etter in terms of representation in Asian employees Black employees and Hispanic employees um for for those groups and then the overall breakdown between staff and students um you know the students are the blue column and so you know we are definitely overrepresented among staff among white white staff compared to the students and um some of the areas where we are you know the Asian students um do not see there there enough representation especially in the classroom as we would like um and the Black students and Hispanic students as well but you can see the disparities um are stronger um you know higher disparity in the Asian population and that is that report so you know overall I mean we we're doing a lot of the things we've been doing with our um our involvement in mass partnership for diversity in education a lot of um the groups that we all are members of as you know with the HR directors and the superintendents and assistant superintendents and the principals all meet in their cohorts um all the meetings are virtual now but um I think we all share a lot of the same challenges and concerns and try to get ideas from our peers of what they're doing in other districts to attract um more diverse staff especially in teachers and uh I think a lot of districts are facing those challenges and we are trying to post in different places and we post on school spring and talent ed is our um application portal and we've also I've been posting a lot more recently on Indeed to try to get more applicants and on LinkedIn we just uh started a new account kind of a trial on LinkedIn job postings we've been able to attract some some candidates through that we I need to work on that a little bit more um so there's some different things we're doing I've been meeting periodically over the last couple months with members of the high school group that's sort of a subcommittee of the I think a subcommittee of the black student union that is focused on diversity this subcommittee specifically focused on diversity in um in the staff and the teaching force and we've been you know I've been meeting with them and I think some of the other administrators have too so we can get ideas from them and they can sort of understand our processes better so it's the first time you know that I've been here that I've really had that kind of engagement with students in this area so I mean that's that's about it I mean I think um I'm open to questions great thank you so much Mr. Spiegel um questions I see Mr. Heiner I see Dr. Allison Ampey um so I see Ms. Exton so Ms. Exton you can start thank you um so one of my questions was was answered but um you know as as you all know the conversation a lot and the community has been around hiring a more diverse staff more representation for our students you know and you shared about that the challenges and how it's something that's happening in a lot of communities in the Commonwealth so my first question was what strategies were are you using to hire um more teachers and staff and you shared um a lot about that and I think the involvement um with the high school group really speaks to sort of the need um that students are feeling and expressing around wanting to be themselves in in their teachers and in their educators um so I hope that you know we can continue to work towards this I would have liked to have seen these numbers hire I'm sure this year especially um hiring teachers at all has been challenging I know sir so I see that um my question is um what's the the retention rate like what do we do once we have hired um teachers of color like what strategies do we have to make sure that they stay so that that the number of staff can go up even if we're if it's a slow growth yeah I mean I think you know one of the things we do is we have a strong mentoring program in the district our curriculum directors who hire um spend a lot of time with um teachers in their departments um they're they're have been um sort of informal affinity groups um with teachers of color and staff of color in the district that they have gotten together um on on occasions um throughout the the years um you know one of the things I will say is we actually did lose a couple teachers this past year who resigned um who went to Cambridge we lost a couple teachers of color to to Cambridge for different reasons one is they make more money in Cambridge and um you know it's just something we um that might have been the only reason there may have been other professional opportunities they were looking for there that um you know something different to me I'm not exactly sure I'd have to go back and look at my notes from the exit interviews but um is sort of a challenge where you kind of feel like um you know we those are teachers like any all the teachers we you know put time and effort into the mentoring and everything and uh it's disappointing when they when they leave so um you know we try to retain we can't retain every teacher unfortunately and um you know I think we need to sort of look again at that and maybe you know I I know um it's going to be a challenging year this year and we'll you know I don't want to get into contract negotiations here but the the salaries are just one area that maybe an issue something we can look at yeah and I think um you know talked about affinity groups I when I think about you know if teachers feel supported and see themselves in other staff members then they know other people and um you know can reach out to their communities to to bring more you know building on that from making the the teachers of color that do work here feel like they belong and they are supported and they have um peers that um in the in the schools um that they work with that they can you know connect with such that then more will want to come so just I appreciate the work that they're doing and the way you're thinking about it and just encouraging um us to continue to work on that thank you I think Dr McNeil has been involved um you know a lot has changed with the pandemic with everyone being so busy with so many things and meetings all the time but I think pre-pandemic there were periodic meetings with um staff of color yes there was um and pre-pandemic I reached out to the staff of color uh this is actually I think it was a year ago and uh at the beginning of I'm again my years emerging together uh like two years ago you know we started a formal like right now we have our staff of color they meet informally but then I reached out to staff of color we start meeting formally and at that particular point in time I think you know just you know when you talk about meeting getting groups of individuals together I had to you know we got together and I had an outside consultant actually come in and they'll kind of help with forming the group and identifying a structure and a purpose and coming up with a an objective and so you you would have a way of directing the group so it's seen to be very beneficial for why people were meeting and I think what came into there was a problem there with me leading the group my positional you know as assistant superintendent it was you know people didn't it got to be it ran to be a it came to be a somewhat of a problem and so my my plan was to work and hire an outside consultant to come in pre-pandemic to kind of take on that role of leading the group consulting with the group and then they would be like a liaison to me and Kathy moving forward but then the pandemic hit and then our focus kind of shifted to just providing instruction for students and shifting the curriculum and being able to do that so you know as we get more into this year I do plan on to continue that that initiative and that pathway to trying to find a way to formulate a structured activities and having the staff of color come to come together in a formal way and then like looking outside as an outside person to come in because there are certain things that you know staff members want to discuss that they don't necessarily want the assistant superintendent to be privy to even though I'm a person of color I think there were still some things that you know when you think about administrative administrators working with teachers you always have to take look at that dynamic as to what things people feel comfortable sharing and then you look at your position even though I don't look at it as as that way but people still view me as you know the assistant superintendent so I think that came into play and there are certain things that they didn't want to disclose to me and so I think that that was a problem with that so like I said before I still think that it's something that we need to pursue and you know still have that opportunity for staff of color to come together and do it in a very structured and formal way so they can see that as a benefit so that's something I learned from the situation you know after going through it and I feel like that that is something that we need to do and I also want to again I want to chime in is that you know also one of the challenges of hiring people of color in a majority white district is that you know many of the and this is part of my doctoral work is that after you know exploring this and researching this this topic you know a lot of people of color want to go back to the district where they were actually in school so we have like you know we have Boston we have Cambridge as much more diverse population of students and that's you know for people of color you know there was some of the feedback that we got like why did you come back to this particular district and then various districts that have you know a diverse population of students that is where that is a reason why they want to come back and they want to give back to those particular districts so it's just another added challenge attracting people of color to come to a majority white district when you look at the staff there's majority white and the students are majority white and some of those you know individuals want to go back to the district where they went to school so they can give back and that they that you know fulfills their you know from an intrinsic standpoint that that fulfills their that's more fulfilling for them not that they wouldn't come to a white district because that they want to give back to where they went to school so there's another dynamic that we're competing but as we as we try to you know you know address this this topic this issue there's food for thought. Mr. Hayner. Going back to the uh the hiring and stuff I'm really concerned by the number the numbers that you brought forward that we've had a reduction in students not asking for it now but I'd like to hear at another meeting of why why those students and what the breakdown is at what levels we lost that many students I think that's the biggest loss we've ever had it may be because of pandemic I don't know but I think that's something we need to find out thank you. I would say I just asked our data specialist for the numbers um the other day and it was just I mean we're you know those are October 1 very preliminary and I don't know if they will I don't know if they're the final numbers that there may be some changes so I'm not sure but that's dramatic and it's going to have an impact on state funding and things of that nature if there is a reason beyond pandemic I think we need to know about it thank you. Well I can I can also say that you know looking at the number of parents who are opting into the homeschooling and you know you know sitting in applications I'm getting you know they're starting to die down a little bit but it's still trickling in like three or four coming at a time and you know parents even comment when they're you know submitting their applications like the reason is is the pandemic and they feel that they want to take charge of their student's education and they and you know we have certain parents in our community who have the resources and they've actually established like a pod where they have hired their own teacher and a group of parents get together and they they chip in and and those they send their there's no students to that particular educator. I think it's important for us to know if that's the answer then that's fine but if it's not we need to know that's all thank you. Well I'm giving you kind of like a and I will have a more formal homeschooling report but I think that that the pandemic has a large is a large reason for that. Yeah it is a large reason for we we don't know where we'll see if they can give you the homeschool report but the Department of Education is aware of the same issue and I think our concern is also about funding but there is some discussion going on as to how that's going to be handled in terms of analysis this is not unique to Arlington right now and will will the and will be a multi-year average youth will they use last year's numbers all this yet to be determined. And I will say as an antidote that you know in those particular letters that I get from parents they're very apologetic and they also say they also state that you know when the pandemic is over we plan to have our students come back to the district so in the and you know again these are just based upon what I've received through the homeschooling application process other you know reasons why you know certain parents may pull their students out may differ but this is what I'm getting from the the homeschool application process. Dr Allison Ampe. Thanks my original question got kind of preempted by Ms. Extin and Mr. Spiegel's dialogue but I just want to I'm going to read a quote I was also going to ask about affinity groups and I want to read the quote that I had for that it's from Beverly Dan Daniel Tatum's book why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and I'm reading it because I think it's in favor it explains another reason or it gives more background for for why it can be helpful. She writes some corporate leaders have found that such interventions sometimes called infinity groups or employee resource groups particularly when championed by a senior executive support the recruitment and retention heightened productivity of their employees a company sponsored resource group can be an institutional affirmation of the unique challenges facing historically marginalized employees of color and I'm glad if we're considering figuring out how to set this up formally my understanding was it was more for networking and connection and interaction but in whatever way it can be set up I think it could be helpful and I think it could both help enhance our recruitment of diverse teachers but also that it could be of interest and benefit to them. Absolutely 100% agree with you. Great. Mr. Yellen? Yeah on the affinity group one of the things that happens in other industries and it may happen in other school districts I don't even know is that a the person who chairs the affinity group gets a stipend and it's often you know so someone on the staff who takes over this responsibility gets a little extra pay to run the group coordinate the group coordinate activities meetings that sort of thing so something to consider as we do some planning on this. Absolutely thank you I you know I did consider that as well but you know when you put somebody in charge again within the within the district they kind of lose out on the benefit as being part of the group and I know and so that's those are all these are all very good ideas and I and I definitely appreciate them and I will just we're going to continue to do and we will make it work. This is something that I'm committed to and I think that you know Dr. Bodie and you know all the people of central office were committed to making this happen so I think that we all understand the benefit and we just got to make sure that we do it properly and that and that people who are going to participate they see a benefit in it as well so I do appreciate all the suggestions and keep them coming. Yeah I've had people say to me who work in with my colleagues say colleagues of color that you know I'm I'm very tired of being the person that has to carry the ball in this kind of work so don't call on me again so I get it. Mr. Cardin. Hi thanks so I want to go back to the the general hiring report and there's there's no numbers in the number of positions that are unfilled but you know it looks like it's concentrated in paraprofessionals and I guess my my issue is that you know we're three weeks into the school year we you know we've milked most applicant applicants that we can get but we're not fully staffed we're not able to run our school system so I think what we need from you Dr. Bodie and Mr. Spiegel is an analysis of where we're still short and how we're going to cover that I mean maybe maybe we need to do a hiring bonus and obviously that's subject to union negotiation but if we pay that that you know a thousand dollars to all of the people in that unit you know if that's what we need to do to staff up then we need to hear that and we need to see if we have the money to do that but you know we're already three weeks in and I just don't know where how we're going to be able to run the system like this going forward thanks. Yeah I mean I would say one of the issues we have is that we are you know the there's so many needs and every kind of need to work together and what I've been trying to do is sort of do general postings and sort of get the applicants and and distribute them to the administrators to to review and and bring in. We also I mean one of the differences this year is we need remote TAs and we've hired several we still need to hire a few more so that sort of takes away from the pool that can work inside in person in the schools. You know one of the things we've done we've been able because there was a reduction in the after school staff we've been able to hire a few of them for both in person and remote teaching assistant positions so that's been one area we've been able to sort of not lose those employees altogether and you know we're still continuing to post still continuing to use our networks and you know you're right I mean I think but this is again not only an Arlington issue I think a lot of districts are dealing with this these challenges of hiring enough paraprofessionals right now. All right anybody else on hiring Mr. Schuchman? Yeah I mean this is an aside really from the issue of the enrollment. Just one thing in terms of the report we expressed the the students in terms of number of students and all the other data was expressed in percentages and be helpful for comparisons to have the same metric going across but that said it appears we have a 2.6 percent drop in enrollment this year as opposed to last year and I know that there they're going to be out of district placements that aren't might not be counted in this right now so that number is going to go up but this is very concerning because our chapter 70 increases have been based on the enrollment above the number that triggers foundation budget increases uh so I'd like to have a report at the next meeting if we can exactly what the change in enrollment is for this year and the impact potentially on chapter 70 for the subsequent year because even if we're held harmless last year's numbers that doesn't have the enrollment growth it has been sustaining our budget. I also want to say I'm very appreciative of Dr. McNeil's expertise in the area of supporting staff of color and that we're indeed fortunate that his graduate work is in this area and we're blessed by his skill and knowledge in terms of supporting these teachers so I just wanted to add some things here. Thank you very much appreciate it. Great anybody else? Okay thank you Mr. Spiegel, thank you Dr. McNeil. Community Relations School Committee chats Mr. Hayner. Hopefully I'm going to do something historic and be brief. We had a meeting last week with the community relations. We talked about re-establishing the school committee chat in a virtual reality and we came up with and I asked my other members of the committee to correct me if I make any misstatements the idea of meeting on Saturdays for one hour again 11 o'clock that's what it was done historically setting up a virtual meeting place setting five minutes for speakers and one of the things that we talked about is separating it out into an elementary meeting a medco meeting and a secondary meeting not that other people can come at those times three three Saturdays a month to determine it. I spoke to Ms. Thomas about having the separate medco one she said she had and we discussed it too mixed feelings about separating them she said initially give it a shot to see what happens but that doesn't mean to other people that they can't come at other times. We suggested having three meetings two in November and one in December and then reconvene to assess the advocacy of doing it number one continue to do it throughout the rest of the year and number two to see if it was worthwhile having separate meetings for medco. We came up with some basic guidelines one of the questions that came up that was of concern was since we're now doing it virtual or we're proposing to do it virtual whether the open meeting law would restrict us I reached out to town council and he stated as long as not a quorum was present and our intended to not have more than two members of the committee at a time and we're not doing any deliberation then this would be considered office hours and basically getting input from the public and not making decisions and he said and our concern with that was the possibility of inhibiting it by having to record it and things of that nature he said that is not necessary as long as we stay within those first two guidelines non-quorum and non-deliberation so if the committee is willing to support this going forward I will send out a basic outline of dates and looking to get three I'm willing to sign up to be present on all of them and that means I'm asking you to sit with me for a whole hour by yourself so I know that's going to be tough you'll get extra pay in your envelope at the end of the year if you go through with it again we're going to assess it again in December to see if whether we're going forward and how many meetings there will actually be so if I left anything out I would ask Mr. Thielman and Ms. Exton to correct any of my boogers great so do you I don't know do you want a motion on this Mr. Hader what do you think like because if to set it as office hours does it need to be like a meeting do you what do you I don't think so right according to council this is not an official school committee meeting it's considered office hours I don't know the legal the legal distinction is we are not required to meet all the measures of the open meeting law great okay so we probably don't need a motion but is there any discussion about any discussion Mr. Cardin yeah I mean I think if the school committee wanted to hold office hours we should have a motion to do this so I move that we hold the office hours as recommended by Mr. Hader and I'll pause for a second I'll second for purpose of discussion and then I mean I was I didn't attend the community relations meeting so presumably it was discussed I think this is more meetings than we used to do because you've split it and I guess I'm you know since you're volunteering to take all of them that that lightens the burden for the rest of us so I'm okay with that I think it's a lot of time but we'll see how it goes my only other comment is when we advertise them we need to make clear that this is you know it's not a one-on-one meeting this is you know it's going to be by zoom there's going to be you know five or six other people on the line when they're telling us when they're giving us you know their feedback whereas when we were at the cafes we could often we could we could take turns with people and there'd be a little bit more privacy so as long as people know the situation and also reiterate that you know we generally can't get involved in personnel matters or somebody's grade is that you know needs to be adjusted or things like that I think is helpful in setting the tone I think the old materials that Jennifer used for hers were were good in describing what the purpose was I put in the package a set of a draft thing of guidelines and basically talk the idea of bringing things that they they I began off with a statement of things that are going well in the system before we get to things of concern the other thing that was mentioned is the possibility of doing breakout rooms but I initially I'd like to try the general I appreciate what you said we have to let people know that this is going to be basically an open forum in communicating this I appreciate that Mr. Schlickman yeah I mean I know where Mr. Hayner is coming from in terms of doing this because he was online with a lot of the focus groups for the superintendent's search and these worked extremely well and they were very informal people were just coming in and conversing at the time and and I like the spirit of that if I may I'm thinking about the way this should be set forth to to sort of change the motion a little it to authorize the community relations committee to schedule schedule and implement these forums dates and times of their choosing accept the amendment second great any more discussion just that we will be coming back to you in December with a report whether we're going forward or not great and Dr. Allison ampe I think this is a good idea to have the forums but I like Mr. Cardin I'm also concerned that you're potentially talking about a lot of time and even if you're taking up one of the seats it's still a lot of time and that part of the reason it kind of fell by the wayside before was that we didn't actually have the audience so I think we can see I'm I don't know that I would support three meetings a month going forward but we can talk when after the first set I would agree with that I think it's we all felt it was a lot to do but if the showing is good we go forward if it's not going we can always reassess it throughout the year as we did the initially anybody else great so on uh Mr. Cardin's motion amended by Mr. Schlickman seconded by Mr. Haener is next in yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Haener yes and I am also yes great anything else on that Mr. Haener you all said thank you everyone okay um Dr. Bodie superintendents report thank you Ms. Marvin I really have one thing and that is an update on the high school since you're not meeting there you can't see all of going on but it is moving forward things are going are on time and this week we sent out the sub bids all the bids and we should know in November how well the bids match budget the other thing is that we are looking to see what kind of groundbreaking ceremony we might have uh we don't know if we will actually do it now or wait till other significant points in the project but traditionally when you begin construction which is a technically what we're doing very soon even though it seems like we've been under construction is to have a groundbreaking ceremony with MSBA the building committee the school committee board of selectmen um and our OPM our in discussion our OPMs are in discussion with MSBA as to what that will look like now in the light of our current crisis so I'll be more we back to you more on that um a milestone that will be happening toward the end of November early December is the first steel going up so that's basically where we are it's all going forward and the one thing I will um just add to this if people have asked now that the students are not in the school can we accelerate what we're doing and the answer is no it's the students in the school really have no effect on the schedule at this time that's it great thank you Dr. Bodie any questions or comments or feedback on that okay seeing none um the 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 request in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence vote approval of warrant warrant number two one zero six five dated nine twenty nine twenty twenty total amount five hundred ninety nine thousand six hundred forty one dollars and sixty five cents vote approval of job description social and emotional learning coach job description all right do we have a motion I mean that yeah we'll move second um okay um Ms. Exton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Heiner yes and I am also yes um subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements budget Dr. Kersi uh Dr. Allison Ampe I will be in touch this week we need to set up a meeting to start thinking about the FY 22 budget um community relations Mr. Heiner we are going to have our next meeting on October 16th at 430 cia Mr. Cardin thanks so we had two meetings last week um most of you were were at at both of them but um for those who don't weren't in the public as well um the first one was with the board of health um at the town the Arlington department of health along with the chair of the board of health um staff from the department and then the appointed chair of the board of health was there who's a medical doctor uh we went over the testing program which we've already gotten an update on we also um talked about um both the relationship between the the APS director of nursing and the nursing staff and the board of health and um got a little more insight into that Dr. Bode meets with the um Christian Christian Bongiorno who is the director of health and human services as part of the emergency management team every day so there's ongoing communication and then there's staff level communication as to certain issues one example that we went through was the the the standard for quarantining students who who may be exposed to somebody in a school we the department of health made the determination that to go beyond the desi standards so instead of trying to determine which students were actually in within within six feet of somebody else for more than 15 minutes which is a desi standard because they're in the same class for six hours or more a day um uh if there is a case then the whole class would be quarantined for the 14 days but it is a more conservative standard it's the standard that most school systems are going with but it it is more conservative than the desi standard and we did clarify that that was determined by the department of health with input from our staff as well and then finally we discussed the health metrics issue um some other districts have set forth metrics that they'll use to either um just metrics that they're watching to see you know how things are going or metrics that they'll use to determine that it's time to switch to remote or it's it's time to um switch back to hybrid um are the recommendation from the the arlington board of health is that um uh they look at it more holistically they are certain they're there they are looking at the state report which comes out every wednesday yellow red green ratings um but they're also looking at it in a whole other set of data they're also looking qualitatively so for example in middleton middleton is in the red zone right now because they have an outbreak at a prison um but so that that wouldn't necessarily be the right decision to follow just the metric because all all all the cases but one are in the in the prison so um we heard from them and and and we'll build the communication going forward as the data changes and and things either get worse or get better um the second meeting was more focused on the issue we had with the reassignments of students in the remote academy that we discussed at our last meeting we did explore it in more detail uh with the staff um we learned that you know they were trying to put people people in their home school as the numbers came in they were they were able to sort of the classes sort of self formed the way it was described so there would be enough students at dalin for example to have one remote class per grade there's actually a little bit overflow at dalin um but those classes were were sort of arranged that way um and then they went back and tried to to cover the the inclusion services and it was clear at some point that that that just wasn't going to be able to to to happen because the students who needed those services were scattered and all all of the remote classrooms rather than being concentrated as they normally are um so um the staff apologized again um we will you know going forward learn from this mistake and um you know certainly we apologize again to the families that were affected so that's those are on our plate last week we are going to meet again hopefully next week we we do need to work on some form of evaluation for the superintendent we do have to get back to the allington human rights commission to meet with them on the issues they raised over the summer uh and uh we're available if the uh Dr. Janger would like to present any of his stuff um before he presented to the full committee um we're also available for that thank you great thank you Mr. Cardin uh facilities Mr. Thielman we're trying to schedule a meeting sometime next week before the 16th when the district report is due to the school committee and um so i'll i'll we'll have it scheduled hopefully by tomorrow end of the day we'll know our time and date for next week uh policy mr schlickman no report and superintendent search process there we have a report uh tomorrow at 3 p.m is the deadline for uh interested people to apply for the position of superintendent schools uh the screening committee will meet next thursday to evaluate the candidacies that are brought before us and plan for interviews through the month of october we are also assembling a bank of questions we will be using in the first round of interviews and that's the report for superintendent search thank you mr schlickman um high school building committee mr thielman we heard from dr buddy i don't know if you have anything else no i've nothing you know one thing is you know the department is open um and so uh we're we're trying to organize a tour of the high school building committee in small groups uh to see both the as dr buddy said the site and the departmenters so i think maybe once we do that maybe we can talk about a school committee trip there too once the building committee gets there gets in there great thank you um liaison reports announcements a mr heiner uh the rody club of allington will be doing its annuals flags for heroes obviously it's not going to be flags are not going out in front of the high school they're going to be up at the park circle water tower uh and thanks to mr lunstrom from the workplace program his students will again help the old fogies put the flags up on october 22nd at 12 i had 11 30 thank you great um future agenda items mr schlickman uh two items one we received a notice from masc that we have not designated uh a delegate for the delegate assembly which will be virtually held in november so i'd like to ask that we put that on the agenda for the next meeting and i'd also like to just get a report at the next meeting of where we stand on the erlington high mascot issue great mr heiner uh if possible i'd like to have some sort of a financial uh report on the effects covet has had on us and where we may be going forward we're going to have to go to the town or whatever thank you and mr heiner was the format of the report that mr mason prepared with the the one that was sort of it was a result of a request from mr schlickman is that sort of what you're looking for or something different i just want to make sure that we give mr mason that he knows what we're looking for i'm not sure if that covers it i'm i'm concerned about we have a uh we we we made a regular budget last year we brought it before the town meeting our expenses are going forward uh mr card mentioned the possibility of us having to offer hiring bonuses and things like that i'd like to know where we stand right now if that report works it fine if it doesn't i leave that to mr mason he knows the numbers are you good with that mr mason or do you need any more from us i'm good i'm good thank you all right anything else mr carded sorry so that reminds me that i that it's for liaison reports we did have a meeting of the long range planning committee since the last meeting um so three of us were there but not everyone so uh basically it was just an update on um you know where where the town plan stands um you know we we did get more um money in uh state aid than then well if if the if the promise of the governor in the house and senate holds and they're all three promise this um assuming that holds then we will get more money in state aid than we had planned for in the spring in the late spring um or whenever town meeting was over over over the summer so but that's sort of that additional money has been offset by declines in expected declines in local revenue the meals tax and the auto excise tax so um you know overall uh you know we'll we'll we'll we'll stay in touch we'll meet again in december or so but for now there's no no crisis for this fiscal year on the on the town side um but going forward things might be difficult great thank you mr carden well not great but thank you for the report um anything else we is on reports announcements future agenda items going once twice okay um motion to adjourn no move no executive session we do we need executive session tonight mr spiegel uh you know but we will next time okay but not yeah i i wasn't ready for it tonight so but i i will be next time okay all right um great i'll talk to you about it next okay um so do we have a second on adjourn great um miss exton yes mr carden yes dr allison ampie yes mr thielman yes mr schlickman yes mr heiner yes and i am also yes thank you very much thank you um to everybody for coming been vivid have a good night my friends


objects mostly based on museum objects that are labeled as Phoenician. And I've decided to start my presentation by showing you this object, which is a traditional fashion did to a cosmetic container. That was found in Vunci in Italy. And I first encountered it on the cover of a catalogue of a very important exhibition about the Phoenicians that were done in Paris in 2007. But however, this object belongs to the collection of the British Museum, and it's not currently displayed at the British Museum. And if you look it up on the online catalogue, you'll see that it's labeled as Phoenician slash Etruscan slash Eastern Mediterranean. So I hope it's a bit problematic it is that this object, which is not labeled definitely by its current institution, was sort of the flagship object of a big exhibition on the Phoenicians. And that's actually quite representative of a lot of Phoenician material in a lot of museums. Hopefully this will make more sense as I go, but better back on first. So today in academia we define the Phoenician as the people who occupied the central 11th coast, I don't have a pointer, so that's mostly here, and the Iron Age of that period, 1200 to 300 BC. And the Phoenicians are famous for having expanded into colonies and trading posts all over the Mediterranean, most famously for campaign cartage, which developed its own material culture from the 6th century that we refer to as Punec today. And the Phoenicians are often associated with many stereotypes, notably that there were great navigators and maritime traders that invented the alphabet and there were great customers developing many techniques from purple dye to glass blowing. And some of these stereotypes are actually inherited from very old traditions. So for example, on the coin you can see a Greek legend, which is that of Katmos, who is a mythical Phoenician prince, and the founder of Thebes and Greece, both of them, giving the gift of the alphabet to the Greeks. But then some of the stereotypes are also encountered on much less traditional forces. So this collectible cart that you could win if you bought a certain brand of packaged meat in the early 20th century, and it's part of a series on the evolution of trade and industry, showing cartaging and erections. So there's many kind of places where these attitudes come from. And my aim and my project is to understand where all these attitudes come from and how they affect the actual material culture that's exhibited in museums. So in order to do this, I have two main steps. First of all, I look at the literature from ancient sources like Homer, like the Bible, or the Latin authors, to archaeological accounts starting from the 19th century up until today, but also more pop culture literature, things like blogs, and novels. So for example here, the image is the cover of the novel Salambo by Faber, which is a French novel from the 19th century telling the story of a cartaging in princess. And you can see another sort of depiction of the Phoenician prince, this very decadent population on it. And then the bulk of my research is based in museums. So what I do, it's quite fun, is I go visit museums that have Phoenician collections, meet with curators, and just look at the displays and ask questions such as what kind of objects are called Phoenician in these museums? What is the rationale behind the displays? And how does the interpretation differ from one museum to the next? And this way, I build a comparative approach between museums, but also if I can within museums, because I try to look at old guides and archives to see if things would have changed in the display over time. And then what I try to do is to link that back with the literature and see if some of the stereotypes that we find in the literature are repeated in museums, or if, for example, attitudes would have changed in archaeology, this is reflected in museums as well. So before I talk about museums, I just want to talk a little bit about the image that we have of Phoenicians today. In very recent scholarship, we tend to believe more and more that the Phoenician identity is fabricated one, and it's coming from external images. And we think that, mostly because we have 10,000 approximately inscriptions in Phoenician that are deciphered. They're not properly literature, because most of them are funerary or dedicatory inscriptions, but they do mention some identity markers. But none of them, out of 10,000, mentions the word Phoenician. Rather, people tend to identify on them with their cities or some family groups dating back several generations. So we think that these people that we group together in one bag as Phoenicians actually thought of themselves in a much smaller scale in terms of group identity, unlike the Greeks, for example, who had this sense of common child identity. And because of this, and because we've always had this attitude through scholarship and we got the word Phoenician from the Greeks and started using it, we have this little characterized image of the Phoenician today, I put up there, and that's actually a real character when Greek. He's a character that exists in real life from the comic book series Asterix, and he's a Phoenician merchant who is very cunning and sly and greedy and he always tries to lure you to sell you as a slave. And this image comes from a lot of different perception and attitudes that just have fed in ultra histories. So starting with the Greeks, which just gives us the word, Romans who invented Punica Fides, and that's understandable, I guess, because famously the Romans are big enemies of the Carthaginians as we know from the Punic Wars. So they were not going to talk about the Phoenicians as peaceful traitors. They were going to depict them as savage and barbaric. But then if we jump to 19th century England, for example, we have much more favorable views of the Phoenicians there, because actually when the British Empire was expanding at the time, they saw themselves as a fraction of the Phoenicians because they thought the Phoenicians were pioneers of civilisations and that they just gave the alphabet and didn't conquer any cities the way the Romans did, for example. They just peacefully went and traded and civilised the word. And in the eyes of the British Empire, this is what they were also doing. So that was that image. But at the same time, this is contrasted by Orientalism, which is becoming very prevalent in the 19th century. And the fact that the Phoenicians are seen as shown in the cover of Salambo, which has very decadent mystical, you know, they sacrifice children, so do they really want to associate themselves with that so much? So basically the associations that people had with the Phoenicians are very selective over time and over space. And another example of that is in Lebanon in the 1920s, you have the political movement called Phoenicianism and that movement claims that the Lebanese population is directly descended from the Phoenicians and rejects any Arab identity. So this, as a political power, doesn't have any prevalence in Lebanon today anymore, but this idea is very present in the mind of the people. So if you visit me in Lebanon, I can guarantee that you will meet people who will tell you, we're not Arab, we're Phoenicians. We invented the alphabet, we're better than the Arabs. So people just pick the aspects that they like and they sort of identified with them. But what do museums say about that? So if we stay in Lebanon and we look at the National Museum in Beirut, this is a map of the first floor where they put all the small things. So in blue I've highlighted the Iron Age phase, so where you would expect to find Phoenician material. And the little puzzle represents the instances of the word Phoenician. So in red you have them on large explanation panels and in yellow you have them on individual object labels. You can see it not a lot. And you can see that the large panel isn't about the Phoenicians, it's about the Iron Age and it just mentions the Phoenician and actually the individual object labels are only for inscribed objects in the Phoenician language. The museum seems like it doesn't really want to put more emphasis on one culture over the other, and it just goes by sort of the absolute ages. But staying in Lebanon, if we look at the AB Museum, which is a regional museum, and I'll come back to that later, you can see that there's much, much more emphasis based on the Phoenicians, and actually this whole area is just dedicated to the Phoenician and you have this big explanation panel with the alphabet like trade and navigation. And they have this big table showcase, which is on the Phoenician farmers that have one on the alphabet and have one on their religion. So even in the same country, you can see that museums can have very different attitudes to those collections. And an interesting one is the Vallarta Museum. The National Museum is also used a lot, but it's not used in the same way that it's used at the Arabian Museum. Because my feeling at Vallarta Museum was that it was much more focused on interpretation and on the sort of narrative display. There are a lot of large explanation panels, and it tries to tell you that actually we don't... This is the state of our knowledge currently in academia about the Phoenicians. So it's not just, oh, we met the alphabet that said... So even if there is a lot of insistence in the case of the end, the galleries are painted purple, which is a little funny because purple died and all of that. It's not reiterating like stereotypes just blindly. It's more focusing on interpretation. What I'm trying to say with this is the frequency of use and the emphasis placed on the Phoenicians in museums is not the same thing. You can use the word Phoenician a lot, but not make it more prominent over other parts of your museum. Or you can not use it much and still make it important. For example, at the Bardot Museum in Tunis, they don't use the word Phoenicians that much, but that's because they're a few kilometers from Carthage, so they prefer to put their emphasis on the Carthaginian. So they just use the Phoenician for a little bit to explain this transition, and then they move on to Carthaginian. That's not the only thing I look at. I trust on that because I'm at the time. But I also look at things such as how the word Phoenician is defined in the museum, and that differs from one museum to the next. So this is where I come back to the Arabian Museum, being regional. In a lot of museums, but in some of them, at least the word Phoenician is used to determine a geographical space, which is the one I showed on the map earlier. So because the Arabian one is a regional museum, it helps put a place on object, I think, to use the word Phoenician, and so it helps distinguish them from other contemporary material that might be quite similar from Syria or from Palestine, that they also have on display. And the Louvre does the same thing. They use the word Phoenician for convenience rather than anything else. And that also makes sense because the Louvre is huge. It has so many collections. Even within the Department of Oriental Antiquities, the galleries which have Phoenician material are not continuous, so you would have, say, Phoenicians in Room A and Phoenicians in Room F, and then BCDE would have something completely unrelated. So if they just call them Phoenicians, it makes it easier for people to locate themselves within the museum. And then the chronological delineation of these objects is also not the same from one museum to the next. So, again, think of the Louvre. This is a bust from the 11th century BC. So it fits within the traditional time period of the Phoenicians. But it's displayed in a gallery with brown-page objects from Syria and Lebanon. I'm still trying to figure out why it's there. But it is. And then the other object is T-men. It's from the second century. So that's outside the traditional day trench that we put. But because it's from Sydonne and the mainland of Phoenicia, they call it Phoenician. And it's like that. And I think part of the reason for this is that our current delineation of the time frame of Phoenician material is quite recent. And it dates from the 1970s. And the works of Sabatino Moscati, actually, who imposed this time mark. So if you look at literature three prior to 1970, Phoenicians could mean anything and everything that came from that region. The Louvre maybe hasn't matched all of its displays to adhere to that time period. And then something else I look at, but I don't think I'll spend for it here, is how the museums are organized and how this affects the presentation of those collections. So for example, like what I said, if the galleries are pretty nice or not, if the museum is working chronologically or if it's separating between thematic collections or if there are any sort of architectural restrictions, because a lot of time they have open spaces and they don't want to restrict them. That's the case at the Beirut National Museum, for example. And at the Louvre they have a huge vase from Cyprus, the Amatose vase, which they can't move because it was twice down. So they have to work around how to organize the material around that. And if you actually read some old guys the Cypriot material at the Louvre, you'll see that people are aware of this issue, but they just haven't found a way to work with it. It's like, oh, we have these vases in this room. Can't do anything about it. And then we have the relief from Portia, but can't do anything about it. So everything else goes in the other rooms. So we do a lot more research to reach. But so far what I've noticed is that museums obviously have very different definitions for their combination. But the perceptions of these objects vary greatly, and that can be to a certain extent matched to the literature. Not like a bit, but there are some things that come back, and that finally some museums seem to monetize themselves from stereotypes and be objective, whereas others reify them and then others take completely different approaches. So hopefully I get to do some more fieldwork this year and reach more inclusive conclusions. Thank you.


My parents got nothing much to share with us or to provide to us, you know. She could not afford to buy me those fancy gadgets, you know, because they're expensive in our country. My name is Warabele Modongo. I come from Botswana. We don't have a computer in our house. None of us ever owned a computer, a mining company and the township. They donated computers to our school. It was then that I started developing that interest of using the computer. I was scared to touch this, you know, because I thought, so I touched this. What if I mess it up? What if I destroy it? Am I going to repay and my parents don't have money to come and repay this? From my background, I had this in my mind. Seeing myself being successful in life. We had this other club at school, in high school. They wanted us to be involved in more research, making a deep research. So that I took an advantage of it to use the internet as my source to get more information. And most of the information that I got when I was in that group, the medicine science fair group, I relied much on Wikipedia. And to share with you the information that I got in there. Our project did well at the regional level. We proceeded to the national level. I had rumors actually in school that, well, you shouldn't trust Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is not a trusted source to gather information for your research. And I was very surprised. Wikipedia is an open source where everyone can impute or throw in his or her idea. And then somebody else comes in and polishes on that idea to make it superb. I passed so I had to progress to Tashary. Most of my friends didn't make it to Tashary and looking at the family background, I had to say no, no, no. I need to achieve more so that I can bring something home, help my parent. The information that I've, I've grasped from Wikipedia really made me to move forward. I managed to pass because most of the materials that I read, the researches that I've made at school, I got them right there from Wikipedia.


Hi Stampers! Welcome to Watch It Weekly Wednesday. I'm super excited to show you this new suite in our new 2019-2020 catalog. I was able to demonstrate it at our Stampin' Up on stage. I've had a little bit longer time to work with it than most people. Let me show it first. It starts with our stamp set called Free as a Bird and I love the sayings in it. Your friendship means the world to me. These these are great stamps and you'll see some fun things that we've done with it. Also the DSP is designed with our blends in mind. So if you want to get the exact colors that are in a designer series paper, all you just use is our blends. And beautiful colors paper. Love the paper. Alright we also have in the suite some trim right here this lace trim. It's very vanilla and it also can be colored with your blends and whatever color you'd like. And then we also have these trinkets that are awesome. They have a little key, a little ribbon, some leaf, and a flower. So some of them also have a little circle there that you can tie it on. Another thing is our nested framelit dies that are stitched. And I've actually put these on a frame that has some a magnet sheet on them. I numbered them and the reason why is if you look at this one and two they kind of overlap. And if you notice they're stitched on the inside and outside. What that does is it gives you a positive and negative of the image. I'll show you. So here is the positive of the image and there's the negative.  So you can get those. It's awesome. You can use them in both ways. Positive and negative. So this you're definitely going to want these nested dies. I love the options that it gives you. You can make a long ribbon and just use the edge. Or you can even make these bigger by folding your cardstock and just using it from here over and making the piece even bigger and longer. Oh one more thing I forgot to show you is this tin comes with 12 cards and envelopes and the cards are these laser cut cards. They're very vanilla and they're just beautiful and they have this scalloped edge on them. So I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with those two. So there's so many possibilities with this. I'm going to take this little key right here and just add. I made a belly band to go on this. This is great because all these cards come in this tin. So with the belly band I'm just going to take my glue dots and go ahead and put that on right here with the little lace trim that we have because it kind of matches the key paper right there. So all those were colored with the blends and if you notice I'm using this die this way and this way. So it's really a lot of fun. You can use it so many different ways. So let me go ahead and show you what I've come up with with this stamp set. So you can use any kind of background paper but I'm going to show you how you can take this and I've run it through the big shot already and I'm just cutting off the pointed end. So I'm going to use it like that to be able to stamp. Let me go ahead and stamp the birds. These are so much fun and easy to color. The Memento ink and then I'm going to go ahead and use our blends. I'm going to start with a crumb cake and just do the actual just the wood right here and you don't really have to stay in the lines and just I'm going to touch up the flowers just a little bit not a lot just give it a little dot of color not the whole thing. Okay and let me go ahead and use this little guy. I'm just going to do his belly a little bit of the pink.  That's how these little birds are going to be. So this will be the inside so be noticed each one of these nest up okay so they one is bigger than the other and so I'm going to take the smaller one and cut it off same as the bigger one and I'm going to put this on the inside of my card like so. Move this up here and then I'm going to take the bigger one and go right on top of it.  So there's the bigger one and I put some of the DSP in there. The world needs more of you so you've got the smaller one too. So that's a fun way to use these cards. Here's another one of them and you can go ahead and sponge that edge and it gives you kind of the blue look on there with the pool party. You notice that I just folded that right over to make it look more like a bookmark or something. That's a fun way to use that. Okay the next one I'm going to show you is a little bit more advanced and I went ahead and kind of tri-folded this card. So if you notice it comes out like this. So I'm going to go ahead and take this part right here. This will become in the inside and I'm going to go ahead and stamp that with the word were the best of friends. So that will become my inside. So when you're building a card that you want the framelets or the the dies to match each other what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to start from the back and go forward. Then I'm going to fold this and this will be the next one and if you notice I went ahead and lined them up so that they are stacking. So I'm going to go ahead and do the next saying on here the world needs more of you.  And then I will go like this and I'll put the adhesive on this side and look to see that they all line up. Isn't that awesome? And then I'm going to go ahead and put the top part right here so I know that I'm covering it up like that. So then it matches. Okay this is what the final looks like. It has the trim on there with a little bit and it all nests. Love that card. It's so much fun. Very easy. You'll love these dies. Now I'm going to show you a bunch of the other samples that I did. This one is really cool just using the flower and one side of the dies. This one is using all the birds and you just open it up and it's super simple because look how cool that looks. You can tell that it's made with the blends and it just matches perfectly. And then this right here we're the best of friends. You notice this is the stamp but we don't have one facing the other side. You can go to my blog and search under the videos for our mirrored image video and it will show you exactly how to do this. The world needs more of you. Love just making a strip there and if you notice I sponge that and that's what you got was the inside of that so it's really pretty. And there's just using the DSP with a folder that we already have that looks great with this stamp set. I know that you're going to fall in love with this bird ballad suite of products. They worked great together and hope to see you next time on Watch It Weekly Wednesday.