Well, we're not paying, we're not paying. Welcome, today is Thursday, the 12th of May. This is the school committee. I'm going to open the meeting and then turn it over to Mr. Thielman to continue. I'll be back at the end. Welcome, Siobhan Foley, who is our AEF rep, a rep. Sorry. We also have some art today, so from the Thompson and Stratton schools from Deborah Campania and Melody Wolf Thomas are the art teachers there. Over to the left here, the fifth grade has a contour line shore drawings with Sharpie and Marker. Contour line drawings in art only show the outermost edge of the important inner shapes of any given former object. For this project, students were challenged to draw at least three shoots. Carefully observing each shoot, students captured the outlines and some of the details. When students finished drawing, they painted the shoes in complementary colors using watercolor markers. One over is a first grade still life with apples of oil, pastel, and watercolor. First graders discussed the work of artist Paul Cezanne in response to creating their own still life paintings. Students observed that Cezanne used many colors to create a red or yellow apple. They observed fruit, noticing the apples are not only red, but many colors. When creating their paintings, they also practice creating the illusion of brownness on a flat surface. In the back there is the third grade, can heads. Aluminum cans, acrylic paint, oil, pastel, and puffy paint. Didier Truclier is a contemporary French artist who finds inspiration in found objects. He's a self-taught artist whose work is popular by interesting characters, vibrant colors, and playful lines. Although he works in a wide variety of media, we can found his inspiration in his canettes, a series of painted can heads. Third grade students watched a video of Truclier's work in the studio. They observed that he uses line and texture in his work, frequently outlining and adding dots of raised paint to the edges of the stages. Each week, students added layers of paint to their own cans, and new characters emerged as students worked. Over here to the right is the kindergarten called Beautiful Oops. Kindergarten students read the book Beautiful Oops by Barney Salzburg to see how mistakes can turn to opportunities. Kindergarteners get a thrill out of seeing how Mr. Salzburg made his mistakes beautiful. To make their own beautiful Oops, students start by going through our scrap talks for treasures. Once they found a few pieces that appealed to them, they glued them down, added drawings to the crayon. They then used paint to add even more color. Finally, they shared the story of their beautiful Oops. And over here to the right is the fourth grade of art readings with construction paper. Students discussed the word of off artist in response to the art of Bridget Riley by creating their own optical visions. This was accomplished with weaving paper and altering the work and the wet of the weavings. Thank you, it's always great to see the beautiful artwork that our students are doing. Do we have public participation? We're, okay, no. All right, so moving on to the school committee public hearing on school choice. Nobody, didn't I have to talk, right? Oh, you have to open it. Sorry, so I was told Dr. Chesson might be able to talk to school choice, is that each year the school committee has to make a decision as to whether we will, Arlington will be open for school choice or not. School choice is the arrangement in the state of Massachusetts where a district can make the decision to open for enrollment from students from outside the district based on space availability. In the past, Arlington has not voted for school choice due to the fact that we are first. First. Okay, so the school committee needs to vote as to. I will entertain a motion. Do we have a motion about school choice? Do we need to? Yeah, so I move that we reaffirm our policy not to amend non-resident students, some of the terms and conditions of the Inter-District School Choice Law. Okay, second motion by Mr. Thielman, seconded by Ms. Darts. Any discussion, if I should. Okay, sorry, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so you now have to vote, yes, as well. So actually I'm gonna now step down and turn the vote to Mr. Thielman. We'll list them, I will be back. Yes, I will. Wish all the athletes are best. Okay. I'll mention Dr. Allison Ampey is attending to a family event this evening and so she won't be here and we'll move forward. The next thing on the agenda is the reappointment of Sharon Grossman to the Human Rights Commission. Does anyone wanna speak to this? Got a motion? So move. So move, second. Second motion by Mr. Hayner, second by Ms. Starks. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it, it passes unanimously. There was a second candidate for reappointment to the Human Rights Commission, Christine Carney. We just got the, we need to post that on an agenda. We'll post it on an agenda and we'll talk about this. Consider her reapplication on the 24th of 26th. 26th of May. Okay, we're a little ahead of schedule here on the agenda. Yeah, I'm all for moving things, moving things along. So the AHS student representatives update from day on the hill. They had to go to the awards dinner. They're at the awards dinner. Well again that will get postponed I guess. That gets postponed. Okay, we reappointed Ms. Grossman, the health, nursing, and wellness update. They're not here yet. I'm not here yet. All right. I'll be here at seven. Let's go to the monthly report, financial report. Yay! All right, Ms. Johnson, go ahead. We're closing in on it and our deficit has shrunk. We have also recommended to town meeting that $135,000 be moved into stabilization. So basically we'll be pulling it out of our reserves and putting it into town reserves. But we felt it was important given the surplus we were seeing in the special ed out of district tuition line. We're showing a deficit in special ed transportation. So I consider those two things a wash. And we also have a number of students that are slated for extended evals this spring. And I took those out of it. And so when I figured everything in, left a margin for the unanticipated, I felt like the $135,000 was the fair amount to transfer. Mr. Hanner. I don't know if you can answer this, may require Ms. Elmer. Why do we have a deficit in the transportation? Was something we were just seeing? When out of district kids get added, if they're not going to the same place or they require substantially separate transportation, that can be more expensive. And included in that feature is also homeless transportation. And that's an always unpredictable number. But just to clarify, the homeless transportation, we do get it more reimbursement for that than we do. We get it as a town of Arlington. It goes to free cash. And as part of the long range plan, it doesn't come back and offset anything in our budget directly, indirectly it does, but not directly. Thank you. Any other questions? Oh my gosh. Okay. We keep moving. District goals, Dr. Bodie, isn't- I don't think we can do anything else. Well, we can. We can do some of the consent agenda at least and ask for committee reports. And the committee reports, yeah. Absolutely. We keep moving. 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 discussions of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant for approval, warrant number 16163, total warrant amount of $404,104.79, stated $428.16. Approval of draft minutes, regular school committee meeting April 28th, 2016 in school committee school enrollment task force meeting joint minutes. Approval of the E. Nelson Blake Book Award for its annual award given to the top 10 students with the highest GPA. The recipients will not be aware of this award until Tuesday, June 2nd, 2016 when the presentation we made at an awards night by the chair of the Arlington School Committee. Do I have a- So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Schlickman. Second by Ms. Starks. Mr. Cardin, were you here on the 20, you were not here on the 28th? I was here. You was here. Okay, there was one before that. There was one before that. Okay, got it, just checking. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, it passes unanimously. Okay, subcommittee reports. Dr. Allison Ampe is not here. Does anyone wanna speak to the budget subcommittee? No, community relations. All right, we are going to have a meeting on Tuesday, May 31st. We're just coming up the time of that. And on that agenda are three things. We're gonna look at the dashboard, we're gonna look at the calendar survey, and we are going to look at the initial planning for any fall community forums. So just those three things. So again, Tuesday, May 31st, we will find the time. Okay, District Accountability Curriculum Instruction Assessment, Mr. Schlickman. The subcommittee is allergic to meeting during town meeting season. But we will pick up our agenda once town meeting includes. Okay. Yeah. Just a thought that if we had the normal agenda, but we're gonna go back to it on the goals and stuff, my understanding is that the goals, my discussion will be deferred to the accountability. So you may wanna consider having a meeting just so that the goals process. Yeah, I know we need to do that, but I think that once we get town meetings settled, we should be done on Monday night. So the pressure will be off. Okay. Oh yeah, we'll finish on Monday. There's not much left. We all wanna finish on Monday. I have an MASC meeting on Wednesday, so they better not extend that. That's right. Facilities, no report. Policies and procedures, Mr. Hayner. There was a doodle in action to set up an organizational meeting as soon as possible. We will be reporting back to the next meeting. The initial policies we will be starting on. School enrollment task force, we're gonna talk about that later on. I have a feeling we will. Warrant committee, Mr. Hayner. Everyone get paid. Any liaison reports or announcements? I attended the Permanent Town Building Committee in Bill's absence a couple weeks ago. So they're moving forward with everything actually, but just some quick updates. The Thompson modulars have been procured. It's actually going to be four classrooms, four small classrooms that are going in. So that will create additional flexibility there. They are interviewing the architects for the addition this week, and I believe we'll be selecting one next week. Everything is proceeding at Stratton pretty well. No major issues there. Thank you very much. And as announced at town meetings, the Stratton project is well under budget by at least a million, so. Great job. Just want to add, I drove by Stratton today. The two modular units that got stuck the other night, I have arrived and they're on site. They got stuck? They were having trouble making a turn. I heard from Chief Jefferson, one of the Knights of Town meeting in block traffic on Summer Street for several hours. There was a problem with one of the trucks transporting the modular. The modular was okay, but the truck freaked out. Well, were they trying to make a tight turn or grow up the hill? I have no more details. They left on Washington Street. But it did block traffic. Oh, left on Washington, they'll do it, yeah. But they have a procedure now, so that should relieve it. If I may? Yeah. I'd just like to announce to the community that, and I mentioned it the other night, the Memorial Day event will be on May 30th. It will not have, we will not have a parade this year. The event will be a program at the town hall. There'll be a presentation and followed up with a dedication to the last Veterans Memorial site at Mount Pleasant for those citizens that have perished in war on terrorism from 1990 going forward. All are welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Mr. Hainer, I have an email here on this doodle, but I don't have a link. You've worked for me. It says William Hainer doodle, please respond. All right. Okay, we'll talk. We'll figure it out. We took care of the committee reports. We took care of the consent agenda. We want to take care of the Edco collaborative agreement. Sure. But do you have any questions? Well, I don't think it's very controversial. All we're doing is getting rid of Wellesley. You know what, Mr. Schlegman? Wellesley, who needs Wellesley? No, it's superfluous. You want to explain what's going on? Why should you, you're familiar with the agreement? Well, basically what the amendment is to that Wellesley has decided to exit the Edco collaborative. So the agreement is being edited to remove Wellesley and slightly adjust the reporting times for people who want to leave. And you want to explain what the Edco collaborative is, maybe for the viewers? Edco collaborative is a joint collaborative we're on for basically special ed and other educational services that are better and cheaper if they're provided for multiple districts. Okay, so. And they also offer forums for school committee members. I'm the liaison, there's a meeting next Wednesday. I find them very informative because a group of school committee members from the entire collaborative get together. The last one we shared with was early starting times. And going forward with that, it seems to be very important. I'll have a report next meeting. Yeah, they do a lot of great teacher professional development too, I have to add. You know, they do a lot of things for teachers over the summer and during the course of the year. And you get a really great discount and you get first dibs on those classes as a member of the Edco collaborative.  So I just think it's a great way for a bunch of schools to think about working together in ways that can help us save money and share ideas. So it's really good. Thank you for filling the time there on this topic. We're trying. We're trying. I have help on us out. Mr. Hainer, you got anything? I was just going to suggest possible move. Yeah, motion. Yeah, Mr. Hainer, do you want to make the motion? Move to accept the recommend to approve the Edco collaborative articles of agreement dated 519 2016 as amended by a vote of the Edco collaborative board of directors on April 28th, 2016. A motion by Mr. Hainer, second by Mr. Schlickman. All any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? This is unanimous. There's a second motion. Mr. Hainer, you want to read out? Recommend that the collaborative agreement shall not be effective until approved by the member districts, as indicated on the signatory page, and the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. This agreement is authorized by a vote of each of the member districts and signed by the chairperson of each member district. Move to approve. Jennifer Seuss to sign such agreement. May I have a second? Second by Ms. Starks. Motion by Mr. Hainer. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? It passes unanimously. OK, so where's the superintendent? She's at the dinner. She's at the dinner, too? Yeah, she said she'd be back at 7.30. OK. Any mischief we can do? Well, I know. We must be able to get into some kind of trouble. Well, we're moving here. It was a lot more fun than we were to the Selecman's chambers. It was. It was. We just made some one-way streets. Well, so in the nursing? I mean, her recommendation is in writing, but we can't ask her any questions. But I mean, my questions about that are for the committee, not necessarily. Do you want to move into a quick executive session? We don't have anything to do with you. Right. Look at us. There's nothing on executive. Maybe we should text her that she should come back. Sorry, you have to come back. OK. There's a motion for brief recess. There's a motion on the table from Mr. Schlichman for a brief recess. I hear second. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. It passes unanimously. So we're going to take a quick break until somebody shows up. Somebody shows up. Thank you. She'll probably be the first one. OK, we're back. Thank you for your patience. I'm going to just, one of the things we meant to read at the start of the meeting was an article in the Arlington Advocate, November 22 of all dates, huh? November 22, 1962. November 22, 1962. That's before I was born. I just want to put it out there. OK. I'll catch you. Me too. And you. Yeah, right. Enrollment of pupils continues its climb. The public school enrollments are continuing to climb upward at an alarming rate, first sentence, first paragraph of the article. Since school opened this September, there has been an increase of 235 pupils. Latest figures indicate that the present public school population, as of October 26, is 8,368 students or an increase of nearly 500 from a year ago. Of the new pupils, 203 are at the senior high level. This tends to stretch the already crowded accommodations at the high school. And it goes on. So then the advocate article questions, where are all these students' youngsters coming from? The answer is not an easy one for there appear to be several possible implausible explanations. Families are definitely larger than they were 20 years ago. Many youngsters are transferring to the public schools from private and parochial schools. Whatever the answer or answers may be, the fact remains that the public school population is climbing rapidly. Last June, slightly over 400 youngsters graduated from Arlington High School this fall, 700 youngsters entered the first grades in the system. Wow. So.  We're back at it. Welcome back to where we were 54 years ago. OK. That's amazing. Now, we're going to have a report on health, nursing, and wellness. Sue Franci, welcome to the school committee meeting. And we're going to give you the floor. And put the mic as close to you as you can there. All right. Right there you go. All right. And you can introduce yourself and take over. Hi. I'm Susan Franke. I'm the director of nursing for the Arlington Public Schools. I will be joined in a second by a colleague of ours, Ivy LaPlante, who is the director of the Arlington Youth Health and Safety Coalition. And we're collaborating on some projects together, which I'll get into briefly. So I'm just reviewing what's going on in terms of wellness in town. Arlington thrives in terms of wellness comparatively to the rest of the state. Overall, it's a pretty healthy community. What we maybe struggle with is the same thing everyone else struggles with in terms of mental health and our youth, but we'll touch on that briefly. So thank you for letting me address the wellness initiatives and accomplishments this year. And we've continued to meet four times a year. Our last meeting will be June 1. So I'll start with the physical fitness initiatives. All of the schools continue to run programming for students, which includes fit girls, amazingly popular, and fit boys and other running programs for boys as well with different titles. And there are about 250 fourth and fifth grade girls in the fit girls program, which has been very successful. Also, the BOK morning workouts continue, basketball, Zumba, PE plus, and the 521 program at the Odyssey. Arlington High has morning badminton, and the fitness room continues to remain open. I believe Larry Cronin from Fitness First donated even more equipment this year to AHS. The FACTS program. They've implemented programming to reflect results from the Youth Risk and Behavior Survey. And that includes emphasis on stress management, the importance of wellness, behaviors, sleep, adequate sleep, et cetera. They not only have been working with students on healthy foods and lifestyle, money management, and consumerism, but as mentioned, added the components of mental health wellness, which is greatly needed. How does that feel, Ada? That's when I took the stairs. I tried, and the door is stuck. We're a wellness committee. We have to take the stairs. I did, and the door was stuck. I apologize. And welcome Ivy LaPlante, right? Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. No worries. How far along did you go? We started early. Oh, OK, good. I'm literally on page one. You're at the end, Tori. OK. So the safe routes to schools initiatives, robust programs throughout the community. Just going to move this a little bit just in case. Continues to have monthly meetings, participation in bicycle and walking programs, safety trainings, and surveys. So that's going quite well. And I believe everybody has this in advance, this information in advance. OK, great. Food services, they continue the USDA fresh fruit and vegetables expanded program to the schools, more scratch cooking, less processed foods available, expanded breakfast options, and try it Tuesdays to introduce different foods to students. They've been working with the schools regarding composting procedures, as well as working with students and families on alternative food fundraisers, decreasing, seeking to decrease unhealthy food sold for fundraising programs and purposes. They've also been working with Arlington Eats in the community. And we hope, or they hope, to expand to the Audison. I really hope they expand to the Audison because we have about 8 to 10 students coming down a day for snacks because they don't have breakfast. Parent and community forums. In September, there was the invitation sponsored by the Minuteman Safety and Health Collaborative in offering important health and safety tips for children entitled Passport to Bike Safety. Other Arlington forums included the opioid crisis, the trans umbrella, guiding good choices, smoking cessation, and hypnosis, the talk with Dr. Shine, marijuana use in the teenage brain, with Dr. Scott Hadland, mental health and suicide awareness night, parenting for success with less stress or how to succeed without succeeding from family, and adolescence is hard work with Michael Thompson. So I'm only going to touch on a few things with the sandborne accomplishments because there are quite a few as listed Arlington High advisory activities, courtesy of Club 84. There's all sorts of information for all staff on e-cigarettes because that's becoming a growing problem. It's easy to hide these babes, as they call them. Handbook updates on tobacco use and e-cigarettes. And they've developed a commercial for Club 84 to be played during Club Day advisory at the end of October that happened already. The Great American Smokeout, social media outreach. And let's see, there's a lot. Club 84 did quite a bit, actually. And smoking cessation classes continue for first-time offenders, planning for a skin that should have actually, I think, I don't know if that happened yet, skin cancer awareness day. And 15 Arlington High students attended the State House on March 16th to celebrate Kick Butt's Day. And that was also part with Club 84. There's a lot there. I'm not going to read it all because there's quite a bit of information there. Relay for Life continues in assembling teams. Students directly involved with the Arlington Youth Health and Safety Coalition. And you've done some wonderful, producing some wonderful materials and newsletters with that very, very professional and robust. Audison Middle School, Carly Newell continues educating 405 students with preventing smoking, guiding good choices, as well as the parenting workshop mentioned previously. Elementary schools, she continues to promote guiding good choices there as well. And the elementary health curriculum continues being taught by teachers, PE teachers, and nurses as well. Let's see. I don't want to have to read every single thing on here. Relay for Life, students in Arlington raised $56,497 in June 2015. See what they raised this year. That's very impressive. All right. Many things that we've already kind of mentioned. So I'm going to go into some of the nursing initiatives, because it's been a very robust year. We had a grant from the Sims Grant, which gave us funding to run something called the OMS Web, Web Standing acronym for Wellness, Energy, and Balance. It was a Monday afternoon program open to all students in the middle school, run by the two RNs, Julie Malay and Kristin Cannelly. It was well attended, though we would have liked to have seen boys. It was not attended by boys, seemed to be girls. It was to look at mindfulness as alternatives to stress management, and they did all sorts of fun stuff. They will be presenting their program at a statewide meeting May 19. The Innovative Care Coordination Grant from Mass Department of Public Health has funded two years of nursing coordination, almost full time. These two years, we focused on mental health issues at Audison, originally high school in the Audison. And throughout the district, this continues to be a serious issue. Having the adolescent population not knowing how to deal with stress and having a hard time. I did not bring in a PowerPoint presentation because our statistics this year are pretty comparable to last year. We have two to three times the amount of encounters in the last three years, this year as we did three years ago. So a lot of these are related to mental health, school aversion, kids just not wanting to be in school or attending. Having a hard time, having their phones with them so that they're caught up on social media while they're in school tends to bring them down a little bit. Let's see. For many reasons, we reapplied for the grant this year, but we're focusing on diabetes and asthma management. And we will see hopefully in the next few weeks whether we get that grant. Last year it was 35,000. It was given, plus change, some information that their DPH is looking to decrease funding on that because we piloted the program and it was so successful there are more communities that now want to do it. So I don't think we're going to get as much this year if we get it at all. The reason we're focusing on diabetes and asthma is because those numbers are drastically increasing in our community once again. There's a higher concentration of students in the Thompson area with diabetes. We received the AEF grant to promote care coordination in the elementary schools. That was very successful in our programming. The care coordinator went out to work with school nurses in the elementary, specifically to help on cases of children with high absenteeism or chronic medical conditions. Again, diabetes came into play with that. This promoted greater engagement to local medical providers who are often unaware that their young patients were out of school so much. So we're getting some really good feedback on these programs. The elementary school nurses have a greater understanding of the protocols, guidelines, and outcomes related to this outreach. It was a successful endeavor. It's a one year grant, but we're really glad we did it. We hope to continue to have the essential school health grant from the DPH next year. This year we had a little over $69,000 for that. It helps to fund our conferences and educational opportunities. It also gives us extra nurses in the schools to help out with the many different things that we're doing. The state just requires more and more from us, and there's more and more students to see. So I sincerely appreciate that the school committee has increased nursing coverage of the audits and getting us closer to state guidelines in regard to the nurse to student ratio. Let's see, what else did we do? We've housed nursing students this year from UMass, Regis, and Northeastern, at the Brackett, the Bishop, the Hardy, the Pierce, and the Audits and Schools. I'm a CPR instructor, so we were able to save quite a bit of money training in-house. We didn't have to send people out because we just did it for free. And the Arlington Health and Human Services ran the flu clinics for all the students in the schools last fall, and they are now setting up the dates with the principals to run them again in the fall. We could not offer this to the staff because DPH did not give it to us. They give it to us for free for students, but it does not come for you to anyone. And then, recently, to wrap things up from my end, we received a $10,000 grant from Mass DPH for the initiation of mandated screening regarding substance abuse. I will defer to the SBIRT grant and information to my colleague Ivy Llan, who, as I mentioned earlier, is the director of the Arlington Youth Health and Safety Coalition. Okay, thank you, Sue. Yes, so SBIRT is commonly, is what it's commonly called. It stands for Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment. And just recently, the governor, Charlie Baker, mandated this type of screening for all Massachusetts public schools. Sue was really forward-thinking in trying to get the grant. She saw that this was the way that the governor was going to go, and it was great because it allowed us to plan for this sort of screening before it actually happened. So I really thank Sue for inviting me into the program and for involving the Youth Health and Safety Coalition. As she mentioned, we do focus on substance abuse prevention. And a lot of those initiatives, especially the tobacco initiatives for Club 84, are spearheaded by our youth coordinator, Karen Dillon, who works directly with the Arlington High School Club 84 program. So it was really nice to hear the connection between our coalition and the schools. Going back to SBIRT, Screening Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment, like I said, is a now mandated screening process in the public schools. And really, it's exactly as it sounds. It's a very simple screening process where students will be asked a series of questions. And depending on how they respond to them, have you ever ridden in a car with somebody who's used substances? Do you yourself have you used, have you had a drink of alcohol in the past 30 days? Depending on how they respond, they will be given referral to treatment and kind of sort of like a small brief intervention. Our plan is to screen all seventh graders in the Odyssey. And our thinking behind this is because, as you can see from the data in the packet, the majority of students are not using substances. However, when they do start, they're starting as early as seventh and eighth grade. So our goal is to stop use before it even starts. And so this screening allows nurses to be able to talk to every single student in the Odyssey, all seventh grade students, and get them the treatment that they need. By pairing with the coalition, we have the resources specifically for substance abuse prevention and connection to educational resources in the community. Every student will be given a packet after screening. So they all will receive the same information. So no student will be singled out. You know, oh, why did Joe receive a packet, but Susie didn't know, every single student will receive the same type of information just to try to keep it as fair as possible. The majority of students screened, they've done pilot studies in the past. And the majority of students actually screen negative for substances, which is, it's great. And you might ask, well, why should we do the screening if the majority of students are screening negative? Because every single student receives a brief intervention and a positive reinforcement of the behavior that they're doing. So if these students are already making good positive decisions, specifically in avoiding substances, then they're being reinforced and reaffirmed for their positive decisions. Some logistics, we plan on rolling this out in November of next year. And we are currently working with the Audison principal and vice principals, and as well as nursing teams as well. And our plan is to have the nurses screen the students during PE courses, so that when the students are kind of running around playing kickball, they're not noticing that their classmates aren't there. The fact that every seventh grade student will receive the same screening is also a way to kind of keep it as fair. And I do wanna highlight that this is a confidential screening. So the students, anything that they say will just be between themselves and the screener. I think, I don't know if, Sue, did you wanna add anything? Or I can open this up for discussion for questions? Yeah. Thank you very much. Sure. Great presentation. Why don't I just open up, Ms. Schlickman. Yeah, I mean, I seem to remember the stress issue is, it seems to be magnified. I seem to remember from last year's data that our young women have higher incidence. Was that true? That's a good question. With young women? Yes, I think that most of it, because kids still continue to be hospitalized for mental health reasons. And the majority of them are young women, yes. Because when you mentioned that you had your stress management event. And it was all girls there. It was all girls. Yeah, I thought that was sort of telling it, sort of, from last year. Right. Is there something we need to be doing? Is it just to sort of make our environment better for this?  Yeah. I'm serious, because I live it at home. So that's a really good question. And that's not to say that young men don't have this as well. Certainly they do, and we see a lot of it. That's not to negate that fact. But I don't know. I mean, I really think it's a perfect storm of things that cause it, to be honest with you. And it's trying to be addressed in many different respects. And I was reading the district goals, which are clearly aligned to social emotional well-being. This is not, like I said, this is not just specific to Arlington. This is every goal. So I wish I had the answer. I think it continues to be supporting kids and letting them talk about what they need to talk about. But how do we reach them? I mean, I have my theories. And that $2 will get you a Starbucks coffee. But I think we just have to continue fighting the good fight with this. And a lot of it's parenting, too. We want to see good, strong parenting at home with this. We can't fix this just in the schools. I don't know if I answered your question. That's OK. Social media is for catfishes, right? So it shouldn't be stressful. No, but when you see all the parties you're not invited to, and everybody puts their perfect face on social media, we don't realize how human we are. There's a great book by, I don't know how to pronounce a name. I think it's Brene Brown, called The Gifts of Imperfection. I'm not into self-help books, but someone recommended that I read this because I also teach. And I did, and I thought, wow, this woman's nailed it with her perspective on why we're seeing this. Not just in youth and adults, too. I mean, I teach at a college, and I work in college health also. And I'll tell you, the transition goes straight through college. Like, I've never seen. I've been in college health in St. Clinic for five years, and I've never had so many freshmen come to see us at the beginning of the school year. They're not ready emotionally. They're not. Many of them. I shouldn't say all of them, but the numbers are pretty staggering as to what I see. Kids, they don't have the resiliency to take care of themselves at that point. And that's just all based on stress and anxiety. The fact is that everybody looks perfect in social media. Of course they do. That's not a unique phenomenon because I remember I graduated from high school quite some time ago, obviously. But people, I thought I was the only teenager going through certain things or liking certain things or whatever. And then as an adult, when you get to know people on a real level and not in this high school setting, you find out how much you had in common with folks that you never thought they were anywhere near where you were at. It could be such a lonely time because you feel like you're the only one going through this. And adults, one of the things that I find with adults is they think that high school is such a wonderful time. But you're really so restricted in your options. In many ways, it's very confining and very stressful to go through this episode of trying to develop yourself as a person within the context of living with your parents and going through a high school with people you're worth since kindergarten. A lot of our students, so we work directly with youth in the high school. And hoping next year we'll work more with our middle school students. And a lot of our students say that the stressors that cause this anxiety, this frustration with school, is because of a lack of things to do. Now I don't know if that's just the idea of social media and seeing all of the perfect world of celebrities. Or if it's the fact that they really do not think or believe that there is anything to do. And so a lot of our students are turning to alcohol and to drugs because they think that is a way to have fun and to fit in. When we see that the majority of our students are not using substances, but they perceive that they are, because the ones who have fun are the ones who are using substances and at these parties posting on social media what have you. So it's definitely what one of our goals is to create more opportunities to support youth and to give them more fun things to do that aren't drugs and alcohol that are just getting together, gathering. I mean students talk so much about the last blast and how much fun that's going to be and how even students who have graduated come back and they say, oh man, we wish that we had five last blasts. That was so much fun because we were just with our classmates hanging out. So we're really looking for opportunities to kind of create that cohesive fun times where students can just be that, be kids. Ms. Starks. So my question was about the testing. So it sounds like it's a one-on-one conversation with each student. Yes, correct. And is it like, so it's the same person who talks to all the students. So the screening, Esper, we have a screening team and it's made up of all the school nurses, essentially. And then what we're going to do is essentially split up the class between the four or five nurses that we have doing the screenings and give them a list of students to screen. And what I'm going to do beforehand is make sure that the nurse doesn't have a personal relationship with the student. We don't want them to be the neighbor of somebody because they're going to be disclosing this personal confidential information. But there's only so much you can do to protect that. With that being said, after the screening, we're going to gather as a team, along with all the guidance counselors at the Audison, and discuss these cases. So anytime that there is a student who has identified as a risk for developing a substance use disorder, that's essentially what the screening identifies. We'll have a chance to go through the process and talk to the person who's screened. The student will be able to talk about the issue with the student's guidance counselor and then refer to services if they need to. With the student's consent. Correct. With the student's consent. Because again, this is a confidential screening between the student and the screener. And do we think that we might expand it in the future to other grades or just always, I mean, it seems to me, if you've hit them, that's great. But then what happens in 9th or 10th? Well, we have a great question. So the mandate from the state said pick one grade to start. OK. But the plan is to go, we'll start with the middle school. We want to get them young. Yep. And then expand to the high school the year after. So I think the high school can be in the 9th grade, yes. That's what we're thinking. So we're piloting it this coming year. And we'll see. But it's a work in progress. All right. Cool. It's the same screening tool that we use in medical offices. Yes. It's a pretty commonly used screening tool. It's unpredictable. Cool. Thanks. Mr. Hanner. Two questions. One related to this. Do you see any connection between this issue and the anxiety? Between substance use and anxiety? Oh, definitely. The other question I have. Do you have statistics breakdown on grade levels at Audison on the anxiety? Yes. I guess. I don't have it with me. No, no, no. That's not if I may expand. I'm just seeing the issue of the new students coming in. 6th grade is coming from the elementary schools not knowing anybody. A higher level of anxiety on entrance. I mean, anxiety is caused by, as you said, social media and other things like that. But that particular thing and being new in the building and stuff like that, I don't know. I don't see that. You don't see it. No, I don't see that. I mean, that's not to say there aren't 6th graders dealing with anxiety. There certainly are. I think it's the 7th and the 8th graders more to be honest with you. Are you able to determine that you seem very strong on the, one of the major contributing factors is the social media? That's my personal belief. OK. That I apologize if I didn't preface that. My personal belief is it is, because this is what sometimes the kids will come in and say. They're really upset. They're really upset. But they wouldn't tell you at first. Anxiety in school has been there forever. And I'm an example of forever. The social media was just talking to somebody and asking a girl out when she said, no, I'd be crushed like that. Now it gets published throughout the whole building to make it worse. OK. Thank you. I was just looking at our youth risk behavior survey data. We just received our brand new data today, this morning. And it's not even an electronic version. Otherwise, I would have shared it with you all. Once I get that, I'll be able to share it. But I was looking at it and we asked a question, what brings the most stress to your life? This is high school students. We ask them homework, friends. Is it family problems? Is it future thinking? And the majority of them say homework. Homework is what brings me the most stress. And future planning is also. And if you take those two issues, you can't eliminate homework and you can't eliminate future planning. So it might just be the compounded effort of everything that's adding to it. And I'm sure we have that data as well for the middle school. And it's broken down. It's on the website. So yeah, we can pull it up. Very specific data is how many kids we can divide it out by grades, what they come down for specifically. Yeah, I'm sure you have actual data too. But it's pretty comparable to last year's data. Thank you. Anybody have a question? So my question is, if you look back at data, and how far back can you go? And what do the trends tell you? So is there an increase in stress? And are students statistically? And how far back does your data go? I have a graph that's coming to my head right now from 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. So those four years, and we are seeing an increase in stress among high school and middle school students. All grade levels. All grade levels. OK. Even the little ones, I mean. Even elementary school students. So there's an increase in stress. And you think that trend line from 2009 to 2016 is media related as well as your theory, right? Oh, yeah. But not as psychologists. I just want to prep as that. OK, but are there any other theories? I guess even more than theories. When you're talking to students and you're interviewing them and you're doing an assessment of their situation, what other things do you see besides my friends were invited to a party and I wasn't. And I saw it on social media. I saw it on Facebook or wherever they saw it. Certainly a lot of peer issues. I think that's probably number one. But they will talk about the stress of their work in class. Sometimes we can even look to see if there's a trend of which class they're coming from a lot. And home life, sometimes they'll say things are tough at home. But I would say peer issues are number one. Yeah, Dr. Cheson, I was going to ask you the next question. So good. One of the things that many districts have started to look at, there is actually a documentary called The Race to Nowhere. And it is very common at the high school level for students to feel a pressure, unlike the pressure that we might have seen before. A vast majority of kids are going on to college where before there might have been other options. You might have gone into work or it might have been more acceptable or more common to go into the service. Now that the vast majority of kids are at least striving to go to college, it doesn't surprise me that you say homework. We see kids that in the past, when kids used to take one or two AP classes, now it's the norm to take four or five. And that creates a level of stress and anxiety for students. And that's something we're going to be working on. That's one of the reasons that we were happy to get a grant from the Arlington Educational Foundation to really look at safe and supportive schools and to do a master plan over the summer for a K-12 program. Thank you. Because that's where I was getting it. I think social media is certainly a part of it. I also think that we have raised our standards. This is a town with higher expectations for young people. It's more competitive academically, which is all very positive, very positive. It's something we've worked on as a committee. We've wanted to accelerate academic outcomes. We've been working hard on that over the past decade or so. But I think one of the outcomes of all that is that that increases stress. Well, sure, because what are all the seniors doing right now? Yeah, they're stressed. Well, it's May, so they've already decided, right? They've decided, but it's all still being posted. And it's about those that are weightless. Look, and I'm living this right now. I know. I can tell you. The weight list says, there, I joke around with everybody. I say, right now, my daughter's a puddle. We just, the whole thing has been stressful. And I just compound that throughout the district. And it gets worse. I was just thinking the other day, if there's x amount of colleges, but the population's increasing, there's a lot more rejection letters, right? So because there's fewer spots in the colleges to take these students that are coming up, I mean, Ben and Jerry's has to come out with an ice cream seasonally called rejection letter. You think I'm serious? I believe it. That's why. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right. So we'll hear you. Well, the other thing with college acceptances is the technology makes it easier to apply for more colleges. So you've got more people applying for seats, so more of a chance for rejection on that front alone. And more students applying. Yeah, so it's huge. So in this summer, you're going to be doing some planning around how do we provide more support? How are we more proactive? Yeah, K through 12, safe and supportive schools. That'll be the summer. And that's part of our goals, proposed goals for FY17. Great goal. Yeah, that's great. All right. Any other questions? I would like to just say one thing. I want to do a shout out to Julie Dunn. Yes. She helped me write a lot of the grants that we received in the last few years, and she's been phenomenal. So I just want to let you know I think that I greatly appreciate the work that she's done. Very talented. Julie is the Julie Dunn as the grant administrator and also the director of communications for the district. And she does a phenomenal job. She does. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. Well, would people object to maybe inviting the cultural competency group to make a presentation? Mr. Schlickman. I mean, I think that because it's the superintendent's goals, I think we should do it with the superintendent. Go ahead and do the superintendent. I don't object. Gifts to discussion. Would Dr. Chesson like to tell us about how park is going? Let's get the gibs. Let's stay with the gibs. We should go to gibs. We'll give gibs, yeah, please. If you want, I can summarize with you. Yeah, so why don't we, Dr. Bodie sent us a memo this afternoon, or the small recommendation on the gibs recommending that the Arlington School Committee adopt or direct her to reconfigure the gibs as a sixth grade school. And Dr. Chesson is the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction assessment as best prepared as Dr. Bodie to talk to this issue. So why don't you summarize this for us? Sure. As Mr. Schlickman just said, Dr. Bodie's recommendation is that the school committee configure the gibs school as sixth grade only. And so I just want to summarize a few of the points that she has taken into consideration. Having all sixth graders together in the same school will present a unique opportunity for the students from seven elementary schools to come together as a class. It'll also present an opportunity for us to develop a specialized schedule. Right now, the sixth grade schedule is subject to the seventh and eighth grade schedule constraints. And so this would allow us to develop a schedule that was much more focused on the needs of sixth graders. Having a sixth grade only school versus a sixth through eighth grade school eliminates the potential for inequity between two very unevenly sized sixth through eighth grade middle schools. So if we created two middle schools, one would be almost twice the size of the other. Six grade students, as we heard today, can benefit socially and emotionally from having this transition year and from having a much more personalized education. There is definitely, and if you've ever been in a middle school, there's a notable difference between sixth grade and eighth grade students. And a difference in school can be both beneficial and detrimental, so that would be something that we would be able to target or work towards those students. Also, bringing those students together from the seven elementary schools would allow them to have a larger pool of students with a similar interest with two smaller middle schools. You would only be able to meet a portion of the schools. And this would allow us to develop an identity that could be better nurtured in a small learning environment. There has been some discussion about the additional transitions that students would have to go through. And generally, when those are more focused on, is looking at individual students moving from school to school or district to district. But in this situation, the sixth grade would move as a cohort, so this we believe would mitigate the effect of moving from one building to another because they're moving with their friends. And also, as we talk to the folks in Needham, we need to just be cognizant of that transition and plan for it ahead of time. The Gibbs School is a much more navigable school than the Audison Middle School, and that's an understatement, I think. Incoming sixth grade students who are transitioning from smaller elementary schools will most likely have at least be able to feel like the Gibbs is a little bit more manageable, or a lot more manageable, actually, than the Audison Middle School. Smaller schools have been shown to increase a sense of community, and positive school culture is really important at the sixth grade level. And finally, the incremental costs of a sixth grade-only school are about half of those that would be incurred if we replicate a sixth through eighth grade school, primarily because of the number of programs that would have to be replicated for equity. And so that's the summary of, I think, the major points that Dr. Bode took into consideration when making this recommendation. Okay, so I think what we can do before Dr. Bode comes is just ask Dr. Chaston any questions you want about the configuration. In terms of the timeline, at the last school committee meeting, Dr. Seuss announced that the, we're gonna hold a public hearing at Town Hall on Tuesday, May 24th at 7 p.m., Tuesday, May 24th at 7 p.m., and there'll be a presentation by Dr. Bode on the sixth grade versus sixth through eighth model, and there'll be also presentations by members of the Odyssey Middle School staff. And then a possibility was to vote on the 26th of May. Anyone can make a motion whenever they want. But before we make a motion, maybe we can just ask Dr. Chaston any questions she has about this recommendation, or anyone can hold pine on the recommendation of Dr. Bode. So we get a sense. Mr. Cardin. Yes, I know Ms. Elmer is not here, but has there been any progress in addressing the concerns of the special education teachers about the sixth grade model? Can you say which of those concerns that? Well, the presentation in April, the survey of the Odyssey teachers, the subgroup of the special education teachers, 70% were against the sixth grade only model. I think there was a concern about whether there would be, we would replicate the programs at the Gibbs for sixth grade, and the incremental costs that Dr. Bode has given actually have replicated those programs. So that was a concern. There was a concern that if we had two middle schools, would there just be those special education programs at one school as opposed to at both schools? And with their sixth grade only recommendation and with the incremental costs stating that there would at least be consideration if there were students that needed in a specialized learning community that we would have those programs at the Gibbs, I think that has answered the vast majority. That was really what their concerns were centered around. They wanted to ensure that students that were in an included environment for their special education plan would be able to have those opportunities, but there would also be those specialized learning communities for any student that needed that in her incremental cost plan accounts for both of those. Okay, Ms. Elmer had said she was preparing two different models, but clearly that model would be one model. Do you know what the other model would be? My understanding is that whatever the other model is has been set aside. Okay, thank you. So if there is a need for students in a supported learning community. Yes. An SLC at the Gibbs in the sixth grade. It will be provided, yes. Okay, that was the major issue. That's what's included in the incremental cost budget at this point. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. Yeah, I mean, just one minute, Mr. Schlickman. Sure. So Dr. Allison Ampe sent you and I an email. Yes, I'm about to read that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Dr. Allison Ampe sent an email with the following topics that she'd like to see addressed going to the future. And the topics are, how all concerns of our special education specialists be addressed? How would we make transitions less problematic for our special education students and our other students? How will we address the effects under Gibbs sixth only configuration on traffic? Arlington wide near Gibbs and what is their plan to address a mitigation of any increased traffic? So those are her four questions. And also she asked that these be addressed in advance of the next meeting. So I'll pass that on to Dr. Bodie. I mean, I believe I've answered the first question. I'm not aware of what the plans are regarding the mitigation of traffic. I will make sure that Dr. Bodie has those concerns. Now, I want to say something on my own observation about traffic is that the traffic at the Addison right now is pretty awful. And the geography there is difficult because you're dropping off in a configuration of narrow and or dead end streets. So this is not the ideal place for a pickup and drop off for a school community. Now, obviously we're generating traffic to the Addison from all over town. So that compared to what we're doing at the Addison now, we're just sort of splitting it. So what's now the Addison six, it would be moving to the Gibbs, which would relieve the pressure at the Addison. It certainly wouldn't be as great a reduction if we went to six, seven, eight on both ends of town and people didn't have to cross through the middle. But it's certain, I view it as an improvement over what currently happens. And the question that I asked Monday night was that all our elementary schools are walked to, but there are a lot of cars hanging around these schools in the morning. Just because it's a walk, it's within walking distance, doesn't mean that the kids will actually walk to school. That's great. We'll still generate a lot of cars, regardless of if it's four blocks or 40 blocks. It is what it is. So I'm looking at upon it in a couple of ways. First of all, the finance committee has said, you really need to be looking critically at the sixth grade only model over at the Gibbs because of the incremental costs. It would cost more to duplicate. Secondly, the educational recommendations from the superintendent, I think are very compelling. Excuse me, that in itself are good reasons, but I think that there's a certain element of disruption as well, because instead of bringing kids together, the split would necessitate students who are now currently Bishop students being split apart. And rather than being a unifying factor of having the sixth grade together, to actually take that Bishop community and disassemble it between Ottison and Gibbs because five plus two is seven and that doesn't divide evenly by three. So you're gonna have some very unhappy people in the center of town, which is my neighborhood. So unless something really, really impressive comes down the road between now and the end of the month from this public hearing, the pillars seem to be lined up at least in my mind to go for sixth grade over at the Gibbs. And I don't want to have every opportunity for everybody to have their say, but I don't want it to be perceived that we're not at least leaning, or at least I'm not at least leaning in a direction because we've been looking at this issue for over a year and there's been a lot of evidence placed before us. Let me just so summarize for the superintendent for the chair, the chair's let me gonna, well let me finish this part of the meeting that she takes over. So we're talking about the proposal by Dr. Bodie to reconfigure the Gibbs school as a sixth grade. We discussed, I presented that reminded people of the timeline we talked about, which was a public hearing on May 24th and then a vote, possibly a vote on May 26th. Mr. Cardin raised questions about the supported learning communities, the SLCs. Dr. Cheson answered that if necessary we can have an SLC. I said it's included in Dr. Bodie's incremental cost budget. It's included in Dr. Bodie's incremental cost budget. There were questions about traffic and that's what we're talking about now and Mr. Schlickman, who's an expert on traffic. You are, in some respects. I've memorized the MUTCD. Yeah, so that's, an expert has enlightened us on it. Anyone else wanna speak, go. So I think that while we do have to work with the town and come up with a plan for traffic, I don't think that that's necessarily something that we have to solve before we make a decision. I don't think that we're gonna be able to have every I dotted and every T crossed once we've made the decision. And I think what we need to do is make the decision so we can start doing all of that work. And I really still feel that I'm not really sure why we're having this forum on the 24th because between the superintendent's recommendation, the school enrollment task force is leaning and the finance committee's recommendation. And all of the Otteson staff and administration and their recommendation that it be a sixth grade. I really wanna know if anyone on this committee, if a thousand parents showed up and screamed at us that it had to be a sixth through eight, would we actually change our mind? Because I feel like it is up to us to make this educational decision.  And so I feel like we are having this forum on the 24th and I feel like it's a false forum because we have already made a decision. I really feel like we are so far into making this decision and I think that we should vote it tonight and that we should make the 24th a forum on why we're moving in the direction we're going and why we made the decision and start having people help us create committees who are gonna start to think through some of the solutions to some of the problems that we're gonna have in making this. I think that the longer we wait, I just feel like we don't need to wait any longer and I just feel like the longer we wait, it just muddies the waters. Okay, so Ms. Stark said she wanted to talk about this tonight and we said we'd wait until the chair and the superintendent were here. They're here, Mr. Hayner, then Mr. Cardin and then we'll go over here, okay? So I agree with everything Ms. Stark said. I was ready to vote for this configuration after the first time the superintendent, well I shouldn't say that, when the superintendent brought it forward, I still had misgivings, but I was totally converted after my trip to Needham and I was ready to go for that then. We initially talked about having a forum back at the beginning of this month. For whatever reason, it was canceled. Then the idea was not to vote until after the vote June 14th and then we had, when the task force came up with their final vote and discussion from the finance committee and on the incremental costs and stuff, we then decided to have a forum. I agree with Ms. Stark's. I think this is the way to go for education for the best parts of the kids. We've got support from the teachers, from the superintendent and everything and it's the financial way to go. I agree that on the 24th, we come together as a school committee and educators and stuff and explain to the parents and respond to any issues that the parents have. Traffic, it seems to be, I've had a couple of emails on that. The person got up the other night at town meeting and discussed that. Mr. Schuchman said it. The worst traffic in the world of all our schools is the Odyssey currently with an increased population and it's just that much, it's there. It's a bad situation and people will be driving to the kids even if they live two blocks away. That's a fact. So I'm in support of what Ms. Stark said. Mr. Cardin. Thank you. So this decision is gonna affect every single student in Arlington, third grade or below, every single future student coming into Arlington. So maybe we should have had a parent forum earlier but we did not. So I think we owe it to our parents to listen to them. I am undecided if a thousand parents in the great majority take the time to listen to the presentation of the superintendent, listen to the presentation of the students, of the teachers and still lobby me and still insist that the two middle school solution is better, I'm gonna take that seriously and it does, it may change my vote. So I am in favor of proceeding with the forum as planned and I think people who are following this understand that a majority of the committee very much favors the sixth grade option only and those of you can state that at that meeting as well at the beginning to put them on notice but it's such a major decision, it affects every single student that I do think we need a chance for parent input in a formal manner. Okay, Dr. Seuss. Yeah, I agree with Mr. Cardin. So the way I see things of having happened is that we put off this discussion until it was clear that Gibbs was going through the option and we kept saying to ourselves and to each other, we're not yet talking about the configuration because we still have not finalized the decision about Gibbs and the task force had not found this decision and that just happened relatively recently. I don't see the need to make the decision two weeks earlier, two weeks later necessarily. What we need to do is absolutely make the decision by the end of the year so that when they start doing the construction documents we have that information. Now, I know that two of the members who are most urging us to do this make the decision now had very different opinions earlier but you've gone through a process and you've heard some different thoughts and you've changed your mind. The parents haven't gone through that process. They, some of them have been tuned in from the very beginning, some are just starting to tune in now, they have initial feelings, they haven't really heard from everyone. We need to give parents the opportunities to hear the information that we've heard and voice their opinion, their thoughts or concerns to us and I just don't see an advantage to rushing a decision that is, as Mr. Cardin says, it's a huge decision. It's a big decision about the structure of education in Arlington. Dr. Ford, did you want to comment? Did I want to comment? Well, I would be happy to be there on the 24th to hear thoughts that people have worries, concerns, to the extent that they can be answered then, that would be terrific. If there are questions that need further research, then those are questions that we could look at and create an FAQ later. So I think there's some value in that part of it. I gotta say this. We took, we invited the staff to come when the enrollment task force, they came and did a lengthy presentation. We questioned them. This is an open, we're on TV. It's presented several times. Parents should be aware of this. If we continue to, I'm not saying we have to take the vote tonight, but if we continue to delay because people have questions they want answered, this can be stalled ad infinitum. You've stated we have to take a vote. My understanding, first off, this meeting on the 24th has to be sponsored by somebody and I think it should be the school committee that is sponsoring this and running this. It should be a school committee meeting just for this purpose. On the 26th, I pushed at the last school committee meeting, the special one that we had. The 26th should be the drop dead date for us to vote on this. If people continually, if people have questions to ask, parents or anyone else from the committee or anyone else, they should be given to Dr. Bodie before the 26th, the 24th. Not at that night because we can stall this forever. Mr. Schluckman. Okay, from my perspective of having been through, having been at every meeting and having been through this and having lived and breathed the decision surrounding the Gibbs for a year, I am very comfortable with the decision and would happily take a vote right now. I don't think that waiting two weeks is going to change the result. My one, I have concerns on two sides of the table. Side of the table, one is that we're going for a dead exclusion vote and the earlier we can tell people with definitively what we are doing, I think it's better and I don't want to see decisions that are likely to be made being held out. I'd rather be able to go and say definitively we are going to make this a sixth only and this is the reason why. On the other hand, we have a new member of this committee who hasn't gone through the process. And given the atmosphere that we have just set forth that we do seem to have a majority of the committee that seems to be firmly committed to Gibbs Six, I think the message to the community is out there. For that reason, I think we can wait two weeks to cast the vote on the 26th to allow Mr. Cardin to have the benefit of a forum and the folks who show up as well as the evidence that we've presented to this point. But I also agree firmly with Mr. Heiner that we will vote this on the 26th and we will make a firm decision. And I see no reason to wait any further. Okay, go ahead. I have another. Yeah, go ahead. I guess my perspective is I see no disadvantage in waiting. We know that we don't have to make any decisions about plans until the summer and until after the vote. And I see a real disadvantage in being perceived by the community to have rushed what is a very significant decision and not have heard from all the stakeholders. So I just, I don't see any downside to waiting at all. I mean, I understand that people are frustrated but just don't see any downside. And I do see a real serious downside with being perceived to have not heard from everyone. And the 26th would be comfortable? No, no, I mean, I feel like we've, that we'll be ready, the community will be more ready. And I feel like that is a valuable thing to do. I just don't see any downside to waiting. Well, there's no motion on the table for us to debate. And I think if it were made, it might be defeated. So why don't we, I mean, Mr. Cardin, if we, I know you don't know what'll happen, but do you think on the 26th she'll have enough information to be able to cast a vote? Yes, certainly. Okay, so Ms. Starks. Okay, so I really want there, I want to understand what the planning is then for the 24th, what the messages that we're sending. And I want to be very clear with people where we stand, okay? Because I really, I really feel like we have sold this as a forum to help us make a decision and that's, I'm really not using it as that. And so I don't want, I'm worried that we are giving the wrong impression because I'm fairly certain how I'm gonna vote and where I'm gonna vote. And you know, I just, because I understand that people want to have a walkable school and I understand that they want a middle school near them and I hear those concerns. But I also have heard the educational and the financial and I feel like that is how I'm gonna vote. And so I'm just worried that we are sending the wrong message. So I really want to make sure that the message we send on the 24th is that we're really close to making this decision and what we want is to hear things that people want to make sure that we hear and make sure that we know how we're gonna, things that we can put on a list to make sure that we handle moving forward. But I don't want it to be sold as a, come and let us know which way you think we should do this because that's really not what it is. Okay, all right, got it. Maybe Dr. Bodie and Dr. Seuss can just talk to the schedule or the agenda for the forum on the 24th, which I've always understood was gonna be sponsored by the school committee and you're gonna chair, all right? That's fine, we're unsure. I wasn't sure if it was a forum, but that's fine. Well, what do you have? So have you kind of given some thought to what it's gonna look like and what the presentation's gonna look like when we talk about that? The thinking is that it's also a forum for education. While we think that a lot of people are watching us this evening, some do, some don't. They may not be. There are better shows on TV. It may not be their favorite rerun either. But I think that there are a lot of people who are just learning about this and I think they'd like to hear what my rationale is for both the Gibbs, just as a school, and then Gibbs as a sixth grade. So that's what I would plan to do and also maybe show them some of the sketches. Now, the Audison teachers are very much want to come and also give their perspective on why they think this is the best option as well. In fact, they've been bounced over a couple of dates and each time I've mentioned a new date, they're just right there. So they're very eager to share that. So I think that it might be an opportunity for people who want to understand better and have specific questions about this or express some of their concerns because there are going to be concerns and people are going to be anxious about this. And so I think it's an opportunity for them to hear. If you've already voted, it still could be a valuable form regardless of whether you vote tonight or later because I think I see it more as an opportunity for education. Okay, going along with this, could we have all the documents that we've received from the teachers, from you prior and tonight, could we make those available online for the community ahead of time? So people come in and that... Yeah, there, we can put them in. I understand that, but maybe mark it in some way. Not buried in Novus. Yeah, but I put them all in one spot and the website worked. With an invitation to come the 24th to learn more. Yes. Yes, we'll get to that way. So I think one, okay, I think we got to close this discussion. So I think the, and then talk about goals because we have people waiting for over an hour here to talk about it. So I think what we can do is, I mean, if it's a sense of the committee that we want to have on the agenda for the 26th, which Dr. Seuss draws up with Dr. Bodhi a week before, a few days before, we can have on the agenda if that's everyone's position, vote on Addison Middle School configurations. Is that on the 26th? Okay, so let's buy agreement. We don't need to take a motion. The agenda on the 26th of May will have on it a item that says vote on sixth grade configuration. Okay, so that's what we're gonna do. I think we're gonna close the conversation and go to the goal. Yep. There's also on here the timeline. Well, that's the timeline. It was actually put on here before we talked on Monday. So we now serve another timeline. Okay, so when are we voting as well? We have to vote to take the Gibbs back. We have to have that formal vote. Well, so that has to benefit that exclusion. Because otherwise we don't have any money to do anything with it. Oh, okay, so that's not, that was. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, Mr. Schlickman. Let's make it contingent. We can take a vote contingent on you. You know, I think the debt exclusion is gonna happen. However, I don't want to make this contingent on the debt exclusion. Because what happened, okay, let's say hypothetically, what happens if the debt exclusion fails? It means we can't renovate the building. But schools for children is already moving out. It is a school, there are classrooms. And we may have to occupy that without doing a renovation. I don't want there to be a thought that, well, if the debt exclusion fails, well, maybe they won't take the building back. Because we need to. And if we can't do the renovation, we're so desperate for space, we'll probably do something with it over the course of the time while we're waiting to get approval for the renovation. Now, I have full confidence in this town that they're gonna go to the ballot on June 14th and vote yes for the debt exclusion so we can do the renovation. But even if we don't, we can't afford to put that building in limbo for another year, especially with one of the tenants already committed to moving out. Okay, Dr. Bodie, do you have any response to that? Does that sound like good? It's possible. One of the things I think has been rather shocking to us as a town is the cost of modular classrooms. Yeah. And I think as this whole area only needs more of them, the market is going to make them more expensive. So I think that that could be a calculated thing that we'd have to look at. It certainly would not be ideal because there's a lot of things we would, there are things we would actually have to do, I think, unless we label it a temporary. In temporary, you can get around some of the, some things. But it certainly wouldn't be ideal because it would never be, perhaps, used the way it could be used. But yes, it's possible. It would not be ideal because it wouldn't be the number that we would have there at all. All right, so we have a request from two members for the next agenda on the 26th to also include a vote on repurposing Gibbs. Yes. Yes. Three members. Four members. No, no. Oh, no. Sorry, you only speak to it, okay, sorry. Yeah, so I disagree. So I've talked to Dr. Bowie about this. What I understand is that we could not, say, stick students in there for any long period of time without money, really. That's right. But we could stick them in there for temporary time for maybe the rebuilding of the high school. So potentially it could be used, but we couldn't, without doing a lot of renovations, which would be very expensive, add put sixth graders there or something, from what I understand. A major reason during the long-range planning discussions that we decided to do a June 14th vote was it was felt to be unfair to make a decision about the Gibbs tenants without the money in hand. Here's another case where I don't see any harm in waiting. I think it gives the voters, our original decision for making it June was the right thing to do would be to have the money in hand and then say the Gibbs tenants formally, I mean, they already know what's happening, but formally, we're now formally taking it over. I just don't think it's gonna help the campaign. I just don't, I don't see any great advantage of it. Mr. Cardin, you wanna weigh in on this? Are you covering? Yes, I was just gonna say the same thing. I mean, I think the correct order is, as has been discussed with other actors in town, and again, we're not acting alone, is first get the money and then give the notice. Everybody knows what's happening. Everybody knows it's, Mr. Schlickman said that it's extremely likely that we are gonna get the money. The tenants are looking for other space. It's just a formal notice procedure. They're not gonna get the notice anyways from the town. It's the town administrator that gives the notice. He's not gonna give the notice till the end of June anyways. So, to us to vote to take the school back before we have money to do anything with it, just doesn't seem quite right. What do you reckon? Mr. Schlickman. Well, whether there's a majority right now who's thinking this way or not, I think the possibility will be on the agenda so that if there are four votes to take it back, it'll be there, so I'd like to ask that be on the agenda. Okay, so I think what we have on the agenda is vote on configuration, grade configuration at Gibbs Middle School. Vote on configuration at Gibbs Middle School. Discussion on repurpose of Gibbs. And vote. Potential vote. I want the possibility of a potential vote. I think in the meantime, I mean, Mr. Cardin makes a good point. It's the town manager who signs the agreements with the tenants and it's a school district that has the power to repurpose the building, correct? Our role, your role in this is to basically take it out of surplus to re... Now, we have nothing to do with the leases there while it is under their control. The time, we may need the building regardless, but the timing, you have time until the end of June to make the decision. Why don't we also, do we have the actual vote in Doug Hyam that we need to, is there a language for that? I requested that several meetings ago that someone find out the specific language from town council. And my understanding when I talked to him privately was that the school department can declare a building surplus and request it be taken out of surplus. The town has the final decision on that. So the only vote that we would be having on the 26th regarding this is a request. And I would ask once again to get town council to give us council on this. I have, and he said there's no certain kind of motion, not like MSBA that you have to have every I and T, every I dotted, T crossed. In fact, just what you said is probably a sufficient wording for what you need to do. It's not, yeah. What's a request to take it out of surplus? Okay, just like a matter of press for vote, we can. Yeah, I want to be able to vote it in two weeks if a majority of the members should, so desires. Okay, so I think we've discussed this and the chair is back. This topic is over and the school committee has a much better hands now. So one thing left. No, no, I don't think that. Back to work. Now, so the only thing we have left to do are the district goals and that, go ahead. We've done everything else. We've done everything else, okay, great. And we've done the reports too? All the reports. Yeah, we did everything. What? Yeah, I should go. I know, we have more efficient than I am, clearly. You're on three more committees, though. Goals, goals, goals. Goals, goals. So just to let you know what we're doing right now, the remaining thing is we have two things and they're related. We want to give a first viewing of the district goals that then will be discussed more fully at the subcommittee meeting. And we also want to hear from the superintendents, what is it called? Diversity Advisory Committee, who have a suggestion for an addition to our district goals. And I have to say, if you've seen Dr. Bodie's goals, there is something on there, but it's not exactly, I know what your suggestion is. So I'd like to consider them both in the next few weeks. And I'd like to invite, who's speaking to this? We have the whole, pretty much the whole team here. There's a few people missing, but this has been a terrific group of people that I work with on a regular basis to talk about these issues, as well as plan, Mr. Spiegel's on that committee and Mr. Hayner, Kimes. To talk about how we can increase the diversity of our staff. And they've worked very, very hard with us to put coffees on. They've reached out to all of these applicants to invite them personally, which has had a very positive, it made a very positive impression on the candidates who have come to our coffees, which we have been told. So they are a committee that both thinks about these things in a very deep way, but also roll up their sleeves and help when we need to get some things done. So they have submitted a rationale and ideas about culture proficiency goal. I'm fine with beginning with their presentation. And then we can talk about the goal. Yeah, I think that'd be easier. That'd be great.  So Miriam Stein is. And Pearl Morris is coming up. Actually, why don't you guys introduce yourselves? And it'd be great if you gave us a definition of cultural competency because I know that it's. It's in there. Yeah, for the viewers at home. Unfortunately, there's only one mic so I have to keep going back and forth. We try to be pretty flexible. I'd just like to clarify, we are the Cultural Competence Subcommittee. You introduce yourself by name for the. Yeah, we will do that. Yeah, okay. We're the Cultural Competence Subcommittee of the Superintendent's Diversity Advisory Committee. Only three of us are going to speak. Okay. And the rest of the people we wanted you to know who they are. I'm Miriam Stein. I've lived in Arlington for 42 years. And both my children have gone through the Arlington Public Schools. My name is Regina Keynes. I've been in town about 20 years now. And I have a grandson who went to the Odyssey and graduated from the high school. My name is Pearl Morrison. I lived in Arlington. I've owned a home in Arlington for 42 years. I've had two kids. They've attended the Arlington Public Schools. My name is Ann Mathis. I just realized I've lived in Arlington for 44 years. Stating myself. And I raised a biracial daughter in the Arlington school system. I'm Arlington almost 24 years now. And two of my grandsons have gone all the way through the Arlington schools from the Thompson. I've lived in Arlington for 30 years. And I've had the grandchildren, nieces and nephews going to school up to the high school. I've had my grandchildren up to three or four years. Welcome. Hi, youngster. I'm here to present the problem of diversity. We want to thank Superintendent Bode for listening to our concerns and issues. We want to thank the school committee for giving us this opportunity to speak here tonight. And we look forward to talking with you at the subgroup. We're here to ask you to set cultural competency as one of the four major district goals for the upcoming year and beyond. The goal we are proposing highlights cultural competency training for administrators, department heads, teachers and staff to be completed within the next two years. We're convinced that it is essential for all adults in the school system to participate. I'll read the goal that we have put forward. It's also in the material on Novus, I guess it's called. The Arlington Public Schools will establish a cultural competency task force to address unconscious bias, coordinate initiatives that are currently underway, which is a really good start and arrange for and initiate cultural competency training district wide. The task force will have a part-time coordinator and will be composed of individuals with diverse voices committed to and experienced with cultural competency. The strategic initiatives you can see on your material it includes having administrators and department heads complete cultural competency training by June 2017 and teachers and other staff complete the training by 2018 as well as increasing the hiring of a diverse workforce. Why are we doing this now? It's not just because of disturbing incidents in our schools and reports of discrimination and disrespect in the schools and the community. Arlington and its schools are not immune from the social climate in our larger society. Some bias is overt. Often teachers don't know how to respond or are uncomfortable doing so. Some of our bias is unconscious and we all have biases. We're often not aware of our favorable or unfavorable expectations or assessments of other people based on their characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, height, appearance, weight or accent. Our unconscious biases don't necessarily align with our conscious beliefs. All these can affect who gets hired, teachers' expectations for students or for colleagues for just some examples. Our full proposal that we've given to all of you in paper copies explains the rationale and gives some really, we think good examples of this. Regina Keynes will tell us a short story of her grandson's teacher who participated in a cultural competency training. As a result, the teacher successfully reframed what could have been an isolating experience for the young boy into an inclusive teaching moment. Thanks Miriam. I shared this story with the group and they thought it was fairly relevant to what we're trying to convey to you this evening. The same grandson that graduated from the high school started school in an independent school, a school that has an anti-bias curriculum which may be a close synonym to cultural competency. He was part of a small group of five boys whose parents allowed them to be kind of the test for the beginning of a first grade. He was the only child of color, the only African-American child, the other children were all Caucasian. One afternoon, one of the curious little boys noticed the difference between his hair and my grandson's hair. So he went and he touched it and it was very different from the other boy's hair. It made my grandson a little uncomfortable and he may have for the first time noticed the difference himself. So the teacher immediately took note and she said, oh, by the way, Dave, why don't you let my grandson's name is Chase?  And he did. She says, well, touch one another's hair. Tell me what's different about all the hair that you're touching and they thought, all right. And she says, well, let's go over to the map on the wall. She said, you know, I need to explain to you why we sometimes, some of us have certain characteristics and some others of us don't. And she said, you know, in different parts of the world nature takes care of us by helping us develop characteristics that make us able to resist some of the elements. And that's why some of us look this way, coming from this part of the world, others of us look this way. And she said, tomorrow I'm gonna bring a microscope to school so you can see what different hair looks like under the microscope. Well, to my grandson, there was never anything I know because he often would tell me, I'd ask him, what did you do in school today? He'd say, we played. And this was evidence to him of a game they had played. So this is just to say that in a school where an anti-bias curriculum is a necessity for every teacher to know, every teacher to understand, may be second hand to some who have natural instincts towards what to do, but to many of us, including myself, you're not always aware of what to do and what to say unless you've been given the advantage of some kind of training and understanding that helps you. And I think most teachers are very positive minded and well-intended, but they don't always know what to do or what to say. Thanks. I'm exhibit A, right? You're exhibit A? I'm exhibit A because my background is in education. I started teaching in 1960 and I retired in 2003. I've been a classroom teacher elementary, several grades in a system principle and a supervising principle. And what I like about this story is true. What it did, what this teacher did was what I found that I often had to do as an administrator and even as a teacher in the school because I was the only black teacher in the city for a long time. But I found often what I had to do was switch the paradigm so that situations like these were matched from negative aspects of differences to positive, to make it a positive learning experience. I often found that my colleagues and I also found that many of our teachers, and I'm sure my teachers weren't much different from other teachers, found it very uncomfortable to address these cultural differences. First, they were concerned about what their colleagues may think about them. Secondly, they, even though the word politically correct wasn't that much touted at that time, but you know what I mean. They didn't feel as though it'd be politically correct to bring discussions of race in differences. And then I think some of them just thought that, well, you know, if they shared this conversation that some of their language may be too strong and discursive and cause people to think that they were prejudiced. So even though it's difficult for educators to discuss these cultural differences, it's something that I think at this point in time is probably one of the most important issues and projects that education has to face. And I think at the community and the school community, when they decide to take this on collectively and to understand how some of these racial relations and some racial issues, how they actually intimate to students. When that understanding happens, then I have found as an administrator in particular and as a parent in Allenton, I have found that there is growth and there's a vital growth, there's vitality and for both the educators and the students. So I think this is our responsibility, the Allenton Public Schools is our responsibility to immediately address this cultural competency as one of the four major smart goals in the district. We'd be happy to answer any questions or discuss any issues. Great, thank you. Questions, comments? Yeah, Mr. My question is what is the cost of the program? And I don't know if anyone from the administration can kind of talk about how we might go about implementing that or what kind of work would be required for that. Dr. Reddy, have you looked into that? Well, I'm not sure which program they're suggesting. We have offered this year EMI, which is a training which is multiple sessions. We all, when I say we all, the administrators have been working on district goals, recognize that this is a time not that we haven't been offering but having more emphasis on cultural proficiency. What those specific programs are going to be is something that is being discussed right now in fact. So yes, we think that that's very important. Now, there is a task force that we are, we're being, there's a planning task force that is looking at social, emotional culture of schools. And this is certainly a very important part of that that is being funded by AEF and that work is happening this summer. But we specifically pulled the cultural proficiency out of it because we do think that that requires, it's important to have that called out. So the answer is what is the cost? I don't, if we fit it within our current professional development calendar, it's going to be the cost if we have speakers for sure, but it's within our available time. When we offered it outside that time, we paid for the presenter and we did, we had not a great turnout for it, be perfectly honest. In part, what's going on in schools today is there's a lot of teachers still taking retail, administrators took retail this year. People are doing a lot of professional development that is mandated and there's only so much time. So I can come back to you later and tell you what that's going to look like, but right now what I can say is that it's something that is shared among, certainly the committee, but also among administrators. Is there also a cost? I assume that not only do we have to train teachers, but we have to purchase some materials and all of that as well. And it's time. We have for, at the secondary level, we have three one hour meetings a month. And at the elementary level, we have of course the Tuesday afternoons, which there's not a lot of time in that either. We had the one professional day and some time before the start of school. So we're limited in terms of what was in our range of professional development. We have control over it and have ability to mandate. Okay, Mr. Hainer? I guess my feeling is the importance of this is to the level, if all of a sudden we discovered we had students in our system that were literally physically harming themselves across the grade, we'd have an emergency session, we'd be sitting down finding ways to deal with it. I appreciate the need for money. There's no question on that. I see this as close to that as can be. As a society, very reactive. We've had two incidents that I'm aware of. I think there may have been more that have not hit the public thing. We have issues in this town with people identifying the importance of Black Lives Matter and then people tearing those things down. This to me is a very proactive way. I'm not saying cut things out. I don't want this, from my perspective, I don't want this to be a voluntary thing. I think this should be an integral part. I also appreciate teachers overworked and really burdened. But this to me, this concept of this is such an important thing because I can remember as a teacher, some of my biases, assuming that if a child was big, they had matured. That's not a fit. That's a bias on my part. Boys weren't as smart as girls in certain areas. And vice versa, there's gender bias. I taught in a community that had one Black student, he was in the high school, I never saw another one in my life as an educator. We have a lot of students of color. And I just see the importance of this and I would ask the superintendent, it is important for us, and we have to decide on the money aspect of this to work with these people, find out what the program is. I don't see it as one or two lectures. I don't see it as reading a book. I see it as an integral part of forcing me to identify my biases and working with people and finding a way to deal with it. I think what Regina shared with us, that's a phenomenal way of taking what I would have found very touchy at the beginning and making it a very positive aspect. I maybe I'm oversensitive to this now because I have Black kids in my family right now. But it shouldn't be, it shouldn't take that. We are basically a white middle-class community or upper middle-class community. We need to prepare our students and our kids for all this, thank you. It's your slip, Ben. We're not all that white. But certainly we are at this table. We're a more diverse community than we think and there's a lot of intermarriage and a lot of mixed families in this community, including mine. In Lowell, we're doing courageous conversations with the Institute for Social Change. And this was just mandated and we are doing this. And the first session was last month and they showed a film from a WGBH series and it highlighted two things. They touched very closely to home. One of which was the systemic housing discrimination following World War II in that black GIs coming home from war did not have the housing opportunities that white GIs did. And that defined wealth in families. It was the cheap homes that GIs bought coming home from World War II that built family wealth. And black folks were deprived of that. On Long Island, where I grew up and they were showing this film in places that I was familiar with. Not my community, but I'll tell you, before World War II, there are more black folks in town than after World War II. And the laws that were in place in the 1960s that permitted redlining and discrimination were even more stark than my childhood memory had. Which defines us for who we are right now and why certain families have more privilege than others. And then they went to the Japanese internment and I married to a Japanese woman so I mean I was just flat out on both of these things. And it took me about two days to recover from this. But it gives an important perspective. It gives a sense of history of not where we are right now but why we're where we are right now. And why we're facing some of these issues. And yeah, even in the New York metropolitan area, I think that growing up, there are gender and racial and ethnic biases that the culture just sort of put into us.  You're trying to treat people as they come to you. And it doesn't always quite work out the way you want. And sometimes we need to be reflective. The fact that Lowell's doing this in requiring this is huge. We had an incident in the high school last fall that wasn't right. It was done out of concern and trying to do the right thing but it wasn't and it was interpreted badly by the community and I think they had good cause for. People of goodwill and did the wrong thing. And I think that in a community as diverse as this one, we all come from different places and we need this commonality. Ms. Starks. I don't want my questions about cost to in any way make anyone think that I don't want this. Actually, as a teacher in the Lexington Public Schools where my students are also very diverse, I would welcome this as much. I know that retail was something that we were all told we had to do but having gone through that training, I'm really glad it was there. It brought an insight and an information to me as a teacher that I really am glad I have and it gave me a whole set of tools to help me better reach the students in my classroom who are there for the first year that they are here in our country. And I would like to hear from Ms. Foley actually if we were to offer some of these things. What do you think? I mean, as a teacher, I think I would welcome this and I would think that the Arlington teachers would probably be the same. I mean, we don't have enough conversations about these kinds of things and the sea of differences in our classrooms are enormous and I would love when Regina and I met and she told me that story. I thought, I wish I had had training so that when that happens to me, when that happens in my classroom, that I know how to respond, that I know the right things to say. It's the reason that we practice fire drills so that when it happens, it's automatic and everyone knows what to say and what to do. And I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing that we need. We need to train our teachers to respond to the students in their classrooms and the things that are gonna come up. I don't know, what do you think? Kelly, do you wanna? Sure, I've got a lot of thoughts on this. I'm trying to just pin them all down. So I work in third grade currently at Thompson School and we're probably one of the more diverse schools, I would venture to say elementary schools here in Arlington and it's always been interesting. I've always found it fascinating watching the kids as they begin to realize the differences that they all have between them and how they all handle that. And it's an uncomfortable place to be as an educator, as a teacher, especially as a white teacher. But I have allowed it to keep going and I've allowed conversations to develop even if I'm uncomfortable with where they are because they always come from a place of curiosity with the children talking about each other's hair. I have a little boy who is Sikh, so he wears a turban and he will talk. I remember distinctly, a good few years ago now, I had a boy in my class who was Pakistani and I had another boy who was Indian and they both could not eat meat. I think it was anything to do with cows and they didn't really get along very well not because of their religions or they just won like football, the other one didn't. And but whenever we had, at that time, we were allowed to have candy and stuff in the classroom. I didn't do it very often. But I remember that there were certain things that I would have and one boy would always help the other one out by saying, oh no, no, no, you can't have those starbursts, they have gelatin. You're not allowed, you can't eat that either. And they would kinda watch out for each other on that. I've witnessed conversations with kids where they start talking about their, they'll do it with me all the time. They'll talk about their skin tone with me and how they're different from me and how they're different from each other. But these conversations come up and they're in a place of curiosity and I think I try to get past my discomfort with it so that I can allow them to talk with each other in a way that makes them all feel equal and safe and okay to discuss these things but to always be vigilant for the bias or for somebody to say something that will put another person down. I can say with a lot of pride that I think we at Thompson do that fairly well. So that brings, that's my feelings on this. There's so much more I could do on that but that's my feelings on that. To flip the switch and to talk about where we as teachers are right now, I have to agree with Dr. Bodie in that at the moment we are all quite swamped with the demands that we have being placed on us right now. I can say that as retail and as some of these other demands start to, start to diminish I think where people, to educators in particular in the district are going to be ready to have conversations about other things that they also feel passionate and feel like they need to do. That's not to say that I don't think something shouldn't be started on this issue. I 100% agree with that but in terms of asking that teachers give professional development time to be trained right now, I would have to say that I think a lot of us are kind of at our limit for what we can do at the moment with our time. Yes, Mr. Heiner. Thank you. Just in the initiatives. Can we look at the initiatives? Okay. In the initiatives. When is I on? In the initiatives, it said by June 17, administrators by June 18 for the teachers. So that's two years away for the teachers. Oh, 2018. Okay, I thought you were just saying a day apart. I was like, that's no help. I just wanted, no, no. No, where are you going with that? That may give. That gives a little more context with that. Yeah. That would. I'm just picturing where I know my teachers are right now. Tomorrow morning we'll start. Yeah, and no. Yeah, you're just gonna, you're gonna actually defeat your purpose by trying to tell people that they need to now get trained in this. But I'm sorry, you had. Actually, let me first get the rest of the school committee and then I'll turn it back to you. Yeah, Mr. Heman. So I think this is gonna be a very good thing. I think what I wanna try to understand is how it integrates into the professional development we're doing now. And so I wanna, I think this is something that's gotta be discussed in a lot of detail on a subcommittee. And so what I'm trying to understand is what's our timeline for approving the goals and when can a subcommittee meet before we have to approve the goals? So when do we have to approve the goals? Can someone refresh my memory? We should approve it certainly this school year. I know that once these are out and that principals are gonna start thinking about their school improvement plans because they want to have a roadmap for the goals for next year so the teachers can think about professional development or plans that they might make this summer. And I can say that by having a goal around cultural proficiency and having goals around looking at social emotional cultures of the schools is going to seep into all of the school improvement plans and is going to perhaps encourage some teachers to be looking at that as well. In fact, I was met with a principal today who definitely is going to have a goal along those lines. So they all are together. And I would say to your specific question, when should you vote? I would like you to vote by June 9th. I think that's sort of the schedule I was thinking of. Yeah. Is that the June 9th? That's the first meeting in June? The first meeting in June. All right. I think that was the schedule that we were talking about. So as I think some of you know, I ran a school in Dorchester where 94% of the young people were young people of color. So I'm a proponent of this kind of training. I just want to kind of know how it's going to fit into the training and the demands we already have on our staff. Professional development time is always precious and we have to make sure that this can be done. So I think it needs to be discussed in a subcommittee. And then on June 9th, the first meeting in June, we need to take a vote on the goals and we've got to figure out if this can fit in this year, if these are realistic. So I think what we need to do is get this to a subcommittee. The subcommittee needs to meet between now and... Do you want to do a motion now? Oh yeah, I'll just do a motion. So I'm going to move that all the goals and in particular the cultural competency proposal be sent to the curriculum instruction and assessment subcommittee and that they should meet sometime between now and then in the end of May. Let's second that. Okay, so a goal by Mr. Thielman, seconded by Mr. Schliffman. Do you want to speak to the motion? I apologize, Mr. Schliffman, if I'm putting too much pressure on you, but I'd like to have a report back by the 26th, not to vote on or anything, just so that we can give as a body, give input. If it's sent by the end of May, it would be presented and would be voting on whatever they're doing. Mr. Schliffman. I think that's possible. It's a subcommittee together. It's a question. Yeah, it's just a matter of scheduling. Just scheduling. Okay, so good faith effort. Absolutely. I think we'll go ahead and do it all tomorrow. Excellent. Good faith effort. If I may, just to go along with it, I asked Ms. Fitzgerald to give everybody a piece of paper. It's a chart that I got from MESC on goal alignment. I would ask the subcommittee to look at that. Okay, well, actually let's talk about that just a little bit. Let's finish this conversation and then we'll go to the other issues that we want to send. Although I think we have to vote on this first, right? So as I understand the motion, the motion is not just to send the cultural competency proposal, but also we're sending all the different goals as well. I guess we could, do you want to amend it to send this thing? I just want to be, why don't we do that? Let's look at it and consider that. Let's amend it. We couldn't have it with us. We also send. Okay, so all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Any opposition? Okay. We're not opposing it, I think it's a great idea. But I think it would be a good idea just to have an overview tonight of these goals because you've had a chance to read it. Okay, yeah. I think let's go back to you guys and for any comments. Just a very quick one that I wanted to mention in line with the comment about how you're overextended right now, especially teachers. I'd strongly promote that in the meantime that the administrative staff become acclimated with this. I worked in the corporate world and in the higher ed world and this doesn't really take if the people in leadership aren't already well imbued with the ideas and the concepts, then it almost becomes an automatic practice. It's what people begin to hear. It's how you address certain things. So I would suggest, and I don't know what the timetables are in terms of how administrative staff could begin an indoctrination along the lines. And interestingly enough, there are programs out there that are relatively integrative. That because what you do, if you take people out separate from the environment in which they work, it doesn't happen as easily or as quickly sometimes. And there are programs out there where interestingly enough the education can be a part of what you're doing anyway every day in the process of doing what you do. Now there may be some needs for work outside that would take some time, whether it's independent time or time out of the framework of the school day. But there are certain programs out there where the kind of education is done in sync with what you are already doing. So that it doesn't look like I have to take time out to do it because when you take time out to do it often it doesn't get back in because of all the other things. So if in the interim there was some way, and Dr. Bode, when I heard about what was happening in terms of the task force or these consultants and focus groups, et cetera, I turned to everybody and said they've started. I mean, you're really on your way to doing some of this and you're already fitting it in. So my sense was with some support and help, what you're already doing could be rounded into what this could eventually blossom as an integrative process that's already happening and that just becomes nurtured and further developed. And we would be happy to give you some names of organizations that do this kind of work. Great, thank you. Thank you very much for your time. Excuse me. I'd also be interested in knowing, we know there's some focus groups that were formed and people brought in to talk with them and it would be interesting to know what their feedback was. Okay, so I actually, I think we have to move on but I have to say that I appreciate your time and effort and coming to speak to us about this. I did a three hour program in college once that was transformative where I really, I came from a background in high school where I wasn't supposed to notice differences and then sort of open my eyes and realize, oh, wait, if it's all done positive and respectful, it's okay to talk by differences and it was really transformative. So thank you for your continual attention to this. Actually, I have one question for Dr. Bode before finishing this. Their proposal, as I understand it, is for administrators first, how many administrators would that apply to? Do we, what would be our guests? How many people would that be? Well, it'll probably be about 36. 36, okay, okay, so. Okay, so details, obviously devil's in the details so and those should be worked out at subcommittee but thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Bode, it's some future meeting. Would you report back to us the program that you've already started? It doesn't have to be now. Yeah, I will. Fine, thank you. This is not, okay. Thank you. I'll put it in general. It's been late. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the next. There are questions on goals. So we need to, yeah, we're gonna actually talk about, we're gonna talk about the goals now and I think I asked Dr. Bode to talk about the goals that are there but also the process that you went through. Yes. Informing it would be great. Process for developing district goals really comes out of the experience that we've had before. We do a reflective process in where we are as a district and where we see needs that need to be met and this process certainly has some roots with teachers. I would, in fact, it's one of the things I would like to have a little bit more formal process about is having teachers involved in it but at the department level, these discussions happen and at the school level they do too. We began looking at really what is our vision? What do we see as obstacles? And in the past we have really tried to look at some very specific things. We want to achieve this SGP or very specific numbers but I would have to say that one of the things that came out this year in our process is that I think we're at, we're doing a lot of really effective and good things in the school district and we're seeing the results of it. But I think there's a collective feeling that this is a special time right now to sort of have a reflective time and that's actually even part of a macro kind of goal setting is that you make proposals, you do the work, you see what the results are and then you have reflection and I think at a very large level that's exactly where we are right now in really wanting to take a look at where we are and develop some action plans for the future in some very important areas. The first goal that we've identified, this first of all for people who are listening there are four overarching goals of the school district that were developed in conjunction with teachers, administrators and school committee a number of years ago and they embody what the vision of the school district is in terms of what we want for all of our students and to that end every year we look at how we're going to further that. What are the strategic initiatives or we want to call them strategic goals of the next year that is going to improve student achievement? So the first goal is about student achievement. What is, what do we need to do? Now as you know over the last many years we have spent quite a bit of time as a school district aligning our curriculum to the common, to the Massachusetts Common Core frameworks and I think that we've done a very good job of doing that but one of the things that's still true about Common Core for that matter the next generation science standards or even in any discipline is that there's a lot. There's a lot and while Common Core did a much better job than we had with the previous standards of really calling out what are the really important learning benchmarks in math and ELA and science to some extent I think that what we're finding and this has come from conversations with teachers is we really need to be able to identify what are the really key learnings that all students should master at a grade level in each content area and certainly at the secondary level in each course and this is a very time consuming process. To some extent we've already begun but we haven't really said okay, it's time and one of the things that Dr. Chesson's working on with curriculum leaders is being able to put a lot of our curriculum documents on our website and that's a process that's in play right now and these would be added at a different time. So we're going to be doing this work because we think it's important and it's important because we want to know what is really key for all students to master in a given year and there's going to be a lot of things we're going to have as well but that focus is going to be important. The other, going on to another initiative we want next year is that, and this is really a high school goal primarily, now that we are moving forward in the MSBA process what is important to MSBA and key in terms of any plans for the school is that we can articulate very clearly what is our vision. How does that vision look in terms of courses we offer, the spaces we would use, the adjacency of programs, whether we need more space for projects, maker spaces, it's a philosophy and well I think that that exists, I know that it exists. I think that it's something that we need to refine, define more, spend really some deep thinking time this year in getting clarity on this and I'm going to invite you all into that process as we go through this and the principle of the high school is he and I have been talking about this for months now and actually the truth is we've been talking to the high school staff for the last 18 months or two years on this but now we're going to have to move into a higher gear and at the end of that time have a very clearly articulated vision so that that becomes the basis for what we do and at that meeting and I'm sure I'm going to hear it again when we go with MSBA, when we get invited to commence the process that that's what they want to see and when you propose something to the building they want to see direct link between that proposal and your philosophy and your vision so that is a huge task this year. Okay, I think we may be a little ambitious but we were in the, what do we want? We're very ambitious about what we want to do. Everything on goal one and then we'll take, and then we'll go through. Okay. Again, it's like trying to get our arms around our student support team process which has different models in different schools and what we think is important is first of all find out where we are with all of that and schools are in different places. I know that one school has already done a lot of work on this in terms of the forums and how they use SST, who's at those meetings, how it relates to RTI which is response to intervention. In other words, how does it relate to the interventions that are done, how does that relate to then the next step perhaps referrals to special ed. So it's an assessment year and trying to get some common, common processes in place. Okay. Some people think that this goal here really relates to the next one and it does except that a number of us felt it was important to really be specific about it because this probably will have more actions that we'll put into place right away next year whereas the next goal which is one that we've talked to you about before and that is we want to look at all of the different ways it's an assessment of where we are as a district in promoting social, emotional competency, promoting positive school cultures and all the discussion we've had before certainly relates to all of this and a number of people led by Allison Elmer who by the way had her baby this week. That's great. Wow. Congratulations. Name? Rafe. Nice. Rafe. She says that its rhymes was safe. So anyway, I'm sorry we've been so crazy with things going on. I meant to get you an email out on that but we're all very happy everything went well. Okay. So at any rate a grant proposal was sent to AEF and this is a major grant for them and helping us to a planning grant means that it provides the stipends that are necessary for the work that will be done outside and a lot of the work will be done in the summer and assessing all of this and there's a lot going on and then the issue is to what extent should we be doing the same thing at all different levels and that'll be the next phase of it. So right now this is more of an assessment part of it and before we go into questions I don't know if Laura wants to, Dr. Chesson wants to add anything on to that particular one. To the last question. No, I think that as we touched upon the other group was here that we're looking at all things that contribute to student success and really what would take to have teachers have a true growth mindset for every student. Okay, questions, comments? Mr. Hayner. I've asked for and I guess I'm the only one or maybe these are not smart goals. There's no in the one to the terms core values identified essential habits of the mind refined vision and programs. These are these are statements. I understand how do you measure them and I'm not asking for an answer right now but we talk about establishing committees. There should be a date who they only report to what the parameters are. To me, I think it's very important to have smart goals that show when and how they're going to be attained and they may not be. There may be reasons they're not going to be. The first one one one says a two year timeline. I understand that and that it says identify essential learning standards. That one is fine but I thought we're coming to the end of the second year of this one already, aren't we? For what? For one one identify the essential learning standards and progressions by discipline at all levels align the curriculum instruction. I thought I've read this two years in a row now. I think the difference this year is that we have while we have aligned as Dr. Bodie described as we have aligned our curriculum to the common core standards what we have, we're hearing loud and clear from teachers is that we need to identify those power standards and the committee has asked and we have begun to work on this year developing a vision. So what does it look like the kids are going to look like when they walk out the door and how do we roll that vision back and what are the power standards? Okay then I guess in the goal whether it's a hyperlink or something expand these and with dates and times for completion. I'm not, I as one I'm not going to hold you to that date but a realistic date for where it is when we talk about setting up committees who are going to be on these committees and who are they reporting to and when are the expectations of reporting to? I think that, you know you're absolutely correct that we need to have those specificities. I'm not sure that this is the place to write them because what I think we need to have is a separate document that has the goals that talks about what the actions are, who's responsible, what the timeline is, what's the product that you want to see at the end. I guess we spent several meetings on developing smart goals and working on it. The initial goal that we had, Mr. Thielman worked very, very hard crafting it and finally came out, we came to a consensus on this and the, is it Ms. Waller? Waller? She pushed us, kept pushing us to develop smart goals with specific things on it. We're not having them here and I guess the specificity, I'm not looking for the granular specificity but we need to have, it has to be published and if you're talking about adding that specificity put a hyperlink to it so that we can do it and the public can look at it too. That's fine. I just want to throw out that this is exactly the kind of thing that the subcommittee should be really discussing. This is the kind of discussion we really do want to have and the thought was the subcommittee would have greater freedom to talk about this. This is why I would like us to come back prior to the 9th of June. In fact, actually can I throw it? And I'll back off. We might decide as a committee that we want to have a retreat around these, we might decide we don't but that should come out in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Mr. Thamon. So what I'd be interested, I don't know if the school committee needs to know who's doing what inside the district and each of the goals but I do think we need these goals and then just the measure. That would be a good thing to have for the next subcommittee. What are the suggestions? Is that possible? Is that realistic? I mean, just so the measures are, I mean, identify the learning, essential learning standards and progressions by discipline of all levels and aligned curriculum which is a big thing. It's a lot to do. Would be, you know, you know, I imagine we're going to get, the measure is to report on the standards that are identified. I mean, right? You will have those documents. Most of these are going to be documents that you're going to get reports on. So some of it's self-explanatory, but I just, I would say sort of, some here add in the next meeting just measure, colon, what they are. So that's how I would suggest doing that. Mr. Carton. Yeah, I agree. Kind of like, you know, IEP goals that you have the goal and then you have the measurement. It should be, you know, something we can look at to say 10 learning strategies were developed or the committee met 10 times, you know, but there should be some goal about how many times the committee is going to meet or how many, you know, what it is we're measuring. But, you know, I do want to add one point. These are powerful goals. I mean, I think what we're talking about here in goal one is potentially, has a huge impact on the district. Identifying standards, refining the educational vision and programs of the high school, student support, establishing a committee to assess the student support model and a committee to assess the district strengths and challenges in creating safe and supportive school environments. These are all big things. So I applaud the superintendent and her staff for, you know, identifying some big goals that are going to have a big, are going to have a significant impact on teaching and learning in the district. I think these goals here, the overarching goals, they will then bear down the superintendent's goals, then the administrative goals, then the teaching goals. So the clarity in here is very, very important for each subsequent group to understand so that they're in line for the student achievement. I guess I agree with you. These are the overarching ones. They're very broad. But they're big, too. They're impactful. That's my point. They're impactful. Yeah. I just want them to be clear so that each subsequent group understands them. That's all. And as you say, it goes to the... So what I think is that CIA has a lot of work in front of them. Yes. Both in terms of the clarity and in terms of the format, what things are going to look like, whether smart goals are going to be incorporated or separate document. I mean, this seems like CIA should make a recommendation to us. Yes. I mean... First of all. The four goals are the overarching goals. And so we're layering it down so that a broad sub-goal here without a lot of specificity at this level but with more specific... Specificity. Better work. It's tough to say. Specificity. Detail. Detail. More detail as it's layered down. So the superintendent's goal would have... Be more of the format for the smart goal where you're seeing what they will do under this. And a principal who is impacted by this will have the action steps and the expected outcomes. So something at this level I wouldn't expect to have that, but the next level down where you've got individual administrators coming up with how they will implement this, there should be sort of a broad group of specific goals. Smart goals, so to speak, that have outcomes and action steps in them. Not at this level. That's just my viewpoint. Great. Any more discussion on the first one before we go on to the discussion? Yes, Mr. Haynor. I guess not to take anything away from Dr. Buddy. Do we need to go to hear every single thing on the remaining goals? Well, I am cognizant of that as soon as I get back, we stop being fast, right? I was taking a lot longer. So let's see me. Clearly it's me. So goal one is certainly very important. I do think it's worth going through the other goals. The other goals are shorter. But let's go... Anything else on goal one before we move on to goal two? No. The others are much more... I mean, we can put them in smart goals because they're much more concrete. Do this. The goal one here, this work is going to... I could not agree with you more. It's going to be very impactful in this district. Very. Okay, so, you know, we're looking at professional development for the new science curriculum and math curriculum. Science is grades four and five, math, K, one. We're looking at professional development for cultural competency. And we'll be thinking about how that is going to look. We're not there yet. Though we have been do