Good evening. I'm calling to order the regular meeting on the Arlington School Committee on Thursday, October 27, 2022. I'm Liz Exton, the chair permit me to confirm that all remote members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dr. Allison Ampe, but I don't Dr. Holman here. Mr. Mason, here, Edson, here, Edson. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Miller here. Meeting of the Arlington School Committee is being conducted in a hybrid model. Before we begin, permit me to offer a few notes. First, this meeting is being conducted via zoom is being recorded and is also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Persons wishing to join the meeting by zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by zoom are reminded that they may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. All participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves.  A number of members of the central administration are out of town this week at a deeper learning dozen conference. So Dr. Holman and Mr. Mason are joining us via zoom and Dr. McNeil Ms. Elmer will not be with us this evening and thank you to Mr. Spiegel for being here in person this evening. Before we begin our business this evening, I want to acknowledge the passing of the Arlington Select Board's long-standing administrator Marie Cropelka who passed away yesterday. Ms. Cropelka started work for Arlington in 1959 first as clerk and stenographer in public works then in the town manager's office in the mid 60s as head clerk working for Arlington's first town manager Edward Monahan. Over the years she held roles in community safety and building department inspectional services before taking on the role of select board administrator in September 2001. As board administrator she assisted the select board in their many duties as well as assisted the public showing to everyone who visited or called the select board office her deep knowledge of how Arlington government worked. On behalf of the school committee and the Arlington public schools I'd like to extend our deepest sympathy to Marie's family and friends. She will be missed. The first item on our agenda is public comment but I believe we do not have anyone for public comment and I understand that our AHS student reps are busy this evening with the music event that is happening so we will move on to the Arlington high school improvement plan. Dr. Janger. Dr. Janger I am driving slides for the meeting and we'll do my best to take cues from you or advance when you need me to just keep an eye on things and let me know if you need me to go forward or back. That's awesome. No I mean and I'm fine if it doesn't work just a little easier if I could. Did you want me to start with the school improvement plan? Was that the one we were doing first? So as I was explaining before we started the meeting I feel like there's a five minute version of this and a 45 minute version of this not a 12 minute version so I'm going to give the five minute version and then you can direct me back to areas where you have questions about the larger document. So the main focus really that we come to across conversations that I only outline in the school improvement plan and I'll only talk about briefly here are sort of three themes that kept emerging in every conversation that we had last year and those were around belonging engagement and then equitable access to higher level learning and so I'll go a little bit quickly through some of the data but the sort of overview of that was right that we heard regularly from teachers concerns about sense of connection with each other, connection with students. We see in the panorama survey as well as a lot of other measures and conversations we're having with students issues around students just not feeling connected to school and you know feeling disengaged. There's a lot of obvious reasons for that we've had the pandemic we had this period of separation from each other we kind of lost the habit of being together and the building project didn't help we came back last year very excited about all coming back together again and yet it took us a fairly long time before we really did all come together in one room because we were still concerned about large assemblies we still didn't have physical spaces in which to do that and you know there are a few times we did I think the first time we all came together just as a group was when the classes during the month of December where we had concerts and I remember speaking to the sophomore class and just saying this is the first time you guys have been together in a year and a half and you know seeing the change in everybody's when we kind of realized because when they started that meeting they were all kind of like this and they were like this is what we do we're all in a room together we enjoy it you know we think about what it is we're feeding off of each other and everybody sat up and we got to that place where it was a lot more positive so quick run through of just some of the data points so if you look at the student belonging scale and this is from last spring you look across all the scales and the lowest scale is the one on the right for belonging in general we actually do pretty well in many of those and we showed improvements in a lot of the areas between the fall and the spring but belonging remains the lowest level scale and then putting belonging in high schools in context is a little bit difficult so I just want to share the next slide which is actually specific to the classroom level surveys that we did in English and physical science last year and again you'll see across a group of relatively high scores in English the lowest two are belonging in engagement we interpreted this when we talked during the summer retreat that the students actually reported that they felt like the climate in their English classes was really good and the teachers were very respectful and they were learning a lot and they didn't feel connected and they didn't feel engaged it's important to put in context that if you go into the deeper recesses on the classroom scale where they allow you to compare it to not just other people who've taken the survey but to other schools that that's actually a relatively high score for belonging in high schools on the panorama scale and so maybe that says something developmentally about high school students and maybe that says something developmentally about the structure of high schools and maybe it says something about where we are nonetheless there is no question that for our students and for our staff focusing on that belonging and engagement with each other and with the content is really important you can see in the staff reports again 66 60 percent of student staff reported favorably on the scale and when you ask do you belong 66 percent reported favorably but where they reported particularly low was on connection to each other where only 47 percent of staff said that they felt very connected to other adults in their school so now pivoting to the next question which is about equitable access to higher learning we talked a lot last year so I'm not going to go through it we've all had that experience um when we were doing the work around the heterogeneous grouping initiative about the various ways in which the experience of students at different levels honors versus a was different in terms of their expect the expectations and relationships they add and the experiences of students of color students in special education and ELL students was different in terms of participating in higher level learning and in those relationships that then went with the levels and so you can see here you know the differentiation where African American students are half as likely in the selected classes on this slide to participate in honors level curriculum Hispanic students were about one and a half times a little bit more and then special ed and ELL students were less likely and that was what led to many of the initiatives we talked about so going through all of these conversations in the faculty senate in the instructional leadership team in the heterogeneous grouping initiative our instructional leadership team articulated the problem what they call the problem of practice this way that a sense of belonging is vital to any institution and it's both the core value of our educational community and a foundational condition of learning that engagement derives from belonging and is central to deep learning and that problem of practice connects the three of those as instructional goals and not just climate goals and so we begin our work in the instructional leadership team and the work in the school improvement plan by acknowledging an absence of belonging and unity among the HS community members including students faculty and staff so out of that a number of initiatives have come up and I'm going to be very quick about those and I outline a few of them here so the first is the heterogeneous grouping pilot in English nine which we're doing this year and next year I have a whole another slideshow about that so I'm just going to skip these two slides and come back to it in addition this year we finally launched what we're calling the equity response team and that has grown out of work that was initiated by request from our black student union and then worked on in our anti racism working group and a number of other groups working on diversity equity issues and that had to do with the issue of microaggressions and bias in the school and one of the requests of the students was to create an anonymous reporting form that would allow folks to report microaggressions so we could track them be better at responding to them and also sharing information that's been contextualized by this response team which is led by David Keneally who's one of the teacher leader folks in the Brandeis program this year he's one of our science teachers and the rest of the equity response team is the administrative team and the advisors who lead each of the affinity groups and the bias groups that's the adult members and we've launched that over a number of steps so there's a series of advisories a series of faculty trainings we'll analyze the results that we've gotten in the middle of the year and then the group will work together to make presentations that will then report out to the student body to the staff and I'm assuming we'll probably ask to come and bring that report to you once we've had a chance to work that through another effort that we're doing around belonging and diversity is the Voices United workshops a number of years ago Arlington high school developed these leadership groups around interrupting bias bullying harassment integrating language we trained about 12 trainers in that and a number of those folks are still here we've trained a few other folks and what we've done this year is connected one of the advantages of the English nine pilot is that by putting three periods of English in every period it was much easier to organize a sequence of seven workshop days that allow us to be able to run it one of the challenges is we've wanted to do it with all grade but doing 380 kids at one time requires about 17 facilitators and we can't get that many people or that many spaces so we're doing them two or three workshops at a time I'm leading those Margaret Thomas is involved in that the administrative team is as well as a number of other staff we work with the students on looking at incidents in our own school understanding diversity looking at skills for interrupting bias and then trying to build some more community and sense of belonging and interest in each other and knowledge about each other so far the feedback has been relatively positive and we're getting better at it every time instructional leadership team I talked about a little I think probably all of the principals have talked about it the instructional leadership team in the high school is interesting because initially we thought we would use the faculty senate because the faculty senate is already a representative group but the faculty senate is really working on different things and we realize that if we wanted to be effective we needed two groups so it's actually been nice they're working together as parallel groups both groups have representatives from every department in the faculty the instructional leadership team is focused again on supporting departmental and interdepartmental professional development conversations and initiatives around the problem of practice whereas the faculty senate is more of a information conduit that allows us to process operational activities which still ends up being instructional we talk about you know how we're running exams or how the schedules function but it's not focusing on a particular initiative that group is starting slow to go fast so we've got two faculty chairs who are organizing the meetings and we are working slowly on those but the group is is moving along very effectively and then we obviously have the building project which you've all probably heard plenty about so I won't go into it here other than to remind everybody that right now we are still engaged in spite of everything with a building project in the backyard we're still at 100 capacity the administrative team is spending a lot of time getting everything in the current phase one building is working while planning for programming and projects in the phase two building some really important things are the faculty are going to be taking time and energy to have clear and organized this year so we can make a quick move in September of next year and then there are a number of spaces that will be opening in phase two that are going to require curricular and staffing attention so there are things that we are right now planning for and will be part of our budget request in terms of the smart lab which is a student run printing center and near the library and also a maker space the smart the student cafe and store which is in the middle which is going to be a vocational training program run by our fax department and our special education department the immersion lab which is an elevated view of what world language can use in order to create immersive opportunities and collaborative workspaces and then there are a number of new special education program spaces that folks are working to think about how their program will shift and those as well as obviously the new library and the new cafe that's it how'd i do you really want to know 12 minutes 10 seconds oh i did the 12 any questions or comments from the committee mr. the only the only thing i want to notice i think when i was looking at the first slide um the school wide panorama scales percent fair but spring of 22 but the belong what part of so it was like march april was that i think it was right after the seniors left oh so it was later in the school year okay okay so we don't do we have any comparison to like spring of 19 when we're all together for a longer period of time that's what i was trying to get to is there any that do we have that that we ever cannot remember the first year we did the panorama survey but i don't think we did it before covid yeah that's what what dr jager just said is correct we didn't start doing this until 2020 yeah yeah so i think it'd be good to kind of see you know where we are this year i think it might be better well that is our hope we're putting a lot of work into yeah right i mean i know that but also yeah right for many factors but one of which is i mean one of the hard parts about measuring any of these things particularly climate and culture but any of these things is we change 10 things yeah and then the world keeps moving and so you know we may have a terrible year on belonging in spite of a lot of really great programs um and we might have a wonderful year on belonging in spite of a lot of nothing because the weather's better and we're not in you know in a pandemic so absolutely thank you mr carden thanks um so this you can probably cover this as part of belonging but um you know we we saw last year a lot of social emotional challenges of kids returning and i we haven't really had an update on sdl but i imagine those are continuing so my question is you know how much do the team consider that as a sort of a short term issue rather than us than a longer term sip issue and is that sort of wrapped in belonging are you doing other things to address any changes that you're seeing so i think belonging is a central focus is sort of a school-wide way of acknowledging this one really specific area of concern is around mental health um we're doing a lot of things around mental health i mean we added so this year we added a social worker position we actually created so we've had the harbor shortstop which they're program for students with chronic and complex mental and medical health issues um that has been primarily staffed by paraprofessionals with supervision from our social workers this year we added a social work position so there's um andrea rosie who's one of our social workers has moved into that role where she's supervising that program what's nice now is that we have really consistent leadership across all of the general education kind of high level tier two intervention programs so harbor shortstop um mill brook and the workplace and that group of staff has been meeting together this year in terms of planning and thinking about how to better coordinate collaborate those services and programs so i mean that that's an area where we know there's a lot of need and a lot of support we ran the screener this fall which last year we didn't run until later in the year um we're looking at other ways of doing mental health screening you know so yes the answer is yes um but you know thank you Dr. Allison Ampe thank you um thank you Dr. Janger for this uh i was wondering when the next panorama surveys and the results are going to be uh we conducted the panorama survey for students today Dr. Howman do you want to add and then in the spring we will and we will do it again in the classrooms um as part of the English nine pilot um as well as with staff and students some of the some of the outcomes i tied to fall um the fall 23 administration that's particularly the building ones because i felt like that was going to be helpful in terms of how well we do and i'm hoping we do it shortly after we've completed the move Dr. Howman did you want to add anything um i'll just add that and i'll mention this in my superintendent's update too that we're doing um panorama surveys for the entire community during the month of november the high school was first out the gate today with students and that will close prior to the Thanksgiving holiday so we'll be advertising that soon and we should have data back at some point in December saying else Dr. Allison Ampe no thank you Dr. Janger and Arlington High School heterogeneous grouping initiative update thank you so much so i have with me um two of the English nine teachers um Megan Miller was up there somewhere and Nicole Edson um so i'm going to start the presentation and then um they're going to pivot to what the teachers have been doing and i'll try to be short-winded in my section so the things we're going to just talk about today um i'm going to review some resources that you can look at and you may have questions about that go a lot more into depth with what's going on um then uh i'll talk a little bit about the work that the staff did going into this again tell outline more of the content of that and then we're going to look a little bit at some of the information we've gotten in terms of outcome and participation um Ms. Morgan had asked whether we were going to put a breakdown by race so there's a slide that i added in here um just now because we finished that so i'll talk a little bit about what we've seen so far in terms of the breakdown and participation and then the teachers will talk a little more so uh going to the next slide um if you look at those three slides so you're all familiar with the second two one is the proposal that outlines why we're doing this and the rationale and process that brought us here the second is the website that has a lot of resources the ninth grade english teachers developed with me over the summer the FAQ which was shared with parents which answers a lot of the questions about the nuts and bolts of how honors is going to work some of the key questions that folks had about things like what is the difference with honors how do you check how does the grading work how does it work if you transition what happens if you switch halfway through the year there's a lot of logistical technical decisions and questions that folks had about that so all of that is outlined there if you want to come back to any of that as a question i'm happy to do that so following the decision to move to heterogeneous ninth grade english um the ninth grade english teachers met first in the spring to plan for the planning what do they need what programming do they want miss edson stepped up to be a kind of a teacher lead on that so she's um taking a role of in addition making sure to help run those meetings organize information and facilitate the cooperative planning so that the teachers are able to use that time really productively all of the teachers i will say though have really stepped up in terms of taking this really serious role in this so the first thing we did in order to ground our conversation was a workshop with a consultant named kim marshal he's the fellow who writes the marshal memo which many administrators i think every administrator i know subscribes too um and what he was looking at was sort of what are what are models of effective planning for differentiated learning how does universal design work how do you really make that effective um in what is really held out by the research and that grounded a lot of our conversation and then we spent the next three days examining ninth grade texts as this says looking at essential questions the staff decided that they would be looking at three texts and units that they would do at the same time so there's some flexibility in terms of um what people are doing when in the flow sometimes that's helpful just in terms of not doing all the same things at the same time but in order to sometimes be having common conversations about common texts and common pieces of work they're aligning three units during the course of the year then being English teachers we started really getting into the nitty gritty of narrative texts expository writing how the rubrics work and then how they were going to use common planning time what resources they were going to bring in for that um and then reading a number of other texts about equity and teaching and grading so as honestly i will say as a person who doesn't always the two things are most fun for me when i get to work with kids and when i actually get to talk teaching with teachers so i don't know how that they enjoyed it but it was a highlight of my year so um again you can look this is uh where we are starting in terms of baseline in the program last spring we conducted the panorama survey in classrooms um to look at kind of what the baseline was the english department does really very very well in that classroom in terms of students reporting on climate you know the kids really reported a positive climate in those classes they required high levels of pedagogical effectiveness high levels of rigorous expectations pretty good relations with the teachers um but again we see as lowest in issues of belonging and engagement so that's one of the areas in which we're looking to see improvement um if however they all remain only the same then there's not in in many ways we see the default as being inclusion since the default is inclusion if all of those things are only the same if students are engaged and learning and no more bored and just as belonging as they were then we should keep them all together in a class because of all the other benefits of inclusion we however expect an hope for significant improvements in all those things so you've already seen this slide about belonging in high schools which is interestingly if you compare our results while they're low 52 percent or 54 percent if you compare it to other high schools that actually puts this at the 90th percent so the most interesting thing of course is after we've gone through the process of bringing the students in we gave them three weeks to make the decision about honors we explained to them how those different things worked we've teared the assignments so students understand the differences in expectations we've made the expectations be around more better work and deeper work rather than just more work which is I think one of the concerns we have the question is to be more sophisticated Ms. Miller will explain that she does it better than I do so I'll leave that for her so what did we see what we see is that when we look across the last five years the two years in which we've been heterogeneously grouped which in 2000 the 21 school year and this school year participation in honors has been over 60 percent this year it's even higher at 65 percent and over the three years in the last five in this previous five years when we were not heterogeneous group as you can see participation in honors in English nine range between 55 and 48 percent so we are excited that right out of the gate we're seeing a higher level of participation and so this is the new slide do you have that Dr. Oman so then the question was participation by race so if you look currently what we're seeing is that participation by race still shows a gap and I'm going to have to go deeper into the data in terms of breaking it down to have a consistent look across English nine across the last four years where we're counting race the same way but this looks right now like we are closing gaps pretty significantly if you look at the next slide the trends across in participation across ninth and tenth grade so this is not just for English nine that African American students were half as likely to participate in honors so the gap was almost 30 percent and the gap for Hispanic students was about 20 percent and then if you go back up to this slide you'll see that the gap is closed somewhat and the proportion for African American students has gone up but there is still a substantial gap there and that is something we are going to interrogate I mean the reality is that the number of students we're talking about in these columns there are 19 students in the column marked black and 30 students in the column marked Hispanic so we plan to actually speak to the students because there's not that many of them and so we can really have conversations about why they're making those choices is it that they didn't feel invited that they didn't feel it was for them that their concerns about preparation or the messages that students have been giving so we really want to have that conversation to make sure that we are optimizing students chances to be at the right level so now I'm going to hand the I guess the microphone over to Miss Etzin and Miss Miller. Hi everyone thanks Dr. Jinger so as you can see on the slide I would like to start off by explaining how we as the English 19 began the year with our students including sort of what unit we started with over the summer we had a conversation about which points in the year we thought we could align our units and the beginning of the year was a great opportunity to do that so all of the English nine teachers began with the same sort of set of skills and we all started with a short story unit in particular the theme of the unit is identity and belonging that's something that we've been developing as a thematic unit for the past few years so the texts that we use are a mix of short stories short films nonfiction podcasts poetry things like that so the selection of texts it's very somewhat across teachers but we use essential questions like who am I how do I create and define my identity how do I define home and belonging and how does understanding literature help me to better understand myself and others so that's sort of the unifying theme that the teachers use to access a wide variety of texts for the students and then Nicole is going to talk a little bit about how the discourse in the classes themselves have been going since this change across you know this first unit and now that we're all getting into a second unit as the year goes on thanks Megan so we've noticed now when I'm speaking I'm speaking for all of the ninth grade teachers so I'll say these are teachers but this is all what has been reported to me and what I've experienced as well so so far the discourse during this unit has been engaging and interesting students at both levels are beginning to feel comfortable expressing their ideas in the whole class setting we've done some informal feedback surveys from the students just kind of giving them a google classroom check-in how's it going and many many of the students have reported that they enjoy the classroom discussions the collaboration between students has been successful with meaningful conversation and questioning both in partner work and small groups overall teachers have reported that classes are running smoothly many teachers have mentioned that students have asked if they could do the honors level work for certain assignments to try it out even if they had already signed up for a level work it's something that we've talked about in our just recently started to talk about in our common planning groups about how this works and what that means for the mid-year in terms of being able to sign up for or change levels again from some of those surveys that we gave to the students they've reported in them that the and this is from quoting the work is challenging but manageable and they're enjoying class so far preparing for this change I will say like required a lot of real work to be done over the summer so we had those five days I don't want to be redundant about what Dr. Janger said but I will say it was it was it was a lot of work I mean it was a lot of work to prepare it wasn't something that we took lightly and it wasn't something even though we've all taught heterogeneous classes at the 12th grade level it was definitely something that we had to dig into to make sure we could align the skills I mean one of the things we did was also think about what skills we teach and how they are they the same at each level are they different what are we looking for across the levels and how is that going to look within one classroom um in terms of I think another thing that teachers reported is that the test the technical aspect in power school continues to be pretty time consuming when dealing with heterogeneous classes and while administration has provided licenses for the google classroom transfer program which many teachers are now using more technical support for power school is definitely needed because that those times and minutes add up am I missing anything Megan there no I don't think so I can touch on the common planning time so the teachers of the ninth grade team have a designated common planning time that we've been using for the beginning of the year so far to do a variety of things that time is really helpful for us to check in with our team members we plan on using an upcoming common planning block to uh work on a calibration of our grading of an assessment of student writing so we've worked so far on several other aspects of you know teaching the heterogeneous courses but we've been gathering samples of student writing and in an upcoming common planning block we're going to be you know anonymously scoring and comparing notes on what our expectations are how those expectations um compare you know across teachers and across levels uh so we have a common assessment prompt that we'll do uh that we'll use for the student samples of that so we are going to be talking about what we noticed about the writing in terms of strengths areas for growth uh for growth and what we want to address um and how we want to address those areas going forward Nicole was there anything else that we wanted to touch on nope thank you thank you very much thank you um answer questions from the committee mr slickman uh a few basic questions uh one of the things that we did was we were concerned about class size do we have a sense of what the class sizes are right now so we ended up with i believe 21 sections because there were a few more and we decided we didn't want to end up in a hole so i believe that the class sizes are capped at 22 um sections run from um about actually i should look but seven i think it's 18 to 22 in the regular classes there are some co-tots that are running like 13 and 14 so actually some small classes and that has made it more manageable i would take it i mean we work hard across the school to have small class sizes in those those ninth grade classes in the directory classes but absolutely i mean correct me if i'm wrong but i mean the class the teachers general are running you know an average class size of 18 19 kids so it makes a big difference and so my sense is that we're sort of using this uh the english classes is also a way to welcome and generate the belonging that was the other issue right that's what i'm hearing i mean we are hoping that we are generating that belonging in all of the kids classes but the focus obviously in ninth grade english and the heterogeneous experience right i mean part of the the pilot's idea was that our goal is to think about the experience in ninth grade do we have any anecdotal evidence that kids who would not even even considered honors uh moved up moved up i will defer to the folks who've had those one to one conversations i'm happy to speak to that i've had conversations with several students i i teach two sections of the ninth grade english this year and i've had conversations with several students across those two classes about whether or not they should take honors and all of those students that i spoke to ended up signing up for honors so you know i counseled them in terms of what the difference was but didn't push them either way i told them you know they should talk to their parents and think about what they are interested in signing up for and they all ended up signing up for honors which i think might speak to that i mean the numbers are increasing the numbers would indicate that that's the case right we're about 15 higher than the general number of students taking honors so that's you know 45 kids or more than 50 kids that wouldn't have been in honors in other year that are in honors now and what we expect because what we know is that the strongest predictor of being in honors classes in the future is being honors classes now so the expectation is you know it's like getting it's like when you're entering salary is $2,000 higher it's not just $2,000 it's $2,000 every year for the rest of your life and all of your raises are based on that so the fact that we now have students hopefully successfully engaging in honors level curriculum most likely our expectation is they'll continue in English and they will be much more likely to spread out into other classes which is one of the things we'll be looking at next fall i think the message is important that we're telling them yes we believe you can do this and if they're hearing the message and actually going out and doing this and succeeding it's going to be a win-win for everybody i mean one of the really anecdotal things that that Zetsons talked about is the fact that kids are sitting in a class where they're not doing honors and that'll in every class there are kids saying can i try the honors work right that they're they're seeing honors level work being done feeling like they can try it so one of the first indicators we're going to get is whether in january which way the motion is and again i'm expecting that we will go up from 65 when kids are like well why am i not doing that too it'll be interesting to see how grades are as well too assuming that our grading is consistent over uh over the standards that we held before my last question is obviously these are ninth graders coming in from the oddison are we thinking or doing anything with the oddison folks to help facilitate this for next year i mean we are not working with the oddison teachers we will be having conversations as we get into course selection um where we again are working and communicating to the teachers what those expectations are so they can be clear um and talking people in course selection however one of the nice things about heterogeneous grouping is you don't have to choose so we we there has been some discussion already around how we can whether or not we wanted to shift to make the the process of the shift easier it's one of the things that the teachers were talking about is that the running two grade books having to run for three weeks without them switching them is technically kind of difficult we bought we bought grade transfer as an application for folks to transfer grades from google classroom if they do grading that way um but technical support about that is also something we're going to be looking at yeah i mean the the thing is is that instructionally the most difficult transition in terms of academic achievement uh and all all the social emotional stuff we're talking about in terms of belonging is that that transition from middle school to high school is very difficult and anything we can do to ease that uh i i see is really a critical aspect of making the heterogeneous grouping uh work because we're advancing the breakpoint between the honors and the non honors and building a little more of a together building thanks i i i look forward to hearing more positive news from the program thank you mr cardin thank you so um one of the teachers i'm not sure which one you just said you had um conversation with some of your students when they were choosing and the you know the FAQs on on making the choice are very vague so i wonder if you could elaborate in you know just a couple minutes what what what you say in those conversations about what the difference is between honors and not honors sure yeah i can elaborate a little bit on that um in the FAQ document we talk about some key uh sort of qualities that distinguish honors level work from a level work or the standards that we hold all students to versus the sort of more sophisticated standards that we would hold honor students to on particular assignments so uh sophistication consistency and independence are some of those qualities that we ask honor students to demonstrate especially by the end of the year and so one of the things that i mentioned to the students who are on the fence about which way they should go i mentioned that the curriculum itself is the same between the two levels we're all in the same class together we're one class community we're all having discussions of the same text but when you know we ask for example writing prompts there would be uh the sort of standard level writing prompt and the honors students would have a writing prompt that asks them something more complex and more sophisticated and then their product they produce for us that writing would need to be more complex and more sophisticated in order to achieve like you know say an a on that assignment so it's really you know the the homework every night is the same there's not additional assignments it's the level of complexity that we're asking the honor students and that we're asking for them you know in return to add to that also um we as a department or as a ninth grade team rather created the ninth grade el a skills chart um i don't know if that's linked anywhere on the slides i'm happy to add it but essentially it shows um a chart where can i share my screen or do i don't have that access yeah you can screw it's it's linked like you can the FAQ but i think you okay it's linked on the FAQ okay so yeah so it's also they get a PDF so the link may not work in there let's see if i share that yeah um so essentially we have here um where we came up like all students will be expected to and then here are the standards for writing reading and discourse and then next to that are the um students electing honors level work will also be expected to and so we take students through the differences there um and like Megan said when it comes to sophistication and consistency and independence and we also provide student samples so that's one of the ways that we teach writing or we teach reading or ways in which that we see um where what is what we know it's what does it mean to be more sophisticated what does it mean to have a more sophisticated claim or to be able to find different and more sophisticated evidence um so students hadn't parents have seen this as well and i just want to say i mean your your point actually speaks to one of the real advantages around heterogeneous grouping which is that as an english teacher to say what a more sophisticated argument looks like or to describe what a more sophisticated argument looks like is a rabbit hole right you can write this and so you can say use transitional words invest in you know implications independent so you can talk about this again but nobody knows what that looks like if they don't see somebody do it and so one of the huge advantage of heterogeneous grouping is that they're in a context where people are doing and practicing work at the level that they're being asked to do it and so it happens in context and actually i think one of the nice things um about the current model which we don't do in our most of our other heterogeneous classes is students may guess wrong right they may be like oh i can do that they have an opportunity then to try it during the course of the year because they're watching someone do it they can try it and then they can switch at the semester mark if they want to step up and do that so i think that's the fact that they're the fact that it's very difficult to describe higher level work looks like without being in a context where people are participating in it great thank you and then just another suggestion is that when we when cia looks at the hgi i think at our next meeting right in december um it would be useful you know now that we actually are running and have assignments that have been given out it would be useful to see what those differential assignments look like particularly for the ones that have been you know developed across all classes thank you we have some samples of those two we need it great thank you miss morgan um so i was going to ask for the exemplars in december as well um i was also uh in december and i can put this in an email i was i had asked uh you and i it was you know within 24 hours of this meeting so um around uh race data which i appreciate is like we definitely need to make sure we're counting the same groups of kids right so the three vocal groups that were called out in the pilot were students of color which you you can figure out which how you're going to define that right um el l students and students with ips so those would be the three that i would be interested in that that was what the pilot was based on so participation rates for those three um three groups um would be helpful i think you know the the two pieces with this that are tough um and you alluded to one of them already is is it's going to be with these really small sample sizes statistical significance is going to be hard to show right because they're really small groups and and you can see when you have small groups of students you know just sort of ran if you randomize it you they can move around quite a bit so i i think that the conversations are really going to be really important because um you know it it may be hard you know even if you're seeing growth in participation with such small numbers as we have it may be hard to show that they're statistically different so um i really i hope that you have those conversations i'm interested in hearing obviously anonymized um and sort of the take homes from that um to the same end the the challenge and and we went around and around about this in the spring and there was just no good solution for it but you know there's a lot of emphasis on the the survey data which i think is is fine um the one of the problems is is that the the data you're going to compare it to right you're going to compare to spring 2022 you have different kids now right like those those ninth graders from the spring of 22 are now 10th graders and you're going to compare their panorama survey data to kids who were eighth graders last year right obviously so i think that um and you know and we had talked i know about saying well do we go back to those kids in eighth grade and give this survey data to that like to you know to try and come but they were in a heterogeneous class then so i don't know that it's going to be tough um but it'll be interesting to see at you know maybe maybe at the classroom level you'll be able to see more um and the other piece because we're talking about this um and because it's the end of october and these conversations are already starting at the oddison i'm not going to recommend you for honors unless you dot dot dot right that's already happening in october um i i really hope that um that there is some connection with eighth grade teachers and i don't know whatever you guys need to do to to to support um the course recommendation process for next year um i think any resources that can be allocated to that should be because um you know i think the messaging is already sort of starting um and so i think the the the more that can be done to align however that happens with you know what you want to see when they're here i think is is worth doing and soon i mean one thing we have considered is actually largely eliminating the course recommendation um because what we see is that students and parents can answer the question for themselves which is if you are taking english and getting an a and not struggling with the homework then honors is probably fine if you're taking english and you're getting a b and you're not struggling with the homework you can probably go on and do honors if you're under just okay with getting a b um and if you are you know so i mean in many ways the sort of judgment conversation about who should i think in many ways is one that we probably should move away from across the board because you don't need to right a kid can make that decision based on their and to be honest if you're getting a c and you really really really want to try you might want to you know and and of course for english you won't have to have this conversation that's a conversation it's much more about your math classes and your um and your science classes yeah i just i i i just encourage you to engage i mean maybe the audison teachers will be like super i'm psyched i don't have to do this like i'd love to get out of this business all together and i'm willing to have conversations with the 10 of students who need to have them with me or with their family so they may be perfectly happy to get out of this business all together and you know if that's the case i think that that's a good thing i think one thing that would be helpful um would be to share with families at some point what the participation rates are by discipline um they must be higher because when you told us in the spring we were we were using the number of two-thirds of students are participating in honors classes which is across the board but then it was kind of weird because it was like two-thirds are mostly participating so i don't know clearly the number was lower in english maybe it's higher i mean it must be higher must be higher than 66 percent in other ones if that's where it averages out but i think sharing with families and students where those participation rates are because i think you know like for those of us who are parents now like when when i was in school it was like 15 percent of kids were in honors right and and that's not the case now and maybe that also would be helpful for people to be like oh gosh you know if there's you know if 60 percent of the kids are doing this then like i can do that too so that that might be helpful um just you know to encourage um to encourage people to engage in it especially in the in the disciplines that aren't going to be um heterogeneous so um thank you dr. Allison ampie thank you um i'm gonna ask something i'm it's i'm hoping it won't come off sounding bad i'm i am happy that we are doing this pilot and stuff but i'm also thinking about the people who are not happy about the idea so i'm wondering with the writing prompt when you're for the honors students when you're asking them something that's more complex more sophisticated how is that how did they learn you know how is that broken down for them or do they just have to go home and stare stare at it themselves at home um and then the same for their product how do they i understand that you're looking you know you read their work and presumably you give them comments and and they hear what you're saying for their work but what about their friend's work or you know is their classroom discussions about um how this met the standard or how this didn't um you know where you're sharing one student's work with all the students um i'm just i'm trying to understand how you aren't sort of i mean how how we aren't effectively asking the kids just to figure things out on their own and i'm not saying that you do it's just i haven't heard yet how how we're not so that's all sure i'm i'm happy to speak to that um we are i think that this is the same um way we've gone about our work in english classes before and that we take like you said we will take a student sample of course we always ask the student beforehand if we can share their work anonymously or if they want their name on it and we we go through the work right so once they've handed something in we put it up we give copies to all the students and we say okay let's move through this so what was let's take a look at this claim what you notice about this claim what does this writer do later on so that they use evidence to support that claim what do you notice about the evidence okay well here in this paper sometimes i'll just you know well we could have used this piece of evidence but instead this writer chose to um choose a piece of evidence that best shows something about the character or that more shows something about that character that they were trying to prove let's just say if that was the prompt so we move through um writing as a whole class absolutely having those discussions um about the work and moving through it together and then also um some of that some of the a lot of the differentiation also happens and i think maybe i don't know if this is something that you were asking but um we work with kids like no student would ever be expected to figure something out completely on their own regardless of what level they were taking the course so we move through the prompt we go through the prompt whether it's an honors level prompt an a level prompt we break down the prompt together and a lot of the writing process actually happens in class um where we are sitting with students individually and having writing conferences individually with all students um on their drafts their brainstorming um and the revision process and just to add on to what Nicole said we use um strategies like graphic organizers and scaffolding for all students um you know i teach um a cotot i teach two sections of the cotot ninth grade so i have um students on ieps who require um a special educator in the room as well and so it really is a range of student ability levels and readiness levels but all students have access to lots and lots of scaffolding and then we do look like Nicole said at examples and the sort of like wonderful thing about english is that um and i talk about this with my like ap seniors as well they're sort of like here is a perfectly correct way of writing this paragraph and then here's the paragraph that does it you know just with that little bit extra sophistication and so we kind of look at those differences and it's not to say that that more basic one or you know less sophisticated or complex answer is wrong in any way it's meeting standards um and then there's sort of the exceeding standards and so we try to look at those um examples and have conversations to help the kids and guide them towards that great thank you that's really helpful um i think that's something i don't know how we can capture that but it's useful for those parents who were really concerned that their kids were just going to be out in the corner doing something different so thank you and and one of the things to realize is that that question what is the difference between higher level work and lower level work is a huge portion of what english class is about right going through developing in kids how do you figure that out um is what english classes are about and having a diversity of students and a diversity of experiences actually helps students to learn that um so i have two sort of unrelated questions i first i just want to say thank you to the teachers for being here and sharing your experiences it's really helpful to hear what it looks like um in the classroom um and i also appreciated your honesty about how much work it took to um to bring this together over the summer um so with that i want i'm curious what kinds of things time resources do you feel like you would need to sort of continue like do you feel like the common playing time that you have right now is enough do you wish that there were more um do you wish and maybe this is already happening but like um dr mcneill's professional development opportunities are there is um that is across the district are there opportunities there for you to work together so what what more would you wish you had to to keep this um or to have this be even more successful sorry you're on my zoom there too which is why i'm wondering am i okay um i can i can start nicole if that's okay um and i'll i'll speak for myself but also for my half of the common planning team um because we've had this conversation just about um you know what we need or if we need anything i think that one of the things that comes up in our conversations a lot is that the teaching side of it um feels really good and it doesn't feel necessarily that different than what we've always done right we feel very sort of prepared and supported in the actual teaching of the kids um and then it's sort of when we get down to the nitty gritty of the technical side of things that's where we feel like we just need a little bit of help or it's um taking up a lot of time and and energy um having the divided power school for example having the process of having kids sign up three weeks into school just some of the logistics um have been difficult for us but the actual support of having our colleagues having the common planning time the professional development that we've had i i feel very good about what we've been able to do so far i agree with you megan thank you um and then my other question is broader and um what sort of stem from what miss morgan was was thinking about so we have these ninth graders that are in this this heterogeneous english and because this is a two-year pilot they're going to go to tenth grade and then get to choose honors or a curriculum that that's accurate if we don't make tenth grade right it's a two it's a plan right now is it's a two-year pilot for ninth grade so i just i'm so i is there a plan or i would suggest and i'm not a researcher or but to document or what what the students do in ninth what the the current ninth graders choose in tenth grade and do we see you know more of them is our plan to track whether or not students sustain participation rates at the upper grades and it's also our plan to look at whether we see i mean my hope would be a that they sustain it in english but that be since we have students who you know arguably 15 percent a group of 50 students who might not have taken honors and they're taking it let's just say that hopefully they're also we see increased levels in other classes as students branch out into other honors classes so we will we will monitor that and i'd also be interested to see what tenth graders who don't choose honors english so they say increase choose curriculum a for tenth grade does their work look different because they were in this heterogeneous class than previous tenth graders i guess anyway just things to to continue to think about as you as you move through this um thank you does anybody else want to add mr slickman i i i picked up on something that miss morgan said which worries me uh talking about teachers uh withholding recommendations for honors level courses we made a decision in 2004 and obviously there are only two of us in the committee now who were on the board at that time in the opinion of this committee may not align 100 percent to what we decided back then but at the time we had a 20 percent reduction in state aid we lost an override and we had to do a bunch of things to reduce costs and one of them was reducing the number of tracks or levels within the school from three to two so we had an intermediate advanced level between college and honors and we pulled that out and the honors had very strict boundaries including previous grades and teacher recommendation and in removing that middle ground we didn't want everybody to drop drop down we wanted to give as much access to kids as possible with the philosophy that every kid is entitled to try every kid is entitled to succeed and if they choose to attempt it and don't succeed that is their right to do that and we will support them and make adjustments for them in that situation so the philosophy that we stepped forth back when we reduced the tracks and I think it's very clear within the course handbook right now that all these these restrictive prerequisites to get to the good stuff were removed and if I'm hearing that somewhere in the system we are doing teacher recommendations as a prerequisite for placement in honors classes it is against my philosophy of education it is against the decision we made in 2004 and I would invite the committee to re-examine that to state it very clearly and I hope my colleagues would agree that this is inconsistent with the way we want to see the system run so let me be clear harlington high school has at least the last 10 years always been challenged by choice right the only prerequisites we have are you have to take algebra one before you take algebra two yes right french one before french two that was that was what we and one thing that's challenging in some of these conversations is interpretations of the culture of school particularly by people who aren't even in the school and how that then works its way through the community zeitgeist who are not always within our control but I'm happy because I've been in this meeting where people have asserted things I have said and I have gone through because in fact we recorded the last two years of the presentations that I've made to the staff and the students about what the recommendations are and posted those to the classes we have always been clear right that students should be choosing right the classes that they think are appropriate the purpose of teacher recommendations is to help provide kids with guidance in making those choices but they're not required to do that part of why what I was saying was that I feel like we could do away with recommendations is that I still think that the mindset that comes with that is that is is unnecessary because in fact the families and children already have the information which is your you know what grades you're getting in those classes and you know how much your the main thing I've ever said to people is is everyone recommends honors and you're struggling to do the work you might want to think about not taking one of those classes as honors and if you feel like you're doing fine with the level of work and you want to step up to a challenge you may want to choose to take an honors class but in general because people know what grade they're getting and they know how much they are struggling to keep up with homework which really are the two big concerns they probably can predict that without our having to go through the process in the first this is the message that I've heard from you in the high school staff for a long time so it was my assumption that this was pervasive in the district if it is inconsistent anywhere in the district I think that we need to make a clear statement and but let me just say as I often have a kid who tells a parent who tells me and a teacher who tells a parent who tells me and then I bring the people into the same room a conversation that I can 100 imagine a middle school teacher having reasonably with a middle school child is that if you're going to do this or this is the level of work I'm seeing I would not recommend you do honors next year I can a hundred percent see a nervous anxious eighth grader saying they're not going to let me take honors when a teacher is saying to the kid I don't think honors will be a good idea right so I think that messaging is important I think some of the recommendations is Morgan made about how we could review that messaging with the students is important I think it's a conversation we'll have with Brian and I think convey back to the eighth grade teachers but I think it's a both and I think both of those doctor Dr. Hellman wants to say something too go ahead Dr. Helen I just want to sort of note that this particular challenge is certainly one that's a district level challenge and so something that I'll work with Dr. Janger and and Mr. Merringer to think through what this looks like for next year and sort of stay along with everyone but the last thing we want to be doing is discouraging any student who wants a challenge to take a challenge and that I would agree with Dr. Janger very much that students and and families have the information that they need based on their experience to make that decision and that we may really want to take a look at eliminating the recommendations not without the opportunity for families to come back to us and ask us for a conversation go back to their eighth grade teacher and ask for a conversation or even go have a conversation with a ninth grade teacher who might know a little bit more about what that looks like so but this is certainly a district level challenge that I think we need to tackle and I hear the feedback and we will make sure that we do that and I will also wanted the opportunity to say a very big thank you to Dr. Janger for the two presentations tonight and especially to our teachers for joining us. Thank you. Ms. Morgan. So and the other thing they think that that along with the recommendation piece every year my experience has been that power school always says you need a teacher recommendation to register for this class so when you do that it's not true I get that it's not true I get that it's against our policy but it happens every time in power school something will be weird and it'll be like well and it'll still let you pick it it'll still let you choose it but it tells you that right and that's not great it says on the the I know my daughter's geometry class said you can't register for geometry honors without a teacher recommendation like the note was next to the class for like the whole year so I hope that that's something that can get maybe if the recommendation piece goes away maybe that'll all disappear in power school I don't know I don't think there's any intent to make it like that in power school I it's just that the impact is that people get to that point and they're like oh wait so I do need a teacher recommendation so maybe I shouldn't find that so I hope that that's that has been a ghost in the machine that you have pointed out yeah but it keeps happening right yeah okay thank you um moving on diversity and hiring report mr. spiegel thank you um so we've uh prepared one report uh it's sort of in two parts um kelly pigget is here who's the assistant director of hr I want to thank kelly and our team for and kelly did a lot of the work to put this report together and I'm going to get started so I'm going to go over an overview of our new hires this year an overview of some of the exits we've had and reasons for staff departures an overview of our um onboarding and mentoring and new teach orientations high level overview of current vacancies and then we'll get to demographic data and our next steps for recruitment and retention and then have time for questions so as you know you met the new administrators a few weeks ago with a new director of social studies visual arts performing arts wellness um especially like coordinator of the high school new assistant principals at oddison stratton and uh two new new assistant principals at bracket um our new a uniday educators we have quite a few we have about 82 new educators who began honor after um august of this year um um you know we've had some replacing educators who retired who resigned who moved to other positions within the district who are in leaves of absence new to the budget and um then we also have educators who um started last year who are continuing um this year started after i gave this presentation last year in the middle of the year last year we added some people um you see the new hires by school the high school had quite a few new teachers this year um as did oddison and and you can see the numbers for the other schools you know we have a very highly educated staff um both our teaching staff and many of our paraprofessionals as well have master's degrees um and we continue the tradition where we have people who have been teaching assistants in the district have been long-term substitutes or done their student teaching here who are now teachers within the district our a unit d and a unit c hires a unit d again is our paraprofessionals teaching assistants uh specialized support paraprofessionals library paraprofessionals and tutors um we have 54 maybe a couple more in the past couple days we keep adding people we are still looking for some paraprofessionals teaching assistants throughout the district um we have one new administrative assistant at the oddison this year we are actually we have a couple administrative assistant vacancies um at oddison and Gibbs that we are um in the different stages of hiring processes on and then other new employees you know we have a very robust afterschool program the afterschool program tends to have some churn um because of the nature of the position they are um you know people who are looking um either to go into teaching in other areas or um you know doing this job um you know for a few years and so we do have a quite a few uh new teachers in that program we have some vacancies still in that program um food service building custodians traffic supervisors bus drivers uh and this is since last year uh you know we had a change in our registration uh team at the sometime like in the middle of the fall winter of last year and then a lot of other employees we hire a lot of people in the summer for summer school uh our various summer school programs um community ed athletics daycare um and daily subs I will highlight we still have I will get to this with vacancies there are a couple areas in here where we are in need if people are looking for positions in um you know any of the positions that you know are listed here including food service crossing guards um and paraprofessionals in the district substitute teachers we can you know have people reach out to me talk a little bit about mentoring and induction and onboarding um we've had a robust new teacher orientation and mentoring program for years this year we have two new mentor coordinators um Marie Janiac who had been in the done the position for a long time retired at the end of last year and so we hire two new people one for pre-k to five one for six to twelve um that's Dorie Palizzi for pre-k to five and Melissa Heath for grade six to twelve and they are really taking the lead on uh have you know uh overseeing the mentoring program mentors have been matched um and when new teachers come in they're working with the curriculum directors and the principals to match them new hire orientation was in person this year it was last year too it was pretty uh we used the high school for part of it the new high school space we use Gibbs for part of it um and again you know the mentoring program continues all year our onboarding process which is really getting new staff the paperwork they need to make sure they get paid and get into the retirement system and get the benefits they need is done mostly online now we've been using DocuSign for a couple years we are switching soon to a new program um of employee records on our one of our talented uh platforms um Kelly in our office Kali in my office and Deb Weinstein in the superintendent's office have really done the bulk of the work on the onboarding of paperwork and then our payroll department um works very hard to make sure that everyone gets into our immune system gets gets paid correctly um and everyone up here on the sixth floor and in the schools and throughout the district works really hard to make sure that we get the new staff um onboarded I mean from beginning with the interview teams in the schools the teachers who take time out of of their summers sometimes or after school to to serve on interview teams and the principals and and other staff and then um and then everybody on the on the sixth floor and throughout the district who gets people onboarded um and talk a little bit about resignations so we did have uh you know quite a few resignations this year I don't think we had more than in previous years but I will say some of the I want to highlight some of the reasons um people do leave one is moving away from the area people have we have had people leave the state they get jobs in other states or their spouses or partners do and they leave um that happens sometimes we had a few people in that um category we had several people who moved far enough away from the Arlington area where it wouldn't have been feasible for them to continue working here and one of the reasons they moved away was because of um they could afford to buy a house farther out either farther north toward New Hampshire or farther south toward Rhode Island or in Rhode Island um so we have had some of that happen this year um there are other people who have already lived far enough away and had long commutes and for the past couple years the commutes weren't so bad with the number of people actually on the roads and now it's like a real normal like what it used to be commute in the Boston area so it's harder for people to take the time oh sorry um yeah got that uh sorry it's harder for people to take the time to um to you know spend the time in the car and we did have a few people leave because of that we've had some people have professional moves within education some people have left um you know because they become teachers in other districts where they were paraprofessionals here they get teaching jobs in other districts sometimes there's lateral teacher moves um in uh to other districts um and sometimes it's becoming an administrator in other districts and at times it's increased compensation we did make some improvements in our contracts this year thank you to the committee and uh Dr. Homan and Mr. Mason for working really hard to do that for a lot of and we successfully settled our contracts and even with that improvement there are other districts also made improvements in their contracts and so it's hard sometimes to keep up with that so um there are challenges that we will have um you know there is this been a very tough few years for educators there is some burnout for people there are some people who have left teaching I did talk to a few people who decided they just they needed to do something else um um and there are personal and family reasons that for people you know their family situations changed and they needed to take um do something else or or change um the career um for that reason we can go to the next um current vacancies um you know we have special education teachers special education I will say is a national issue and statewide definitely of where we have some some vacancies and other districts do as well um we are finalizing a hire for the high school um and Audison and we are working still with some vacancies at Gibbs and Dallen um we have a part-time Italian teacher vacancy school nurse has been a challenge school nurses have been tough also throughout the state um paraprofessionals again it's again we are having challenges everyone is having challenges with this as I mentioned crossing guards we need food service and substitutes so those are some of the vacancies um that are that are sort of the ones that we kind of really need to fill we are functioning well as a district I think I want to thank our administrators and that the teachers and paraprofessionals we do have for working really hard I know sometimes we don't have substitute coverage and I know at Audison they you know teachers step up and cover during their preps and they get a little extra money for that but it's you know it's very helpful that they that they do that um and um so that goes to the vacancies move on to some of our data so what we one of the um reasons we have had a goal of increasing the diversity of our staff for years is because our students are increasingly diverse and we want our students to both see themselves in the teachers and other staff in front of them and you know it's the windows and mirrors um that we've heard about so much so we want that our staff overall I mean our students overall are more diverse than our staff overall especially our teaching staff um so you can see the student data um with the percentages of or the numbers of of students um who identify as black or African American American Indian Asian Hispanic native Hawaiian um two or more races and white we go to the all employee um slide the next one um if you can see the numbers there um we are um you know primarily um you know 70 uh 78 percent white staff which is a much higher percentage than our students um if we go to the new hires which is the next slide it's about 71.67 percent white so we are more diverse with our newer hires that we've hired since last year um so that is a trend um where we have been able to add some some diversity to our staff we go to um some of the uh the different units we have so the AAA is a small unit um you know there are small numbers of um overall um and so there are some higher percentages of non-white administrators in the district BIPOC administrators in the district and one of the things that is um you know we've we have added um more BIPOC administrators in the past couple years and the hope is I mean I think all of our administrators have an interest in increasing the diversity of their staff and I think BIPOC administrators will have um we'll have a lens that some of our white administrators don't and will hopefully will lead to more diverse uh diverse hiring um our AAA unit A staff um which is mostly is our all of our teachers related service providers um and some other uh professional licensed professional staff is about 87.9 percent white with um you know other percentages of um of BIPOC staff lower percentages of BIPOC staff there is also one of the things that you'll see in these slides and we've talked about this before is there is a significant number of staff who are not self-identified so we've changed our forms in the past couple years through um you know with our system that Kelly and has has sort of led is um it's there's a the form where you um identify you have the choice to identify or not is a required form you have to fill out that form whether you identify as one of these um racial categories but there's also a choice that you choose affirmatively choose not to self-identify and that's a choice that that people make that they do not want to self-identify the next slide is our unit C which is our administrative assistants and office specialists that's a smaller unit as well um so it's you know primarily white but there is some some BIPOC administrative assistants and office specialists in there uh paraprofessionals is more diverse it gets closer to mirroring our student uh data so although there's still a high percentage of non-identified there um but we have um hired more paraprofessionals who are by pocket and then we move to principal central office IT um and our after-school program is the next one where we have our after-school program in daycare have had um attracted more diverse candidates um for years um for a lot of reasons and um they are able to hire um and attract uh diverse candidates and maintenance transportation food service um there's a high percentage not self-identified in that category um and then we have sort of the breakdown of Arlington students and staff by ethnicity and you can sort of see the comparison between what the students are and then several of the units and new hires so that hopefully we'll show you at least how we're trending a little bit the last year or so and then I want to talk a little bit about our next steps so um we are as you as you know we're involved in strategic planning and I think Dr. Hummel will probably update you on strategic planning later um so um strategic planning group two is uh valuing all staff and we are working um Margaret Keele-Thomas, Julie Keyes, another teacher um from the Audicent Cesar is a math teacher is on that group um we are developing our strategies for retention of staff um and recruitment of staff but one of those things we're looking for is you saw the paraprofessional data we're trying to look for ways to provide pathways for licensure to paraprofessionals if they desire to become a licensed teacher um one of the other things we're talking about in Dr. McNeil has worked on uh this year is really creating really meaningful professional development for all our staff and we think that's gonna help um you know help boat help retain staff um Dr. Janger talked in his presentation about belonging and engagement both for students and for staff and that's something that Margaret Keele-Thomas and I are working on um to increase those kinds of opportunities for engagement both in terms of recruitment and retention and one of the things we're gonna um be doing is meeting with all of our new educators to check in on them and see how their experience is and really how can we improve that experience um for educators in Arlington and so that's that's um a couple of the things we're we're doing um to sort of look at the these areas to see how we can keep the staff we have and um and recruit new staff and that's the presentation thank you Mr. Cardin thanks um so I I guess I don't know if you tracked the data but for the teachers that are resigning do we track their their race their their identity uh we yeah I don't have those slides but we we do I mean it's primarily um yeah we do it's okay because that would be because Margaret Keele-Thomas expressed the fear that we were losing BIPOC teachers but the question is are we losing them disproportionately right yeah so they if they're only I don't know what percent they are of the of the of the unit um uh you know if they're 40 percent if they're sorry if they're like 10 percent of the unit for example but they're 20 percent of the resignations then there's a problem that we've identified yeah I don't think that's information yeah yeah right um Mr. Heiner those people that are resigning say it was disproportionate it was 20 is it possible can you find out if they're leaving for compensation because if it's a compensation thing rather than uh an issue in the in the community okay it's important to know yeah Mr. Thielman um just back from the concert downstairs they're doing a great job by the way um my question is have you ever done a study of those who stay in the district so that's something um we have not and I think other than our panorama data I think I think the panorama data may be something that is sort of a study of current staff um and some of the things that we've seen from that data um so in terms of just the surveys we've done but we um in terms of and I we haven't done that kind of uh other than that because I found actually that yeah sometimes that analysis yeah determines it tells you a lot actually it could it tells you some things you might not want to know but actually to understand who stays and why they stay informs sometimes it informs who you want to recruit but it depends on what that yeah group looks like and then it also informs what you need to do to change to get people to stay sometimes yeah so that's all yeah Mr. Heiner I just want to say how much I appreciate what Mr. Spiegel and his entire staff does and and to his credit he does a tremendous amount of work and acknowledges the people around him but he owns a lot of thank you thank you thank you very much for the report thank you and thank you for being here oh Dr. Halman did you want I just wanted to echo everybody's thank you um thank Mr. Spiegel for holding down the fourth this week overall absent and also for all the analysis that he's done and the work on strategic planning because the um the team that he is on is really heavily focused on making sure we do value all staff and we've had a lot of conversations about how to make these data um more visible to the community easier to track um easier for his office to track so and I know that he's thinking a lot about that and so thank you very much for your thorough work on this Mr. Spiegel thank you next we're going to go to the superintendent's evaluation and so there are two parts to this um agenda item Dr. Halman is going to present her um materials to us and then I would like us to have a just a brief conversation about um the document that will be used for us to complete the evaluation and the date that you will have it ready so that I can put it all together so Dr. Halman you can start with your materials please thank you so in your materials you have link to a website that has my evaluation materials in it as well as a little bit of explanation for how this is organized I won't speak at length about this you have the materials except to say that there is an additional section at the top um called student outcomes where I've included both the outcomes report to the school committee that you received at the last meeting as well as an additional achievement and opportunity gap analysis based on the feedback that we received on that report at the last meeting um there was expressed in that conversation and interest in us sort of formatting things the way the state does with relative to gap analysis and we are more than happy to do that um moving forward but didn't quite have the time to do additional analysis on top of what we've already done and so hopefully this uh provides a little bit more context and information about how gaps have been trending across some of our focal groups over the last several years um it is worth when you look at some of those graphs which I'll pull up um taking a look not only at long while I flip through taking a look not only at um the trend over from 2017 to 2022 but also just what has happened between 2021 and 2022 because in some of those instances you might notice that a gap that was getting wider may be closed a little bit more in the last year or so um or at least from 2021 to 2022 but as Dr. McNeil reported our um outcomes demonstrated typical growth in the LA um more high growth in mathematics particularly at the middle school level and um you can take a look at that gap analysis to see more on that I mostly included achievement gap analysis because gaps with growth are a little odd to display in the way that I have these graphs displayed but I'm happy to talk more about growth or Dr. McNeil Canada later meeting if you'd like I also included chronic absenteeism analysis that you received at your last meeting with the outcomes report some accountability reports by district and school as well as our panorama surveys from the last administration um would love to have the current years up there but like I said we're doing that in November um there are goals and evidence and this is taken from the formative assessment and updated so there's a lot of information in here um and a lot of it is new or updated so if the text is green that means that's new since the formative assessment in February if the text is blue like this it means I've just added new artifacts or new evidence to that document or folder and if the text is black it means there hasn't been a change we still only have the 21-22 school improvement plans in this folder because we're still in the process of collecting and presenting those to you and the goals remain the same from the start of last school year there are three district improvement goals and a professional practice goal there's a new summative reflection on this page and the standard indicators are the same ones that I chose uh when I first began and other than that I don't have much more to report if there are questions about navigation certainly don't hesitate to reach out and I'm happy to answer any questions about what's there if you have them thank you Dr. Hellman are there questions about Dr. Hellman's materials okay oh there there are some access issues but um we can work with Liz on that Liz Diggins on that okay all right um so my understanding is that Mr. Hardin is working on a document that we will each fill in and it will be ready early next week yeah did you receive that yeah yeah okay um and we are it's we're scheduled to to present the evaluation to Dr. Hellman um at the November 17 school committee meeting so I would like to request that all of you have your um evaluations finished on November 10th does that feel like something that you all Mr. Hannah do you want I just want to understand are we going to be presenting our individual ones are we going to send them to you for your presentation is that part of the discussion tonight we can discuss that my in the past it's those chair has put that all together and that is what I'm expecting that I will do the one that goes to desi is a compilation that you are required to do if you would like to experience doing straight navities forms individual together it's never been consistent so Mr. Kern is is creating or is using a state form that he's going to share with all of us that we will each member will fill in and share with me and then I will consolidate it for desi if you would like to read from your um narrative at the meeting it's an option it's an option thank you do you want to add anything Mr. Kern no no no I'm just going to ask for a little bit more clarity about how you're going to present the evaluation so you're going to present the the summative form which my my understanding is that if there's you know seven proficient it says seven under a thing and if there's one needs improvement and then I'll have the narrative I'll have to I know some have sort of taken blurbs from each person and I'm open to your feedback on that I don't care what you do in writing I just if you can tell us wouldn't you see them maybe on the tenth if you can tell us like how are you going what you're going to present then we can evaluate if we want to add to it okay instead of doing it on the fly yep thanks okay just clarify on the tenth you want me me emailing you or should they have them go to misting and then me yes email them to me anything else Dr. Holman does that all feel okay for you okay monthly financial report Mr. Mason good evening everyone um tonight for you had for your review um you have the multi-bottom financial reports for the third period of fiscal 23 this report reflects expenditures in our financial system as of September 30th 2022 this report includes the reports for the general fund the grants COVID-19 related grants as well as select revolving funds and special revenue funds um once again the first report um is the general fund report what you may notice is that the general fund report is not much different from the last report that I provided because you know the last report I provided you up to date expenditures um due to the encumbrances that was updated in the system which was September 22nd 2022 um a pool of data and so due to the timing of our accounts payable warrants and payroll warrants the figures are not necessarily substantially different um the report for period ending October 31st 2022 will be much different and should we have a better viewing of where we stand currently the projected formula assumes that departments will spend their budgets down to zero um so the current projected balance which is very unlikely is currently around two million which was the same um dollar amount in the previous formula and that was reported in the last month the excess was tied um to some unfilled positions at the time and uh salary changes for selected bargaining groups that had not posted to the ledger at that time and budget alignments that still need to happen that have happened down to September 30th the report also um include uh normal grant spending which the spending is um going according to the plan our COVID-19 grants we do have some funds available in s or three um which we hope to have an adjusted spending plan to propose to an at the next budget subcommittee meeting in addition um I will be working with uh Allison Elmer this is a superintendent student services and our grant administrator on the other our prior related special education grants there those do have some balances as well and last but not least you will find the normal special revenue and relevant fund support I'm glad to not have anything to note at this point in time still waiting for a certified circuit breaker amount for revenue purposes um but however spending is going as planned for mr mason mr lippin yeah I mean the follow-up is going to show us where we're off in terms of salaries based on the uh lane changes and and uh unfilled positions right because because what I'm looking at right now shows us on target mr mason did you hear that question um I did not necessarily clearly hear a question I'm going to short this question our statement I'm just clarifying that right now we can't tell the differential between what we projected for salaries and what we've expended and that a subsequent report will give us a sense of where we are on the salary line item uh given those changes right that is that is correct and the future report you'll will have a better understanding with the salary line items will be at as well as any adjustments that were made to accommodate any new positions yeah that was what I was uh looking for and I I'm glad I'm glad to have it hope hope all is well with you thank you all right mr mason will now put the end of your financial report okay and everybody can hear me correct I'm just concerned the setup here we're trying to prevent feedback as we sit next to each other here so sorry if there's some we're given side looks here to make sure everything is good so um so also submitted for your review was a preliminary under year report expense summary for fiscal uh 22 so this was for the period of July 1st 2021 to June 30th 2022 um before going any further I just want to thank first Jose Farias the school accountant this is the first year that he actually did nearly most of the the drafting of this report um and you know for the producer's support there's a lot of work which included working with uh special education business manager Andrew Campbell and gathering special education and transportation data it also required you know Jose kind of hurting the cats so to speak by requesting and gathering information from the town departments on school related spending on the town side in addition to going through over 4 000 different accounts that we have on our financial ledger um please note that in the memo that I provided there's some comparative information of the years of what was reported to the department of elementary and secondary education um every year we have to actually send or have an audit done on the actual report and send that over to desi which we also do share with this committee um the report has been clean for the last few years and so but when drafting this report we noticed uh something and that you would likely notice on this report that the total spending is actually reflected as lower um over from the prior year which is about 5.29 percent and so after further researching and reconciling um I did not want to change the actual numbers that were on the memo because that's what we actually reported to desi um the reported number for fiscal 22 the number that we just reported is correct uh due to instructions on how to report the MSBA construction projects on the end of the year report provided at a recent desi training um we realized that our prior reports were over-reporting the the high school project expenditures meaning we reporting expenditures in fiscal 20 and fiscal 21 based on what we were incurring on the books not necessarily based on when we were paying down a debt and that's what's supposed to be reported on the end of year report and so in real in reality um the fiscal 20 and fiscal 21 periods reflect about 2.6 million dollars and 16.9 million dollars of additional spending so which in result if you was to actually back those numbers out of the reported uh numbers the year over it would be a year over year increase of spending of about 9.6 million dollars but when you compare fiscal 22 spending to fiscal 21 which was an 8 percent increase um the total spending in fiscal 21 would have been uh around 121 million after us catching us and so I I say this because the auditors do audit these items and there was something that desi wanted to make sure that all districts were aligned in that some districts were not actually there was no um consistent way of reporting the expenditures well the other tables besides the town expenditures um that needs to be that would be slightly overstated everything else is correct so the year over year change on the school committee appropriated funds um was mainly driven around the reduction of our audit district tuition and transportation spending um which was due to age outs and overall less students being sent to audit district schools or aggregate bases which is uh the cause of the reduction of about 1.3 million dollars you would notice and the variance on that table um also note that town expenditures uh show a report category which once again is driven by a pivot table which I did not catch but the town did not pay for special education tuition that is actually the regional school assessment which you will receive an updated memo and it will be posted online with also the notes of the um the construction adjustment um our our grant expenditures remain pre-level uh due to how we have rolled out and scheduled our COVID-19 grant spending because that's the total grant spending that's there um the grant spending is still elevated when you compare into grant spending prior to COVID-19 um and this will likely be a continued trend for fiscal 23 um and will probably fall off with fiscal 24 the last summary that was on that memo you will see that as reports um on the the final pages of columns 5 through 10 exclude in column 6 which was private grants so this would include circuit breaker tuition and user fees which would include monotony preschool music lessons daycare or an exchange tuition also athletics school um school lunch and other local receipts which include community education and building rentals and so overall spending has increased for for the special revenue by 40 percent some of that's um which is about nearly about three million dollars year over year and some of that is uh driven by increasing spending and our facility projects as well as we had increased utilities last year for the new high school um some of that was covered by the project the rest will have to be covered by our operating budget which included special revenue funds and um which was charged with building rentals and also um you'd notice that lunch is um the lunch food services has also increased due to due to due to the the reasoning is that you know um you know lunch has been free uh during during the pandemic and it's still being covered as free and even a fiscal 23 so the food service expenditures are also up due to increased participation of the food programming and you also notice that pupil services has increased factual level prior to fiscal 21 which that's representing community yet in our practice school program um which are now back running in person um in fiscal 22 so uh I would end my my recap of uh fiscal 22 spending there and open up to any questions Mr. Carden thanks I was just going to suggest to Dr. Allison Ampe that maybe we at budget take a a closer look into the this uh spending report and the um changes that Michael was describing Mr. Slickman just in terms of the changes in the spending you described in the reduction as a result uh I assume we're not going to run into a net school spending issue with desi as a result of the way we changed our reporting um I first I haven't consulted with Department of Elementary and Secondary Education yet um about what we found internally uh but it would not be an effect to the next school spending because this is actually the same town uh spending side and tied to a non-net school spending item which is construction okay Dr. Allison Ampe yes thank you thank you Mr. Mason thank you everyone all right superintendents update Dr. Holman let me one minute share slides so starting with strategic planning updates we are starting community forums next week on November 2nd those will run through um December 8th seats are limited to 50 participants per forum and are formatted as I've mentioned before as interactive workshops the forums are designed to share our mission and vision equity audit recommendations and gather input and feedback on initiatives which the teams are hungry to receive and are looking forward to receiving um the forums will take place in the evening all staff are providing initiative feedback on November 8th and when I say all I do mean all we have it baked right into our professional development day to make sure that we're getting feedback from staff students have been invited and are encouraged um by the AHS student council to participate as well we moved back uh AHS student council meeting time so that they could attend one of the meetings um and we also have posted the flyer around we have a different flyer for the kids highlighting that they can get community service hours if they participate in one of these the last forum is going to be virtual and the seats are filling up which is great and we're really looking forward to hosting these and speaking with the community and hearing from them about what what our work has been so far I wanted to give you a bit of a preview as well um on the initiatives and sort of where they stand I I share this with you with the caveat that these are exceptionally drafting because like I said we're about to go get four five six rounds of feedback on them um initiative priority area one group is working on ensuring equity and excellence right now they have two initiatives that they are working on that will be shared with the community the first set of forums they're probably going to have a third but we're not sharing that one out yet because they're still working on it um one is focused on ensuring that we assess our intervention services and assessment practices and in order to make sure that we're developing a multi-tiered system of support that includes robust tier two intervention at all levels I think something we've certainly heard is that it's not always clear what constitutes tier two when a student is receiving it um what sort of reports families can expect on various assessments that we do throughout the district why we do various assessments throughout the district and an MTSS plan would enable us to do that and to enact it effectively another initiative that they are looking at is a definition and implementation of strong cohesive and equitable core curricular tier one curriculum practice um with instructional practice that builds all students capabilities they're really looking at um deeper learning approaches to learning making sure that we are in you know in thinking about belonging we're actually not just thinking about how do students feel when they're in school but understanding belonging as tied to what happens in the classroom during academic time and so the administrative team has been thinking a lot about what does engagement really look like it was actually a lengthy conversation at our conference today um and what do we need when we say what does excellent instruction mean when we say it in Arlington so that's what that 1B is really focused on is is making sure that we define that and put the resources in place to ensure that we can do it initiative to valuing all staff is looking at three initiatives right now one is to create and sustain pipeline programs for paraprofessionals students and interns in order to um meet our diversification goals another is to reimagine professional development that in response to staff needs to continue reimagining it we know we've done some work on that this year but there's more to be done um and ensuring that all aspects of compensation are more competitive when compared to areas cities and towns is part of our retention efforts a third initiative or our priority three initiatives at the moment these are focused on infrastructure operations and sustainability one is to sustain inclusive in modern schools and to do work to identify what we mean by that what a modern school requires in terms of maintenance um what a modern school has in terms of spaces and where some of our constraints are currently in the system and what we would hope to see in future planning another is focused on our food and nutrition programs we're thrilled that we have had the ability to feed all students breakfast expand our breakfast program and if you eat all students lunches we want to make sure that we're providing food that is nourishing to the body so that we have very healthy students in class um who have been nourished and whose brains are ready to do some some heavy lifting so that is what that one is focused on three c is focused on enhancing school experiences through facility renovation reconfiguration and redesign um that includes taking a look at the odyssey but also taking a look at some of our other facilities and what they might need in order to be inclusive and modern priority area four under sustaining collaborative partnerships are focused on three initiatives one of which is clear accessible and consistent communication for and with families across the district for the focus on that two-way partnership and communication and improved welcoming and onboarding of new students and families to APS making sure that we have spaces where they can get all the resources they need where they can safely enter the system and know where to go if they have any questions along the way and four c is about improved access to care and enrichment services that includes after school care and before school care but also all of the services that we might be able to provide to students external to the school day when it comes to academics so i'm thinking about what we might be able to do more of so those those are previews don't ask me too many in-depth questions about them the teams know way more than i do and we're really looking forward to getting some feedback from community members on what they would hope to see in any one of these initiatives what they feel like is missing from any one of these initiatives um and we'll use that to building them out and making them more detailed and clear to the community so that's the preview a quick playground update uh stratens rubber surfacing started this week where they're hoping to schedule inspection for next week which would enable them to open in early november all we're all hands on deck at pierce at that point because the construction companies workers will be able to focus their attention on pierce which started its construction later the anticipated opening for this is still mid november and we're hoping we'll be able to stick to that and bishop opened uh earlier in october and a few additional updates um the fall play is coming up on november fourth and fifth it will be in the new aahs auditorium they're performing a mid-summer night stream and i'm very much looking forward to this it'll be our first play in the new auditorium and uh i hear that tickets are selling quickly november is feedback month in the district we will be asking families and students as dr janger said um and staff to weigh in and let us know how things are going so far this year we're really looking forward to administering the same surveys that we did last fall so that we have some comparative measures um it's possible we may tweak measures here and there from year to year but for the most part we really want to see what it's like to do two rounds and see what kind of impact we had over the past year with some of the work that we've been doing um there's also an annual town survey that is launched each year and they have they're working on it now and have asked us our town side colleagues um if we have any items that we would like to include on the annual town survey so i mentioned that in case any committee members or community members have any input on what we might want to ask on the annual town survey you can certainly reach out to me um separate from this meeting and let me know what your thoughts are about things that we might want to know um from the electorate and uh oms cross country team is starting to wrap up their season this is their second season if you recall we just started this team last year there are 38 this is pretty amazing for a team that's brand new um there are 38 runners on the oddison cross country team uh they competed in eight meets and one invitational during the season as of October 25th both the girls and boys teams were three and three and they have two more meets to go uh they've been determined um they've shown sportsmanship in their practices and the runners and coaches would like to express their gratitude to APS for funding this team and making it possible i had the opportunity to go for a run with them the other day and they are fast and they run fast up hills which is tough on me i'm tool for that so they uh they wore me out and it was a lot of fun and we have also a couple of programs running that i'll be sharing with families later this week um hopefully tomorrow the holiday help program um and i also wanted to thank members of our community for chipping in to provide short-term housing placements to some of our students this past week um we really appreciate the community support in the holiday help program which is run by health and human services to provide families with addition who need additional support over the holidays to provide gifts to their children as well as families who have stepped up to help children who need housing placements recently um this is a wonderful town to work in because people are so willing to step up and help out so thank you all and your enrollments are in your packet and one last update this is brand new um our branding is done and i'm sorry mr schlickman there's not a duck but i hope that it looks more like a pond um we gave them all we we did a full survey of all the staff we also asked our staff members and community members for a little bit more feedback a lot of people shared some of the same things you did they liked the tree but they liked the circle as a concept they couldn't quite see that there was a pond in the picture they couldn't quite see that there was a man path there and so we've emphasized several elements of some of our original ones that we shared with you in order to make some of those things clearer this is done and will be posted on the website soon and we will have the ability to update letterheads and other district level sorts of things and put some new um graphics on the central the new central office wall that matches our new branding so i wanted to provide that update too and with that i'll take any questions that you have thank you dr helman um next we have a resolution um from the gas leaks task force for us to discuss um so david morgan um emailed mistigan and she shared this with all of us um that they have the town manager's gas leaks task force has written a resolution um requesting that national grid commit to a schedule for fixing the significant environmental impact methane leaks in arlington of which there are 14 and many are in close proximity to arlington schools um so the task force is asking if the school committee would be willing to endorse the resolution before they present it to the select board so i have agreed to bring it here to the committee for consideration mr schlickman uh i move endorsement second the motion by mr schlickman seconded by mr haner any discussion um roll call vote mr haner yes mr cardin yes miss morgan yes mr schlickman yes mr thielman yes dr allison ampie yes and i vote yes that's unanimous um the school committee will sign on to this resolution sent to just all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number 23079 dated october 18th 2022 in the amount of 418 908 dollars and 62 cents school committee meeting minutes october 13th 2022 school committee meeting minutes october 20th 2022 updated job description for assistant food service director so move second we have a motion by mr haner seconded by mr schlickman roll call vote mr haner yes mr cardin yes miss morgan mr schlickman yes mr thielman yes dr allison ampie yes and i vote yes that's unanimous subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget dr allison ampie sorry i'm having technical difficulties um we will be meeting next week and we will add the things that were already mentioned to our agenda thank you community relations mr haner nothing to report at this time we're not going to share our conversation about subcommittee meetings i would i know okay i'm nervous i don't know if the superintendent was okay i'll share it i'll share it um on election day uh oh no sorry i the door monitor oh sorry i apologize the uh the thing that the school committee asked the community relations to look into about floor monitor we were asking all subcommittee members to try to do it during regular school time if that can't be done a monitor will be assigned to the front door for that meeting and it's the responsibility of the chair of the subcommittee to let miss diggins know that that is something that needs to happen with sufficient time to get a monitor if if it's not during school time thank you sorry thank you curriculum instruction assessment and accountability miss morgan um can i ask a question about that but if if we set the meeting time and it's not during school time like we're gonna we then also write to miss diggins and say hi miss diggins i just said a meeting well i mean i don't know right what i would suggest that you come up with a meeting before setting a check with her so she has the available okay make sure you i don't think there's going to be a problem uh the i think the piece two is that there are some nights where the door is already going to have a monitor because there is a different event going on and so there's the piece of clarifying do does miss diggins need to get any door monitor or will there be one there and the discussion was around doctor home like dr homin should not be responsible for that so i just thank you sorry the chair of the subcommittee should confirm that a door monitor is needed and that someone yeah the only thing i want to add is dr homin said who's on the call that there will not be an issue in filling that seat so there'll always be someone so you can always find someone to sit there adorable all right i'm not coming the i a Morgan we met uh this week we talked about the overnight experience we talked about elementary literacy and we talked about strategic planning uh i have not written minutes uh the overnight experience the uh they are working to connect with teachers and staff and administrators at the gibbs to evaluate options for this year uh they're going to come back to us november 13th when we meet again which i is that before we meet here again yes yikes uh november 14th so we're going to meet on november 14th at 8 30 we're going to get an update on planning for an overnight experience um we're also going to talk about slc programming at the gibbs we had a great presentation from dr mcneal about the elementary literacy work um and i'm excited for him to bring an update on that to the full committee probably sometime before we have to actually vote on the recommendation that they're going to bring to us so um maybe like january february time frame um so yeah but it was it was a great meeting cia annex me is the 14th at 8 30 cia next time is uh at 8 20 actually um and we will be talking about overnight experience update uh slc at the gibbs and strategic planning update 8 20 be there or be square all right facilities mr fielman no report policies and procedures mr schlickman we if you're on the policies and procedures committee be alert for list eggins query on meeting times we have enough stuff on the potential agenda for which to have another meeting our linkedin high school building committee mr fielman we meet monday the first at 6 p.m and superintendant evaluation mr cardin uh we're hopefully done for this year thank you uh liaison reports mr organ uh i uh am on the wellness committee i'm the wellness committee liaison and i believe for many years that was not a group that meets but this year we're meeting six times because they're taking on a whole like desi led uh overhaul of various things so i'm psyched about that uh one thing that is of note for this group specifically mr schlickman is that they are looking at the wellness policy in quite a lot of detail um and we'll be making some recommendations to the policy i guess it's going to have to come to the policy subcommittee when they come up with something um so there was a lot of conversation and i encourage them to ensure that anything they put in the policy was something they intended to do and was not going to be in any way aspirational um and that having goals and aspirations is fantastic but we need to have our policies need to be what we're going to do so uh yeah we're meeting uh monthly i believe thank you yep so there's probably another meeting before we come back here pass yeah uh any other liaison report sound so excited uh announcement mr schlickman just sort of uh we we had a school committee chat uh for metco on the 24th um no that's the wrong day anyway uh uh the 15th of october is when we had the school committee chat for metco and it was a beautiful day it was 70 degrees it was sunny and nobody wanted to sit by the computer we did have one arlington parent uh pop in to ask about how can i support metco do you need people to be uh partners you know partner parents uh with metco and so we directed her to the metco director but other than that it was just too nice a day for people to be on zoom thank you um i um i wanted to read um a modified version of an email the committee received this morning i did change some or take out some details um i wanted to take a this is an email i wanted to take a moment to recognize and share the incredible work of two arlington public school staff a building principal and superintendent elizabeth homen the department recently had a young child who was facing removal from their family late in the evening unfortunately due to numerous circumstances that day the department was hard pressed to find an appropriate foster home for them after talking with the principal about a new targeted recruitment effort we had just begun to roll out in two other communities i received a call from dr homen who agreed to partner with us and helped send a message to school families eliciting their support for the child by nine p.m. that evening we had an arlington family who had come forward for the child and agreed to support them during this traumatic time i have worked for the department of children and families for 12 years i currently serve as the area clinical manager in arlington so often in our work we find educators professionals and other agencies nervous to partner with us there is often hesitancy bureaucracy and plenty of reasons to say no and they do often but last week the principal said yes and then dr homen said yes and together they helped a child find a safe and loving place to stay i am forever grateful for their support to our children and our agency they deserve an award signed kate butterfield licensed social licensed clinical social worker area clinical manager of the arlington dcf office um so i wanted to acknowledge that and i also wanted to thank and acknowledge cindy karan who i understand also played an integral role in this process um and as this committee and the schools talk a lot about belonging and growth and joy um i think keeping a student in their community and in their school building helps to foster belonging and a student's availability for learning relies on a student feeling safe and secure so i appreciate this principal dr homen and miss karan's commitment to our students physical and emotional well-being and congratulations on being recognized okay i have i also um oh all right that was an announcement future agenda items uh i wanted to just let the committee know that i we've we received the metco updates and school committees are often going to the new metco headquarters either to have a meeting or to visit and so um i reached out to miss smith and dr homen and just sort of expressed our my interest in finding a way for the committee to to have a trip to nubian square to see the new metco headquarters i just want to let you all know that um okay anybody else future agenda item um there's just minutes to approve for executive sessions so i'm open to moving that to the next meeting if someone would like to so move adjourn the meeting move to adjourn second i have to take a roll call vote motion by mr hayner second by mr schlickman mr hayner yes mr cardin yes miss morgan mr schlickman yes mr thielman yes dr allison ampe yes and i vote yes the meeting is adjourned thank you everybody