It is now 6.30, good evening. I am Bill Hanna, Chair of the Allicton School Committee. This open meeting of the Allicton School Committee is being conducted remotely, consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in the publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. To this meeting, the Allington School Committee is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All of the materials of this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda Dashboard on the town's website. And we recommend the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless either chair note otherwise. I will address each speaker on the agenda. After they have concluded their remarks, the chair will then seek any input or questions or statements from the members. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. Permit me to confirm the members that are present. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Good evening. Dr. Holman. Yes. Dr. McNeil. Yes. Mr. Spiegel. Yes. Mr. Mason. Yeah. Yes. Ms. Keys. Yes. Thank you all. At this time, no one has signed up for public comment so we will not have public comment tonight. At this time I would like to, on behalf of the town of Allington and the school committee, welcome Dr. Holman. Our new superintendent. Saying that, I will now turn the meeting over to Dr. Holman. Hi everyone, I'm going to share my screen and you should be able to see my slides. Can someone confirm for me that you can? I can. Thank you. So I am here this evening first in my first meeting as your new superintendent to talk about our district plan for a pandemic recovery and return to school this fall, which we are all very much looking forward to. But as before I present this plan, as I present this plan, I have a few things that I want to say and ask our community members and the school committee to keep in mind. First is that what I'm going to present tonight is the first arrow that we're shooting at a moving target. Things are changing on a regular basis. We are getting new guidance on a basically daily basis. We're still awaiting some guidelines relative to health and safety for the start of the school year. And we anticipate that elements of what I'm going to share tonight will change. We've grown accustomed to the shifting ground that we're standing on over the last 18 months as school leaders. And we know that families have grown accustomed to that as well. We also know that some of that uncertainty can get unsettling and at times frustrating. So we are ready to pivot when we need to, we will communicate as clearly and quickly as possible if anything I share tonight changes. And our core goal of this plan, and I hope that you can sort of see the spirit of this as I share what our plans are, is to ensure a full consistent and in-person return for all of our students this school year. We're very excited about seeing them again. The plan that I'm going to share with you tonight was developed starting in mid-July. We've been working on this in weekly meetings and in between those meetings with a slowly expanding group that I'll describe in a moment. We started with priority setting and then moved on to drafting and feedback in subcommittees and those priorities were aligned with what we were already working on as a district and the district's overarching goals. We've engaged in revision and editing as a central office and administrative team. We have regular meetings with building leaders to ensure that we can consistently implement what is laid out in this plan. And what you're hearing tonight is an initial draft. We're going to engage in revisions based on the committee and the community's feedback through next week and look for final approval of the plan in a meeting possibly on August 24th, but I think we may still need to finalize that date. I want to say thank you to the people who have contributed to this plan. This was truly a team effort. We had 11 teachers, four health professionals from the town and the school side, 22 family members, 42 administrators and two community members who joined us on this extensive team. They contributed to the priority setting, the drafting and the revision of this plan and they wanted to make sure that everyone recognizes that we recognize a few really important facts about this past 18 months and what we're walking into as we start the year. Those facts are that learning and teaching experiences were significantly impacted and we should not pretend as though they were not. We want to walk into this year realizing that families were challenged with new and different responsibilities and that required our families and our parents to juggle many demands related to their children's social learning and academic learning and probably doing all of that with a lot more limited resources. And the team also wanted to make sure that we articulated and acknowledged that Arlington Public Schools teachers and staff and leaders all learned how to do their jobs in dramatically different ways that that learning is something we want to take with us but also something that is going to require us to learn some new strategies, reconnect with one another. Again, we had a lot of teachers who will be walking into a school building with students for the first time in 18 months and we want to make sure that that's a supportive return for them as well as for our students. The team identified three core priorities for our return to school this year. One was equitable, inclusive and safe learning environments. We worked to make sure that equity and access were consistent in this plan and that we're at the core of this plan. Our second priority was collaboration, communication and partnership with families. My hope is that you will see evidence of that priority in our approach to the communication as we prepare for the year and the old continue to see that throughout the year ahead. And finally, our last priority was to make sure that we build upon the fact that we learned how flexible our systems can be in our schools last year and we don't want to forget that lesson. We want to get better at being really flexible and responding to the needs of students. And so our last priority is to build upon and refine our flexible system to make sure we have whatever students need for us to have for them to be successful. Our communication plan for making sure that the community knows what our plans are for the fall is laid out here. We are going to have district online family forums and as things change, we will update what our message is in those family forums and also make sure that we send that home in case people can't join us for all of these. We will have forums on the 19th next week from 6.30 to 8 on the 25th and the 30th from 7 to 8.30 p.m. We will also have school-based forums and the dates are listed here on the screen and also in the recovery plan that I emailed to all of our families. All forums will be live-streamed in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. And at schools where we know we need someone to also do an interpretation in American Sign Language we will have that available as well. The link to all of these and for all languages is at the bottom of the screen and also in our recovery plan. And I want to note to families that the way that this platform works is we do a Zoom and we send the Zoom to this other platform, LexaKey. And our partners at LexaKey have interpreters on their end who live audio translate what I'm saying or interpret what I'm saying out to those who are listening to the broadcast in that language.  There's a place where you can put questions in a chat and we will see that but you won't be able to see what questions other people are asking and we will have a moderator who's going to help me out with seeing what the questions are that are coming in all of the languages. So if you submit a question in another language it gets translated to me and we can see it in English and then we can respond so that you can hear in the other language. So that's how this platform works and I just wanted everybody to understand what that's going to look and feel like because it's a little different from being on an open Zoom meeting. With all of that said, we're going to return to health and protocols in a minute but I'm going to turn it over to Dr. McNeil who's going to talk very briefly about our instructional plan to start the school year. Dr. McNeil. Thank you, Dr. Hoeman. So within the subgroup that focused on core instruction we wanted to make sure that the goal for our tier one core instruction is to ensure that all students receive grade level curriculum and the use of data to determine what supports will be provided to students should they show a need. The different links that you see on the slide are the various frameworks that we're going to utilize in order to build the different domains that we discussed in our core group. So we relied upon these different documents to provide a foundation for our thinking. So you see that they're multi-tiered systems of support you'll hear that term utilized throughout this recovery plan. We also have the desi acceleration role maps where provide the way to think about providing instruction for all students and to help us to think about how we're going to do that throughout the year. So there's a framework for thinking about that. And then there's the universal design for learning which gives us a way to make sure that all students have access to the tier one core instruction. And then we have the castle and the social and emotional core competencies. And these are the five competencies that we want to make sure that are integrated into all of our tier one core instruction. And so as I mentioned before in my remarks that the core instruction subcommittee we identified four domains that needed to support this high quality robust tier one core instruction program. And those different domains include collaboration, data informed practice, curriculum and instruction and professional developments. And a lot of these domains mostly aligned with what is mentioned in the desi acceleration role maps. And then you see their image. I'm sorry, I just wanted to point out that image that we see that gives a way of thinking about the multi tiered systems of support. So now we can go to the next slide. Thank you. So also we had, in another subgroup we talked about academic and SEL supports for all students. I wanna emphasize the fact that we're going to develop plans will be created at each building and each curriculum leader and teacher will think about how they're going to address the first six weeks of school. And within that first six weeks our goal is to build positive relationships with students and develop two way communication plan for family so that we can tap into what families and students are thinking about the things that they wanna focus on for their students. We also wanna utilize different tools to assess students. And I just wanna also emphasize the fact that we're gonna balance between getting to know our students and understanding what they were, the knowledge that they were able to acquire over the last 18 months. So we're gonna use such assessments such as mental health screeners, early literacy screeners, standards-based curriculum assessments which will include unit assessments. And that will vary throughout the different content area. And I also wanna emphasize that in the recovery plan which is one of our suggestion or recommendation from the acceleration guidelines is that we put together an assessment or a data collection calendar. And there's a live link in the recovery plan. It's, as you read through that plan you'll be able to click on that and see when the assessments will be given throughout the year. And the third bullet on this slide I wanna talk about is like the support plan. So if there's a need, if a student identifies a need we will make sure that the support plans are in place. Fallamies will have an opportunity to give input to those plans and that will make sure that the length of the plan the type of tools that we'll use for progress monitoring and very strategic specific supports will be put in place in order to give the student what he or she needs. There's an example of the different academic supports on the right-hand side of the slide. They're listed but they're not limited to those things that are listed on the slide. And so you can see we have the academic supports and the social and emotional supports. Okay, we go to the next slide. So in order to make sure that we provide everyone with a strong supportive start for all students and I will also say families is that the building principles are gonna work in order to schedule in-person orientations for new and remote students. So we're looking at students that are just joining our district for the first time and any students who were remote all of last year for the last 18 months and before that when we first went to lockdown. So these in-person orientations will be, the details will be sent out by the building administrators and we're looking, they will take place late August and early September. We're also gonna provide connection opportunities for all K through A students and families so that they can have a connection connect with their teacher before the first day of school and then that those details will also be sent out by the various schools that building leaders. And so one of the things that we wanna focus on as I mentioned before the five out of the five competencies we want to focus on integrating self-awareness and relationship skills in all content areas pre-K through 12 grade. And then on the right hand side you'll see just bullets that describe what the first six weeks could look like. It's from a high level. We're gonna get more into the details as we start planning with teachers as they return to what those different activities will include. And again, it will vary by classroom but we will make sure that the main goal is to connect with students, get to know them and get them acclimated back to in-person learning. Thank you very much. Okay, I am going to talk about health and safety protocols and I will acknowledge that there is a lot to this next section, Christine Bonjourna our Director of Health and Human Services. I believe is here and will join us for the Q&A section in case anyone has any questions that are specific to public health that we can direct over to her. I'm going to move through some of this content fairly quickly. And then I'm happy to address any questions that require me to go into a little more depth on any of these as we continue to talk. So we'll start with masking. We are going to recommend to the school committee to adopt a policy that will require indoor masking for all teachers and students pre-K to 12 to start the school year, regardless of their vaccination status. This recommendation aligns with the CDC and neighboring communities and allows us to very confidently provide a safe and equitable start to the school year. We've outlined parameters that the committee discussed as we were working on our health and safety protocols in our meetings for reconsideration of this masking requirement because we know that we have teachers, most if not all of our teachers have been vaccinated and we have students who have been vaccinated. I did find out earlier today that Arlington's rate of vaccination for students in grades seven through 12 is higher than the state average, which is great news. We don't quite know exactly what it is yet, but that was some good news. So these parameters that are listed here though are not rules for when we will allow vaccinated staff students to remove masks. These are a starting point for us to begin conversations and collaborations with the health department, with our staff around whether or not is at that point safe to remove masks. It is important to understand here that masking is one of multiple mitigation strategies that we have that help protect us against COVID-19. High filtration masks have proven very effective against the Delta variant. We recommend that if families send their child with a cloth mask that it be double layered and possibly contain a filter, we won't have requirements for the types of masks. We ask that family supply mask for their students and the best mask for students, especially our young ones are the ones that they will keep on their face. It's also one that fits snugly around their nose, face and chin. And we will have masks available in the event a student or staff member needs one. We're not beginning the year with a requirement for vaccinations, but we are beginning with a requirement that staff disclose their vaccination status, whether they're vaccinated or not, and that any staff member who's not vaccinated produce a weekly negative COVID-19 PCR test. Our pool testing program will be in place to support that requirement. We have every reason to believe that Arlington teachers who are able to be vaccinated are vaccinated. So the disclosure requirement allows us to verify that information and share with the public the percentage overall Arlington teachers who are vaccinated. We have been in constant collaboration with our labor unions, the Arlington Health Department, our district legal counsel, and we will continue to explore the possibility of vaccine requirements moving forward. This is a for now, not a forever start to our planning process, but this is the requirement we're able to commit to and is subject to change at this point. When it comes to pool testing, we do intend to continue our very successful pool testing program This year I want to emphasize that we do need to reacquire consent from families because the consent expired at the end of last school year. So we need families to fill out their returning student update form. And even though it says returning student update form, we were able to make this form available to new students as well. So in addition to all the enrollment paperwork you filled out at the time of registration, if you're a new student, you can also fill out your returning student update form. Make sure you update any contact information that might have changed between your registration this spring and now, and make sure that you fill out the consent form for pool, for pool testing for COVID-19. We cannot require pool testing because this is considered a medical procedure or test that requires informed consent. We can do it for opt-in services like sports and we are going to, we will continue to have a requirement for participation in pool testing for our athletes, but we can't require it for participation in public schooling and we can't make it an opt-out program because of the requirement for informed consent. It has to be an opt-in program. So please fill out your returning student form. And we have had over a thousand, I think we might be close to 2000 folks who have already done this. So thank you to those of you who have already filled out your consent form. We're not maintaining a three-foot distancing requirement, but for all of our students who are unvaccinated we are going to be able to keep students in all of our elementary classrooms three feet or more apart for the majority of the school day. So while no, we are not saying that all day long students will always be three feet apart. And while we are allowing teachers to enter into rearranging their classrooms so that students can collaborate with one another, we are thinking a lot about maintaining three feet whenever possible and also maintaining some level of potting within a class, potting is a word that I'll use here for this because it's kind of hard to explain but in order to facilitate contact tracing it is much easier for us to keep a small group of students relatively near one another for most of the day. So if you think about our elementary school students they will have a seating chart. That seating chart may change on a regular basis every few weeks so that they can be around new friends but they will be around the same several friends for most of their school day. And then when they go to lunch they will sit if they're sitting indoors which we're hoping to use the outdoors as much as possible they'll sit with those same friends so that when we have to do contact tracing in the event we might need to do that we know who the close contacts of that student are and we can minimize the impact of quarantining on the class. So this is as much a safety measure to make sure that students aren't exposed to tons of other students every day and it is also a logistical measure because it helps us facilitate the contact tracing process. Most of these requirements are really to make sure that we give students the ability to experience school in the way that we want them to experience school return to collaborative learning while also making sure that we can maintain safety. Students will eat lunch like I said with the same group of students that they are assigned close to in the classroom in the event they're eating indoors. If they're eating outdoors they will eat with their class but they might have a little bit more flexibility as to who they eat near and that allows for a little bit more socialization. We are going to prioritize outdoor instruction in instances where the removal of masks is instructionally beneficial. This includes for really critical things like speech and language services where it's really important to see the mouth early literacy instruction for choir and instrumental instrumental music we're going to purchase additional PPE that's specific to that area like bell covers and specialized masks but we'll also prioritize having those outside. English learner instruction and world language instruction will also be prioritized for outdoor instruction and we won't have cohorting and distancing requirements in grades seven through 12 where students are able to be vaccinated. We intend to maintain ventilation and air purification measures from last year. We know that we need to maintain four to six air exchanges in a room per hour. Most student classrooms have that level of ventilation with the units that pull outdoor air directly into the classroom. We can also open windows but we do maintain four to six air exchanges in rooms that have those outdoor air intakes in all of our, and that's all of our classrooms. The units are equipped with Merf 13 filters. Those are going to be changed in August, December and April that's very similar to what we did last year. And we also have additional layers of ventilation and purification in place. We have Austin air purifiers in all student occupied spaces and the ability to assess any space that educators have concerns about. So if anybody expresses a concern, we can go take a look and make sure that we're attaining the air exchange rate that is necessary to ensure safety. Our illness protocol is much the same as last year. This is actually the exact same one that we had last year. Students who are ill or show symptoms of COVID-19 need to stay home. Parents should call the school to report the absence. The symptoms are listed here and in our recovery plan and any student who has these symptoms should not be sent to school. They should be taken to a healthcare provider and be tested for COVID-19 with, it says they're antigen or PCR tests but really if it's a symptomatic individual they should be tested with a PCR test and we have changed that in the language of the plan. I just didn't get it changed on this particular slide. So they need to be tested with a COVID-19 PCR test if symptomatic and be fever free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication in order to come back to class. We also added feeling better because we don't want students who feel ill to have a mask on all day. It just exacerbates it and can make them feel even worse. So we want them to be feeling better too before they come back to school. So quarantine and travel. We are requesting that all families follow the current state domestic and international travel recommendations or orders. We recognize that these conflict with one another, okay? So if you look at state guidelines and then you look at CBC guidelines and then you look at guidelines around international travel these can contradict one another and they can also be, they can also change very quickly. We do not currently have a travel mandate in the state. And so as a result of that we are asking families to use their best judgment to take precautions when you travel. We do not have a quarantine expectation when students return from travel. However, if you have been engaging in any level of high risk activity while you've been traveling, if you've been in crowded spaces, if you have not masked unvaccinated students of course we hope that you will take all of the precautions necessary to ensure the safety of all of our students at school. And so if you ever have questions about this we encourage you to reach out to your child's principal to find out more about what we might recommend about any one situation but every travel scenario is different. And for us to have any level of blanket requirement or expectation on this would be extremely challenging. We hope that you will collaborate with us and help us figure out based on the situation with regards to the virus at the time where you're traveling and what your activities will be what the best measures would be for you to take. When it comes to quarantine we're waiting for updated guidance from the state right now on this. We have preliminary guidance on it but it is fairly subject to change. This is currently pending further updates. Right now the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and DESC have told us that asymptomatic close contacts would have the option to remain in school masked while indoors and be tested daily with our by next now which we have plenty of tests for at least five days. And if of course that turned out to be positive we would send the student home and then reassess the situation because if that turned out to be positive we would be looking at conditions where we may have an instance of school spread. Vaccinated staff and students will not be required to quarantine but close contacts of a case would be required to mask for five days and test on day five and students and staff who test positive would be required to quarantine for 10 days following that positive test. Again, we're still waiting for updates on quarantine guidelines but we're fairly certain that that is what they are going to look like. I am going to very quickly move through the last few slides and open it up for questions. We will have hand sanitizer and continue to sanitize high touch areas, spaces and supplies over the course of the day. Teachers will have regular access to sanitizing supplies and custodians will perform routine cleaning with attention to high touch surfaces throughout the day. In the event we have COVID-19 in a classroom that is when we will use our sanitizing mist broadly in that classroom space for the infected individual was and do a deeper clean of that particular space. When it comes to meals and nutrition, our elementary students and our students at the Gibbs School are the ones we are particularly cognizant of because those are the ones who don't have access to the vaccinations. These students will eat with their cohort class for learning community for all meals. We are prioritizing outdoor eating and implementing that planning to implement that as often as possible because it opens up space for our indoor eaters if we have any on that particular day. We will be assigning students seats in the cafeteria. Like I said earlier, they will sit with other students from their class and near other students who they sit near in class. That additional layer helps us with the contact tracing and six feet of distance will be maintained between students from different classes or at the Gibbs from different learning communities. At Audison and the high school, students will have the option to eat outdoors as often as possible. And at Arlington High School, we do have a plan for an open campus and we'll have more details about the implementation of that in our forums for AHS and to follow. Transportation will be available to students according to our usual district policies. And these measures are the same as they were last year. Students and drivers must wear masks. Windows will be open on days when the conditions allow for it. Students will have assigned seats to facilitate contact tracing and high touch areas will be sanitized in the runs of separate students. And with that, I will conclude and welcome any questions from the committee. Could we close the slides and make sure Ms. Borgono has access. Any members of the committee, have any questions or comments they would like to make? Mr. Carden. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Homan and to everyone who worked on this plan for reentry. I'm very pleased with the progress we've made and the plan that's come together. I think, Dr. Homan, you've seen a lot of the emails that have come in with questions and you addressed some of them in your presentation, but I hope going forward, we can start an FAQ so that we can address these questions. Related to that, the guidance you just gave on travel isn't in the plan. So either put that in, I would suggest either putting that in an FAQ or putting it in the plan itself because there have been a lot of questions on that. The CDC, we reference the state guidelines. The state references the CDC. The CDC only has guidelines, not requirements, but they do suggest a quarantine. So I think what you suggested is much more flexible and realistic, but we need to get that message out because right now it's very confusing. And then just a quick question. Last year we weren't able to run the Bishop bus. Are we planning to do that again this year? That is my understanding, but I will double check that with Steve Angelo. Great, thank you. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. I wanted to follow up on what Mr. Cardin was saying about the travel. I'm concerned that we need to be clear what we're requesting families to do and that I think we should take the state and CDC guidelines and at least explain what we hope they will do. It may, I'm not asking for some sort of enforcement or restrictions because of it, but I think I spent a long time on the state website this afternoon and I had to go to three different links to find what they recommended for an unvaccinated individual in terms of quarantine. And then when I looked at the CDC website, which the state also references, it has a different explanation of what they expect for an unvaccinated person. And I don't expect our families in the heat of travel to come home and then be trying to go through multiple different links and then decide which one they're going to do. I think we should have at least some suggestion. Also, they wanna know before they go. We should have some suggestion of what our hope is and it can be updated if the guidelines change. And of course they can, if their doctor or someone prefers that they do something else that would supersede things, but I am frustrated by the information and the un-clarity of the state guidelines. Then yeah, so the only other thing is that I think it'd be helpful to let families know about what the purpose of the forms will be because I think people are really happy that there's forms, but they aren't totally clear on what's going to happen and what's gonna be discussed. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Morgan. Hi, yes, I have a couple of questions. The piece on the travel I think is really important that we clarify Arlington took such an aggressive and unusual tack on travel last year that I think a lot of families are understandably very anxious about this piece and are wondering when the district is going to decide that their kids can't come to school. So I think we just, we need to really make it very explicit in the reentry documents so that people understand what the expectations are.  Nobody knows necessarily what's going to happen, but I do think that we have a history in Arlington of taking a very different course than neighboring districts and being more aggressive than the state was. So I think people really need to understand and know what to expect. The piece that I wanted, so I wanted to clarify regarding when Dr. Holman, you were talking about potting and quarantining, and then you talked about the desi test and stay. So is your intention, so I was confused because I was like, all right, I understand why we're potting, but then are we going to quarantine these kids or are we gonna allow for test and stay? Right, so we still need to identify, and I'm gonna say this and then I'm gonna ask Christine to help me say more about it, but we still have to identify close contacts. So we need to be able to figure out who are the close contacts, who are now testing and staying if they choose to stay or who then will have the opportunity if their parents decide to keep them home for quarantine to quarantine. And that is a much easier process to do if we have the kids near a set number of students. It also uses fewer resources if we're not testing and staying the entire class. So in instances where we do have a positive case, what that level of potting does is it first ensures that students are around fewer kids during the day, but it also allows us to contact race much more easily. And Christine may have, Ms. Mongeurna I have more details about what the quarantine guidelines look like because I believe you've heard a little bit more about this. So I think, thank you for the opportunity to speak up. I think that there is so much more to come from Desi on this particular piece that it's just sort of hard to like make a definitive decision at this time, but the quarantine, anytime we have a positive, we're looking at the, there are a number of different things that come into play. The age of the children, different, the seating rate, every case is different. So potting versus the Desi recommendations, I think it's a case by case. And I think we'll wait to see what Desi has, but at this point, like I said, it's case by case. And I think what we decide today may shift and change by the start of school based on data that we're seeing in camps and different groups we're working with now, various positive, and it may change by September 15th, September 30th, it could change based on the data. The goal being we want kids in school and that's the overarching goal, both in health and human services. And I know on the school side, so we will be working hard to make sure that that's the ultimate goal while being safe. And I think so, I guess what I would like to hear about with the potting, I would like to hear from elementary teachers maybe, like I would like to hear from them how this goes. I feel like as a student, you could be in a good pod and it's a great day and you could be in a not so great pod and it's a long three weeks. So I would really, I would like to get feedback directly from our classroom teachers. I don't know how we can collect that efficiently, but I'd prefer to hear from them than have it be sent through. So I'd really like to hear from them about this, especially if it's something that we continue deep into the school year. And then the other piece I wanted to ask about was around the decisions on masking. But the first thing I wanted to say, I've heard from several parents over the last couple of weeks, just about wanting some acknowledgement that masking is not a no cost exercise. Universal masking is not no cost. We have students with hearing impairments. We have students learning English. We have students who work with SLPs. And for some of those, for some of those kids, it can be really hard to navigate school with masking. And again, I think that it's absolutely what we need to do right now to support keeping kids in school and getting them there. But I think that we wanna continue to acknowledge that there are costs to universal masking and they're paid disproportionately. And I know that that's something, Dr. Holman, that you and your team have discussed at length and has been acknowledged in many meetings and conversations I've been a part of, but I think it's important to make sure that we stay that publicly here because I think it's something that you've all been extremely mindful of. And I just wanna make sure that we continue to reiterate that. So my question about masking, so it sounds like, and this is where we got hung up a little bit last year too, is if the school committee is gonna make a decision, do a policy on universal masking, then the school committee is gonna need to rescind that policy at some point, I imagine. But it sounds like there's a lot of, as there should be, certainly a lot of interplay with the health department and with Ms. Lindjourneau and her team. And so, we're probably not ready to have this conversation yet, but I do think it needs to be really clear. If this is, I certainly support universal masking, especially to start the year and if we're gonna have a policy to do that, I think we just need to understand what it's going to take to move away from that. So I don't know, Dr. Holman, if you know anything about that yet at this point or it's something we can talk about down the road, but I just, I wanna make sure that we're clear about who's gonna make these decisions, who has the authority to make them. It's gonna come as a recommendation from you, I assume, and then we're going to accept it as the way forward, but then how do we back out of that down the road? I will say that that is part of, that was a major part of the conversation that the subcommittee that was looking at health protocols had. And one of the things we wanted to make sure we articulated, which is why those parameters are also in the plan for removal of masks, is we wanted to indicate to folks that we understand the instructional and sort of, and social and academic implications of masking, and we wanna have an off-ramp. And we wanna establish to folks that we're going to be constantly reassessing this in collaboration with the health department, in collaboration with our bargaining units, in collaboration with our families. And if, when we feel as though we've gotten to a safe place, me bringing a recommendation forward to the committee or the committee recommending that we do another reassessment of this is what I would imagine would happen. So I would bring a recommendation forward to this unit so that we could examine whether or not to rescind this, along with all of the data that would support that recommendation. Mr. Schlickman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Um, the logic of coming back to the school committee in the event that the life gets much better and we wanna rescind restrictions, it makes a lot of sense. And we can afford to be cautious there and take the couple of weeks to post a meeting and get community feedback if we're lifting restrictions. My question is the opposite. If circumstances change and we need to change and make our requirements more restrictive, what is the protocol for that? Who makes the decision and can the health department make a call in real time to change the rules? I defer to Ms. Ben-Giorno on that. What do you think? Absolutely, yes. I mean, obviously it would be a decision that we would make with the leadership team that's making these, that's driving the decisions across the town. We would take it very seriously. If students are out of masks and the decision is to go back into masks, there'd be a lot of data that would support that. So I think we have to always be on our toes in looking at the data. So that could be done easily by the Board of Health. I understand. I must commend you and the entire health department and all the folks in the town side who have been partners with it. You've made quick nimble, correct decisions. And I'm so grateful for the work you've done because I'm asking this question to sort of lead into the following question. I feel uncomfortable regardless of any circumstances having an unvaccinated person in their buildings. We have not received a ruling. We have the authority at this point to require vaccinations for vaccine eligible people entering our buildings. Should this authority appear after this point or after we get school started? Would the Board of Health or the health department have the ability to quickly say, yes, we're going to make this requirement? And would you be guided by a sense of this committee that that's the direction we'd like to go should we be legally entitled to do that? The conversations are starting. I think that, I'll leave it at that. Vaccinations are the way we will get out of this and that's the direction that most places are going. So that is definitely that conversation starting at the top level. Yeah, I hope that as we move forward, we find ourselves with the ability to require a vaccination. Thank you. Mr. Thelman. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. And I want to thank Dr. Homan and everybody who worked on this over the past several weeks. I think it was a very collaborative process and a very clear plan and a good framework for how we move forward. My questions, I think are this. I may have a different view than other folks here. My understanding is that we're on the 24th, we're going to come back and adopt this framework. But in the moment, based on public health changes, the superintendent and Ms. Bonjournal will connect with each other. The town leadership will make a decision and they can make a decision in the moment to change anything that they feel is necessary for the health and safety of our kids without having to come back to the school committee to consult. That's kind of how I see it. I mean, I even to the point of if they say, look, we're at a certain point in this pandemic where we don't require masks anymore. And they feel that there's not a meeting in the school committee and for whatever it's gonna be. I don't know if the superintendent has to come back to us to make that kind of a change. I think the school committee is adopting a policy and a framework and then the superintendent and consultation with the district, with the town's leadership can make decisions as she sees fit based on the best interests in the health and safety of our kids. But that is not how yours, I mean, Dr. Holman, how do you see it? And I guess, Christine, how do you see it? I'll start, I'll say that the advice that was given to superintendents was to ensure that we engaged our school committee in an initial start to the year and a conversation about what our policies and procedures would be to get ourselves started. I appreciate the ability to pivot as needed and to do so in collaboration and consultation with our bargaining units, the town, our administrative staff, and of course, keeping the school committee as informed as we're thinking about making new decisions. I would intend to give the school committee an update if we were considering pivoting, both at the moment we were considering pivoting and then when we had our next meeting publicly to talk to the public about where we are with regards to reconsidering any of our policies and procedures, but I agree with you, Mr. Thielman. I think that the guidance we've received to superintendents is to collaborate with the school committee at the onset and at the initial establishment of what our procedures and policies will be to start the year and from there, the license to make decisions as needed in consultation with Ms. Bungiorno and others would be very appreciated and would allow us to be more nimble. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I see our role. I move the policy and be consulted throughout the process. If you have to make a decision in the moment, I don't think you have to wait for the school committee to weigh in. I think you just have to let us know and then the very next meeting, we talk about it. And if you feel absolutely the law requires you to consult with us and for us to take a vote, then I guess we can call an emergency meeting. But I just, I feel like the superintendent's got to have the leeway to make, to pivot as appropriate based on data and circumstances right before her. So that's kind of how, that's how I see it. Or anyone else? Ms. Eckston, then Dr. Nipi. I just want to echo Mr. Thielen's thanks on this plan and the amount of time and work that went into it and the number of people that contributed to it. I think it's a really comprehensive, detailed framework. And I appreciate everybody's work on that. One of the things, so I had similar comments to Ms. Morgan about travel. So I will not repeat those. But another thing I just wanted to acknowledge are the sort of experiences and concerns of families who were fully remote last year in coming back to school. And not just sort of with this new Delta search, but just returning to the school building after having been away for almost 18 months, rejoining kids that were in school buildings last year. And the feelings that those kids are gonna have. So I really, really appreciate the visits that are planned before school and the work that is going to go into those and the teachers that are gonna be asked to welcome all of the students into the buildings earlier than they may have originally anticipated. I think that was a really wise decision. So I appreciate that. Very briefly, Dr. Holman, can you just again for the community, can you share why students are not having lunch individually in their classrooms and why they're going back to the cafeteria? I think that's just come up a little bit too. Sure. Before I say that, I do want to note that it's the, those new and returning students will come back for a tour. And what we are dedicating for the teachers is that they will make a connection, a meaningful connection with the kids. Some of that for all kids might be virtual, it might not be a welcome back into the building because we don't want to mix a whole bunch of people up right before we start a school, but for our new students and are coming back from remote students, that will be an in-person before the start of the school year and even before teachers start and an opportunity to tour the building. And that has shifted a little bit over the last couple of weeks, so I wanted to make sure that that was clear. And then for lunches, it is, it's tough on coverage in a school for us to have the kids split sort of all over the school at lunches, in part because the teachers also have lunches. And we want to make sure that the kids have the services that they need and the supports that they need during their learning time. So when we need to split the kids out across multiple classrooms to eat, instead of having them in some versions of larger spaces together, what that will do is require us to get really creative about supervision. And what that could mean is pulling a support like a TA out of a classroom for instructional time or out of working individually with a student to provide an instructional support so that we can supervise lunches. So while we are not saying that we won't use classrooms, so what we might do is instead of putting three classes in a grade level in the cafeteria, we might do two classes in a grade level in the cafeteria and another class in their classroom. But that means we're supervising two spaces instead of three spaces. So that allows us to have our staff doing what we want our staff to be doing which is helping during instructional time as opposed to helping to supervise lunches which was a real strain on the system last year when we needed to have so many different spaces utilized for lunches. Now, we can get creative about that. The principals and I have talked about this quite a bit. We can get creative about that by using space adjacencies and having staffs try to supervise across a couple of spaces but we also wanna make sure everybody stays safe, everybody stays in their spot because we're trying to maintain not mixing too much. So those are some of the considerations that come into play when we're thinking about the use of cafeterias in large spaces for lunches. And we can also, we're going to work to distance the kids if they're eating indoors as much as we possibly can but we don't wanna commit to it but what we know we can commit to is maintaining them close to some of the kids who they would otherwise have been close to in the day so that they're not mixing with a whole new group of students or they're not sitting with students who would be in another classroom. I hope that- Yeah, no, I just, I wanted the community to hear about the complexities of supervising lunch. Thank you. I'm off then. Dampy. Thank you. I just wanted to address what Mr. Thielman was saying about the superintendent pivoting. So first, I wanna emphasize I have no question that the superintendent will be making the best possible choices but I also feel that masking to some extent comes under policy and we own policy. And I'm not comfortable what we're asking the superintendent to do in terms of making decisions about masking isn't a turning it like a light switch on or off. It's something that is going to require bigger messaging to the public. And also it's not something we wanna turn around and have to turn back on really soon. So I don't have a problem with us having to even have an emergency meeting to discuss this. Obviously other public health things, you know, it's the public health department has powers and they will use their powers to see fit. But I just wanna emphasize that I think that some of this stuff does come under policy and that we should be involved in making policy decisions. Thank you. Mr. Codd. Hi, thanks. So two things, just to expand on that a little bit. What I thought Jeff was talking about was maybe other issues. For example, there may be a time if and hopefully there won't be but there may be a time when a classroom or a school or a learning community has to go remote for 10 days. And that's not technically permitted right now by Desi but if our health department requires it then we have to do that. And I would expect the superintendent to do that even though the plan doesn't say anything about that. So certainly that would be within her authority. And the other point I wanted to make is about the vaccine mandate. What we're doing in Arlington is very similar to what's being heralded in California. The headlines say California teacher vaccine mandate but it's really the same thing we're doing. It's vaccinate or be tested weekly. So we certainly will explore if we can do more but we're doing as much as California is doing and Boston is doing for their public employees and other communities. There isn't any hard vaccine mandate yet that I've seen. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Xt. All right, going back to the masking policy. So last spring when Desi came out and said we masks didn't have to be worn outside anymore that decision was made by the superintendent and never came to us. So I don't know if that falls under something similar to what Mr. Thielen is talking about but that decision was made by the superintendent last year or so. Well, I gotta go to the chair. I'm gonna move on.  Yeah, I just want to also state that relaxing the policy is something that can take time. And certainly as we're setting the masking policy or the health policies that we're putting in writing anything that we've put in writing that we're removing I think is appropriate to come through us. A more strict requirement out of a sense of emergency has to be nimble in something that can be done. And, you know, testing is fine but testing is one day, two days, three days, maybe five days after somebody becomes contagious. And it just feels like weak T to have a compulsory vaccination policy was knocked out for testing. And I would really like to see an assurance that everybody who is eligible has been vaccinated and not go for an offline. Is there something to add, Jeff? I gotta be honest, we're sort of beating this and we all know, go Jeff. I would just say that I would hope we don't get to a point where the district leadership, the educators in the buildings, the principals, the health department has, you know, a feeling about masks or whatever the policy is and the school committee withholds or doesn't allow them to do what they think is best for kids based on their experience inside the buildings every day. That's what I was trying to say. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you, Dr. Holman. Thank you, Dr. McNeil. We'll be on to approval of data coach job description. Dr. Holman. I will hand this one off to Rob Spiegel to talk about this. This is a position that was discussed in CIAA subcommittee that we did several rounds of revision on and would like to be able to fill but that would require the vote of the committee. So Rob, Mr. Spiegel. Yes, so we had discussed this in several iterations. This iteration would be, a data coach would be within the AEA teachers bargaining unit which is similar to our other coaches that we've added in the past couple of years including science coach and social studies coach and math and literacy coaches. But this would work specifically, you know, between our data, the specialists in the district and educators in data analysts and data and actually Dr. McNeil probably has a little better idea of the kinds of things they would do in terms of that would intersect with curriculum and instruction but it really would be a link between our data specialists who really are doing with our power school team and everything and our educators within the district. And so this would require desi licensure and some experience with data and in an educational setting. Mr. Slickman. Thank you. I wanna commend Dr. Homan, Dr. McNeil, Mr. Spiegel between the time of the first draft of this job description and the one that came to forest tonight, there have been significant improvements in it and it has turned into an excellent description and I'm very thrilled with the work that they've done and I'm happy to support this. Entertain a motion to approve the data coach job description. Go move. Is there a second? And we'll have discussion in a second. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Dr. Ampey, do you wish to discuss it? I just wondered who this person will... Oh, nevermind, I found it. Nevermind, I support this. Thank you. Thank you. What's the wishes to discuss this before I call the vote? Roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Eckston. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Mr. Slickman. Yes. And I vote yes. So passed. Moving on to lab capital plan approval. Dr. Homan. So this came to me from the executive director of lab, Bill Lupini, and he said that in a meeting in June, the lab board voted to approve an increase on the ceiling for the lab capital plan to a $4 million, apparently the ceiling for that right now is $3.1 million. I was not present for the discussion of this, but my understanding is that the rationale for increasing the ceiling on the capital plan budget is in order to fund some capital requests that are coming in as a result of various building projects. I do have an inquiry into Dr. Janger to ask about whether or not there are capital requests that we need to be having on this plan for our lab classrooms at our new high school. But the Belmont project, I know had several capital plan impacts that required them to then seek an increase in this. So this could have an impact on things such as the credits that we received back from lab. If they were to expend the cap on the capital plan, they would actually need to budget for that. And so that could have an impact on how much we get back in credits. I'm still working to understand exactly how all of the ins and outs of this work, I'm happy to go back to Mr. Lupini with questions if there are any, but it requires two thirds of lab communities to vote in the affirmative on this in order for the cap to go up. Any questions? Mr. Schleckman. How many communities in lab and how many you've already approved it? I do not know the answer to that. I would need to go find out. Communities on the board, I also don't know. I have not been to a board meeting yet and I just met Mr. Lupini the other day. Okay, I apologize for asking you a question. Sorry. Mr. Gardner. Okay. I'm sorry, Mr. Schleckman. Thank you very much. I think that looking the cap makes some sense. Len? Sorry, yes. So it's the five LABBB communities. So Lettington, Arlington, Belmont, Burlington and Bedford are the five communities. So yeah, this is just a routine. I don't know when it was last increased. I don't remember it being increased on my, while I've been on the board, but presumably at some point it's been increased. Thanks. I move approval. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Mr. Schleckman. Yes. And I vote yes. So it is approved. Moving on to the superintendent's report, Dr. Holman. Thank you. I'm going to share my screen one more time. And today in my update, I'm going to share an enrollment report and a little bit of detail about the memo that you received that was attached to that enrollment report. My apologies. I sent you an updated one earlier this evening because the one that you had in Novus was an outdated version. So I wanted to make sure that you had the most accurate version. I will also share an administrative hiring update very briefly, but there will be more to come on this once we have all of our administrators in place. We have one more search that's pending and a little announcement about an exciting grant award that we received just this past week. So the enrollment report that is in your materials for tonight, the goal of this is to help you see the number of students overall that are in the district in each school and each grade level. I developed this when we still had a few students pending in the last day. We have rolled that over. And so in your next report, you won't see the pending columns. You'll just see how many active students we have in the system. And then next spring, I'll start reporting the pending, the ones who are coming in and rolling again. The goal is also to show you the average class size of our elementary sections and also the middle school learning communities and a comparison, because I think this will be important for us this year, given what happened with enrollments last year of the October, 2020 enrollment data to the current enrollment information that we have available. So some takeaways just from this initial report and then I welcome the committee's feedback on this report, anything else you might wanna see in it, anything that was a level of detail or questions that you had about it that you would like me to tweak, I'm happy to adjust how this report looks depending on what the committee would like. But some key takeaways were that we do have an increase of 38 students in kindergarten compared to last year. In October, decreases in grades one and two and increase of 72 in grade three. Our average class sizes are under 25 at all schools except in Straton grade four. And I did check with the principal at Straton and they are still able to maintain that three feet of distance in most cases when they are seated at their desks. The average LC sizes are under a hundred at Gibbs and at Otteson for all of our learning communities. And we have an overall gain so far of 101 students compared to last October. Of course, those numbers continue to change and I'll have a new update for the committee on September 9th. I can pause here or I can do the rest of the update. Yeah, I'll stop. Sorry, Ms. Morgan. Just a really quick question on the enrollment report. When you're, Dr. Holman, when you're talking about the attrition or the Delta or I can't remember exactly what it said, you're looking at the Delta in that grade like kindergarten last year and kindergarten this year, you're not looking at the cohort isn't dropping that much. It's just the number of kids in first grade last year versus the number of kids in first grade this year. Correct, yes, that's how I looked at that. Anyone else at this time? Mr. Carden. Thanks. So obviously this section stuff is all within your purview but I just wanna highlight the fourth grade class at Brackett being so small, class size. When there's a couple of cohorts that are, there's several that are at 16, there's several classes across the district that are 16 kids per class. But at the upper grade levels, this is sort of the big outlier. So maybe that's just how you land or maybe there's reasons for that because of the SLC at Brackett or something. But I think that's a good question. But we do typically hear about it when things are that unequal. So just a warning, thanks. I actually, we have some shifting situations with regards to staffing right now that I'll have an update on in terms of section numbers that does have an impact on fourth grade at Brackett. And I will also note that the SLC students who are in an SLC are included in these counts. So that that's included in bad average class size so that it's not extracted and they are included in these numbers, these are overall. Right, right. But that might be a justification for having smaller class sizes at Brackett, for example, overall, because if there happened to be a large cohort in that SLC of four or five kids, then that might be a reason for that class size. I think it is helpful to have the SLC numbers somewhere. We always got, there was always the issue of where to include them and do you list them twice or what? But at least at the school level, I think it would be helpful to have at the grade level, I'm not sure if we need to have that or not, just to know our enrollment in those programs is helpful. Thanks. I can include that next time. Anyone else? Okay, here we go. This exit. Wait, I was trying to. Yeah. Dr. Andy can go first. Go ahead, Dr. Andy. She had a hand. Okay, sorry. I don't know if this question can be answered now. I forgot to send it on earlier, I'm sorry. I'm curious how these numbers relate to the estimates that Mr. Mason had done last year as part of our presentation for finance committee. And maybe that's something that could be discussed at our next meeting. Thank you. I just, I want to get Dr. Homedic. Do you want to respond or do you want me to go on? We haven't done that analysis yet. Okay, fine. Mr. Mason, I can work on that. Great. This exit. So I want to echo Mr. Hardin's comment request about having SLC numbers, that's helpful. The other thing that I don't see here that we've had in the past are the Metco numbers. Just helps us just know how many students from the program run the district. And then, yeah, I look at the fourth grade at Stratton and then look at the fourth grade at Brackett and the community is going to see these numbers too. And it makes me uncomfortable, just the big size. And I know that cohort has been large all along. So I'm just going to express my concerns there. Thank you. Hey, Dr. Homedic, you can go on. Okay. I want to say a welcome to all of our new leaders and just put their names in front of you. We're going to have them also visit at a point in September so that you can all say hello to them and hear from them and they can introduce themselves to you. But we do have assistant principals now at every single one of our schools and their names are listed here. Some of them have been with us for a while in the district and are just now coming into full-time assistant principal roles. We're very excited about having that level of support at all of our schools. We also have new directors and coordinators, Margaret Cradle-Thomas will be our new director of diversity, equity and inclusion. Rashmi Pimperkar will be our director of digital learning. Doreen Crowe will be our new director of nursing pre-K to 12 and we're already keeping her pretty busy. She hasn't even started yet and she's helping us out with health protocols. And Rina Mella will be our new middle school special education coordinator. We also have a new town chief information officer which is very exciting and she'll be starting very soon. Her name is Pat Shepard and she's joining us from the Museum of Science. So that's just an update for you. We'll have more information about all of these wonderful people before long and you'll be seeing them, I'm sure, on school committee meetings. I also wanted to give you an administrative hiring update. We have one active search at the moment. We are searching for a new director of our MetCo program. We have screening committee interviews completed at this point and finalists who are in the process of being announced and engaging in finalist interviews in the coming days. We will have finalist interviews early next week and an announcement targeted for the end of the week and are very much looking forward to having a director of MetCo in place so that our new director of diversity, equity and inclusion can shift her focus over to that very important work that she's already started working on with us. I also wanted to let the committee know that we have been awarded a Sims grant and the grant title is here and this is mostly an FYI and some good news. We're very excited about doing this work in collaboration with our health and wellness department and our nursing department. The grant title is updating and improving Arlington Public Schools elementary human growth and development curriculum and grades four and five health curriculum. The group that's going to work on this is going to update our health and human growth and development curriculum which is currently in grade five. This will extend it to grade four and update it. This is a program that covers education about puberty, gender identity and sexuality so we want to make sure it's very inclusive and that the needs of our students are met by whatever our health and human growth and development program is and this grant's going to allow us to do a lot of that curriculum work. The amount is $20,000, 755 and we're very grateful to the Sims Memorial Fund, Inc. here in town for this generous award that's going to have a great and positive impact on Arlington's students. And I also provided you with a new calendar of our presentations for the school committee which we talked about at length in a workshop this Tuesday. In it are a few highlights which the community can expect in the coming year. School improvement plan presentations will take place from all of our schools throughout the fall and they're very excited about building these plans and sharing them with the community. There will be an entry plan findings report and my formative evaluation in January of 2022. We will do an outcomes and accountability report and share the findings from our most recent round of MCAS as well as other outcomes that are driving our district work this year. We'll do that in early October. And my budget proposal to the school committee will be in February with a public hearing and approval in March. My evaluation will take place summative evaluation in May and June and we will cover other topics as needed for work that's happening and it's ongoing in the school district and that's just an update to the community on what they can expect in terms of presentations from the administration during school committee meetings this year. And that concludes my update. Any comments from the committee or questions? Really, wonderful. Moving on to the consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Warrant number 21279 dated 61521 total amount, $1,214,422 and 24 cents. Warrant number 21296 dated 63021 total amount, $1,493,732 and 85 cents. Warrant number 22007 dated 727 2001 total amount, $204,967,99. Approval of the school committee regular meeting minutes June 10th, 2021. Approval of special school committee meeting minutes June 29th, 2021. And approval of school committee superintendent workshop retreat minutes July 24, 2021. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second? Thank you, roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Hexton. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Kiden. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Dr. Rampe. Yes. And I vote approval. Subcommittee reports, budget. Dr. Rampe. Nothing to report. We'll be, I think we'll be scheduling a meeting in the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Community relations. I'm hoping to bring a schedule for the this year's chat which we discussed back in June to the full committee just to give everybody an update and ask for volunteers to attend them. Great. CIA, Mr. Cardin. Nothing to report. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. Nothing to report. Policy and procedures, Mr. Schlickman. Nothing to report right now but I'm sure we're going to need to meet in early September. Allington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. It's looking great. Dr. Holman and I made a presentation to the select board the other night and we are in four members of the select board, chairs of some of the committees, the capital planning committee, finance committee, I think a few others took a tour of the new high school and it's moving along great. Thank you. Liaison reports. Anybody have any at this time? Announce. Sorry, Ms. Morgan. I heard from Invision Arlington and they were going to reach out to you, Mr. Heiner, about having an opportunity to provide the results of the survey and present those at a meeting of your choice. So I will connect with you over email and make sure that that connection has been made and then you can put them on an agenda should you so choose at some point in the fall. Thank you. Any announcements and any future agenda items other than the one that Ms. Morgan just mentioned? Ms. Morgan. So I guess I would like to see at our next August meeting. I appreciate that we're trying to move through the agenda but I still have a lot of questions around the decision-making and when we use words like policy. And so I would like to have an opportunity to sort of clarify how that's gonna look and what needs are sort of engagement and involvement. So I'd like to have a more, I'd like to be permitted to have a more robust conversation about that at a future meeting before the start of school. Thank you. Anyone else at this time? Dr.  Sorry. This is a, okay. This is a request for much later in the year but I wanna get it out there. I would like to hear discussion of both the box scheduling and the, what's the other change that they, I'm sorry? Heterogeneous classes. Yes, the heterogeneous classes. Thank you. And the decision for doing or not doing, especially from the lens of a student who is perhaps struggling. Because what I've heard is that some of these things were really good for those students and I'm concerned that we've kind of made a de facto decision without ever having the actual discussion. And I'd like to hear more about the feedback that people had received and hearing from it from the point of view of all of our learners not just our most highest achieving. So thank you. But like I said, this is way down the pipe. I just wanted to get it out there. I'll be talking with Dr. Holman tomorrow about tonight's meeting. It's one of the things we can put on. We can discuss it. We'll get back to you on that for when? Okay. Mr. Codden. Yes, I had already made this request to you, Mr. Haynor, but I'll make it publicly. So Dr. Holman can hear it. I do think we need to be briefed on the new SLC that we're starting. So hopefully the first meeting in September, we can do that. Thank you. Anyone else at this time? Great. Okay. Moving on. Executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and our non-union personnel. Our contract negotiations with union and our non-union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To discuss the legal and bargaining implications of the COVID-19 vaccination requirements with all unions and the MOA with bargaining units of just been a cafeteria and traffic. It's a motion to go into executive session. Roll call, roll. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Who made the motion? I'm sorry. I made the motion. I didn't get it. I'll second it. I'll second it. Thank you. And I voted in the affirmative. Thank you. And Dr. Ampey. Yes. And I vote yes. Mr. Spiegel, I assume we will be coming back out for the purpose of just voting. Yes. Thank you. Motion to adjourn the reg. I'm motion to... We're done. We just did it. We just made the vote to go adjourned. Thank you. Second session. Okay. Now we just... Mr. Schlickman. I move that we ratify the memorandum of agreement for these cafeteria workers. There was second. Second. Second. Thank you. Roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Ms. Extent. Yes. And I vote yes. So moved. Mr. Chairman, I move ratification of the memorandum of agreement for the traffic supervisors. Is there a second? Yes. Second. Roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Ampey. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Extent. Yes. Thank you, folks. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Yes. Aye. It's been vivid. Let's do this again and soon. Indeed. 12 days. Bye now. Bye bye. Bye.


Structural levels of proteins, the quaternary structure. First the contents, quaternary structures, bonding involved in quaternary structure, examples of proteins having quaternary structures, then the fibrous proteins and the globular proteins. So first the quaternary structures. Quaternary structure is the final structure of protein folding. When the proteins start to fold, the last and final structure of the folding pattern is the quaternary structure. First of all, when the protein is synthesized, that is the primary structure, the linear polypeptide chain. Then there is the folding, the local folding, that is the secondary structure. Then if there is one polypeptide chain, when it folds up, then it becomes a tertiary structure. So quaternary structure basically when there are more than one polypeptide chain, there can be two or more than two polypeptide chains, that they form a quaternary structure. So by definition we will say, quaternary structure is basically the structure of protein, which is formed by folding of two or more than two polypeptide chains. This means that the protein which has one polypeptide chain, that protein will never make quaternary structure. Whereas the one with more than one polypeptide chain will always be the quaternary structure. The final structure will be the quaternary structure. For example, for example, we have hemoglobin. As you can see in the diagram, there are four different polypeptide chains. So there are four different polypeptide chains in hemoglobin, which then form a compact molecule of hemoglobin. So the final structure of hemoglobin is the quaternary structure of hemoglobin. Bondings, what types of bonding are involved in the formation of quaternary structures? Zetter bonds are also involved in the tertiary structure, such as hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds. Van der Waal interactions are basically weak forces that develop in the molecules between the atoms. Sometimes some covalent bonds are also there in the quaternary structures. Examples of proteins with quaternary structures. In the beginning, I told you that the quaternary structure will be of the same protein that has more than two or more than two polypeptide chains. They will form a quaternary structure. So here we have hemoglobin. Hemoglobin has four polypeptide chains. These are pepsin. It is also having more than one polypeptide chain, creatin. Creatin is basically the creatin that makes our nails and hair. So these are all the examples of the quaternary structure of proteins. In the diagram, you are looking at the sum of the four structural levels. First of all, when the protein is formed, it is in a linear form. What is the name of the linear chain? Primary structure of proteins. Basically, it is a polypeptide chain. The second structure above its second step is a polypeptide chain that you fold. What we will say is that it is the secondary structure of proteins. Then, on the third level, the secondary structure which has a secondary structure, a secondary structure will be a further fold-up and it will become a tertiary structure. And then, when you have more than two or more polypeptide chains, they will form a quaternary structure. This is the primary structure. This is the secondary structure. This is the tertiary structure. And this is the quaternary structure. The quaternary structure is a final structure of proteins. The proteins of which have more than two polypeptide chains. The polypeptide chains of which have a tertiary structure are the final structure. Students, if we want to classify the protein based on the tertiary or quaternary structure, then the number of proteins is huge. There are thousands of proteins in any organism. It is very difficult to classify those thousands of proteins based on the tertiary or quaternary structure. Because each protein has its own shape. Each protein has its own folding pattern. It has its own arrangement. So, in this way, you cannot classify the proteins based on the tertiary or quaternary structure. Is it difficult or not? Then, the scientists have divided the proteins into four categories. The first category is the fibrous proteins and the second one is the globular proteins. Fibrous proteins are the ones that make the folding pattern in a fibrous arrangement. They are made of a thread-like structure. Fibrous proteins, because they are made of a thread-like structure, they are having a structural role. The structures of our body are mostly made of fibrous proteins. If we look at our hair, there are fibrous proteins in our hair. There are collagen in our bones. There is silk in our hair. There are silk fibroids in our hair. All these are fibrous proteins. Since fibrous proteins are made of structures, their important property is that they are water insoluble. Because if the structure is made of water insoluble, the structure will dissolve as soon as the water comes. So, you will see the most properties that have a structural pattern. Those things that are made of structures are always water insoluble. Globular proteins. Globular proteins are the category of their overall appearance. They are not thread-like. They are made of a rounded form. The functional role of proteins in the cell is the globular proteins. There are fibrous proteins that play a structural role. That is, they make a structure. When the function is performed, like the function of hemoglobin oxygen is being carried, enzymes are playing a role in different biochemical reactions. All these functional proteins are mostly globular proteins. Globular proteins are water insoluble. They can interact with water. Secondly, if we take its examples, all the enzymes are globular proteins. Hemoglobin, myoglobin or succubus-type proteins are globular in nature.