Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, May 26, 2022. I'm Liz Eckstin, the chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Mr. Schlickman. In the affirmative. Mr. Thielman. Here. Dr. Allison Ampe. Here. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Hayner. Here. And the administration. Dr. Holman. Here. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Mason will not be joining us this evening. Ms. Elmer. Right here. Through me. Mr. Siegel. Yes. Hi. Our AEA rep. Ms. Fernandez. Here. And our student reps. Amy. Shella Roo. Sorry if I'm not saying that. Here. Yes. And Megan Carmody. Here. Great. Thank you. Tonight's meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a remote model on February 15, 2022. Governor Baker signed into law a new session law extending certain COVID-19 related measures, the new law chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. Includes an extension until July 15, 2022 of the remote meeting provisions of the governor's March 12, 2020 executive order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. The governor's order, which is referred, which is referenced with agenda materials on the town's website for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Before we begin permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI persons wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. These persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate you're asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. All participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website, using the novice agenda platform. And finally each role, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. Before we begin tonight I just wanted to take a moment. For those of you watching or listening at home I will be mentioning the events that took place on Tuesday if you have small ears listening in and want to tune out. I want to acknowledge the horrific and senseless act of violence that occurred on Tuesday at the Rob elementary school in Olvada, Texas, and active violence that took the lives of at least 19 children and two teachers. Today, May 26 was supposed to be the last day of school for those students and teachers, the day students and teachers look forward to every year. In so many words, I am a teacher, a parent, and a school committee member. I feel this with every piece of my being, I feel anger and sadness and frustration and heartbreak for the students, their families, their classmates, the teachers their parents, and for educational institutions across this nation. A school systems mission is to educate our students for the ever changing world ahead of us. Instead, teachers have been asked to protect students from violence, teach through a pandemic and fight against social and systemic inequities. My heart goes out to the students, families and community of Olvada, Texas. I also want to express my deep appreciation for the families, teachers, administrators and community here in Arlington for the support they've offered one another in the last two days. This affects all of us. We can and must do better for our children. Please take a moment of silent reflection for the 19 children and two teachers who were killed on Tuesday afternoon. Thank you. We are going to move to our first agenda item, which is a possible vote to approve a memorandum of agreement with the AEA Unit A from August, sorry, 25th, 2022 to August 24th, 2024. Ms. Fernandez, do you want us to go first or? I can share my news. So the AEA did vote to ratify the contract this afternoon. Thank you. So I just wanted to say thank you to Ms. Keys and Ms. Fernandez and the entire AEA Unit A negotiating team for working with us to come to this agreement. I also want to thank Mr. Cardin and Mr. Heiner trying to find your pictures here. For your work on the school committee's behalf, we know that many school committees and educators unions are in negotiations right now, and we appreciate the efficient and collegial way that we were able to work together on this contract. Does someone want to make a motion? To approve the MOA between the Allington School Committee, the School Committee and the Allington Educators Association and authorize the chair to sign this if it passes. Second. All right, we have a motion by Mr. Heiner and a second by Mr. Schluckman. Any discussion? Mr. Cardin. Yes, I just want to echo the thing so everybody involved, including the administrative team, Mr. Spiegel, Dr. Homan, Dr. McNeil, our outside counsel is Valerio, the excellent MTA facilitator, Sarah, I'm going to forget her last name, and then the AA negotiating team, which was very large and I don't have the full list in front of me, but thank you all for your cooperation and I'm glad we were able to find common ground. Anybody else? All right, a roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schluckman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. It's unanimous. And thank you again, AEA. Appreciate all of that. Public comment is next on our agenda, but we do not have anyone signed up for public comment. So we will move on. So we have AHS student representatives. Megan and Amy, want to share something and then I have something to say. Sure. Well, there's not much to share right now. The student government elections are underway and the results will be announced tomorrow. So it's really all we're doing just waiting for that. But we also just wanted to say thank you to all of you guys for allowing us to sit in on your meeting on the meetings this year. It's been really great. And I think that the council's really appreciated being able to have. Thank you. So it was that my paper echo. I just wanted to also say thank you both for your time and for sharing about things that are going on at the high school and in the Arlington public schools in general, we appreciate having a student perspective. At our meetings, it's really important to have that, that perspective. I have two more school committee meetings before the end of this school year, but you. I would like to relieve you of your duties so that you can enjoy your last few weeks of the school year and have a wonderful summer but if anything comes up feel free to reach out to us. Thank you. I don't know if anybody else wants to say. I would, I'm sorry to put you both on the spot, but I'm curious what insights or things you might have learned from your experience being student reps on the school committee. Our advisor misprick night he really tries to make like the meeting seem as formal as possible and everything we have like a gavel we have approval of minutes and we all do like, like roll call and stuff and I guess seeing like it actually done in a way that's like really professional not just trying to imitate professional that's been kind of cool to see because that's what he wants, and it's like, we're kind of just goofing off you guys are like doing it in real life I guess. Thank you so much for your service and for being here. Megan, did you want to add anything. I mean yeah also just seeing like how much all you guys do like I feel like before I was a rep I was representative I was also one last year but before that I didn't really know I really know about the school committee at all but being able to actually see everything you guys do is really cool. And like thank you for everything you guys do. Great. Thank you. I just want to say, it's our pleasure having you as well. You have been there keep us on our toes as well. So thank you. Oh. All right, our next item on the. Sorry. Yes, Mr. like. I just want to thank them as well and note that state representative garbily started off as a student rep and got elected to the school committee when he was 18 and 19 and ended up as a state rep I think before he was 21. So, I hope that this is not your first foray into public governance.  Thank you. Okay. Update on district goal setting process first read of district goals Dr. Okay, I am going to share my screen you should have in your materials a draft of a set of district goals that I'm happy to take any discussion and feedback on it's this document here. You will notice a little bit of a language shift from what the committee is used to and I'm going to talk a little bit about that, as well as a language shift even from what we discussed in the first day. In CIA, we talked about having strategic initiatives underneath the goals the overarching goals. Since then feedback from my administrative team who thinks a lot about initiatives suggested that we call these objectives, as opposed to initiatives, and I thought that that was that their feedback was well noted so I did change the language here but again, these are drafts so we can certainly change anything back. But before we talk about those I want to give a little bit of an overview on where we are with regards to strategic planning. We're in a bit of an awkward dance right now which we discussed in CIA, where we have an existing set of practices around goal setting and timelines around that and we're working on building a district mission vision and strategic priorities. And it's the end of the year and we need to prepare our teachers for what it is we're going to be working on next year we need to prepare over the summer. And so we need kind of have two simultaneous threads going at the same time and I want to talk through how I see those working together. As we prepare to have a new strategic plan that should be slated for to begin implementation in spring of 2023. So actually January of 2023 so I want to talk first about how we developed the strategic objectives that you have in your packet to review and discuss tonight. I'd like to do a bit of a preview and a timeline on the work of the strategic planning team that's been convening this spring preview, the organization of a five year strategic plan, and then have some discussion about how the committee would share the work of the strategic planning committee with the community, as well as have any discussion that you have around the strategic objectives that are in the document in your materials. So to develop the strategic goals and objectives that are in your materials for tonight. We started with an articulation of what we're currently working on so really wanted these to reflect stuff that we have been deeply thinking about this year. We wanted these goals to be broadened over arching so that they could be interdisciplinary and cross school. So we're happy to answer questions about what action steps we imagine might fit underneath any one of those strategic goals that you have in that document. We were really trying to make sure that we got review and feedback from the curriculum team and tweak according to their feedback that's where the switch from initiative to strategic goal came from, from our central office cabinet team from our principles were still in the process of getting input from them most of what we want them to do is actually take these and map them on to their school improvement planning for the fall. So they will sort of manifest whatever the goals are going to be, and then review and feedback from the CIA subcommittee that happened last Friday and is ongoing will continue to circle up with that subcommittee both to report out on the goals and to tweak them as needed. So we did a lengthy conversation at CIA subcommittee about the vision statement and did some tweaking of it after that. And also we did some, we need to do some approval of these things in June so that's forthcoming. I'd like to share with you the work of the strategic planning team so far they do have a draft vision statement which you can see on your screen for the district. And just as a bit of a reminder this group actually did a lot of conversation for about an hour and a half on one of our meeting days to talk about the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement what does a vision statement do what does a mission statement do so for the community and the committee, a little bit of definitional work here. The vision statement should really reflect the aspirational future state that we're striving for. You never, you may never reach the reality of a vision statement but it is something that you can constantly work towards that you can constantly improve towards. It's sort of your dream state or the horizon you're headed towards the mission statement in contrast is actually a bit more of a roadmap how are we going to get there what are the actions that we're going to take what is our purpose as an organization towards contributing to that vision that we have as a community for what education should be and should do for our students so the draft vision statement that has gone through several rounds several iterations several sets of people coming to an agreement and then mixing with another group and needing to merge their ideas is as follows. The vision of APS if it were to be approved by the committee at some point as we get all of these other parts together would be to create a connected and inclusive educational community where all learners feel a sense of belonging experience joy and growth and are empowered to determine their own futures. We can talk about that more and how we got to some of those words, if you'd like what I'm done. As we work towards a five year plan, some of the language might need to shift in order to accommodate the structure of that plan. So the current language that the committee uses is they have four overarching goals and then beneath those goals each year at this time about the administration proposes goal objectives. A proposed shift in language would be to have four to five strategic priorities. This is something that the committee is going to be working on at their next meeting next Tuesday. Beneath those strategic priorities there would be strategic objectives as opposed to goal objectives. A goal and an objective mean generally the same thing. We want to really highlight the fact that we're trying to be strategic we're trying to build a five year plan and we're trying to make sure that whatever we are doing it is towards the aim of meeting our vision through the actions that are articulated in our eventual draft mission statement. So the organization of this plan would look something like this. We can certainly tweak what the organization would look like, but it would have those district vision and mission statements towards the top, perhaps with some framing language. Now we do have the vision of student as learner, as part of the documentation that already exists for the district, and a lot of the same ideas and words that are in that vision statement are mirrored in the more concise vision statements and mission statements that we're working on as a strategic planning team. So I'm imagining taking some of the language we already have about what Arlington Public Schools strives for and wrapping it into some context language that would help explain what we mean when we talk about educational system that has the vision and mission that we ultimately land on. And then beneath this sort of overarching framing language there would be five, four or five major priority areas. I'm imagining that these are going to be somewhat similar in terms of scope to the priority areas we already have. So there's one that's focused on student achievement. There's one that's focused on professional development and human resources. There's, and there are two, they're focused on operations and infrastructure, one of which is really focused on community engagement. And specifically that that would, the focus of the priority areas would stray much from where they are now. They may be more concise statements about what it is specifically that we're striving for. And then underneath each one of those there would be strategic objectives, like what you have tonight to take a look at. And for each of those overall and for each fiscal year, there would be action steps. There would be outputs. There would be outcomes. So outputs would be the stuff that we would produce as a result of having done that work. So we would expect to see these specific things in place, maybe protocols or procedures, or an actual tangible outcome. There would be outcomes and benchmarks. So what data do we expect to see shift and how will we know if it is what are our benchmarks against which we are comparing. And then there would be budget implications. And this piece that's in gray would be on some sort of a cycle that would need to be revisited on a regular basis. This is how you keep a strategic plan alive is you have to constantly be coming back to it. Seeing how you did against those benchmarks analyzing whether or not any of your just your goals or plans need to change. So to talk a little bit about that cycle. This is the piece that would sort of wrap your existing cycle into the cycle of the strategic plan. And here's how I'm imagining it, but of course we can shift this cycle. However, the committee sees sees fit. So essentially what we would do is in the fall we would do outcomes and school improvement plan reporting. This is our opportunity to report out on the outcomes and impact of the work that had been done the previous year because at that point we have data on that from the previous year. We use those outcomes and whatever our plan articulates is the plan for the following year to do our budget development and have conversations about what it is the district needs to structurally adjust or plan for or provide resources for in order to continue implementing the plan. And then when we get into the spring right about now, we would report out on progress and any adjustments that might be need to be made to strategic objectives and action steps for the following year. And then over the summer we would work to make sure that the strategic objectives landed in the planning that the principles do for their school improvement plans. And we would report out on the impact of the previous year once we have the data back from previous year. So that cycle would iterate itself multiple times. And these things would be subject to some degree of change you don't want to stray too far from what you've articulated is your plan, but you wouldn't necessarily have a brand new set of strategic objectives each year. You might be tweaking them here and there as you go. You might be tweaking action steps as you learn more or as new priorities arise. And that appears nope that appears to be my last slide so with that I'm going to stop sharing I will say that there have been some conversations in a strategic planning team about making sure that the community is aware of all of the work that's happening in that strategic planning team and giving the community an opportunity to take a look at that vision statement and articulate what it means to them. What it would look like if we have an organization that gives all students a sense of belonging and empowers them to determine what their future is going to look like. What would that mean for your child. What, what do you need us to take into consideration as we plan for actually building out the strategic plan itself. What are some of the things that need to happen in year one versus in year three or four or five. I'm open to the committee's thoughts on this but I was considering hosting some forums over the summer and into the fall that would allow community members to engage with the vision statement, the missions, the mission statement, and the four and the four or five priority areas, as we are actually drafting and writing a five year strategic plan, because I think that that will help the community understand what the strategic plan is what it looks like what it's for what the process is for making our progress towards it, and also help us better understand what people actually think we mean when we talk about a school system that meets the vision statement that I just showed you. So, I'll stop talking at this point answer any questions that the committee has about that process that structure or the strategic objectives that were in your materials for tonight. Thanks. So going back to the action items. Do you view those typically as being multi year items, or just an annual thing. So I think the action steps are more annual those are going to be more granular so it's going to be here's what we intend to do this year, and those action steps would change your tier underneath that strategic objective. A lot of the strategic objectives we have in the document that you have for tonight are actually multi year things that we're not we know aren't going to take us only just the 2223 school year. So the hope is that many of those can be put into the strategic plan pretty directly without us needing to resort or rewrite things much, and then we can write out action steps that are going to take it like out over multiple years. Great thanks. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, I think it sounds like a good way to frame this process and I, I'm just, I just have a couple of questions one is, I'm just curious to know what the how what the committee's reaction was to the, to the overarching goal that we drafted about a decade ago I'm just curious to know what was their reaction to that. We have we're actually going to take a pretty close look at those at our next meeting they spent more time looking at our mission and vision existing mission and vision statements. One of the reactions of I recall the reaction of a student was holy cow there's a lot of jargon in here what does that word mean. And then another one, another community member read the sentence out loud and said that it was just a really long sentence so it was hard to follow the sort of thought or thread through it. And I do know that we had looked at strategic priorities a little bit towards the beginning, or the overarching goals. And one challenge that was raised is some lack of differentiation between the last two, which talk about infrastructure and resources both of them do and operations and so which operations go under which one has been a little bit of discussion to. We were trying to get to something that everyone could agree on that's why the sentence got long, that's really how it worked. So, and I'm curious, you know, one of the one of the objective the first objective that we spent a lot of time on a while ago was a different era understand was this idea that, you know, the only public schools were preparing people for the next level of their education whatever it might be whatever course it might take. So, you know, high elementary school was designed for middle school middle school, high school, and then, and then high school for post secondary studies of some sort whatever it might be that they were prepared to enter into a post secondary degree program. Of some sort that they released prepared for that, and then they would have the choice of whether or not to pursue it. So I'm just wondering if that maybe not articulated in the same way, but if that objective was still something that was felt a felt priority. Oh, absolutely. Yes, we, there's been a lot of talk about that I think that piece that you see in the vision statement around that empowerment to determine their own future is, is a nod to what will become a priority around student achievement and making sure that all students are challenged, ensuring that all students have a route forward to opportunity opportunity and post secondary education really being sort of the standard. Okay, because I mean the thinking at the time. A while back was that we wanted to and we wanted to ensure the curriculum was rigorous enough so that students left the system prepared to make whatever educational choice they wanted to make. These are their future studies so that that's I just, I just curious to see how that's still on the table. Okay, and then I don't mind for this so we would and the process are we are we going to like enshrine this in policy is that we want to do or we just kind of get rid of the old policy and I'm not sure it's necessary for being policy but we felt it was necessary a decade ago and I don't know what people thinking is right now. I can weigh in but then I think it's up to the ultimately that that question is up to the committee. Yeah, I guess the overarching goals in in trying to policy in some of the vision and mission work and at the end of the day the strategic plan is the districts and the implementation of it especially through financial support is the committees. So, so I would my answer initially would be yes in that elements that are getting revised now are already in policy. I do want to try okay so be a policy vote. Okay. All right. Thank you very much I think I think it's great framing I think it's good start. I think it's exciting and I think that he's excited to and I think it's time to refresh, you know, the overarching goals and all that stuff it's been a decade this is a good time to do it. Anybody else. Mr. Slickman. I'm really happy with the vision statement is coming out. The real difference that we've got in the vision statement now then the stuff that we're having before is the presence of students in here, because their voice is being heard is to not just what we want to do to them. But how they really view themselves in the process and they want to be heard and empowered. So, I think we're moving forward and we're doing some really good great work. Thank you. So I'll echo my appreciation for all the work that that has been done on this. I, I just have two sort of process questions so my understanding is that we are going to approve these strategic goals at the next school committee meeting, and that this will allow educators to do what they need to do. I'm sorry, Dr. Allison, I'm getting here. What they'll need to do for their professional development planning. Now I've lost Dr. Homan on that. I'm here. So, yes, so this is the first read of the strategic objectives the strategic objectives aren't part of the work that the strategic planning committee is doing they're not articulating those they're articulating the big priorities, the vision and the mission. We would like to draft vision mission and strategic priorities for the next meeting, and that can be a first read for the committee on those. We would like to lock those in before the summer because some of the writing and some of the like sharing out with the community as I indicated, could happen over the summer. But the strategic objectives today is a first read of those we can approve those at the next meeting, we could do it at the following meeting after that. So that timeline is a little bit separate from the work of the strategic planning committee for now. Okay. Thank you. Dr Allison Anthony. Thank you. So I had a few questions or comments. I think we need to process things. First, when will the school committee review and approve the vision and mission statement, or Dr Homa, were you saying that it belongs to the school system so we don't, or, you know, I'm confused about that. I'm saying that because it, the overarching goals, the vision and the mission are in school committee policy now, and because those are the sort of central framing components of a strategic plan that yes, I would seek the school committee's approval of those items, and that a first read of that should be available to you at the next meeting. I think a read could happen at the next June meeting for approval at that point, or if we needed to have another meeting at some point in the summer to further discuss it, we could do that too. Okay, so I was just making sure that it was being approved by us assuming that's what we wanted to do before you went out and started community dialogue on it. So then, thinking about the new process. So first, I'm not sure I totally have in my head, what the new process is not not because you didn't explain it but I'm just trying to picture what it looks like on the ground. And I don't have that in my head, but the two comments I have is one, I'm a little concerned it seems like potentially you're going to be making a whole lot of goals or objectives or whatever you're calling them. And whether there's going to be more than is that I'm concerned that there'll be an unwielding number. Second, it's a little unclear to me how when they get refreshed. I mean that not the action steps I understand that part but when do we go back to the strategic objectives. And refresh those. And it felt like they were potential. I mean I understand that some things are more, you know, multi year. And sometimes we finish things which is great. And so clearly those would drop off, but whether they, you know, when do we look at them and decide yes we're still we still want to be this is still a major. thing we want to be thinking about or also we've got something else that is a bigger deal that we need to put in so we're going to have to knock something off so we don't end up with too much. Yeah. So that's where your existing practice and this process overlap nicely because I'm imagining that strategic objective piece would happen each spring. And we would take a look at the strategic objectives for the following year. And there will be action steps in the strategic plan associated with those. And if we need to make revisions at that point in the spring we would do that similar to how you approve the goals for the school system. Now, we would do the same thing each year in the spring so that everybody knows what they're planning on doing for the fall. Okay, thank you. Mr. Thielman. This is the second time. Thank you for recognizing me. So I think we have, we have policy AD, and I think we're going to have two readings, then we would be, it would be formally be a, you know, first reading is next the next meeting. And that would be understood to be replacing policy AD. And then the second meeting, we go to replace policy AD with the new goals. And that seems perfectly fine to me also I would say. Well, I mean, I don't see everything written out yet. So I may have a question. But I think it's better that this committee is worth smithing all this stuff than us. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thanks, sorry. I think we're just next week, we're just going to have the vision and vision, right? We won't have the goals at that. I mean, so we've got two different sets of goals coming along. And we've got the new ones that we're approving, you know, the, we're going to call it the old goals with the new strategic objectives attached to them, that's going to be in play for next year. We're going to have new, I don't remember the wording, I'm just going to call them new goals, new goals with strategic objectives which may be the same or different than what we've just passed. And those aren't going to be ready next week, are they? I may have a draft ready next week. That is the agenda item on the next meeting of the committee, which is on Tuesday of next week. So depending upon how, well, that's their last meeting. So from that, we should be able to gather enough to draft something that the committee can look at at the next meeting. I just want to be clear that like I said, I think that the focus of those strategic priorities is not going to be qualitatively different from the focus of the four overarching goals. I think it is possible that there may be a fifth overarching goal that says something about equity and access. I think it's possible that the language of those overarching goals is condensed so that it's more specific about what the next five years priority is going to be. But I think that the overarching goal, the strategic objectives that you have tonight that are more specific for next year should slot nicely underneath what the strategic priorities are going to be because the conversations we've been having. Like I said to Mr. Thielman, really revolve around the very things that the current overarching goals already focus on. So there's going to be one on student achievement. There's going to be one on professional development and human resources. There's going to be one on operations and one on community engagement. It's just a matter of crafting with the community and the committee what the specific things about community engagement are that need to improve in the next five years to help craft that language and make it really specific. That makes sense. Yeah, I was just suggesting this. Mr. Filman is saying we can just take, take out the old closet, put in the new and I'm just concerned whether the new is going to be actually ready to be plumped in. And I wasn't clear to me that it will be. So I'm, again, I'm just more talking process that I'm not sure we can do what Mr. Thielman suggested because we have to wait until I mean this, the mission and vision will be ready. But the goals, I'm just not sure are going to be quite big. But they may not. We'll see. Maybe more time. It sounds like we can see what comes to us on June 9 and how the committee feels about about bringing it back on the 23rd for vote if we need to refer it to CIA again for some more. Some more consideration so I think at this point we can see what comes to us on June 9 and then work from there. Whether you feel like June 23rd is soon enough or if we need to, to wait longer. Just, just, I wouldn't, I don't, if, if we can do that meet the ninth to do a first read meet the between the ninth and the 23rd and CIA committee just to make sure we're aligned and then approve on the 23rd I think it would help the district do planning and work over the summer to get ready for the new year. That's all that I think that would be the most helpful to the team. We're not ready. We're not ready. If it's never done, if it's, you know, we're not aligned and we're not ready, we're not ready. Anybody else. All right, always trying to talk. Oh, thank you. Mr. Schlegman. I, you know, Jeff has a really good point. But there are a couple of ways we can work on it in that if we have a conversation on the, on the first meeting in June, and do a first read at the second meeting. We're well on our way to being where we need to be or we could suspend the rules to approve it in the second meeting in June. Lots of ways we can play this but I don't think that we're going to be in a position where there's going to be much conflict with what's before us and what we're looking to do. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Thank you for your programming report. Dr. McNeil. Yes, thank you and I do apologize for my lighting. I got to work on my lighting. So I'm able to share my screen. Yes, I am. Okay, so, yes. So here's a summer programming report. I sent this ahead of time so you have all the details. I won't go all into get very granular but I will give some highlights for each one of the programs. I'm very excited that we're able to, so for our title one, we're able to extend it to non title one students. So if you see there you'll see the selection process that we put in place in order to identify students who would benefit from being part of the summer program you see we're focusing on reading K through three and math K through five.  We do have in person and remote. We found that have offering that option of remote to families is beneficial because it gives access. And that is something that we learned through the pandemic so we want to continue with that. And the reason that we are able to offer that extended summer learning programs because we're using as her funds in order to add students who are not in the title one program throughout the year. So what we did is we started with the title one schools we developed a list of students that would need that to benefit from being a part of the program and then we extended it to non title one school so that was part of the selection process. So here for literacy you'll see the number of students for in person number students from remote their team, and then the focus of instruction here in math again you see the number of students are going to be in person number students remote and then if you click on the summer benchmarks that goes over the, the things that they'll focus on through the summer programming. So we are also offering a program for our EL students, you'll see there there's a description of the program. And this is for elementary source for ELL newcomers entering grace one through five. It is going to be in person at Bishop school. We see that right now we have 4445 to 50 newcomers. And then you'll see the dates. And we're also also offering for the secondary level at Odyssey middle school there's two classrooms, and they can see a description of the program. And then we have our six to eight summer math program which is going to focus on the big ideas for each one of the grade levels you see our team we have a teacher, one teacher who was going to teach. We have enrollment, and this is going to be remote fully remote and we were able to do this, because again the flexibility of the program that we're able to. It meets the needs of the teacher and the students. This is for enrichment at the high school, massive open online courses. Here's, this is something that's in process of identifying the different things that will be offered for students so this list may grow by the time of the end of the year. And then also we have at the high school credit recovery. And then this is the criteria and this is the goal. We want to make sure that we're offering students an option to get those credits that they need to graduate. And then we have our ESY program right here you'll see. The program is going to be located at monotony at Pierce Gibbs, and at the high school. You'll see the report from the s y 21 from last summer, how many students attended and you'll see how many proposed students have been invited to the program for this for this summer. And that's pretty much it, I will open it up for questions. Thank you, Dr Allison and be. Thank you. Dr Neil I had a few questions. I'll go backwards. First, I was just wondering, is there any overlap between the extended school year and the other programs. Yes. Yeah, if you have some students that will be enrolled in both. And can they do that. Yes, if you. I didn't try and do this schedule so I just, it seemed pretty similar but I didn't try and actually work it out myself. Excuse me Dr McNeil yet so so students it depends on what the student is eligible for in special education what is that's dictated by their individual IEP so a student may be proposed for speech and language services but also may be eligible are invited to the title one program, you know for reading or whatever it is so that's really an individual basis but they do primarily run at the same time if that's the direct question. You know they're running the mornings ours are Monday through Thursday. So from nine to 12. Okay, also if you look at the program for the title one program they have staggered classes. So there's also flexibility for any type of overlap so students can attend if they're able to. Then that actually brings me to my other main question which is the title one school so if I'm understanding this correctly from a parent's point of view. They need to get their student to Thompson or set up remotely. Three days a week for an hour, starting at different times. This is correct. Yeah they'll have schedules correct. So I'm just wondering if something if I'm a working parent. This is kind of a pain.  I'm just wondering how much the schedule is in a pediment to participation that the fact that it's a short period of time, instead of say, it's a chunk of a half day summer camp where you pull out some of the kids during the day for their classes and the rest of the time they're just doing summer campy things or something. I'm just wondering, do you find that all the kids who are who would benefit from this are actually able to take part in it or is the schedule a problem for them. Well it's an ongoing challenge for us because of you know schedule we and to answer your question we sent out the number of invitations that we sent out don't reflect the number of students who are actually attending so we sent out over 300 plus invitations for both programs. And if you're able to look it's a little bit over 100 students that are attending. We have we tried to we have the summer fun program activities that are also taking place at Thompson so we tried to make sure that they're in the same place. So if any type of students any students who are in who are enrolled in both can attend without having to worry about transportation. And that's why we also offer remote. So we're trying to look at all different types of options in order to take away any barriers that the schedule might, you know, might have for any working parent, and we're still open. It's a work in progress we're always trying to think about new ideas to provide more access. So I can't I'm going to say that it's not perfect. But that's where we are right now and then we'll continue to think about how we can provide access based upon feedback we get from parents, one of the one also as a barriers we have students that come to the program and they may go on a summer vacation so we also know that attendance is as a challenge at times so it's not perfect but this is what we have in place for right now. So I guess my question would be, could you talk to parents both those who participate in those who choose not to find out why are they choosing not to, especially, you know what. I'm just looking at this as a parent and that if I'm over here by straighten, and my child has to be at Thompson for an hour three times a week. And I'm having to get them there and back and they're back and that's a good point that they're summer fun and stuff but just. It's not a. It provides a barrier for parents and therefore for children's participation and it just concerns me. That's all thank you. Thank you for your feedback. I'm really happy to see the extensive programming for English learners. Do you have a sense of how many students might participate. Well, like I said before we send out the invitations we have a proposed list of students that may attend but it's not until you actually have the first day of the program and then we, we know how many students are going to be able to come so. Again that can change throughout the summer depending on what the plans are for for families. So again it's not a perfect, but we it's not perfect but we this is what we have in place right now.  But again that that's a cost factor attached to that. So, the reason why we're able to offer the extended program as it is because we have to answer funds. I mean if you remember back before the pandemic. It was maybe a third of the students attending so I'm very excited about the fact that we're able to have more of an outreach because of the funds that we have. In order to apply to summer programming, but like again, like I said before like we're always open to new ideas and but we know that there's going to be a cost associated with whatever we try to do moving forward. I just want to say my appreciative of what I'm seeing here today and I saw that little invitation to come visit over the summer and it sounds like fun. Thank you. Sure thing. Thanks. So last year I know we had trouble staffing the ELE program. Are we are we doing okay this year or are we on that? No, we're fine we have the staffing that we need based upon the student population so I think we're in good shape. Great thank you. I also appreciate that the English learner program is going to be in person I think that's going to make a big difference for for those students I appreciate that that you're making that happen this year. The other thing I just want to comment on I think it's something that comes up every year but I feel like this is one forum where these summer programs are discussed and so I just want to for the public. Maybe Miss Elmer you can help me a little bit but the placements for ESY are often sent out toward the end of June as you know who will be teaching what classes and the transportation, the last minute thing as you know, bus routes. I don't know if you want to say any more about that but I just I know that that's something that comes up every year and I want to have this as an opportunity for people who might be listening to just understand how that process works. Sure. So, actually the bus routes are pretty set because they stop at each elementary school in on the way over to Pierce, and they will also stop at Addison to drop students off in the afternoon at summer fun if they're enrolled. Other than that, that's most students would take that transportation other than the door to door transportation that a few students receive as part of their IEPs. So it's a little bit different than how it is for the other programs that Dr. McNeil described because it is individual to the student. So, every student does not come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, nine to 12 right so they're scheduled individually based on their services. And so that does mean that it is, you know, very close to the time that we're going to start. We've set a goal to have those two families by mid June. Mr. Cardin had asked about staffing. We're still hiring some staff but we're in a better place than we were last year at this time so we're feeling better than we were last year heading into the summer as you know, we talked about at several times with the difficulty finding staff. But yes, we don't, you don't come on a set schedule for all students so we're not blocking, you know, all third graders at 9am, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday so a student might be getting, you know, the server. So it's not something that we can set in stone and tell you at the beginning of, you know, the March or even May when the schedules come out so yes it's we're working on getting them out as soon as possible. But they are going to come out closer to the start of the program which will be July 11 this year. No, I just I appreciate making that public because it's it often gets questions. Any other committee members before we move on. I do want to correct something that it. So, the question was asked and this Elmer did offer explanation as well but the students who are eligible for ESY. In the, in the report that I gave you. You know, I'm not sure after after actually go back and we have had students I think in the past who have participated in both programs but I'm not sure for this year that we have students in the ASY program participating in the title one extended program because of, you know, the different services that they're receiving. So I have to do have to go back and I will check on that to confirm. Anybody else approval of DEI specialist job. Mr. Spiegel or Dr. Homan. I can give this one to Mr. Spiegel for an update. So the CIA committee met last Friday. I think it's you and met and this was one of the topics on the agenda to discuss this job description and we reworked it a little bit added some language that was suggested by the commenters in the last meeting and by the committee members and last meeting. And so what you have before you includes more language that explicitly identifies. Disability as a topic, one of the duties, one of the areas that the person in this position would be working in the that would be part of their portfolio of including anti racism anti ableism anti sexism social justice. That all of those things that they will be working on to advance our DEI agenda. So I don't know if there are specific questions about the language. If anyone on the seat on the committee, the subcommittee wants to talk about it or, or Dr. Homan. I'm sorry. The chat everybody just saw on our side is because I if I look a little distracted is because I just found out something happened. So I missed that toss over Mr. Spiegel. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't know if anybody who was on the subcommittee wanted to speak to the discussion last week or if. So, I don't know if anyone has any questions about the changes. So I think Dr. Holman wasn't going to be able to respond right away. Mr. Spiegel. I know that I was I was opening it for other people on the committee who. So I know one in the committee or is asking questions so I don't know. Then I know there's Dr. Allison and the other question so we'll let. I don't so much have a question as to say that I appreciate that the I think Dr. Homan and. Miss Thomas, the director of DI took. Listen to the discussion that was had. And. Added words to address. Many of the concerns that were raised at the CAA meeting of which I am not technically a member so I'm not speaking as a member of that. Committee, but maybe there's someone else here who wants to. So, thank you. And we also want to share. Okay. Someone like to make a motion to approve. Job description. Approval of the. Specialist job description. Second. Motion by. Mr. Cardin second by Mr. Heiner. Any more discussion. Roll call vote. Mr. Heiner. Yes. I don't think this Morgan is here now. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. So it's a six nothing vote to approve the job description. Dr. Allison Ampe. I see. Ms. Morgan. Here, but yeah, she had to step away. And so I think. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. When she's back to turn her camera back on. Okay. Okay. And then Mr. Mason was not able to be here. So he, he shared the monthly financial report with all of us. If there are specific questions that committee members have. You can reach out to him. And if we have something that we need to follow up on, we can do that at our June 9th. And then we can do that at the end of the month. And then we can do that at the end of the month. And then we can do those meetings as I know there'll be some other budget things we need to take care of as we wrap up the fiscal year. The superintendent's report. Dr. Homan. Okay. Sorry about that. Everybody. I'm back. And I will start by acknowledging that we have both a community down tick in COVID-19 cases that are being reported to us. And we're very pleased to see these numbers trending down as rapidly as they are. I want to talk a little bit about indoor masking recommendations, requirements. I want to thank the community for their patience. As we have figured out. And we've had a spectacular prom last weekend. As I understand it required all the students to test ahead of time. We're able to preserve all of our in-person celebrations and events. And have maximum participation for our students in them when we don't have them out because of a COVID infection. With that in mind. I think the most important thing is to keep your school in place. And be sure to keep everything in place. And needed to pivot quickly on where to have recommendations in place versus where to have requirements in place. The monotomy requirement with exemption is extended through the end of the school year. When we receive exemptions. We are open to having families not mask their student. But the monotomy preschool has a large proportion of students who have medical conditions. because they haven't been able to be vaccinated. And so this is certainly helping to keep that community safe from COVID-19 infections. We are also seeing that the masking requirements have a really significant positive impact when we have a true outbreak occur. We try to make sure that it's a true outbreak. So I wanna talk a little bit about what we mean when we talk about that. It's a moving target. There are not clean lines that define what constitutes an outbreak. Each situation is really unique. And we look at all of the factors, but there are some general guidelines that we use. And we've collaborated with the Department of Health to sort of understand when something is considered an outbreak versus when it's not. And we're using those parameters to help us make our decisions as we go. Masks are a last resort after implementation of other mitigation strategies because they are not learning neutral and we know that. And so where we can avoid having extra restrictions in place, we really try to. But when we do have a school-based outbreak, we generally consider that an infection rate of about four to 5% of the school population also spread across the school. So we could have an infection rate of four to 5% of the school in population, but it could be really concentrated in one or two classrooms. And so if it's spread across the entire school, if we can't sort of pinpoint a locus or a focus area for it, then that's when we might consider a school-wide masking requirement. Also the period of time matters. So if it's four to 5% but it's spread out over a week, a week and a half, then we may not institute a requirement. We may watch to see if there is a sort of locus that emerges within the school or a set of classrooms where it peaks up over a short period of time. A short period of time is about three to five days. And in cases where we've had pretty significant outbreaks, we have seen a sharp uptick in a 48-hour period. And so those are the moments when we institute a mask requirement. Once we've had a mask requirement in place in the school for about a week, sometimes a week and a half, we begin to see pretty sharp declines in cases and we're happy to lift it and have it be a recommendation again. Classroom-based outbreaks are generally monitored with some mitigation when there are three or four cases in the room before we would institute a requirement. Once we get to about five or more cases in a single classroom, depending on the circumstances, that's when we're gonna consider a requirement for that classroom. We do keep an eye on things like, are there known cases in the household? Do we have a cluster at a particular seating arrangement area of the classroom? Do we know of events that happened outside of the classroom, such as gatherings that may have included multiple students from a single classroom? So those are things that we ask questions about when we have cases so that we can kind of determine what our next moves or mitigation strategy should be in the interest of keeping those as light as possible. The recommendation is intended mostly to protect staffing levels at our schools. We understand that we are in a position where the virus is becoming endemic to society. And that means that we're all learning how to live with some level of COVID-19 being around us. And so what we're really looking at also when we put new mitigation strategies in place is are we going to be able to continue to operate, to have students in school for in-person learning as much as possible and to have them have access to the teachers who they depend on having access to every day without us needing to shuffle around service providers, shuffle around our educators too much. And that creates inconsistency for the kids, which is not good educationally. Those who haven't been infected since January 22 are right now at pretty high risk of infection in the current surge. That's something we've learned from our partnership with the Department of Health and the folks who were initially infected with the Delta variant are pretty and haven't gotten the subsequent Omicron variants are pretty susceptible to infection right now. And so that mask recommendation is really intended to help us protect staffing levels and to help us protect all of those in-person events. And it's pretty strongly recommended for those of you who may not have had infection since January 22. So that's a bit of an update on how the indoor masking determinations work. Right now, like I had message to the community we're on a recommendation for the entire district but we don't have any requirements in place for an entire school at the moment with the exception of monotony. We did receive some updates from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education earlier this week. One, most of these were linked to our pool testing program and we learned what the plans are from the state to continue or not. Some of the testing initiatives that they have been helping us with by resourcing for the past couple of years. So in spring of 2022, they do intend to continue the current testing program. Arlington Public Schools will not do testing the last week of school as we wrap up the year and wrap up our nurses' offices. We will need to suspend testing before that last week of school. We will change the protocol for students that are identified as close contacts in accordance with the state and new guidelines that are coming out. Students no longer need to quarantine if they are close contacts. They should continue to mask for 10 days and we recommend testing on day five, but it's not required. In summer, oh, also we're gonna shift APS test to return. And if you recall, this is a program that requires that in order to return to school between day six and 10, students produce a negative antigen test and report that to us. We're gonna continue to recommend that, but it is not required for the remainder of the school year. If it helps students be in school and as long as they continue to wear a mask and they have had a resolution of symptoms and they're considered to be shutting the virus and so it's not necessary that they test to return in order to mitigate spread at this point. In summer of 2022, there is not going to be any state program support. Self tests and symptomatic testing will continue and we have the resources to support that for families, but there's no state program. In other words, the state will not be providing us with cool testing resources or providing us with antigen tests to pass out to families. We do have a healthy stock of antigen tests that we can continue to provide to families should they need it, as well as use for our students in our nurses' offices. And the same is true for fall of 2022. Schools will be able to purchase self tests through a statewide contract to keep in their nurses' offices or to provide to families, but there won't be a state program and there won't be a state program of support. We've spoken with our nurses about this and to get a sense of how they are feeling about it. They completely agree with this approach from the state and say that they are looking forward to having the time and capacity to continue some of the health screenings that they've been known to do in previous years and have sometimes not had the capacity to do because we've been very focused on screening for COVID-19. This isn't to say that we won't be vigilant about it in the next school year. And I will look forward to updating the committee on what our plans will be to keep track of COVID-19 outbreaks and infections next year so that we can make sure we keep everyone as safe as possible, but wanted to update you on the status of testing for next school year as soon as we had the information available and a few additional updates. I will be sending out likely, as soon as this meeting is done, some community input on three different topics. One is a COVID-19 booster clinic interest survey. Students ages five through 12 were recently approved to receive a booster shot. And so we're working with the Department of Health and Human Services to run a school-based clinic and would like to gauge interest from the community on attending one of those. We are working on a district and school website update and revision and we have a community survey to ask users what they usually look for on the district website, what they would like to see improved on the district website and what some things are that they might like to see featured on the new district website. So we will be sending that survey out very, very shortly and we're also going to resend the before school programming survey that was sent earlier out for community input so that we can decide whether or not to pilot some programming for before school care for families in the following school year. I already provided a bit of an update on strategic planning. We have had five of our six in-person meetings as well as the online launch and we have one more left. We did have our strategic planning meetings scheduled this past week on the same day as the news out of Texas landed and we needed to pivot our agenda a little bit to allow for folks to get home and for the administration to convene and consider responses. So we didn't meet for as long as we intended to which means that in our next meeting we're going to be looking at both mission statements and at building some strategic priorities. So we'll be condensing some of our work a little bit and then maybe doing some follow-up asynchronous work with the committee afterwards. We have started doing the after school planning meetings that I referenced at a recent school committee meeting where we presented some of the after school data for the next school year. Three of these have been completed so far at various schools and we've established some action steps with teams to sort of solidify some procedures and some space usage challenges that we can address with the teams so that we can try to open up as much space as possible in our after school programs for next year. We have an instructional leadership team workshop on May 31st for administrators and coaches that I'm really looking forward to following the holiday weekend. We're going to talk there about how to make sure that our leadership teams at our schools are really empowered and involved in the development of school improvement plans in partnership with school councils for next year and be able to share a little bit of a preview of where we're headed with some of the work that we're looking at for next year and the goals that you looked at for today. You have your enrollments available in your novice materials, no significant changes from the last set of reports that you got and then a few updates on administrator hiring searches. We are offering our congratulations to Kim Visco who is going to be our new director of K-12 Wellness. We have a final round tomorrow for K-12 visual arts director and are looking forward to an announcement on that in the coming week. The Brackett assistant principal first round of interviews is complete and the Stratton assistant principal resigned recently and that position has been posted and our Arlington high school special education coordinator searches in its final stages with an announcement coming soon. I'm happy to take any questions from the community. Oh, did you have one more? Mr. Spiegel did I miss one? We direct our social studies. We had some interviews last night and we have some more next week. Thank you. I'll take any questions. Can I also add one other thing for our last two sets of district-wide director interviews? We've had students on the committee and I just wanna also add that the students have been wonderful on these committees and I think Dr. McNeil would agree that it's been great to include student and community rep parent voice on these committees as well. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Dr. Allison Ampey? Sorry, I seem to be quick off the mark today. So two questions. One, I know we raised the question, I mean, I asked the question about the masking requirements because there was some confusion in the community about the difference between strongly recommended and recommended and honestly thinking about it, we've only got four weeks left. So at this point, I think I'm not gonna worry about it. We can talk about it next year but I'm just acknowledging that there was confusion. I think right now it's gonna just be recommended or required and we're good. So my other question is regarding the enrollment data, the projection and I guess I'm wondering why we're projecting only 63 monotony students. I understand that it's somewhat dependent on how many students have IEPs that suggest they should be going, or that say that they should be going to monotony but we also have to keep our ratios good. And since we add IEP students throughout the year, shouldn't we bump our gen ed students up some at the start so that we keep our ratio good throughout the time? Anyway, that's my question. So that's, what happened was I had sort of a penciled in estimate on monotony in the previous report and then we recently turned over some data in the student information system and it was starting to capture the existing real enrollments at monotony but we know that those fluctuate throughout the year and they grow throughout the year. So that's reflecting the real number that's coming from the SIS. I could substitute it with a number that we anticipate monotony would level out at if that's more helpful for your projections or we could leave it that way and it will automatically pull the real number that's coming in but we're staffed for whatever the true enrollment we anticipate is at monotony not for whatever the SIS is reflecting right now based on enrollments that we know have come in. I guess I'm trying to predict what the October one numbers will be just to have a sense of are we growing are we shrinking what's happening to our budget, et cetera. I'm not worried that we're not gonna have the teachers and staff from monotony. I am concerned about the ratios because I know that has been a problem in the past that sometimes we come out of balance with students of the IEP and general education students because we don't have the right balance but mainly I'm concerned about trying to predict our October one numbers. So thank you. Anybody else? I just wanted to ask Dr. Herman, are you going to send out a communication about the change to testing recommendation as opposed to a testing requirement? So I wanna wait until we get some of the final revised guidelines back from the state and have some time to put them into something that's gonna be clear for the community to understand. So I'm aiming for early next week to get something out to the community explaining any revised guidelines. Great, thank you. Anybody else? Okay. MASC Delegate Assembly Resolutions. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you very much. Arlington School Committee is very well respected around the state. And one of the things that MASC does every year is holds a delegate assembly in which resolutions of important public policy are discussed and voted. We've been asked to submit a couple of resolutions simply because that we're well respected and the things that we've presented in the past have been well received by the Assembly. So I put together two resolutions that I would hope the committee will vote to send to MASC for consideration of the Delegate Assembly. Normally the deadline was July 1st, but this year they moved it up to June 1st. So that's why we're on now instead of next meeting. The first resolution pertains to the State Board of Education. This is one we've done in the past. There are many professions and trades around the state and every single one of them has a licensing board or agency that either includes members of the profession or is exclusively for members of the profession such as the legal profession, the Board of Bar Overseers or all attorneys. The licensure for teachers and educators is governed by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and State Law prohibits licensed practicing educators and school committee members from being members of this board. And given that the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has a lot of policy influence and can set a whole bunch of mandates, it is totally unreasonable that the people who actually know teaching and learning either through the governance side on school committees or as practitioners in our schools are specifically excluded. So the resolution would resolve with the Massachusetts Association of School Committee calls for the enactment of legislation to repeal the provision of the Massachusetts law that prohibits practicing educators and setting school committee members from serving on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and be it further resolved with the Mass Association of School Committees calls for legislation to reconstitute the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education by including members of expertise as licensed educators and members of expertise in public school governance. This is critical this year as well because we're going to get a new governor in January, which means that the current administration who is openly hostile to any kind of educators participating in public governance will be gone and I'm optimistic that a new governor would be a better friend to public school governance. The other resolution represents one of the worst forms of voter suppression that we have is everywhere, every way is evil is what we're seeing coming out of Texas, Florida. The state has tremendous power to take over a school district to appoint an overseer to replace the school committee and the superintendent. And while there may be emergency situations or difficult situations where it's important to interrupt the local governance structure for a short period of time, Lawrence, Holyoke and Southbridge were placed under receivership and none of them have emerged back from it. The Boston Globe within the past week had an extensive article analyzing test scores, graduation rates, college enrollment and a dozen other metrics. And it shows that the state has failed to meet almost all of its stated goals and that there's absolutely no plan on the part of the state to return these districts to local governance. Lawrence has been under receivership since 2011, Holyoke since 2015 and Southbridge since 2016. So the resolution that we would be proposing would be for permitting a short-term state takeover for no more than three years and that language would be resolved at the Massachusetts Association of School Committees calls on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to restore local governance and accountability for Lawrence, Holyoke and Southbridge public schools no later than July 1st, 2023 and be it further resolved that the Mass Association of School Committees calls on the Massachusetts legislature to enact legislation to limit any future state takeovers to a term of no more than three years. I think these are very sound public policy proposals at a junction in time in which we have a new administration coming in and that they will be well-received by the Delegate Assembly. So I move that we adopt these for submission to MASC for the Delegate Assembly. Second. Second. We have a motion by Mr. Schlickman in a second by Dr. Allison, any further discussion? Are we gonna vote on each one separately or one together? We should vote on them separately. If you wanna divide the question, I have no problem with that. Let's provide the question. Okay, we will start with, sorry, and now I'm looking at the second one with the membership of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education with a motion by Mr. Schlickman in a second by Dr. Allison Ampe. Does anyone wanna discuss that resolution? Okay, roll call vote. Mr. Heiner? Yes. Ms. Morgan? Yes. Mr. Cardin? Yes. Mr. Schlickman? Yes. Mr. Thielman? Yeah. Dr. Allison Ampe? Yes. And I vote yes. It's unanimous. All right. The second resolution preserving local governance of Massachusetts schools, a motion by Mr. Schlickman in a second by Dr. Allison Ampe, any further discussion? Mr. Cardin? Thanks. So I would support the part of the motion that calls on the legislature to change the law governing receivership, but I don't think that I or all of us have enough information about the situation in those three cities to call on the state to do anything specific to those three cities. So I'm not gonna be able to support this. Thank you. Mr. Thielman? Mr. Cardin, summed up exactly my sentiments. Anybody else? Dr. Allison Ampe? I feel as a resolution, this is going to be going through the MASC legislative committee and that they'll iron out the bumps in there and that to me, this is more a way of raising this in awareness and getting it discussed. So I understand what Mr. Cardin and Mr. Thielman are saying, but I will vote in support of this. Anybody else? All right. Roll call vote. Mr. Heiner? Yes. Ms. Morgan? No. Well, hold on now, I'm gonna have to do that. Mr. Cardin? No. Mr. Schlickman? Yes. Mr. Thielman? No. Dr. Allison Ampe? Yes. And I vote yes. It's a four, three vote in the affirmative. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right, consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 22257, dated May 17th, 2022 in the amount of $720,485.17. Regular meeting minutes May 12th, 2022. Motion. So moved. Second. A motion by Mr. Heyner, second by Mr. Cardin. Roll call vote, Mr. Heyner? Yes. Ms. Morgan? Yes. Mr. Cardin? Yes. Mr. Schlickman? Yes. Mr. Thielman? No. Dr. Allison Ampe? Yes. And I vote yes. A consent agenda passes unanimously. Subcommittee liaison reports and announcements. Budget, Dr. Allison Ampe? Thank you. We met earlier this week. We discussed program fees and we're going to be getting more information at a later meeting to review them and consider adjustments for the coming year. We discussed the FY22 budget and recommended that if we ultimately have access funds that they be transferred to the special education reserve fund. But that's still in process of being finalized. We had discussions in preparation for the long-range meeting that happened this morning. And I think that's pretty much it. So thank you. Great. Community relations, Mr. Heyner? On May 21st, we had a school committee chat for English language learner families. I'd like to begin by thanking the chair and the superintendent and anyone else involved for providing interpreters. For those that sought it, there was one parent who did and we had that parent, the interpreter, Mr. Cardin, myself and another community member that was not ELL. The discussion centered around concern for documents not sent to, the statement was made, not sent to parents in the native language. Concerned that all of the school related documents do not go out in the four major languages as required by the state. A concern that there are no interpreters, translations available during parent events at school. There was a sharing that there will be, we shared that there would be a new school webpage and translation should be less of an issue with the new webpage coming forward. Question was asked, where can information be found regarding the civil rights compliance review from several years ago? That was later provided by Mr. Cardin to that person. A lot of these concerns, this is my opinion and give Mr. Cardin to add any more, were brought by the community person, not the English language learner parent. A lot of the stuff that was concerns from the past and it was our opinion, my opinion, that we need to go forward. And I think Dr. Holman is going in that direction with all the other staff in the system. I would invite Mr. Cardin to add anything more if I missed anything. Nope, that's pretty much correct. In the last review that I did send on the item about translations, we were cleared by the state, we were considered fully implemented. So at least in the state review, we have implemented the state requirements. I think the community member's concern is that we should be going beyond the state requirements. And we are in several respects and I'll let her know about the changes that Dr. Holman has put in place, including the additional translators that we had, for example, at the chat. So she's now aware of that and also will be able to communicate directly with Dr. Holman if she has additional concerns. I'd just like to add that the parent was appreciative of having the interpreter there. And I'm very happy with that. And the translator went to Grottendonstable High School for a year where Bill used to teach and they both knew an additional exchange student. So it was a very small world. We had her close friend as an exchange student, which when she said she was an exchange student from Grottendonstable, I go, wow, small world. Can I have? Yeah, Dr. McNealy, I see her again. No, and I also want to respond. Thank you, Mr. Carden, for providing that information to the community member. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that on our website, we have an interactive document that parents have access to that they can fill out and we have a staff member within our district that receives a stipend for making sure that the interpreter and any documents that need to be translated are taken care of. So I just want to make sure that everybody in the community knows that. And that was that review that I received. I inherited when I first came into the district and we have, since then, we have received, we have complied with all of the subsequent reviews that we've gone through as well. So I just want to add that information and to share that information as well. Thank you, Dr. McNealy. The IAA, Ms. Morgan. We met last week. We went over the 22-23 strategic objectives. We talked about the process for getting updates on the 21-22 district goals and we looked at the DEI position that was approved tonight. Thank you. I have heard from a number, it's my week to shine, I guess. I've heard from a number of students as part of their civics project at the Audison that have some issues that they would like addressed at CIAA, which is very exciting. So I do think that we will try to get one more meeting in this year so that we can address or at least hear their concerns. Dr. Holman. I just want to say civics action project time is one of my favorite times of year and I really appreciate the work that the eighth grade teachers have done to do these sort of action research projects with the students because I've enjoyed speaking with many of them too and they're really great projects that they're working on. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy and procedures, Mr. Schlickman. Thank you. We do have a meeting scheduled early in June. I don't have the date in front of me and the here's all full of other screen so we'll make sure it's in the calendar to everybody's aware of it. Thank you. Arlington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. We meet June 7th, I think it is, and the project is moving along on budget on time. Excellent. Please on reports or announcements. Mr. Heiner. I have two announcements. Number one, as of past three weeks there were three mock town meetings by third graders and I'm going to make a public statement. They do it much better than the regular town meeting. Cleaning concise from the three schools did a great job. The other announcement is that it's in the calendar. Audison will be having a program for veterans dealing with Memorial Day and we have a phenomenal speaker, a young lady, graduate of the Air Force Academy who is a current A-10 pilot. She's really, I was a little couple of minutes late coming to the earlier meeting and I had just listened to her and I'm looking forward to hearing it again tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to extend my appreciation to Mr. Heiner for the work that he has done with the mock town meeting with the third graders. I had the opportunity to go to the Stratton mock town meeting and the amount of work that Mr. Heiner does to support the students and then ensures that everyone who wants a chance to speak gets to speak and students who might not feel comfortable at the beginning are getting up and standing in front of their classmates and in town hall and speaking. So thank you very much, Mr. Heiner. It was a really wonderful experience. Thank you. Anybody else? Dr. Allison Ampe. I just wanted to make an aside on the Arlington High School Building Project. I just noted in today's globe there's an article about how the MBTA is building a bus or wants to build a bus facility in Quincy. And I looked it up and it's only 350,000 square feet that it was coming in at a price tag of $402 million. And we have built a high school which is or we are in the process of building a high school with all the improvements that a high school has of 411,000 square feet for under $300 million. So I just wanna say I think we're getting quite the bargain and also I have no idea what they're doing down at Quincy, but that's all. I just thought it was very interesting comparison. Thank you. Thank you. Great, future agenda items. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you, Madam Chair. We've been in negotiations with our unions and I had an informal conversation with the traffic supervisors. They had identified some trouble spots in town and they would appreciate if we were to go and express our concern over a couple of specific locations in a letter to the select board and tack. So if we could have that letter on the agenda for the next meeting, I'll write something up based on our conversations presented to the committee with the hope that you'll approve it and we can set it along. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. So we will be going into executive session. We will not be returning to regular session afterwards. After this, I will entertain a motion to enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union. It's in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to construct 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. AEA unit D negotiations, executive session minutes May 12th, 2022. Mr. Carter, you're muted. Sorry. Did we do the consent agenda? Did I miss that or did we? We did. Yes. Okay. Sorry. Nevermind. A motion for executive. A move. Second. All right. A motion by Mr. Hainer. Second by Mr. Schlickman roll call vote. Mr. Hainer. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. And I vote yes. Its unanimous will be going into executive session.


If I saw someone in a tanning bed, I would tell them that they need to stop immediately. Tanning was really popular when I was in high school, so I was a frequent tanner. But right after prom, you know, I stopped, and then right after that is when I found the mole. I got up out of bed for work and I couldn't put pressure on my right foot. I thought I sprained my ankle. I was shopping the night before. I was like, maybe I just stepped off the curb wrong. So I went to work and, you know, I went about my day. By the time I came home, my foot was like three times the size I was supposed to be. My leg felt heavy, and that's the only way I really have to describe it. It felt like I was dragging it along, and then I started noticing that the, like, the skin on the front of my toes and, like, on my foot was getting hard. She happened to know my history, and she was like, well, you had a lymph node removed, didn't you? And I was like, yeah, what does that mean?  I don't even know what that is. I never heard of that. I was like, my cancer was six years ago. Like, this is over. Like, I shouldn't even be bothering with this anymore. And I called my oncologist and I came in to see him, and in two seconds he was like, yep, that's it. And then he actually gave me the card for Dr. Ashanov and Dr. Schneider. They were pioneering all this new surgery to fix lymphedema because it's become, you know, such an issue and that they were the best people to go to. My consultation with Dr. Ashanov and Dr. Schneider was super thorough. They came in. They knew exactly what was wrong. They explained to me everything that they were going to do and how they were going to fix it. And the most kind people, the most warm people, and that's kind of important. I would have not felt comfortable having somebody work so closely on my body if I didn't trust them as people and as surgeons. I didn't want to look deformed and I wanted to help myself now because the ability to help myself was now. So I decided there was basically no option except to get the surgery. They were like a great team. Both of them had their experience in certain places and they put it together to basically fix me. It was three days before Christmas. I was walking around on Christmas with my family. I was all wrapped up, but I was walking around and I was, you know, having a good time. I literally felt like I didn't even feel like I just came out of the hospital. I feel like a weight's off my shoulders that I'm going to be able to go through the rest of my years without having to worry about what I look like, if my pants are going to fit, if my shoe is going to fit. It's crazy how different my leg feels now than it did back then.