I know that the ethic in this district is to do the right thing for kids and I'm appreciative of the data. So I think it'd be nice to track this over time because it does seem like we're making improvements, significant improvements in the last few years so that we were suspending greater numbers of students and we really made an effort. I think as the national attention has been brought to this issue, Arlington has taken notice and really sort of thought, been much more thoughtful about this. I have a couple questions. In previous years we've had elementary school suspensions were there none in this year? No, there were none this year and I can actually, in my time here there was just one, two years ago so. Okay. And then the other, one other question is the percentage in the pie chart. Is that absolute number of students or is that suspension incidents? Of those who were suspended. So number of kids, number of students rather. Okay, thanks. Anything else? Great, thank you very much for doing this on short notice and taking your time. Thanks. Good night. Good night. Good night. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. So we have next the budget priorities at the elementary school levels. Now do we have, I know we just got something uploading novice. Do we have any hard copies of it? I don't know if that's useful for anybody. I could, I could maybe. No, actually only if it's, it was a little frustrating that we got these so late so we didn't have time to really read through them before. I think when you hear their report, you'll understand what a busy group of people these are. No, I understand. Would you like some, would you like us to take some hard copies? Yes. Yes, so it might be useful to some of the members. Not right, excuse me. For me it doesn't have to be for right now but I'd like a copy eventually. Okay, got it. Is there something in this case, is it extra paper? I don't know. I think there's one. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, great, thank you. We're gonna sit in order of speaking. Yeah. I don't need that on either end.   We have this and we're there. We can take it. We can. Break. Great. Are we waiting for the copies? No, no, no. You can start now. I want to, you did introduce yourself and just remind you, as I know you have that, to talk into the microphone. Absolutely. Which doesn't say amplify but for Jax. Good evening committee. Madam chair, superintendent. That's all. Oh. Who are you? I'm standing by the principal now. Okay. Stephanie Zerjikoff, bracket. Mark McEnany, Bishop. Kristen DeFrancisco, Hardy. Karen Hartley, Pierce. And Karen Donato, Thompson. So again, good evening. We're excited to be here to present to you today to talk about the budget considerations for next year. We want to start tonight by kind of thanking you and to give you an update of items that we prioritized last year and that we were able to receive. We're happy to say that the addition of learning specialists has allowed us to mitigate some of the larger caseloads and to begin to think about how we implement co-teaching strategies to help all students. Also, increased coaching staff has helped give teachers the support they need as they implement new curriculum in the areas of math, reading, and writing. And our new science FOSS kits are in classrooms and teachers are working to learn about and implement the new hands-on curriculum. And we've received nothing but positive feedback as it pertains to the support that Larry Weathers has given the teachers and the staff around the implementation of the new FOSS curriculum. Even though we asked for full-time kindergarten teaching assistants at all elementary schools, like I said, we weren't able to get them, but we were able to implement full-time TAs in some of the larger kindergarten classrooms. And we have seen a remarkable difference in the Tools of the Mind program for kindergarten having that additional support full-time in the kindergarten classrooms. So this year we come before you to prioritize what we feel will help our elementary schools meet all the important goals that we have established as a district. You will hear about some of these goals in our discussion tonight, and it's also important in this discussion to take a look at what we as principals are experiencing on a daily basis. As the Arlington Public Schools student body increases, so does the complexity of the students that we're receiving, increasing the responsibility and the time demands on the building principle. Our instructional leadership responsibilities and personal leadership styles are now compromised due to these facts. It's become increasingly challenging to do our jobs at the level that we personally hold ourselves and in which the district and the school committee expect of us. Research shows about 25% of children have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders. About 14% of students are learning disabilities. 9% have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and about 11% suffer from depression. Several of our elementary schools have become level two schools as measured by the DESC over the past few years. This is attributed to the constant demands and the challenge is an elementary school program while teachers, specialists, and administrators work to support tier one students in the inclusive general education classroom along with our high needs, tier two and three students who require specialized, direct and specialized, I'm sorry, systematic instruction. So for clarification, high need students belongs to at least one of the following individual subgroups, students with disabilities, English language learners, former English language learners, or economically disadvantaged students. So for a school to be considered making progress towards narrowing proficiency gaps, the cumulative PPI or the distance between general education students and achieving proficiency and special education students and closing that gap must be at 75 or higher. In short, in order to stay committed to the high standards to which the committee or the community and our students have become accustomed and to support the growing high needs student due to increased enrollment growth. The elementary principal group has identified three contributing factors that are affecting our ability to lead our educational communities effectively. Principles, this group here, we've reached or gone beyond capacity. Daily scheduling constraints have limited administrative liberty to design general curriculum programs within the classroom along with interventions both at the general education and special education level. Social workers are doing more than their scope of work as they strive to support the social emotional wellbeing of all students within our schools and those who require specialized attention. So with this said, our four asks for the fiscal year 17 school year are elementary, I'm sorry, assistant principals at the elementary level. Increased FTEs for specialized staff, gym, music, library, music. An increased board certified behavioral specialist, continued financial support for our social emotional programming, specifically responsive classroom and open circle training. Kristen's going to take over from here. Mark, I'm just gonna go into each ask or start off by going into each ask just to give you a little bit of a picture of why we asked for, why we think those things are gonna help us to reach high needs students. The success of high needs students in an elementary school depends on many factors. Some of these, and I say some of these are preventing disruptions to the classroom, providing high quality professional development for teachers, ensuring high quality curriculum experiences, building the capacity of teachers to implement social emotional programming, supporting intervention programs in math and reading, creating a schedule that allows for services to be delivered in an efficient way, having enough staff to support a schedule that matches our pedagogical vision, creating a climate where all students feel confident and as a result can access curriculum, promoting an environment with growth mindset, facilitating data meetings where teachers understand how to use data to inform instruction, providing feedback during evaluation follow up conversations with teachers that is meaningful and that contains through lines from evaluation to evaluation, working to promote a co-teaching environment where special educators are able to do important work with all students in classrooms, supporting the coaching staff in curriculum areas, developing an SST which means student support team protocol where teachers understand the response to intervention model and are able to bring data to the table to inform both academic and behavioral plans and strategies for children. Principal presence at special education team meetings so that signatures on IEPs represent a true consent to the plan in place for high need students and all students. Staff who are able to consistently meet with children that have been identified on IEPs as well as visit classrooms to address social emotional needs and social workers are often leaned on for problem solving outside of their social work responsibilities and these again are just some of the things that we feel like are in our everyday work. All of those items listed above require involvement of the principal at a high level in order to bring about significant improvement in schools and the district especially for high needs populations there must be a clear vision for leadership. We are concerned that because the principal is involved in making all of these facets run smoothly with minimal administrative support at the building level and with scheduled restraints and growing school populations this is becoming increasingly more difficult. Assistant principals with a clear defined role at the elementary level would support the work necessary to ensure success for high need students and all of our students. This ask would free the principal to be more involved with educational leadership initiatives. It would also allow social workers to be able to fulfill their roles as intended and Karen Hartley is going to continue. The elementary school schedule is a key component to making sure that our district goals and curriculum initiatives are possible to execute without schedules that support common planning time co-teaching methods, coaching programs, intervention plans and teacher collaboration through learning walkthroughs we will not be able to meet our goals effectively. The schedule creates a struggle for the following reasons. Art is on a different timetable. Specialists are shared between two and oftentimes among three different school buildings because of this individual school schedules cannot be built until the specialist schedule has been decided at the district level. This impacts the ability to give common planning time. Stag is subject to areas to accommodate special education and ELL services. Schedule for Title I intervention provide RTI services. Instrumental music is difficult to schedule during the school day because the limited amount of staff is spread among seven elementary schools and the middle school. Students are sometimes missing common core subjects to participate. Because we have all these parameters to consider before being able to schedule core subjects, it is often impossible to create a schedule where teachers have common planning time. Consideration of these parameters also impacts how well we are able to deliver special education services and support co-teaching practices. This is why we ask for more specialist positions that are community based and can facilitate both the growing number of students in all schools and to help us create a schedule that matches our educational philosophy. And now getting back to our ask for BCBAs. Behavior analysis is the scientific study of principles of learning and behavior. Two primary areas of study include the experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. The experimental analysis of behavior is the basic science of the discipline and has over many decades accumulated a substantial and well-respected body of research literature on how behavior is learned and changes over time. The experimental analysis of behavior is a scientific foundation of applied behavior analysis, ABA. ABA is a systematic approach for influencing socially important behavior through the identification of reliably related environmental variables and the production of behavior change techniques that make the use of those findings. Practitioners of behavior analysis provide services consistent with the dimensions of ABA. Common services may include, but not limited to, conducting behavioral assessments, analyzing data, writing and revising behavior analytic treatment plans, training others to implement components of the treatment plans and overseeing the implementation of treatment plans. Behavior analysts are qualified to provide services to clients with a variety of needs, including improvements in organizational functioning. For example, staff performance management and pace structure interventions, skill deficits, for example, communication and adaptive behavior, and problem behavior, for example, aggression and self-injurious behavior, among others. In our setting, BCBAs also help to build the capacity of all teachers who work with our students. Learning how to implement a behavioral plan for a student is essential to that student's success. At this time, the district has three BCBAs for all Arlington Public Schools, not nearly a big enough team to meet the needs of our growing population of students. Our BCBAs are straight out and at no fault of their own lack the bandwidth, collaboration, detail and follow-through to support the teams of teachers and staff effectively. As a result, social workers in collaboration with the BCBAs have taken on responsibilities outside of their scope of work, which in turn compromises their work. This is why we're asking for additional BCBAs to expand the important work of helping students to be able to access their classrooms and build the capacity of teachers to maintain this work. Finally, one of the ways that the district has begun to help elementary schools welcome all students and establish communities where students are able to thrive socially and emotionally is the responsive classroom approach. This approach is a way of teaching that emphasizes social, emotional and academic growth in a strong and safe school community. Developed by classroom teachers, the approach consists of practical strategies for helping students build academic and social, emotional competencies day in and day out. The seven principles that guide this approach are that the social and emotional curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum. How children learn is as important as what they learn. Great cognitive growth occurs through social interaction. To be successful academically and socially, children need to learn a set of social and emotional skills, cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy and self-control. Knowing the children we teach individually, culturally and developmentally is as important as knowing the content we teach. Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children we teach and how we, the adults at school, work together is as important as our individual competence. Lasting change begins with the adult community. Over the past three summers, the Success Grant has funded a four-day training for 30 staff members each summer in responsive classroom, its principles and best practices. This work has supported the need for a consistent approach to addressing student expectations. Through the use of common language, school-wide expectations and community building activities, students are recognizing their voice and seeing their role as members of the greater school community. This contributes to positive social and emotional growth of both staff and students. Schools that have been using this approach have noticed a significant change in office referrals and a consistency around how teachers are working to make sure expectations are clear and consequences for students are logical. It is important that we are able to continue this work where it has started and begin this work in other schools. With a Success Grant ending, we are asking for resources to sustain responsive classroom and offer trainings for additional staff members throughout the district. So this concludes our ask for this budget consideration. We do appreciate your time and I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you might have for us. Great, thanks. Questions, comments? Mr. Carton. Thank you for your careful consideration and what you put together and presented. I'm sure you've heard from the CFO that the budget outlook for next year is extremely grim. That's despite the town giving us a 6.6% increase, but all of that is being eaten up by other costs, including the need to add classrooms at Thompson and Hardy due to enrollment growth. So we're looking at a very dire situation as far as funding new stuff. And so, hopefully as you continue your meetings and working on the budget, you'll try to prioritize some of these and see where we come out. One thing I did wanna ask about that I've asked about before is, we've added a significant amount of out-of-classroom staff over the years and you're requesting additional out-of-classroom staff. We've added learning specialists two or three per school in one or two per school, a social worker, math and literacy coaches, and now we have a request for additional BCBA and assistant principals. One way we can do that is by pushing on class sizes a little bit. So this year we have nine sections that are in the 76 to 78. These are cohorts at a school. They're in the 76 to 78 range. And so those are divided pretty evenly. Three of them are split into three classes that are relatively big. Four of them are split into small classes that are quite small. Two, three of those cohorts are gonna push out to middle school, but we'll still have, these numbers will change over the summer, but we'll still have about six or so of them next year. And so I guess as you're looking at what you can do to fund some of your initiatives, are you willing to push those classes to 26 kids per class, or do you prefer to keep them small? You don't have to answer tonight, but that's something I think you need to think about. And if the decision is to push them to 26, then that's something you need to start talking about with your parents, because they come to us. As soon as the number goes to 25 or 26, they come to us. And they're very concerned about that. Whether there's really a significant difference between 26 and 24, I'm not sure, but that's where we hear a lot of concern. So happy to hear any response or let you think about that. I hear you jump in there. Yeah, yeah. Why don't you go first? I think that knowing that we were coming here tonight with these asks, they seem pretty grand, but they are going to be extremely necessary as we move forward with the class sizes and the profile of kid as we describe tonight, the student. The large class sizes, we would definitely, we are talking about it, we know that we have to look at things to give up, eliminate, cut, whatever it may be. So those are ongoing. We knew we didn't have to have the answers tonight, but please know that we are in serious consideration and talks as a principal group with the superintendent, assistant superintendent, as we look to obtain at least a couple of these asks. At least a couple of these asks. Great. The other thing I would say is in looking at the ways that schools have built their staff over the last few years and you mentioned learning specialists and coaches and which are extremely important for a lot of different reasons, for our teachers, for achievement growth. But I also hope that you're noticing that what's straining buildings on top of the numbers that we're seeing rise are the social, emotional and mental health of our kids. And learning specialists are a part of that answer. Reading specialists and coaches who work around the classroom may not necessarily be as close to it as we would like. And when buildings are creeping up towards that 500 number and at the same time, our kids are stressed out for whatever reason, for a variety of reasons actually. And that does compromise the quality that any one child or anyone adult can do their job. Mr. Heiner. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, please, go. Defer, please, go. These things that we have asked for tonight have actually been in our conversations for the past couple of years. The assistant principal one especially, but we've held off on asking for that because we know that there are other things that we pushed as a priority before that. And we've been able to get some of those things. So you just referenced some of them that coaching the interventionists, that the increase in learning specialists, those things were really important for us to have in place and we're grateful that we have them. But now what we're seeing happen is we've made these really careful decisions about where we wanna put our resources for kids. And in doing that, we are at the helm of making sure those things happen the way that they should be happening. So kids are reaping the benefits from the resources that were put there, the expertise of the people that we've hired. And what we're finding now is we're at a place that if we don't ask for it, those things that we've put in place are not gonna be run the way that they should be. We're not gonna get as much out of those important things as we think we should. I don't know if class sizes is where we'd go to think about making a concession. I think we all agree that once you start to up those class sizes, it's more than just bodies in a room to one person. It is increasing the anxiety of a student that doesn't get the teacher's attention or it is increasing the inability to implement those FOSS kits the way that they should be implemented. So I'm not so sure that that would be our first go to place, but I'm hearing your thinking, and I know everybody is about, how are we gonna think out of the box a little bit about this? And I think Kathy and Laura are willing to help us do that. We had that discussion before we put this on as an ask. So I think it's important to think about, yes, we do need to be creative and the budget is in dire straits, but I think I can pretty much speak for everybody when I say I don't know if class size would be the first place we would go if we could help it, yeah. Just to add to end this question, I feel like large class sizes are going to be the standard. They already are 26. I don't flinch anymore at 26. It's the geography within a classroom once you reach 26 where you're gonna put all the kids. However, but it's about great teaching. And regardless if it's 18 kids or 26 kids, we as instructional leaders need to support our teachers and our teams, and we need to be able to effectively evaluate and supervise these staff. And with the burden and the responsibilities that we have taken on, the increased responsibilities that we've taken on as a principal group, really great. And my concern is our evaluation and our supervision of our staff has become compromised. We're not able to do it effectively enough. And that's where the meat of student achievement and best practice and increased best practice is going to happen. And those things have, like I said, become compromised. Everyone has things for Mr. Heiner first. When I first came on the committee, the first budget hearing was a request to try social workers. And we, it was temporary. They, I think the seven schools shared them. Following the year there was a request to make them full-time in a time when the budgets were tight. That has paid off dramatically. The only problem is now we're over extending those social workers. I am an advocate of small class sizes. I do not support class sizes of 26. My fifth grade class had 54 students in it. The desks and chairs were bolted to the thing and it was pure research. The teacher was the source of all information. The kids just said yes and produced paper. Those days are long gone. The stuff that we're asking of our students, we just spent a period of this committee looking at test scores. Preparing those kids for those test scores, when you have a large class size and have just one student be a disruptive influence, can disrupt the whole, it has a ripple effect. I'm preaching now. I'm preaching to the choir. Education is a very innovative group of people. I think it's our job. We're hearing you people, and I'm not knocking my colleague, Mr. Cardin, but it's our job to find a way to maximize the education. You are the experts asking us, you've given us a good document to work from. We have to find a way to maximize those education and I don't wanna give something and lose something at the same time. Thank you. I'm not sure who was first, but I'm gonna go get for Dr. Allison Epby. Unfortunately, I need to echo what Mr. Cardin said. We had our budget subcommittee meeting this week and it's not looking good. It's not that we don't hear what you're saying or value what you're saying or appreciate that what you're saying is correct and needful and everything. We don't have anywhere to pay for it. And last year, we were able to kind of pull off a minor miracle and get the town to give us some extra money. We're not gonna be able to do that this year. We know next year we're going to be opening the Gibbs. I mean, the next fiscal year, not the coming one, but the one after that. We're gonna be opening the Gibbs. That's gonna need some significant increase in funds and we're gonna need to be, so we're looking how we're going to progress all the way down the road. We can't just keep going for the little bumps if we're gonna, the next time, we're gonna not be able to miss the big bump. So when we ask you what could you give up or what are the trade-offs, we really were looking for input back because decisions are gonna have to be made and they can be made with the best input from you folks or we're gonna do the best we can. And it's not because we don't agree with everything you're saying, it's just the budget only goes so far. And right now, a whole lot of the extra that we're going to get is already spoken for. And it's spoken for with things that we can't change. So we're working within what we got. And so questions I would have are how many people would need assistant principals and could a partial assistant principal is that better than none or is it better to put the money someplace else? You talk about with the success grants that some of the schools have been doing this and that it's important and then begin it in other schools. Which schools have done, how many schools have done it? Do they all need training again or are we just talking about training a few people? Or is there anything we can do there? And these aren't questions I expect you to be able to answer now. This is our chance for us to talk to you and give you an idea. And I wish we had had a chance to get a better handle on what the numbers are but we're just getting the first glimpse of things and it's not looking pretty. And, yeah. So I guess I don't actually have a question. Sorry. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Any questions, comments is what I think is appropriate here. Can I say something real quick? I think that this group's aware of the reality. Our first responsibility is to create priorities from our perspective and our buildings to support the kids and support our teachers and our teams. I think we've started that conversation about here's where we're at, how do we get to the outcome or the ideal outcome and it might not be the ideal path that we all see. But, Kathy and Laura have worked with us and are willing to hear our ideas. I can assure you that our perspective on where to find that money isn't going to be at the expense of the quality of education for the children in our schools. I mean, the budget has broken into lots of different categories.  So, as we explore those options, we probably won't be looking at our own staffing necessarily. I guess I'll stop right there. Does that make sense? It makes sense, but it's also, we're going to have our secondary principals come in and they're going to also have me. Well, that's their responsibility, I get that. But you don't get a point at them and say, no, take their money, okay? So, if we don't get feedback from you about we're going to have to make our own, I mean, we'll be talking to Dr. Bodie and everyone and getting the best information we can, but decisions will be made. And it's not because we didn't hear you and it's not because we didn't believe what you're saying. We just can't make the dollars go any further. I think too, I think we know that you would, if you were able to give us everything on this list, you would do it. I think that that goes without saying. I also think that when a group of people like us and the secondary principals in special education and all the people you'll hear over the next few weeks talk about what they're asking for, it's such a passionate thing when we go and we look at this and we think about what it is we want. I mean, we've met, I don't know, three, four times. We've been up at night in our Google Docs and talking back and forth. So I think too, when we do this, we do this with a lens of this, it's our responsibility to say these things, to talk about how we see our day in, our day out and what we're doing for kids and make sure that we feel like we've communicated that. I think we also understand and know, I mean, all too well that the money is the money. So giving us the opportunity to talk to you about what we think makes a good sense, we're grateful for that. And also you being candid and honest with us about, okay, this is what you're gonna have to do in order to make some of these come true. So we go back to that drawing board and we think with Kathy and with Laura and our Google Docs and whatever time at night that we figure out how we can get the bulk of or the most important parts of this. So we know we still have some work to do and appreciate being able to paint that picture in a way that we think makes sense. Yeah, is that good? I'm just feeling. So we've all discussed the budget reality, that's pretty clear. I think I appreciate you coming in to give us this information and the path to change is a long one. So it's good to keep saying this year after year. I have been struck by how understaffed we are at the administrative level in our schools, especially when we have schools of 400 plus students. So I've always had the impression that the elementary schools, especially the larger ones, should have full-time assistant principals. So my question is this, would I suspect if you put an assistant principal in a school, she or he would look different in each place depending on the character of the principal. One might be an instructional leader in another place, another might be better at student life issues. That's putting it in general terms. But would you, I guess the question I have is, is the assistant principal position, which we've heard about for a long time, is it, you know, without naming a position in the school, is it more, would you give that, would you give up a position in the school for an assistant principal? If Dr. Bodie said to you, you can have assistant principals if you do X, Y, and Z. I know you don't want to give up.  So that's a tricky question. And I realize we have a budget. We're talking about personnel or staff. Yeah, correct. We have a very smart group here who are, like you said, the assistant principal will look different in every building. Fair enough. And what that model looks like, we are trying to come up with what the ideal model would be. Again, at any one of our schools. We have 500 to three. Correct. How do we prioritize the needs? How do we combine efforts of a particular staff member with administrative experience or, you know, different certifications? We're looking at a myriad of possibilities. Because I mean, you know, you sometimes you bring in a certain talent, level of talent, and that makes it, if someone's leaving, it makes it possible to not replace that person. I mean, we've all done that. Sure. And again, the building principal, we used to say, yeah, we're the instructional leaders in our buildings. Well, yes, we are. We're everything else on top of that. And the social emotional wellbeing of our students and staff are on our list. And so we've become those keepers as well. And so we work very tightly with our social workers and our BCBAs and other support staff. So our teachers are supported so they can support our kids. And by saying that, you know, who's to say, you know, the assistant principal can take on that liaison, that collaborative piece with the social work and BCBAs to free us up to, you know, concentrate more on a structural leadership, supervision and evaluation.  And so if not an assistant principal in FY 18 at one of our schools, I would love to see it in FY 19. I'd love to see us get there because I do think it's critical for the overall, you know, stability and strength of the school. I promise this is the last thing I'll say tonight.  There has been no ads whatsoever. Yeah. No, I get it. Now I had another question there. I saw something here that said that something about common planning time. Schedule. Right, without schedules, it's for common planning time. But isn't the half days on, isn't that common planning time on Tuesdays? Is that, but it's maxed out with other things? Is that what happens? No, the common planning time, what's nice about the common planning time on Tuesday is that it is a release for teachers to get together and to, you know, we can't contractually say what happens during that time, but providing that time for teachers at the same time is very helpful. So it's not so much the Tuesdays. It's more in the schedule, in an elementary school schedule when you're trying to bring in a special educator or bring in somebody else who's an interventionist, maybe who's working with kids, or you're trying to line up the common planning blocks. It's hard to do that when, number one, we have art, art is different, which, you know, that's something internally we're trying to think about. But the specialists are, some of them are coming in in their car and you don't even see them whiz by the front off. They don't even check in to get to teach the classes, particularly at Pierce this year, because it is a smaller school. Pierce was used a little bit as the kind of fill-in when you look at that matrix, you know, we call it Sudoku from not a good place. It's hard, it's hard to fit in all of those pieces. And so what we're finding is, is when you can't have that common planning time within the building, if you don't build in those blocks, then, and you've got teachers meeting, like let's say fourth grade is meeting all at a different time, the interventionist can't get in, because, you know, they might take their fourth grade slot and then when another fourth grade comes back, they're on to third grade. So trying to build a schedule where we're able to get RTI reading in, math all at a different time so interventionists can go in. You know, maybe a science block that's all together across the grade level so that teachers can teach different FOSS units. So it's more than just the common planning time is important, yes, but it's kind of an incidental from planning in all of those places where we have consistency for the specialists, the learning specialists to get in, and then of course then they have a common planning block where they can meet with all those specialists that are in the building at that time. So it's sort of a catch-22 with the Tuesday, it's great PD. I mean, they're getting that time with their, but it's not the same as creating it during the school day. Got it, got it, okay. In other words, if the planning time isn't common, math can't be common. Yeah, okay. Literacy can't be common, science can't be common, and so as specialists are trying to get in to help a certain grade level, they're unable to do it. Okay, got it. One last question, I'll stop. Yeah, no problem. So there's a note here that says, it says, thank you for that. It says here, stop curriculum ads, it is crushing people. So you got our notes. You got our notes. I got the note, yeah. You're not supposed to have our notes. How could I not pass up on that comment? What's going on? So what's, oh, is that yours? Did you ever write this? I don't remember saying it like that. One of it, it goes past. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. No, it's from our meeting. I've had things go up with really, I don't believe what I'm saying. So, I know, I know. Just to like do the positivity sandwich here. The curriculum that we use is the best. We use very high quality curriculum and those experiences are wonderful. However, since we've seen standards change as in as we've tried to revise, reinvent and implement new curriculum, we've seen some pretty aggressive implementation plans. So, if we look at first grade this year, or even last year, we saw a new science curriculum come in. They have a new math curriculum coming in. New units of study for writing that have rolled in. We're rolling in new reading and a new approach to readers workshop to a new curriculum attached to that. They're dense and high quality. We're asking more of the social-emotional curriculum than we've asked in the past. That's the experience that's starting to happen in second grade. We're geared up for that to happen now in third and fourth, second and third next year in terms of math. And at the same time, we have really wonderful new social studies units coming in and disciplinary units. It's a lot. And one of the things that we've talked about is, and I think we're really representing our teachers on this too, we wanna focus on what we have and get to the highest quality that we can with our teams. That's great. Thank you. Principal does mean principal teacher, I would think of you. Right? Yeah, okay. All right, thanks for that. Thanks, I just, I couldn't resist asking about that. Right there. And... Where did you have that? Mr. Slickman. He said that to me about halfway through, he goes, do they have the one with the one? Yeah, yeah. I haven't read it. I'll be interesting. Yeah. I'm reminded on one of the first tasks of select in New England towns was to regulate the town common. And the reason for this is that a town common is capable of feeding only so many sheep. And if you try to put too many sheep on the common, they will all wither and die so that you need to restrict the number of sheep you have on the common and it can be painful. And this is one of those conversations where it sounds like we're trying to crowd too many sheep on the common. There is a limit to the capacity of any teaching staff or school system to adopt new initiatives. And I think that that's a warning flag for all of us and one that I'm aware of in my day job. And I appreciate the fact that that comment made it in here. The teachers have to know that we respect the work that they do and that in order to do things well, we have to limit the number of new initiatives. And the unfortunate thing is over the past few years, we've been buried under a lot of initiatives that have been placed upon us by the state. So we haven't been able to do a lot of the things we really wanna do because the state is mandating so much of it. The other thing that I would say is that I'm really heartened to hear what you're saying in that even though it's a stressful time in that one of the questions I've always asked is who's caring for the caregivers? And that when we adopted the new state evaluation system, I know the amount of work that goes along with that because I've had to evaluate teachers and to do it well and to do it meaningfully requires a lot of time and a lot of thought and a lot of discussion. It's not a paper process. It's a building a relationship process and to build a relationship with too many teachers just defeats the whole purpose of the evaluation system where you're not having a daily conversation about teaching and learning in practice. You have always come in here and said we need assistant principals but you know, we're gonna be altruistic and say yeah, we need them but we'd rather you staff something else or give the money to someplace else than the fact that you're coming in here and saying we can't say that anymore. We need the support I think is admirable and I'm glad to hear you making the ask even though it's a different year to deliver that ask and I will substitute, I won't ask my usual question because I know that we've skirted around it and I know that I will be expecting the superintendent to be thoughtful about that going forward though any advice you'd have in terms of things we're doing and spending money on that we really shouldn't be doing isn't a bad thing either. I've gotta say that the social workers are very important. I couldn't have run a building without one. The CPT I understand the scheduling and why you'd need to go and have sufficient FTEs of specialists in order to align your curriculum within the grade level and to foster common planning and cross classroom collaboration and kids moving between classrooms. This is all good practice and school committees when they start talking about adding administrative positions are always getting kicked around and when it's time to make cuts the mantra usually is to cut administrators so that you protect the classroom and it's difficult to talk about this on one level but the other thing is that we all have to be cognizant of is that leadership matters and if you're looking at a strong building you've got a strong capable leader if you've got a building that's in trouble it's often because you have the wrong leader in that building even though they're capable leader they're just not in the spot and we have an obligation to ourselves to not only support the leaders we have but to develop leaders for the future in having positions that lead to the principalships such as an assistant principals position is partially a professional development opportunity for us to work people into a leadership position where they're supported and trained and mentored and ready to take a building if we need them so there are very strong cogent arguments for what you're asking for and I've walked through buildings I've seen what principals do I've seen what great principals do I see the great work that's going on in our buildings and frankly given the staffing levels that we're providing you I don't know how you do it so I've got to say thank you thank you for being frank and honest with us and thank you for the work you're doing I know that I'll carry this in my heart through the budget process and we'll try to work something out that we can make some of these improvements as we look through what we have to do to find money from elsewhere in the budget so that we can support your work. Thank you very much for coming. Yeah I don't know what I think guys but thank you. We really appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for the work that you do. Can I? Oh I'm sorry. Wait I was just going to say real. It's another comment. Sorry about that. I'm sorry. I didn't see your hand. I'm sorry I didn't see it. Anyway so it's even though I'm saying we don't have any money or anything we really do appreciate all the work that you're doing to compile what you need and we are taking that and we're communicating that out. We did that last year and it was really favorably received and we're hoping to build the case over the years for what the schools really need when there's a re-dial or more money coming from the state and things like that. And this is part of the process no matter how much of it we're able to fund or not no matter how much we want to fund it. So that's all. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks. So the next on the agenda AA is going to give a presentation twice once focusing on elementary school needs and then we'll see them again next week focusing on middle and high school needs. So I am Liz Higgins. I teach first grade at the Bishop School and I thank you for letting me come to be the voice of my elementary colleagues. I just wanted to let you know what our process was. Each of the schools met and compiled the list for next year's priorities and then submitted them to me. And it was very evident that there was common themes at all seven of the schools. Class size, we have come to realize it's here to stay. The large class sizes. So we're not actually asking for additional classrooms because we also know there's no space. So our top priority would be to add teaching assistance and specifically the kindergarten teachers are asking for full time teachers assistance and basically every grade level sharing one TA would be the next greatest request. The class sizes, the norm is 25 now in the elementary schools and the children are far more needy whether it be emotionally needy or educationally needy and it's really making each day a challenge to meet the different needs when there's one adult with 25 children and being able to differentiate and meet the needs of the advanced students and support the more needy students is more and more challenging. So we specifically have on our list full time TAs for kindergarten, grade level TAs and more teaching assistance to service the identified IUP students. And with the very few TAs in this school they are often pulled because of yet another problem we have with substitutes. So they're asked to cover a class and unable to service the children that they're scheduled to see on any given day. We specifically are mentioning also the quality of the TAs and adding quality substitutes to the list. It's very often that someone puts in for a substitute in advance maybe for a personal day and the position is filled and then it's kicked back because an opportunity arises in a system where the daily pay is higher. So that is one of the biggest reasons that TAs are being pulled out of classrooms and not able to service the kids. We also have BCBA support increase as a request for next year. It sounds like there's a lot of common thread between what the principals are asking for and the teachers. We need more help with the special ed children. We need more help with the regular ed children. We need help with kids in crisis. And so our greatest request for next year would be additional staff. We also have on the list at every elementary school that's faced with having double classes for FIS ed. It is such a challenge and it's a safety issue. With 56 year olds running around with two teachers, yes. The amount of injuries and nurse visits on those double class days have increased greatly. Just collisions. It's nothing intentional. It's all accidentals. The other bigger piece to our request is technology. Currently at the elementary level and it differs a little bit from school to school but there's a, for example, a cart of iPads with 25 iPads to be shared among three classes. Because of the wonderful block scheduling, what one class is teaching, reading, all three classes are teaching, reading. So you take this day, you take that day and the upper grades really are feeling it the most at need for more technology. And it varies from school to school. There's certain schools who feel strongly that each child having their own Chromebook would be best for their school and other schools are asking for each class having a set of iPads. For research, for better keyboarding, for test preparation, all of those things would improve if they had access to consistent technology. And then there's some smaller wishes for next year. The FOSS kits are shared among grade levels. So FOSS is the science curriculum, which is wonderful. And each school has a grade level kit and then it has to be shared. So we're all teaching the same concept at the same time but we don't have our own supplies. So we're sharing the teacher's manual. We're sharing the books for the children. We're sharing the supplies to create the sound gong when we're 25 flashlights when we're doing our light unit. And so everyone's having to scramble and it would be very helpful for every classroom to have their own kit to work with. Keyboarding curriculum was a request from the third grade through fifth grade teachers and some outside professional development consultants. So that's more staff. Okay, questions, comments? Mr. Heiner. I was just wondering, is there any thought of bring your own device at the elementary level? I'll direct this to you, Ms. Jess. We have to bring your own device. I think it's a lot harder for the elementary teacher to have multiple different kinds of devices in the classroom. And I do know that we are planning on meeting with whomever would like to weigh in on what our device strategy will be at elementary middle and high school in the spring, yeah. Trying to be creative of finding a way of... Totally get that, me too. Yeah, thank you. Yes, Mr. Harden. So the one big difference between what you guys are looking for and the principals we're looking for is the assistant principal position. And I know you weren't aware that they might be asking for that. But that would probably trump most of the stuff that's on your list. Can you give some reaction to that? Is it something that your teachers are frustrated with, not having enough support from a principal or what are your reactions? I'm happy to speak on that. I was aware that that was going to be their greatest request. And I would support it wholeheartedly. And I believe that all elementary teachers would also support having more support from a principal or an assistant principal with starting with observations. I think that there's a lot more that could go on to support us and our growing as educators, having more time, more visits for observations and follow up. Because at this time we have a pre-meeting and a post-meeting and it's not enough time. It really isn't, so. Okay, thanks. Mr. Sikman. The one thing that I'm really pleased about is how parallel your list is to the principals. I think that that indicates a tremendous amount of collaboration in our buildings. And I just want to say it's a very positive sign and I'm glad to hear that. Gotcha, Snabby. I'm wondering, this is actually more for the administration, if there's any way we can get some numbers on how often the TAs are pulled, tactical subs and things like that. Not right now, but just. So we are currently collecting that data because it is such a problem. So each teacher is asked to keep a log of how often IEP minutes are not being met because the TAs isn't there to provide the service. So it's the TAs. And it's a substantial issue at all the schools. It's not just regular classroom TAs, but also TAs who are one-to-one for IEPs. Yes. Okay, yeah. So it might be able actually to remind the public that we have a great need for substitutes. Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. Yeah. Oh, sorry, yeah. I think that we need to make a distinction between a one-to-one where a student specifically has it in an IEP and when a student's in a supported classroom. But that would, again, as Mike Reming was discussing, we start to get to that level of detail. You start to identify individuals, so. Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mr. Hanner. The issue with substitutes, it comes down to one thing. It's money. Right. We are not able to compete with the higher level quality substitute. When he or she decides to come here, there's no other job available and as soon as another job becomes available, they're going to desert us. We have to look to balance between taking TAs out and raising that, I don't mean to oversimplify it, it costs money, but to be competitive in this area for substitutes. We are, I don't think we're at the bottom, but we are very close to competing with the bottom in the area. We're looking, yeah. I think 85 is the next one up from us. I think it goes to 90 and the rest are over 100 per day and in the area. And we are now at 75? Yeah, 75. I remember asking last year, if we were to increase it by $5, that you, you guesstimated it would be about $30,000. Does that seem right? That was. Okay, I remember, that was actually a query that I gave, that I asked for last year and I think that was the number. So just to sort of see what kinds of things we're looking at, yeah. I'll be very frank with you, because I subbed an awful lot. Concord is I think at about 110, 120 right now. We won't even talk Cambridge, but the bottom line is that money equates to the quality of substitutes and the consistency of those quality substitutes come into your district. Speak to the, it teaches, when you get a good quality substitute, you want that substitute to come back and work with you. Paul Robb, I'm sure he has enough about the substitutes. They don't want to come back. Yeah, you're nice. Mr. Shepard. Yeah, this is truly a marketplace effect.  So my question would be, have we done a town manager 12 analysis on subpay? I don't think we've done one recently, but we are thinking about the town manager 12. I think we're probably on, we are definitely on the lower end. There might be one or two districts in the town manager 12 that are lower than us, but most are well above. It would be helpful to look at those numbers, because this discussion just keeps coming up every year. And it resonates that anytime we're not filling a substitute position, we're having a ripple effect within the classroom. Well, I think it's important, I think we should do that, looking at the town manager 12, just for that information, because that is our baseline look at things. I think given that people live in a certain area, we really need to look at what's going on around us. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and we're on two sides, Lexington and Cambridge. And I do think that this is something that we really need to look at, because it actually is one of those things that adds to principal pressure every morning. The first thing they're doing is looking at who's out, and then how are they going to manage to cover everything? So the whole day is spent, the morning is spent trying to figure that out. So that would release some pressure if we could have a more consistent supply. But having said this, I know that Rob has talked with other HR directors, and while it is an issue what we're paying, and I think we should go up, the pool of people period is down. A lot of districts are having trouble finding subs. So we've been trying to think of some creative way of, at one point, if you remember, a couple of years ago, we put in a building sub at each elementary. Maybe we need to look at that again and have two building subs, or have something proportional. When we were doing PD, a year ago, we did is we had a team of subs so that there could be rotation. Because the other thing that happens in elementary schools is that there are IP meetings, and there's other meetings that go on that have to be covered. And so if we would even have a team, we could schedule the IEP meetings based on when the team was in that school. So we're thinking of these kinds of things right now. I mean, having the data, having the numbers, especially on compensation, is sort of important for us to make an informed decision. But if you take that $75 and multiply it by 180 school days, you get $13,500. And I don't think you're gonna hire anyone. I think McDonald's pays more. I just found out the average subs pay on a yearly basis in the state of Massachusetts is 20,000. Thank you for putting that in perspective. Okay. Mr. Thielman. So I guess the question I have is, is there an issue, do we have data on the amount of times that the principals have not been able to get any subs, and there's a... It's very rare that a building will have no subs on a particular day. The issue is in no subs. The issue is not enough subs to cover every teacher that's out. So there's multiple issues. So you're combining classes? Excuse me? You're combining classes under one sub? Or the principal's jumping in and teaching the class? Usually they're pulling TAs. But what I'm saying is that there's... Usually when these issues come up, I mean, we have subs in the district that are daily subs that come and take jobs in different schools very frequently. Typically what's happening is either there are grade level professional developments going on, on some days when whole grade, or maybe not whole grades, but a number of teachers in a grade level are pulled for professional development. There are some days when teachers are pulled for mentoring, either the teachers being mentored or going to watch their mentor teachers, or the mentor teachers are going to watch the teachers they are mentoring, and they are trying to get subs. Obviously we offer, our contract gives teachers personal days and usually they schedule those in advance and get subs in advance.  But typically the sickness is going around, it's hard to get last minute subs. It's hard to get subs for tomorrow morning or the morning of, because people already have their schedule for the day.  So there's multiple factors that go into the issues that we have with the number of, if it was just, if we didn't do any professional development, which I'm not advocating, and teachers were just in the building and they were only out when they got sick and we'd have less of an issue. But if, and if no one got sick ever, that would be less of an issue as well. But people get sick and people, and we want teachers to have professional development and mentoring and all the things that we do. And I've talked to other HR directors, everyone, no matter what they're paying is having an issue, getting enough subs in their district right now. And it's a combination of the job market right now is good overall. Yeah. There's low unemployment, people are not looking for work. We're at a good point right now, which I've communicate with all the principals this week, that a lot of teachers, student teachers are ending their student teaching. They're finishing their, some of them are finishing their studies and degree programs right now and have a gap where they are available to sub. And I've met with some of those people this week and they're going to be added to our sub list and hopefully they will go onto our sub list in the spring. They're also the teachers who are getting licensed and will be prime candidates for long-term substitute positions either in Arlington or in another district or in openings that could come up mid-year. So we also stand the chance of losing some of those people when other longer term assignments come up. Thank you. I'm struck by every story I go into now has a sign asking help wanted, which was certainly not the case in the state several years ago. So it is, it's sort of a good problem to have as a state level that we have greater employment, but it's a tough thing to have. Okay, so now, sorry, I don't have my, thank you very much, Ms. Higgins. Yeah, Dr. Buddy. No, nothing, I was just gonna say thank you, Liz.  You know, I've been in the system for 24 years and there have been some amazingly wonderful things that you've added throughout my career. Most recently, the curriculum that's provided is top notch. It's really, really good stuff. And, you know, we just want to get that to the children in the best way and having some more support in our teaching. Great. Thank you. Thank you for coming here. Monthly financial report. Good evening. The story for the monthly reports is out of district special intuition. And as I hinted or warned last time, it was worse than it was last month, but that's not entirely unexpected. We knew there were some things that were outstanding and pending and we didn't want to put hard numbers out there until we locked some things down. But that's the story. If we stay where we're at, we do have enough reserves, I think, with one thing or another to finish the year okay. We'll finish this year okay. It's next year. And what that's going to mean, given our limited revenues going into next year, we have to cover the shortfall as we go into the next budget. And it is a significant one. So, questions? Yeah, Mr. Hinder. I got several tonight. I'm on the budget tracking report. And item 81215. 81215, yes. Ministers. So we used to book everything to temporary salary and wages professional. This is the stipends. These are the stipends. This is administrative. These are the stipends that we're trying to tease out the expenses and we've lumped them into different categories. The budget all resides under temporary salary and wages professional or other. And you'll notice that there's a great, we're projecting a great big positive balance. Okay. And that's the offset to those. It'll offset that 42. Thank you. So all those expenses used to live in that one line. The reason, Do negativity stipends? Okay, no, no. The reason I'm asking was there was nothing budgeted. Correct. It's now showing up. Correct. But it is covered. Correct. That's the big part for me. The budget, the budget's sitting in one place, but we're teasing out the expenses right now. Fine. And so next year, We'll tease out the budget. There should be a budgeted item. Thank you. Item 81318. Teach a moving allowance. Yep. We never budgeted enough for that. Well, who's moved? I thought all the movie was done. Straton. I thought that was done in last year's budget. I thought we had that in last year's budget. So this represents the strategy. And there's always relocation every year. I understand that, 23,000 shouldn't be, if that's Straton, it's appropriate. If it's just. It's Straton and other things. Straton. Straton packed up in. No, I understand that. I understand that. I was under the impression this happened in June after school got out and it was in last year's budget. That's a package. That makes sense. 81320. 81320. Yeah, skills stipend. This is part of the ongoing campaign to clean up all the stipends and to make them behave. And we're not all the way there yet. Okay. 81413. 81413. Well, Jerry, the teacher. This is a stunner and I need to sit down. To me, this is something we should know on day one. We should. The problem is that there's no really good way to track when the teachers roll on. We know in Munus when the teachers are rolling on, but I didn't catch it in the budget and we had a big influx this year. So this one caught me short. So, okay, so going forward, it'll be. We can catch that up. It shouldn't be nebulous. It should be known out front. The problem is, is when they roll on and when they roll up. What do you mean? It's not steady. I don't have a granulated enough to capture it as well as I should. I've focused on the salaries. I get the salary spot on. The longevity doesn't go up every year the way a salary does. Right, I understand that. It kicks in. But it should be predictable. It should be predictable and I should have predicted it. Okay, fine. So that's there and. By and large, longevity has been quite steady. Yes. Because so many roll off the top and so many roll in, but we seem to have a bubble right now. But if I was entitled to it as a teacher, it's gonna happen on a predictable, yes, that's what that's where I was coming from. Line item 8513103. 85, okay, hold on. Let me get there. 85103. Yeah, could you just tell me what's going on in that line? Yes, the 250,000 dollars is actually going to go to the one-time reserves we're going to use. So you see that I'm going to be transferring $250,000 worth of expenses out of that line and into the reserve funding that was part of our budget. Okay, according to this, it was budgeted at 306. We've incumbent 431. No, we've spent 431. 431, well, yes, it's spent today. Yes. And then we're in. And then we've encumbered 30,000 and I'm going to move $250,000 of those expenses into a revolving account where we had reserves from a prior year. And if you'll recall, our funding sheet from the FY17 budget, we discussed that in length when we did the budget last year. I have yet to move those expenses. So I'm showing it as a move that's about to happen. Okay. So are we over budget on that? Well, if you counted the 306 plus the 250, but the 250 is budgeted elsewhere. So I just need to move the expenses over to that 250. So we won't be over budget? Yeah, okay. Plus the instructional materials and textbooks is fungible. Yeah. You know, things that used to be a textbook are now a little more ambiguous. Right. And so I think, I really do think about textbooks 85106 and instructional materials 85103 is interchangeable. So if it's the sum of those budgets and the sum of those expenses and with that and the 250 from reserve, we're fine. And the last one is the last line item on this 88550 computer equipment. We budgeted 20,000 and we're spending a lot more. What happened there? Well, we needed to get more Chromebooks in for the fourth and fifth grade testing. And this wasn't predictable from last year for the budget. Well, because of the iPad and the fact that the park didn't run on the certain later versions of the iPad, we thought we had enough hardware but then the testing needs skunked us. So we had to scramble. Are we adapting for this year on this? Yes. So we're gonna, the budgeted item is gonna be higher this year, predictably higher. Well, I don't think we're going to need to do this year over year. I mean, this was sort of a catch up year. But this period, yeah. Normally, if we had known it ahead of time that park would not run on an iPad 2.0. I understand that part. No, no, no. We would have used part of the 400K that we get from capital. No, I understand that part. My concern is this hardware is not forever. So we're gonna have, this item is going to be. But then it'll get folded into the long range capital replacement plan. See, we were replacing. Only forward, we're gonna always look at the capital to deal with a big chunk of this. As much as we can get out of them. Okay. If they continue to be as generous as have been. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. I had a question about the tech stuff. So I understand we were taken by surprise about the iPads that we have don't work apart. Was that a failure on Desi to communicate to everybody? No, it's a failure on the fact that the iPads are five years old. Okay, so we saw iPads and we had iPads and so we thought it was okay, but actually the iPads that we have were too old to. Right, I don't think anybody anticipated the level of horsepower that was going to be necessary for the video that's necessary in the park. So it can run, but they would often get stuck. They would have to be restarted. It was not a good testing environment for students. So can you absolutely positively not do it? The answer to that question is no, you can, but you have lots of technical issues and that's not a good testing environment for students. So, but that I don't think was communicated well by, I mean, was Desi reporting out? Yeah, I don't know that anybody knew, right? Yeah, that's, because I'm saying we were talking about this when we were making the purchase originally and we thought that they would work for testing. Yep. And the new ones do, nice job. Right, but I'm saying even when we started this whole thing, this question was asked. Yes, it was. And the answer was that they would work for testing and it sounds like the words that we, I mean, the information we were getting from the top was not really adequate for making the technological purchasing decisions that we needed to make. Right, I would agree with that. Okay, thank you. Mr. Seeland first, yeah. Thank you. So, you know, we got five months of the fiscal year done. There's seven months left. Are you able to make some projections on where do you think we'll be on June 30th in terms of? If we hold steady on our out of district placements, if they don't take a nasty turn in the spring. They're getting worse in the air. Correct. If they don't get worse. Yeah. I think we'll be okay. Okay, meaning a break, even budget or something. We'll have to absorb our, we'll have to absorb our sped reserves from tuition in. We'll have to absorb our sped reserves from town hall, but I think we'll be okay. But after using the sped reserves, you project that we'll be. At this point, I feel like we'll be okay, but that's subject to the usual disasters and footnotes. But, you know, assuming we don't have another major elevator blowout, we don't have, you know, three move-ins in February, all needing residential placement, you know, those kind of horrors, things that wake me up in the middle of the night. Assuming none of that happens, I think we'll be okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Cardin. Yes, sorry, just going back to the computer stuff. Have we updated our sort of information technology plan as a result of now having Chromebooks in the elementary school? I mean, my kids are saying, suddenly they're seeing Chromebooks and they're using them so they can take the tests on them, but the teachers don't really know what to do with them. So is it now a plan to have Chromebooks instead of iPads or are we adapting that or what are we doing? Well, as I said earlier, I want to meet with the staff just to let them have a responsibility, opportunity to weigh in on what the direction will be that we'll go with the elementary schools. If I had a crystal ball, I said that we'd probably end up with a combination of both devices and we ran professional development on both devices this summer for teachers and we're continuing to do that. We have some mini courses that'll be starting right after the first of the year and one of the things they're gonna be focusing on is again the use of both devices in the classroom and how you would translate from one device to another. Great, thanks. As I say, we have a curriculum technology update coming for the next meeting. So that will also give more information. Yes, Mr. Heiner. Just a thought, could we, the iPads that don't work for the testing, could we move those to the grades that don't do the testing? Absolutely, that is what we do. We don't throw anything away. Thank you. Even five years old. Mr. Slipman. One of the things that disturbed me this week was that the governor went and did some nine C cuts. Basically he used this as a tool to override the veto overrides by the legislature. So he made vetoes of many programs that he didn't wanna fund. The legislature used their authority to fund them and now the governor comes along and wax them with the nine C, which I don't think is sporting to say the least. Do we have anything on our plate that is impacted by the nine C? Not that I've seen so far, but we only have, circuit breaker is only funded at 70% so far. And if the governor leans hard on the cuts, I would expect that it will not go up from the 70%. In a normal year, it often does go up. They budget it conservatively and then in the fourth quarter, they take it up to whatever they can afford. So I would, the last time there were nine C cuts is exactly what happened. They made cuts to circuit breaker and it meant that we got the lower number that they projected at the beginning of the year. So by staying low, I think we're safe on the circuit breaker. Add one point to that. We became in an unfortunate position a couple of years ago that we are one year out. So it used to be that when we, there was a reduction in circuit breaker or some big surprise, it was a real problem because we had to make cuts in order to adjust to that. We are no longer in that spot. We are budgeting. So that would happen next year. Obviously it would have an impact in the following year for sure, but at least it wouldn't destabilize us in this year. And actually that's one of our concerns is we're gonna be very careful following the budget the rest of the year and we will probably most certainty have to use the reserves we put in the stabilization account because we do not wanna break this budgeting protocol. It's just too dangerous and out years to have that happen. So we're gonna do everything we can not to have that happen this year. So are we gonna be fine? We always have the circuit breaker money, but we don't wanna touch it. I just wanna know if we need to be, how much squawking we need to do. I talked to a representative Garberley last night briefly about this and a lot of them for Arlington were earmarks. But the children's room was one of the ones that did not get reduced. So I don't know what all the earmarks were. He was gonna get that information to me, but right now they're not, the governor's not talking about school budgets or even direct local aid at this point. So the last piece of this is the revised budget transfer summary. Oh right, we need to vote. Actually can I ask just a couple of questions before? What can we do now? We can do it now. Oh, can I just ask a couple of questions just about this? So the sort of good news about things like the substitute teacher, those numbers look better than we anticipated. Is that just because we're not filling those positions and that's the same thing I assume with the TAs. They're also looking, okay. The other question I wanted to know is lab credits. Would that be helpful in any way? If we took more, took. Against you that. When we had the budget shortfall years ago, the agreement we had and we talked about it, even finance committee at the time, that we are not going to have that as part of a revenue stream. But is there some cushion there? If we really got stuck, there is some. Right, okay. But it is more in the background. It is not, I will never use that as a revenue stream. Okay, okay. So the question is, do we need to take a vote now versus during the budget? No, we're just doing now. I think we should just do it now. Yeah, yeah, let's do it now. So does that, yes. Budget met on Monday and we were presented with the budget transfer and this takes care of the concern that was raised at the last meeting that we were charged with to figure out how to do the approval. So we voted to recommend to the full school committee to approve the fund transfer that Ms. Johnson has presented to you. Second. Well, we need a motion with a number. You don't need a number. Oh, the number is, yeah. The number's right there. We get a stated in the motion. Okay, so Mr. Cardin, give us a motion. I move that the school committee approve the budget transfer amounts as presented by the CFO. Do we need the number? You need to state the number in the motion. The, no, it's on the exhibit. You can state the motion as presented. Yes. Okay, okay. Do you have a second? Second. Okay, second by Mr. Seppin. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, aye. Aye. She and I miss. And you know, I forgot to mention that Ms. Starks is not with us today. I should have mentioned at the very beginning of the meeting. She was, she's out sick, so. I'm sorry to mention that. We have another, so are we done with budgets or are there other questions about future other items? Okay, we have another vote to hold. The school committee has talked about having a retreat to discuss a bunch of big picture things about how we evaluate the district goals and progress in the district goals with evidence we want to see throughout the year and anything else really. Actually, if there's something else that's that sort of big picture that we want to talk about, please send it to me. But we need to vote to have that meeting. And I will finally get this date right because I know I've been mangling it. The date is Saturday, the January 21st starting at 11 o'clock. So can I have a motion? So moved. Okay. Second. To have the meeting on the 21st. To have the meeting on the 21st starting at 11 o'clock. We'll set a specifics. Okay. And then by four. And ending by three, do you think? Three. Three. I mean, this is outside. Yeah, okay. Doesn't, it may not take a lot of time. We don't need to say that. I suggest no later than four. We're gonna have lunch, so. We specify the lunch bill and the thing. Yeah, well, we can dictate the manager. All right, so if you have a special request for lunch, if you have a special request for an additional item for the agenda, that's sort of that big picture. I think it's valuable to meet informally. I think we get a lot done by this kind of formal meeting. So I think something we've talked about last time when we had that big meeting last time. Okay, so all those in favor of holding the retreat on the 21st of January, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Len, aye. Okay, unanimous. Did you get? Okay. Great. Okay, superintendent's report. All right. A few things. We've agreed that every meeting will get a little bit of an update. Maybe we should change it to once a month building. The building, we have a lot going on. But I think of a particular note is what happened this last weekend at Stratton with the break-in. It happened again in a breezeway door. One of the things that, well, those breezeway doors can appear to be locked. They're the kind of hardware where it's a metal pole that goes into a well. And a lot of, it's just clearly not a secure way. It can be pried and pulled open and that's essentially what happened. So the hard, there's a lot of things that are going to be in place going forward. One is the hardware has been changed to a different kind of bolting. Still have the crash bar, but it will be a different kind of bolting mechanism.  So it creates a sort of a shadowy place that if you're doing drive-bys by the police, you may not notice that. So that is going to be moved, but also there'll be lights there. The contractor is going to put some cameras in a couple of places so that we don't have this. What happened with the break-in is the same thing happened last time and that was got a hold of a fire extinguisher and sprayed the gym and the cafeteria, which we did not know until early Monday morning and at six in the morning making a decision about whether we're going to have school and whether we could manage everything needed to be managed in order that there could be school. And I want to compliment the staff and that they were as flexible and as cheerful as possible in doing this. They really were quite amazing. And I'm calling the director of food services at 6.15 in the morning because this was key. Can you handle lunch? No problem, she said. And they just did a remarkable job of doing bag lunches. So really kudos to the whole staff at Stratton for pulling together because we know that it would be quite a burden for parents that they're not expecting it. It's one thing, you know, snow's coming in and it's another, it's something like this. But the key thing is also just making sure that we do more to secure this area. And I think it's a lesson too in terms of future constructions that we really are going to have to invest in cameras and so forth. We're fairly certain that this was certainly an older student, high school or older because of the size of the shoes.  And you know, let me just leave it at that at this point. So it is, that's where we are right now with that building. And I won't, I'll say some more about the new construction. I just want to add, I heard from a parent this morning that the librarian, her sweater had been covered with the material and stuff like that. She said it has never been that clean. The cleaning company did such a phenomenal job as well. Yes, kudos to CERPRO. They came in and they were amazing. They cleaned the beams. Even if, those of you who know that Stratton Gym, there's a big ventilator area. They went into it, they cleaned everything out. It hasn't been that, it's remarkably clean. That's awesome. I heard from some parents at Stratton who were concerned that they didn't receive timely information about what had happened. And during, this was during the day on, I guess it was Monday when it was found that there wasn't communication to the parents about the extent, you know, what happened, what was, why, they were told that there wasn't going to be after-school care because there wasn't actually a place to hold it. But they weren't told what had happened in the school. And I don't know what their imaginations were running to, but they were quite concerned just with the deficit of information and stuff. So I think in the future, if at least a quick email of, you know, this is the damage and, or this is the type of damage and we have to clean it up, that apparently didn't get out to parents until fairly later in the day. I think it was that there had been vandalism. There had been vandalism, I know that went out. I don't think it explained what the vandalism was. It did not. And in fact, some people thought the vandalism had to do with graffiti that had happened. But yeah, I know that there was an alert, you know, a communication that went out because I organized it to go out that early, early that morning. But it's true, I think, and this is a learn for the future that we need to assess more quickly whether after school can happen because that communication did go out a little bit too late. Right, no, I wasn't saying that I was, I mean, that may be true also. But my point was that parents weren't told what had happened.  They didn't know anything about what the damp, you know, they knew there was vandalism, they knew nothing more than that. And I don't know what they were worried there was, but they were worried. I think this has come up before that adding detail can often be helpful because the lack of detail in incidents creates vivid imaginations in anxious parents. And so more detail is just helpful, I think. Well noted. I did tour the new construction that's going on as well and it's coming along quite well. I talked with the project manager and he sees no problem in the timetable whatsoever. Picked up a couple things that I've reflected back to them so that that was good that I did it that time because there's things that sometimes, you know, you can see that other people might not see at the time. So we're gonna work on a few things. But that is going along well. The Thompson timeline is going along well as also. I did get a note today from our OPM, our owner's project manager, saying that Thompson is going to have some Saturday construction and we're going to get a note out to the neighborhood in the next tomorrow because in order to make up for some days that have been lost recently that they're gonna need to do some Saturdays. What I don't know before I send the note out is exactly how many Saturdays. So that note will go out tomorrow but they do not anticipate a problem with the timeline either at this point. So I haven't been by there. What stage are we at? We should be at the stages. They were gonna do the area near the playgrounds. There was gonna do some asphalting to create new pathways. That should have been done this week. I haven't been over to look myself but then the site, we definitely wanna get moving on the site preparation before deep freeze comes in. Exactly so. There were some delays initially for some permitting but that's all been cleared up and we're going forward on that. In fact, not only are we going forward but we're also thinking about furniture. So we've had some emails in the last days about how much furniture we need to order. So getting that going as well. So that's pretty much what's happening with Thompson with Gibbs likewise, a lot of planning. In fact, a lot of work that we've been doing even internally, we spent a lot of, Allison, Elmer and I spent a lot of time today and Laura's been involved as well is really looking at these floor plans just to make sure that we're getting the right sizing for all of our programs and the adjacencies that we need and so forth. So we are moving quite well on that. It's staying on schedule. I think we do need to schedule an event where parents can come and we certainly want teachers too as well to see where we are but we're not quite there. So it may be more delayed than I thought. Our next meeting is going to be on Monday and I don't know if we're gonna be able to squeeze it in before the holiday. So it may have to wait until after the holidays to do those, certainly comments but we have to, it'll have to be soon because we have to stay on our schedule. We have a very set schedule on that. All right, and high school. The high school, we've completed all the reports that we need to complete. We continue, we will be continuing to meet with MSBA regarding enrollment design numbers and that will be taking place this month. One thing I've learned I think since we talked about it, maybe not but that the January meeting has been canceled for MSBA so I talked with our liaisons and she said that, you know, assuming we get all this done, which I expect that we'll have no issue on that. It'll probably be mid-February when the vote is presented to the board for us to go into the feasibility study. So that's the earliest mid-February for that. She suggested March but I think that the town manager and I have a strong preference for February moving forward. Our eligibility period act doesn't actually end until March so this will be a little bit an aggressive schedule relative to that module. So we're doing well in all the buildings. Great, thanks. And one of the things we will be beginning to do is start planning committees at Audison with respect to the Gibbs. So we'll talk more about that at another time. So a couple of other things. One is the enrollment and you have the most recent chart which our total number for the district is 5,524. So that's as of December 2nd. The interesting thing is that we just received this week, maybe it was last week, end of last week our certified copy of our October 1 numbers and we will get that to you in Nova so you can see it. But it's exactly this number. Oh really? So in the last two weeks, even though we've had, I know we've had, I know we've had move-ins because I've had principals tell me we must have had an equal number of people leave because the number has stayed the same in the last two weeks. But still, we're over 5,500 students. And- I think that represents what kind of increase from last year. I have to do the numbers, but somewhere between four and four and a half percent. It's up there. We received really great news this week. I don't know if you recall that we apply for a safe and supportive schools grant. Well, we received it. Not only did we receive it, we received the largest grant in the state. And this money is to, it's a planning grant. And as you know, one of our district goals is looking at all of the different ways we support students in our schools and looking at what we need to, first of all, identify where we are and then to do some planning about where we need to go. And this grant will help us in that, in addition to the money that AEF will also be providing us. So this was terrific news and I wanna thank all the people who were part of this, which was pretty much, it was led by Julie Dunn, but the whole administrative team pitched in to get this grant written. So you're focused on social and emotional issues? Yes. For the safe and supportive schools. It's a planning grant. It's not an implementation grant. So we expect to see, you'll see the report of what gets accomplished, but then you'll also see what some of the actions are, which will certainly be part of our district goals for next year. And then, what else was there? Last night, we participated with Vision 2020 on a really interesting community talk. And Mr. Cardin was there and Dr. Seuss was there as well. And Vision 2020 is working with the school district to increase community conversations about our schools and the future of the schools in Arlington. And last night's questions was a follow-up to the movie that was shown a couple weeks ago, but the questions were really interesting, probing questions is, what does it mean to be educated? And then, how do you measure success? I think everyone had, it was a very exciting conversation about what does it mean to be educated? And there was a lot of commonality among the people there. And a focus on self-realization, self-awareness, there was just all of these things, foundational knowledge. I mean, I have a whole list of things here. What was interesting is when we got to the next question, which was, how do you measure it? What is success and how do you measure it? And so that's where there's some challenging. I think people who were engaged in this conversation understood the challenge that we all face in trying to measure how well do we educate our children? There's certainly the standards set by PARC and MCAS. But in our district, we measure success in so many ways, in little ways, in large ways. And one example I gave last night is even just in the Tools of the Mind program, our students at this point in the year are making weekly goals, they're writing the goals out on Monday, what they want to do by the end of the week, and then they see if they've accomplished their goals. So it's very tangible kind of work. We certainly do goals at all levels of the district. But we measure success in so many different ways here in terms of the awards, attendance, we're talking about suspensions, the implementation of the curriculum, of course, standardized tests, of course, but that's, well, that's important. We look at it in many ways. The performances our students do in art and music and drama. So it's a conversation's gonna continue and I hope other people will join in as we go through the year. And in the next event is going to be in January in which we're going to talk, Laura and curriculum leaders are gonna talk about some of the initiatives in the district. And I mean, between what I want to comment, but there's one more thing that's related to this I want to mention tonight because you both were there. So I just want to say that one of the things I think is really difficult for parents is who want something more, they just want bigger, better, more, is to really get a handle on what is happening in the district. And so I think that that's why this January meeting will be especially helpful to figure out, okay, I think this is what is great and we want more of that rather than I just want something more and not really having a clear idea of what they're pushing for. So I know I actually pushed to have them bring you in and have them bring other people in and I'm glad they're doing that. And I think that's gonna really shape the conversation which has gone on. The conversation has been very interesting so far but I think it needs direction and I think that's gonna be really helpful. Yep, it was a good group. There actually were people that weren't parents also just community members. So it was an interesting cross-section and they had a group of facilitators which were very helpful and focusing the groups on, we spoke up into groups on sort of tackling some of these harder issues as far as measurement as not just the more amorphous, we want more social emotional learning. So I think it was a good conversation. Yeah, Dr. Hussain. So one thing, I appreciate that this is, these forums have been going on but as someone who fell into this category, I wonder what about the people who can't attend the meetings like last night I had a sick kid and I couldn't go. How do they, I'm concerned that this is supposed to be a community thing. I'll reach out to them and ask them, there are ways obviously for people to say who aren't in the room, it's gonna require work. But let me reach out to them and see what their thoughts are on that issue. Well, all of this is going on is, things don't happen necessarily sometimes sort of in a sequential linear way. Things happen sort of an organic and a broader way. The curriculum leaders and administration, we are doing a lot more professional development and networking around the issues of what does the future of education look like and a lot of it has to do with personalization. And that doesn't mean that each student does whatever they wanna do. Because it's in the context of common standards and people were talking a lot about common foundation knowledge. But it's about how do we provide opportunities for access to the curriculum that's individual to students' learning needs or interests. How do we differentiate types of assignments so that they're doing work on the same standard but they might be approaching it in different ways. So it's choice assignments aligned. And we've been actually doing a lot of work around that. There's pockets in the district of more of that kind of work doing. And in recognition of that, we've actually been invited to be one of the 10 districts in the state to sort of take a lead on this. So we're involving ourselves with a group with Department of Education as well as Learn Launch, which is a group that has been partnering with the Department of Education around how we look at the direction of public schools, or schools in general, but particularly public schools in our Commonwealth. So it all has a synergy to it as we move forward. And we'll keep you up to date on some of the activities we participate in. I think it's hard to understand how much education has changed in the last five to 10 years. And to really understand how much I suspect is going to change in the next five to 10 years. And especially in Arlington, we're in this position where we really are, in this, we have a new high school, we have a new model at the middle school. So we really are in this great position to be thinking big picture about these kinds of questions. And I'm so happy for the kind of conversations that are happening at the community level, at the curriculum, educator's level, among teachers. I mean, I think there's a lot of really exciting conversations happening in the district. We agree. So that's it. Good, thanks. Okay, so we have, let's see. Consent agenda. All items listed within asterisks are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There'll 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 17075. Total warrant amount 537,329.75. Dated November 10th, 2016. And warrant number 17082. Total warrant amount 617,834.48. Dated November 22nd, 2016. So a vote, is that? Yes, so moved. So moved. Second. Oh, I'm sorry. Approval of minutes. School committee, regular minutes, November 10th, 2016. Okay, so moved by Mr. Hayner, seconded by Dr. Allison Ampe. Fallen Saver, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, it's unanimous. Okay, so we have a first reading of policy. Can we talk about that? Yes. We're going to talk about alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. You have a copy. This is recommended by MASC. We decided as a group to remove, and it's on your copy, and second and last paragraph, the third and fourth words, that was, we checked with council. Council had no problem with that. Okay, any discussion comments? If I might just add one other thing. Down below, it says cross references, and I apologize, I just checked it. J-I-C-H, drug and alcohol use by students. We do not have one as such. Okay. Going forward, we will. Okay, so that is a reference to- So I'm going to, it's just when we go back, make that adjustment to that. Okay, so this is only first read though, so we're not voting on this yet. Does any input from the rest of the committee I'll be happy to take? This isn't changing anything we're doing now in terms of our practice, it's not adding anything to the- This is the state recommended that we have this policy, MASC is a quality, we went through it, thought about removing that instructional material thing, we checked it with Rebecca, she said it was fine. So it doesn't make them do anything else? No, absolutely. That's all I'm going to check on, thank you. That's our first question on all new policies. Yeah, no, I knew you were asking about it, I just wanted to make sure it was asked, okay, thank you. Okay, so this is for first read and so by the next read, we'll have that policy, is that right? The J.I., whatever? No, we won't have that one yet, but I'll put a reference on the document that will be forthcoming. Okay, so can we vote for it at that point if there's a cross-reference to something we don't have? It's not great form, but I don't see a problem with doing it. I can remove it and then we'll have to put it in a den. I know, I know, I know, I'd rather just state that it's forthcoming. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Subcommittee and liaison reports, budget. So, budget met on Monday and you heard a lot of what our discussion was. First, the outlook for the FY 18 budget, which is not as happy as we would like. And second, we took care of the approval of the budget transfer to address the concerns that were raised and we'll be meeting again on the 10th of January at 6 p.m. here. Okay, great. Community relations, Ms. Starks is not here. I can say that we had our first ever office hours, first ever, maybe we've had it before, but first, since I've been on it before. At kickstand this weekend, nobody showed up, but several people stopped and thanked us for having the office hours, even though they didn't come to the office hours. So in terms of public relations, it was a positive thing. I also think that if we choose to do this going forward, that we will advertise it more thoroughly and we really didn't do that much advertising yet. I think Cindy wants to be here for the vote on this, which she wants to suggest a schedule for this year as a trial basis and the goal would be for each member to commit to two of these for the year and we'll just see how it goes. If it doesn't work, we don't have to do it next year, but we'll just see it. Yes, Senator? Just a suggestion through the chair. Would you ask her to submit a doodle or whatever for us to sign up ahead of time so that we can pass on it? Yes, I think she wants to give us a list of dates for us to approve, but we aren't not committing now sort of when we're, because we want to allow for the possibility of substitutions, you know. We can keep this informal about, yes, I can do this one. Oh no, I can't. Can somebody else cover for me type of thing? So yeah. Okay, district accountability, curriculum instruction and assessment, Mr. Slickman. We will be meeting next Monday. It should be a fun meeting. Yeah, I've come on down. Jack Schneider, who is an assistant professor of education at the College of Holy Cross and director of research for the Mass Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment will be talking to us about the consortium and talking about what the consortium is looking to do and whether, you know, engaging in a conversation with us as to what the requirements for being involved might be and so we can think about do we want to play with them or not, totally non-pressure, but it's just gonna be informational, but you know, it's sort of an interesting group. I know that I'm working with them through my position in Lowell. And that's next Monday. And just to fill in. 530 right here. 530 right here. This is hopefully to get the piece. We met with another member of the consortium from the Center for Collaborative Education, but they didn't have information about the piece that Mr. Jack Schneider will be talking about, which is sort of the community engagement aspect of the piece. And so hopefully we'll get a bigger, a fuller picture having heard from both of those people. Great. Facilities, Mr. Tillman. So the facilities, all three of us are on the School and Home and Task Force. We meet on the School and Home and Task Force meets in the 21st. It's 6 p.m. right here to talk about the Hardy School. And we, you know, our committee would meet if we needed to caucus beforehand, but I don't think that's necessary. Okay, great. Warrant Committee, Mr. Haynor. Everybody get paid. Okay. Any liaison reports? Policy. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's take a skip the page. I did. I'm so sorry. I want to begin off by saying our next meeting is next Tuesday, December 13th at 5.30 in this room. And at our last meeting, the subcommittee asked for the full committee's input on the policy to have a single sign up for the vendor warrant before we go forward with drafting a policy. There was discussion about our fiduciary responsibility as a whole group, understanding difficulty of getting four people to sign it all the time, but at the same time, how would you like that to be? If it's a single person, should that person literally be talking to the group, sharing with the group concerns that he or she might have? I don't know. That's why we're asking for the input from the full committee. Yeah, Mr. Slipman. I mean, there are a whole bunch of questions that we need to ask ourselves before we go forward. One of which is, should this only be a one person signing at times of duress? In other words, when we don't have a school committee meeting that aligns with the warrant, because right now we've got the warrant, they're generally prepared for us on a timely basis on the night of the school committee, we can look it over and sign it. If one person is signing the warrant for the committee is authorized by the committee, would there be a reading period where the warrant would be available electronically to the members so that we can look at it and ask a question through the CFO's office before it gets signed? Those are basically the sorts of questions that were before us, and before crafting a policy you'd sort of want to resolve those kinds of issues. So that's where we're at. Right. I would be concerned. I would want the burden to be shared. So I know you are on this warrant committee and this burden is falling entirely on you. I think for this kind of thing, it would be good to have it rotate by the chair, by the, you know, this designee should rotate, right? So it shouldn't just be potentially one person, but it should be. That becomes a legal question aligned to the law, so we should query town council whether we can structure it that way. Well, I think it's not like, yeah, yeah, yeah. If we decide, since the state has allowed a single person to sign it. Right. This news thing, the committee may designee, designate two people to sign it. Only one signs it, though. Right. Up to two people. If you move away from the force, the majority of the committee. Right. So I mean, right now, the payroll warrant, the chair still has that authority to do it. I'm doing it. When I was away, the chair took it over, so there was no problem with that. And that stays with anything. The vice chair can always sign for the chair. Right. But I think the issue that Mr. Schlickman brought up, is this going to be an all time deal or should it be just in times when the full committee doesn't meet? Mm-hmm. So I think that's a thing to craft to go with it. I'd be in favor of it just in times when the school committee doesn't meet. I mean, that this is kind of, this is to deal with the summer problem, right? Yep. Where half is our invocation. Yeah. It's just really, it's tricky. We also just had four weeks between committee meetings. Right. So that would have been an opportunity. We had to chase get four people. We had a situation. Yeah, right. Come chasing in here the day before Thanksgiving. Right, right. Yeah. Well, it sounds like it's, I can bring a draft dealing with that piece. Yeah, it sounds like there's enough interest in pursuing the question of it. Okay. Does that sound right? I mean, talk about policies and procedures. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good start to get that piece. We can begin with a draft. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll bring a draft to you folks for next one. No, that's good. Thank you. Great. Okay. I think I've ever been, yes. Oh, sorry. I saw the school enrollment. That's why I said, sorry about that. Yeah, I can see. But you addressed that. Yes, okay. Liaison reports then. Yes, Mr. Hayner. So I'm in town building committee. We met here tonight. Dr. Bode talked mainly about it. Thompson, Stratton, and Gibbs are all on schedule with the completed on time. Right. That's all I got to say about that. Excellent. Other liaison reports? Any announcements? Yes, Mr. Hayner. Today, the Stratton third grade students met at town hall for a mock town meeting. I wish to commend publicly the three third grade teachers. They did a phenomenal job organizing these students. They came in, they followed all the procedures. I had one gentleman come up to me before we got started and he greeted me with good morning, Mr. Moderator. They were a little bit nervous, but 59 of them came there. They had three articles, one to remove alcohol from the town completely. One student got up and made the statement that people are still going to use it. They will go out of town and we will lose the taxes. That article failed. Third grade. All right. Third grade. They're a student. Amazing. The second article was to build a park and a public garden in town. It passed by two votes and that passed. The third one, which we all, all the adults thought was gonna pass horizontally, was to have a public swimming pool. Only five students voted for it and it failed. And it was for fiscal reasons, right? Yes. The students were concerned about the fiscal effect on the town. One of the students got up and said there are a lot of people that will have to pay for this in their taxes, but they won't get to use it. And then he said by age, and they all looked at me at that point. But very, the teachers did a wonderful job in the etiquette and stuff, and I am really proud of the students. And we had a lot of parents there and it was a wonderful time. And I have to say, you're amazing for doing this with the students. I mean, it's really- It's the kids and the teachers that do it, truly. But it's really a great blessing. Thank you. Any other announcements? Future agenda items. Anything we wanna see on the agenda? We know of right now. Okay. So we're gonna go into executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted. To enter 02-16 grievance dated 10-14, 2016, for Audit and Middle School Guidance Councilor caseload to comply with the provisions of any general or special law to protect confidentiality, a personal matter, and to discuss strategies with respect to collective bargaining or litigation and or to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel. Vote to approve the following school committee executive session minutes, Thursday, November 10th, 2016. Roll call. Mr. Cardin? We need a motion. I'm sorry. So moved. A motion by Mr. Hayner, Mr. Sligman, are we coming out? Do we need to for this? No. For the grievance, do we need to? We don't need to come out. Okay, so we're not coming out of the exact session. Okay, good. Okay, roll call. Mr. Cardin? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Good.