dy know this. This is just kind of breaks it down. I have a slide for the needs of the elementary school. We're looking to need about 17 to 20 elementary classrooms over the next five years in the oddison. Come on. Oh, I skipped one. How do I go back? Huh? Oh, okay. Middle school. Also, over the next five years, we're looking at needing another 20 classrooms at the middle school. And again, this just outlines kind of how we get to those numbers, 14 regular, 16 specialists. In addition, once you have all those new classrooms, we need more gym space, more lunchroom space, more administrative space. So it's more than just the classrooms. And of course, at the high school, they don't want to leave it out. We need to rebuild the high school. We know we're all waiting for that 21st date. So hopefully, here we go, right? And just, I put that on there, that the MSBA will be involved in this and to stay at the top of the list for the high school. Obviously, we always need to say this, but any other renovations are all in our dime because we can't ask MSBA for money as long as we're waiting on the high school. So there are four big questions that we feel like in order to help make our decision and move our decisions forward, that we feel like we need to have answered. And it's, these are questions that we need to kind of talk about tonight and come up with what we think. But we also, on January 7th, have the forum that Community Relations is gonna put on and it will be co-sponsored by the School Enrollment Task Force. They voted that last night to help get input on these big questions from the town and voters as well. So the first one is elementary neighborhood schools. How important are they? What is the definition of a neighborhood? Like for example, could neighborhood be Hardy and Thompson, are they a neighborhood together? So kind of trying to put our heads around what that means to people and also what is it possible to just redistrict to put students where the classrooms are. We have classrooms, we don't have enough, we still don't have enough, but we do have some and a lot of, they've been a lot of wild and crazy ideas thrown out of the School Enrollment Task Force. I think that that has frustrated some people. They're like, I can't believe you're talking about that. And other people, I just feel like we're just putting everything we can out on the table no matter how crazy. But one possibility is do a massive redistricting and move kids where the classrooms are and save some money for a while. I don't really know how much this helps and for how long I don't think that we have enough classrooms to really make a difference in the short term, but all of these things kind of need to be thought about. The second big question that we need to ask is what size we want our middle school to be. As you heard, you know, when Mr. Rajiri, sorry, got up and spoke today, we are now, we are the seventh largest in the state. We are starting to catch up to our high school and we have to decide, are we gonna make it big and own it and just teach the stuff out of it? Or are we gonna break it up somehow? That's kind of a really big question that we need to answer. And we should probably have that discussion here. A lot of people at the School Enrollment Task Force are really interested in what are the important pedagogy input from the school committee about these questions. I mean, you know, it's an interesting meeting. We have Al and Al Tosti and Charlie Foskitt are there kind of from finance and, you know, capital planning. And so they talk numbers at us and we talk, you know, practices back at them and then the poor select men are trying to figure out like what they're supposed to be doing. And it's kind of interesting meeting. It's great to have all those minds there together because, you know, we have to have these discussions just like that. And then also, if we do break up the middle school or if we try to do something about the middle school, what grade level should we keep together? Do we wanna have just one, you know, we have to kind of have some discussion around what we think about that. The third big question is class size and teacher load. I'm trying to redefine it from class size to teacher load because we all know that not all students are equal.  We need to define what we think is educationally sound. We have to think about what we can afford, how do we define it? And we just need to know what people wanna do. I've been trying really hard. I've been playing with a formula that tries to get to something where we can define what we think is an acceptable teacher load. And I'm working with Sanson on that actually more this week so hopefully we'll have something that we can bring forward. And then the second part of that is not just what is teacher load that is acceptable but what are we gonna do when we exceed that? Cause it's gonna happen even in our best case, right? Even if we were to do all this building, if the town continues to grow, we'll be in this position at some point again and I just wanna make sure that we always say, okay, we can say that 30 kids in a classroom we're gonna add a teacher and then we're never gonna let it get to 40 or something like that. But there's definitely could be different steps to mitigate what we think is acceptable teacher load. And obviously there is some point when that actually has to be another classroom but we need to kind of define those. And the last big question that we wanted to get answered and they wanted our input on also is town impact. We know it's gonna cost money. We have to build something. We have to do something about the enrollment issues. And I think that one of the things that we are all aware of is that we wanna build somewhere. Well, where can we do that? Where's the smallest impact on the other priorities the town has? Whether it's arts or other programs or whatever, we do wanna make sure that we keep all of that in mind. I'm not really sure how accurate this is. This is mine and I have a cold and I've been home for two days. So I had a lot of time to prepare the presentation but my head, I'm sorry, I am on cold medicine so I am not necessarily all here. But I was trying to figure out for people where the stressors are and when they happen. I mean, we've been talking a lot about Thompson because Thompson is the first one that's gonna hit but you can see and I believe that closely on its heels in the next year, we have Audison and Hardy and Bishop that are also right at the edge. And I was trying to figure out and I need probably, Dr. Bodie, you should look at this and kind of see. You know, I kind of rolled in Audison classrooms. I don't know if there's like a huge need at one year to have like all 20 classrooms but I kind of assumed that it would be a rolling in. So over three years you kind of see them get up to that. And that's what in a lot of the schools, right? You need a couple the first year, then you need a couple more, then you need a couple more. So just trying to, I would really like to better explain to people what is happening and where it's going on. Yeah. When you did that, are you taking like for Bishop where it needs zero to two? Is that including like using the repurposing classrooms which are only the classrooms that they listed on that sheet. Okay, so it's only classroom, classroom. It's not the specials. You're not taking. Unless there was a special classroom listed as a potential use. Okay, like the computer rooms. Yeah, like one room, this computer room at Bishop, just the computer room. Yeah. So I assumed no internal monkeying with rooms, right? So it was just from the list that Dr. Bodie gave us of available rooms. Okay. So that's kind of where the tipping points happen when I think so, you know, as we get there. I also wanted to look at it another way. If you think about it, what we really need is we have these five elementary schools that are under a lot of stress for their enrollment and what they all really need is to have 24 classrooms, right? They need four for six grades and so I just mentally do the math. That's also 20 classrooms. So no matter how I look at it, it's 20 elementary classrooms. Thompson needs six, Bishop needs six, Hardy needs three, Dallin needs three, and Bracket needs two, at least, right? There are also, there's other spaces that we need. Some of them are gonna need additional gym, lunch, after-school space, special space, and again, we still have an additional 20 classrooms at the oddison that we need to do as well. So I just was trying to look at it from a couple of different ways to help people get their heads around like why is this happening? And obviously those are the five schools there, Pierce and Stratton are the two that are not. I'm also trying to boil it down. I feel like for a lot of people on the enrollment task force, we're so stuck in the weeds. We know what's going on, that it's hard for them to kind of, so I wanted to try to say, in my mind, there's really only two educationally feasible ways that we do this. One, we add to the five elementary schools and we add to the oddison, right? We do that. Or we can take the fifth graders out of the elementary schools, which alleviates the strain on the elementary schools, and we pair up five, six, or some combination of five, six, and seven, eight, and I'm not married however to do that. You could make a five, six, seven, and then move the eighth to the high school, but you can either relieve the strain from the elementary schools by removing a grade, and I think that there's probably more acceptance of doing that at a higher grade than doing it at a lower grade. I mean, you can take kindergarten out, but I think that that's harder. So really, I think that if we can get it to a choice, a high level choice that we wanna make, I think we need to have a high level vision of where we want it to go and then move back through what that means we need to do for all the short-term stress that we're seeing at places like Thompson and the next year and the oddison and the other places. So I'm trying to think about, because I feel like there's so many possibilities out there that people can't even get their heads around it. So I think that we can try to put them in these kind of bigger buckets first and make what I say is kind of a vision statement for the schools. And then once we've chosen the vision, we can choose then what the steps are to mitigate it and move in that direction. So if we remove the fifth grade from the elementary schools and do something like a five, six and a seven, eight, obviously one of those two can stay at oddison, but then we need to obviously build another school. So you're either kind of mucking with six schools or building a new school. And I think that that wasn't clear to a lot of people. A lot of people saw that there were costs for Thompson and costs for this and costs for that, but I think that one thing that we really need to do is put it all together and try to give people different buckets of costs to choose from. So a couple of timeline requirements in order to build permanently anywhere by the 17, 18 school year, we have to go to town meeting this January with the ask because we have to have the money and it takes that amount of time. However, modulars can be in place with a year's notice. So we have a little bit more time if the solution for any of this is modulars, which for some short term might be anyway because it's harder to get to the long term. And then this, I just put down all the dates that I knew so far that we were trying to work through. We are right now on December 10. We have December 14th, the community relations meeting, more facilities, another school committee. Are we, can we keep it on the 18th? We did, so he's set. So he is coming at 430 on the 18th of December. I assume it'll be at the high school. To give us his new numbers, because as we know the numbers are short from what he gave us, a lot of people are asking, and I feel like now that we've lived with those numbers for a while and people are throwing them back at us, I have a lot of questions. So I'm really excited that he's coming again. So we're gonna get a new update on that. We can ask him all of our questions. We know the 21st, hopefully, we hear about whether or not the high school is. And then the next meeting of the school enrollment task force is on the 22nd of December. January, we have the parent forum, a full school committee meeting, and then that town meeting is kind of where we're headed. So that's the big strain right now on trying to deal with all of this, is that we have to get to that with the right ask. You don't wanna miss that timeframe. So these are kind of the questions that we need to answer or that we need to be thinking about. We need to come up with complete solution costs and plans for people. They're asking us to try to put that together. We need decision timelines for whatever options we wanna put out there. We really, obviously, someone needs to refine my stress table because I'm not really sure I just did it. And then tonight, I feel like what we really need is we need to have some high-level recommendations from the school committee on how we wanna move this forward and what we can take back to the school enrollment task force. They've been asking us a lot about pedagogy and about what we think is educationally sound. And because, like I said, some of the ideas are crazy and that's okay because it makes you think about some other ideas. But I feel like we really, we haven't been able to talk about any of this. So I haven't been able to talk about this. We've had facilities meetings where we've had some discussions, but until we have something that the whole committee agrees that we wanna move on. I don't wanna take it to the school enrollment task force. It should come from all of us, not just. So that is kind of all of my thinking and trying to put it all kind of together and explain it. So I just wanted to make sure everybody had seen that. I did not, at the school enrollment task force, we did not talk about kind of this is my take on it. And I would like to have that discussion with you guys before I take it to the school enrollment task force about kind of, I feel like if we could just make some decision and head in some direction. I feel like that's really hard, but I feel like that's what we need to do. It's hard too, because like I said, the McKibben numbers, the people on the numbers side of the table say to us, but in five years, the enrollment shrinks back down again. So why should we invest? And I'm like, but it shrinks back down to where we are now or a little bit higher.  And a lot of people who have been coming to these meetings don't believe that. I'm still not sure I believe it. So that's one big question I have for Dr. McKibben is really after five years, you see it really starting to retract and where are you getting that? Like, if we don't have, we can't be for his numbers for the growth and not be for his numbers for the shrink. So we either have to buy in or not buy in. And so I'm having a hard time because they're having a hard time then saying, well, if it's temporary, let's find temporary solutions and all kinds of crazy ideas. Minuteman's got a whole bunch of space. Let's bust into Minuteman. That was a joke. I'm serious. I mean, they're like looking for space everywhere and they're kind of thinking about putting kids everywhere. And I just feel like we have to kind of get our hands around what we think we really wanna do and then try to see if we can work that. Let's let your colleagues talk to you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Thank you for sending this to us during the day. So after you did, I went through it and spent time looking on the map of Arlington and where's there's lots. And what I'm wondering is the Pierce Field, Pierce Practice Field, doesn't look that different in size than the area that the Gibbs is on. And I'm wondering, could we create a high school slash upper middle school campus, call it part of the high school, build a seven, eight classroom on the Pierce Practice Field. Maybe there can be some sharing of facilities, possibly gymnasium, parking, things like that. Maybe get some reimbursement from MSBA for doing it. We save the Gibbs and all their programs. And so we put five, six, we do a five, six at Audison. We have seven, eight at the high school and then they move on to the regular high school. It would take the stress off of all the elementary school. I mean, you would have to phase in and there might be some years where you need to do a module or something, but it would take stress off of all of the elementary schools. You could adjust what's remaining by redistricting. It would offer the chance maybe to do some different educational stuff with our fifth graders. Like we could start a foreign language early, a year earlier, or maybe we could do a sampler so that then when they go into sixth grade, they have knowledge and can pick their foreign language. And it would be, by having them all together, we'd have efficiencies of scale and that the class sizes would be able to be more even. Whereas if you do two separate middle schools, you're gonna have more inefficiency with teachers and it's gonna be harder to keep, you're either gonna have to hire a lot more teachers or you're gonna have different class sizes. Anyway, I just thought it had a lot of pluses and I'm wondering, do we have any idea if it would sail with MSBA? I mean, as part of, I mean, we told them already that we're interested in doing the eighth grade and could we just throw in another grade and, you know, wrap it all together? I think that's a question that can certainly be discussed assuming where we are with them this year. You would be putting in another roughly 1,000 students, 900 to 1,000. There is no parking to share. Right, and we mean, I'd build a garage, yeah. You have to do something, maybe underground. And those kinds of things MSBA would not fund. Right, right. Well, funding a garage versus funding a school for some of the eighth graders on our own. I'd rather fund the garage and maybe get the town to set up a parking authority and we could share it with people who need to park for other reasons in the town. I mean, this is a fascinating little idea if we can get into play. Right, now the only problem, of course, is the timing. Yeah. Because the high school's gonna take a while. But I don't know if we could build on the Piercefield earlier. I mean, there was a really good, Al Hilts, is that his name? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who also drew up basically adding, kind of making it a campus and taking over the crusher lot, which is the trees behind the Odyssey, which is a pretty good size of all those five acres of land there, and kind of making it into a middle school campus. So build a seven, eight or a five, six. And they're still on the same campus, but they're separate schools. Right. That's another place to build it. It is wooded and it's currently on the map as protected. I just don't know what level of protection that means right now, but yeah. And that, again, it saves the Gibbs. If we can do that, I mean, again, this one is completely without the MSBA because it's on our own land, but it's also within our own timing, right? If we can move on it, we can move on it and do that. So I mean, that is, I think of all of the recommendations that is my, I think what I feel like if I envision what we need to do in order to help save these elementary schools, because I don't think that the pressure is gonna go away very soon. And I don't think that enrollment is gonna drop the way he thinks it is. And so I'm worried that if we build on to the five elementary schools that in another 10 years, we're gonna have to build on again. If we don't start thinking about how to do this differently and kind of alleviate some things. So I like the five, six, seven, eight idea. I just don't know where we necessarily put one. Dr. Seuss. So when that plan has been mentioned in the past, there's always this question of, we just don't know if the high school, in the high school proposals, could support that many grades. Is there any way to do a study sooner? I mean, I know that certainly if we get to the feasibility stage, we have to study the space much more deeply and find out details like that. But would there be any way to answer that question? Because if it's not feasible, well, we say, I mean, we still can leave potentially the audicent proposal up, but then we have to take it off the table. But if it is feasible, then we have to seriously consider it, I think. So it would be great to really know that. Right, it'd be great to know cost aside, and we're gonna have to pay for something. The great to know, is that at all feasible given the physical space? Is there any way that we could do that? I mean, is it? I don't know how many acres it is. Right. Acreage would make it be an important piece of it. Right now, audicent's acreage is about seven. You wouldn't, it's hard to believe that it's seven, but it's just the way it's configured. The high school is about seven point eight. We're talking about every buildable space or just the space you're having at right now? The whole, I think the, I'd have to go back and look at the map, but I think it's all of what the high school, the fields, everything. Okay. So on this, on the 2016, the high school is seven point seven four. Okay. The high school field. I don't know what that means. 8.53. So that's just the footprint of the high school building part. So I don't know what that means. I mean, I don't know. Well, that's the whole plot of land that the high school's on. I think for the town, it would be great to have this combined thing because I think we could get some benefits. Certainly we could do things like introduce athletics into the middle school easier because of the fields and stuff nearby. They could share some of the resources. Oh, a terrarium space could be shared or something, you know. But if it's not feasible, it's not feasible. So that's why it'd be just great to know is it a genuine possibility. Well, that's why I have a feasibility study with MSBA. You're saying we can't do that until we get feasible. We wouldn't be able to know that in the next couple of weeks at all. Right. We'll turn that, or maybe the next couple of months before the town meeting vote. The real time, the regular town meeting. Right. Well, the question is that if the state goes and says, yeah, you're going to the next level, what kind of conversations can we have with them? Right, right. Or with architects, frankly, we entertain. There's a different question of whether they're gonna pay for it, but then there's this basic question, is it all possible? Right, is there room on the lot? Well, the thing is we put an SOI in to the high school. In that SOI, we identified the enrollment issues at Otteson. And one of the things we put in was the possibility of the eighth grade perhaps being combined in some way of the high school. We did not put in anything about a seventh, eighth grade separate school. Right. That would be in the same campus. But that's not, that's not, I mean, that's a question about who's gonna pay for it. But the question I think is, is it physically possible? Again, if the answer is no, then we don't think about it anymore. Well, that's a question that we would probably have to hire an architect to take a look at. It might even be possible to have one of the members of the task force who is an architect to take a look at that as well. So just to the broad question, is it possible? Yeah, and there will be a lot of issues with the seventh grade in that field, another building in that field because of access.  I think we just need to know this. I think we can't, I think sort of speculating that. I think that we can take a look at that. We can certainly take a look at that. There's probably more of a chance that if it was, had some adjacency to the high school, that that might be a conversation you could have with MSBA. I can't even predict what they would say. Clearly if you went to a field that was not adjacent, it would be a separate project altogether. Yeah, where's your. So in the feasibility study, we have what's nine months to do a feasibility study? We have to go through the first phase of it, which you can shorten up. It's about a nine month phase, nine months. Remember we had to do a lot of different things to prepare in terms of committee and getting the money for the feasibility study. So there's a lot of conversations and administrative pieces, but then you get the money for the feasibility study and that's when you start really looking at what is the preferred. Is that you? And we could get that in January? So now we just have to mirror the displays. For that money in January, we have to wait till April. If we were approved. Well, the warrant article for January is broad enough that the answer could be yes. The feasibility study that we would do in the MSBA process, we have the flexibility if we want, right? It's our money that we're spending on the feasibility study to look at the needs at seven, eight, nine through 12, we could do that. So we're not. I think you could look at that, whether that would, they would agree with it. I don't know. Another piece of this too is that one of the things that MSBA does is they sort of have broad estimates as to what a project will be. So they have a certain amount of money and I think for this particular cycle, they had about $540 million. So not that they have an exact dollar amount, but they're doing approximations in terms of the cost of a project. So they are inviting people into the grant process based on rough ideas of what, and so that's another factor that, again, I can't even predict what they would say. But we're gonna have to spend town money on something anyway, so then the question is, what do we spend money on? I think that that's really key is trying to come up with, if we add the five schools and the Odyssey, is that the same as building a new building? And if not, well, that's one decision point, right? But if it's the same, then it's still like that's what, I think that's the hard part is there's so many decisions that it's become such a snowball, you know. How much would it cost to add a performing art center or an art center to the high school if we were funding that as the town? That's what we're talking about. And we took the gifts. I mean, you know, there's so many moving parts because I think that there's such a commitment on this committee to do the right thing not only for the kids, but for the rest of the community. So. I just want to. It's difficult, Mr. Thielman. Thanks. As I understand it, our decision in January is really that what the task force was asking us last night was whether or not we're going to make a proposal regarding the Thompson. So that is something we have to zero in as a committee. That's what they want to know. Are you gonna? And I think that decision is, are we gonna add on permanently or would we rather build a different school? Because if we're gonna add on to Thompson, at that point I think you may as well add on to all of them. Right, so well, yeah. That's another tipping point. That's another thing that we have to decide. And you can also slow the decision down too. While we could make that decision, clearly Thompson needs classrooms, but you can do temporary least modulars for a period of time. Right, we're heading in one direction and we can kind of, you know. You can have more time on the decision. Right. That's possible. And if that's what people decide, I think for all of us, one of the lynch pins and all of us in the decision models is what's gonna happen with the high school. Right. And once we know that, that really is going to make some big differences in what we can do. Yeah, yeah. One other thing that I want to say is that when we said that the Odyssey is the seventh largest middle school. Last year, I don't know what it is this year. Last year, we don't have the numbers for this year. But last year, the largest was in Marlboro and they had 1325. And they've got a declining enrollment. So it's not gonna take much for us to get from seventh largest to largest. Right. And if the largest now is around 1300, 1500 isn't beyond contemplation to think about having 1500 adolescents in one building. Just on itself, with a big site, lots of cafeterias and gyms and stuff is one thing. But to pack them into that site even with added classrooms, eh, no. Right. Which is why I think you can, if you looked at the, so an architect drew up an idea which is that you build kind of another building and then walkways up to it from the Odyssey that we have to up to the Crusher lot, which is literally right behind Odyssey right behind where the parking lot is, is another idea, because it breaks it up but keeps it together like having a seven, eight on the high school campus, right? Now you have the campus and he even went as far as to like, there's a street that runs up there and that could lead right to a new parking lot and a new facility. And so, I mean, it's an interesting idea. You know? Or you can add permanent modulars onto the middle school. You can have a base of six classrooms and go up three levels. Right. You could get 18. I'm not sure 18 will do it even at its, if you get to maximum capacity. And you're overtaxing the rest of the building. Right, you still need more gyms. That building was built for 900 kids. Right. It would be totally overtaxing it. Dr. Allison Ampe. Can I show you this since we spent all the time? I think, I'd love to see this. Okay, so these are screenshots from Google Maps. They're both at the same resolution. So this one, this map is by the high school and I'm at an angle so it's kind of hard to do this. So this is the Pierce practice field here. Yeah. And then there's DPW, the DPW parking lot there and there's the high school over here. This side is the gyms. And the gyms parking lot. And I'm just, visually, they're not that different. So it just, from a very high level view, it looks. Right, well, they are, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, the gyms is not on, is it on, I don't think it's on this map that Adam gave us. Oh, it's not, okay. Does anyone have any questions or can I ask them? No, but I just gotta say I'm intrigued by your idea. Right. No, and I think that's, I mean, I think that, if we don't end up adding on to five elementary schools in the Odyssey, we have to build somewhere and then the question is where? Do we build on the gyms? Do we build on Crusher? Do we build on Pierce Field? Do we build in the middle of Monotomy Rocks Park? Do we build, I mean, there's a whole bunch of, we were trying to build in the cemetery. A few holes over at the Winchester Country Club. Right, right, right, so. The challenge, we don't have a lot of empty land. Right. And the large parcels that there are around, like Miraq's car dealership, I think that they're quite attached to. So, land acquisition costs, if we wanted to go after something, would be very high too, and that just, we're done. You know, one point to feel, if they consider was that Kathy passed out this memo, which everyone, I think everyone got, which was renovating the gibbs for a school is $14 to $20 million. And when you do that $14 to $20 million renovation, you get a school that can house a grade, sixth graders, fifth graders, whatever we decide to do, whatever we conclude is best, educationally. But then you displace all those tenants. And so you've spent $14 to $20 million building a facility for our students. You've displaced these tenants, and if we want to help them as a community, we gotta help, we either gotta help them find a home outside of Arlington or help them find a home inside of Arlington. And if it's inside of Arlington, that could cost us some money too, especially with the Arlington Center for the Arts. So it's not, it may not be the best financial solution. Yeah, there are a lot of moving parts here. So, a couple of questions that I need to answer. Okay, that's what I was going to get you. Ms. Stark, so let's put forth the questions we need to answer. I think that one of the big questions that we can answer is how big do we really think we want the middle school to be? I mean, we heard from the middle school principal, even he is kind of hesitant that it get much larger. But in our vision, do we want it to get much bigger or would we rather have, and I like the way he said, if you break it up, because the other possibility is you take 500 middle school students, I don't know what that is, maybe it's one cluster of each and you move them over to the Gibbs, but like he said, who gets to go, who gets to stay, that gets really hard. I would rather have a small middle school as hard as that might be than put one grade somewhere. I just don't feel like putting one grade somewhere is a good idea. I don't know why, but I just, I don't feel like that's a great idea. Well, let me just say that I think that's, that bears a lot of discussion and thought and reflection. I don't know if we can just make a kind of a visceral, I don't want one grade in one place. I just don't think that's a good way to make a decision. We have, Needham has had. She's not making a decision, I'm putting out there what I think. Needham has had a lot of success with its sixth grade, and I know some people that have worked in that district and they like it. Would they like to have grades together? They probably might, but they seem to like the sixth grade there in Needham, and it seems to have good results. The principal of the middle school tonight talked about some value to the sixth grade. So I'm not wedded to one idea or another. I want to study it more, and I think it's, I want to see a lot of research and reflection on that point. Dr. Seuss. So, you know, when I talk to parents, they are generally against the idea of putting a single grade for a very reflective reason. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea educationally, but I think if it is a good idea educationally, we need to hear from teachers, we need to hear from educators. We need to sort of have a conversation with the community about why that's a good idea, if it is. Because what I'm hearing from parents is they don't like it. Just instinctively, reflexively, they hate it. So I think if we were building a school district from scratch with these numbers, we probably would create two middle schools. But I think that given where we are now, I understand that that might be a more difficult thing to pry apart a middle school and create two schools. So I think for those, if we take over the Gibbs, if we decide to do that to alleviate the overcrowding at Otteson or somewhere else, I guess, I just want to have a conversation with educators and find out more what their thoughts, and at all levels, not just the sixth graders, but I want to hear from elementary school educators and everything just to sort of have a conversation about the benefits and disadvantages of doing something like that. Can I, I want to make one more point if I may. One of the things I've heard a few times is this worry that if we take the fifth grade out of the elementary school, that we're going to result in some schools being too empty as a population declines. And I think the population will eventually level off. I mean, you know, I have a lot of friends right now who are living in East Arlington, who no longer have kids in the elementary school, right? And we're not moving. So that sort of happens where people have kids, they pass through one school and then they move on. But I think it's important to realize that right now we're not dealing with an ideal situation in terms of the facilities that we have. You know, people don't realize that the 11 extra classrooms that we have this year, those aren't really empty, right? Right. I mean, so that there aren't computer labs in schools. There aren't, I mean, maybe there shouldn't be, but there aren't, right? There aren't after-school programs, dedicated schools, rooms for after-school programs.  So I'm not that worried about the idea of a school having three sort of extra classrooms, right? You know, if we take out fifth grade. I think, and population declines a little, I think we can probably do something with those classrooms that would be really good educationally. So, you know, I know that we have to worry about costs and I think that's a really big consideration and I don't wanna build unnecessarily, right? I don't wanna overbuild. To your point, to your point, the down one opened in 2006 with 348 students last year at 456. Hardy, when it was renovated in 2001, opened with 270. It now, it had 392 in 2014. Bishop, when renovated and reopened in 2000, had 371, 2014 at 415. Brackett opened in 1999 with 263 students. In 2014, they had 497. When Stratton, Stratton was last renovated in 1963, but they had 306 students in 2006. They now have 408. Pierce opened in 2003 with 228. They are now have 267. And Thompson opened in 2013 with 358. One year later, 392. Okay. Right, right. So, we're stressed now. We're not at a stress, you know, we don't have much stress or hanging around right now. So, the idea that maybe some schools will be a slightly better situation than they are now is not talking about a bunch of empty classrooms sitting there doing nothing. Maybe we can get them back to where they were designed to be. Right, right, right, exactly. So, you're trying to get a sense of the committee so you can go back. So, I'm gonna ask you to push on the, let's go quickly around on the size of the middle school. And I will say, I don't want 1,500 adolescents in one school. Middle school size, Dr. Allison Ampe. I don't think it should be bigger than it is now. I don't think there's enough, the core doesn't support it. And there's just not a way of enlarging it. So, no, we need to find some other solution. Mr. Seelman.  You know, I think that goes without saying. What that actually means, I would wanna see a plan that talked about ratios of administrators, counselors, social workers, support staff, nurses, to students in any configuration. So, whether it's a five, six, a six, seven, whether it's just six grade by themselves, I think these questions need to be answered. So, theory, yeah, general, high level answer, smaller school, absolutely. But I think it's about really looking at it in a much more granular way than we have. That's why I raised that question before. You know, I need to know how many adults there are gonna be to support each of the kids in the school. I mean, how many social workers, how many counselors, how many nurses, how many case workers, how many teachers, how easy is it gonna be to offer different services, different language services? I mean, that's a, so there's a lot of thinking that needs to go into it. And if we come out with that, you know, what we can't, we can actually offer more services to kids and more support in a bigger school, I gotta be open to changing my mind when that data comes here. I can't be kind of wedded to one. Right, right. Dr. Seuss, I'm just trying to do a lightning grant so we're not here a little bit longer. Dr. Seuss. So I think if you designed a school from scratch for 1400 kids, it might be, there might be things that you can get out of that. I think that that particular school, you cannot add that many students with the common spaces and the way it's structured so that you can't separate upgrades and stuff. I think that to create something that we'd want to have would require so much money that we just can't do it. Mr. Pierce. I don't get this, please.  I like the idea of students not changing schools a lot. I don't much get the towns that have four or five school changes in the kids K through 12 life. I think that there's a reason, now look, I'm not an educator, I'm a lawyer, so I don't know the pedagogy or whatever you're looking to find out, but I do know that there are liability issues when I see the students rushing in the Odyssey Middle School after a class of bell rings and it's like a herd, it is a herd and it's galloping and if there are any extra students in that hallway, I can't imagine what it would look like. So part of me thinks that elementary should be K through five and that kids experience should be that and secondary should be six through 12 and there should be two schools. I mean, I don't know how realistic that would be but the student would only have to change once. That's just a fantasy, I guess, but as to the middle school and its size, it should be smaller than it is now and ideally it should be with two grades, not three. Ms. Starks, to summarize. So I teach in a middle school of 824 students, which at times seems really big and sometimes seems really small, but we also are growing and my school will undergo renovations to add a three-story addition on next year. So we are headed towards getting bigger. I have a feeling they're about to build it for nine to 950. So I know it's possible, but I feel like definitely 1100 just seems like, I don't know, there's something about when you cross that thousand line that's like the size of a high school, like that just, I don't know what that is, but I just feel like as a teacher, I like knowing that I know a third of the sixth graders right now and that every kid in that school has someone who knows them well, which is the whole idea behind middle school and I just don't think you get two certain numbers and that just doesn't, it isn't true anymore. It's really hard for the administrators to know them all and it's important that they know them all too and as a teacher, I know my kids, but I certainly don't know all the kids. And so I feel like the ideal size is somewhere in that eight to 900, give or take a little bit of a high school. I really like the idea of doing a five, six, seven, eight. I even like doing it as a campus in the same place. So it's not even really a transition. I mean, it's a different building, but it's a similar place. So if it's seven, eight on the high school or seven, eight on the oddison, having it be in one place because they are a similar age and they have similar needs. I too, if we were to add it at the oddison, I do wanna make sure that we have all of the facilities and all of the things that they need. We're gonna need two of everything. So it is an additional school, but I also can see that being, I like it being with another school. Whether it's at the high school or on the Pierce field or at the oddison, I much prefer that than putting them out at the Gibbs, I guess, because I still like having them together. It makes it more of a campus feel. One thing that's a lot of this. The next question you need is, because it's 9.45 and I know that we're gonna be moving the 10 o'clock rule. So the next question needed answered was in terms of the neighborhood schools. Neighborhood schools. Neighborhood schools. As the task force wants our thoughts on that. So let's go and do the lightning round again on neighborhood schools, Dr. Allison Ampe. I think that Arlington Fields are very important. Could you say anything in here? I think Arlington Fields, they're very important. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that literally hundreds, maybe thousands of families moved to the town with that promise. And it's part of the culture of the town. And we have to explore. One of the things we figured out years ago on the school committee, and then we haven't really addressed it a long time, but it was that one of the realities of the neighborhood schools is that there were inevitably unequal class sizes across the district. That was just sort of what we had to accept. And so I think that's, I've always been comfortable with that. And the other thing, as I wanted to say, I never knew the name of that lot was the Crusher Lot until this whole thing. It's the Crusher Lot. Yeah, this has been a great education.   I know, exactly. I don't know, it must be somebody's name. Dr. Seuss. Yeah, I don't have anything to add. I think that the town is committed to it. I have many, many pleasurable fond memories of walking my daughter to school and enjoy that and would not have been as fun if I had to drive her someplace, but I don't have anything else to add. What? I think the town is very much committed to that. I think getting rid of that, it doesn't seem like it's going to achieve that much, frankly. I'm not gonna get that much out of it. Any possible savings and efficiency would be at the expense of huge costs and angst over the neighborhood schools. I think that it's a no starter. Mr. Pierce. Yeah, I think buffer zones were for us the third rail and that it started to fray that idea a little bit and that's why we got a lot of outcry and it was very valid because as a parent, two small kids, I share the same memories that Dr. Seuss has and all of us have of knowing the crossing guard and frankly, I think that the Thompson-Harty area is a neighborhood in and of itself. I agree with that. I think that the two schools share similarity in size and geography.  It's nice to think that the students all play together in town leagues and they get to know each other eventually when they're middle school students. But there is something nice about the neighborhood streets and joining up at the neighborhood schools field. So I wouldn't want to disturb that. Ms. Starks. I never got the chance to walk my kids to school. I live in the Bishop busing district. So I put my kids on the bus but I did walk them to the bus stop. It is different and it's interesting because we've just been finishing up the Thompson video and one of the things the parents said was there was a lot of angst around busing those kids off in three different directions at first. And then it's funny because then it goes on. It says, yeah, you know what? They were much better at it than we were.  And it was funny. It's true. But I do agree that I think the neighborhood schools are something that define Arlington. It's one of those small town things that people like about this town. I think that they like that it's a town. They like that we have these small schools and yet they're more expensive and it's a different way of running things but that seems to be what people like. So I would tend to agree on that. Anything else on your question was that we need to bring back? We have to talk about the Thompson, I think, right? Because that's the immediate. Is there a class size question, Juana? Class size. Well, there were four questions. Which is how needs, that's the Gibbs conversation. That's the Gibbs conversation. It's kind of where we weigh on that. So I think we need to hear what people say about that. Yeah. And I think the other one is class size. It's just a, which is kind of theoretical but we should at least see what people think before you look back at the committee. Right. Okay, class size I think worth the squeal point. We can't get any bigger. Right. Well, like I said, I'm trying to work on a formula that talks about teacher load and trying to define what we think is an acceptable teacher load and that would take into account, it would have multipliers for age and it's very different for an elementary school teacher who teaches all four subjects. So they have four subjects but only 24 kids but they also have really little kids and then you have to add in the special needs and ELL and are they high, whatever. So I'm trying really hard to kind of come up with something but I feel like that there's, I mean there's just a certain amount of size too, right? I mean our classrooms can't hold 40 kids but I also realize that if I had a class of 30, if I had help in that class, I could do that. So that's the other thing that I struggle with is that, yeah I think that there should be some limits but all I feel like is there should be a limit and then if you go above that, here are the steps that we're gonna take to mitigate it at every level and if it ever reaches here, that's a new classroom. Like it can't, you know, and that's what I would like to try to get my head around and see if people have numbers that they associate with those. Well, I don't think we're gonna get to that decision tonight. No, no, no. But what is it? I do wanna. Because it's at 9.51 now. So what, is there anything else you need to know tonight from this committee in order to move forward? Go ahead. So ask the question specifically and we'll go around to another lightning round. No, I need to answer. Okay, Dr. Allison Ampe. You need to be paying attention to what the design constraints were for the classes that were already built because that's a hard limit and there's different sizes and some of them are smaller than you would think. So that's just, you can't just assume you can go to 30 and everything. Right, exactly, exactly. All right, I think that the ask on the Gibbs is, I don't know what the ask on the Gibbs is. Well, what do you think the ask on the Gibbs is? Okay, everybody gets a comment on the Gibbs. Which is the element? Yeah, I mean, I don't see it. I think if we were right now, based on what I know right now, okay, if we were to take that building over, we'd have to put somewhere between $14 and $20 million of improvements into that building. We would displace tenants who were serving the town and I feel an obligation as a member of the town meeting, as a parent, as if somebody uses a lot of the facility or my kids use programming there to try to help those tenants find other space, which is gonna cost the town money as well. So for me, I just don't see it as a viable option. We were asked last night to see if we could use some classrooms in that building for a temporary period of time. I don't think, I don't think that's possible, but Dr. Bodie has to kinda do some research on that. So that's where I'm at. Right. Dr. Allison Ampey. I would much prefer not to have to use it. I would, I wanna hear what our other options are though before I totally roll it out. I agreed either way we're gonna be paying more costs, but I just, I wanna know what the options are before I say no totally. But I like the Pierce practice feel better. Yeah. Dr. Seuss. Well, I am at the Gibbs almost every day. In fact, my son was opening night of a play there tonight. One flew over the Cougar's Nest. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a really tough, tough play. It's a much beloved place for me. What I have been saying to people all along is there's a lot of passion around the arts. Rightly so, this town is committed to the arts and it should be, it is possible to potentially find another place for the arts and it's potentially easier, well, everything's hard, to find another place for the arts than to find a new school building. That doesn't help the other tenants of Gibbs who are also incredibly valuable members of our community but who we're just hearing less about from, right? What I hear from mostly is the arts community and then my response is I think this town is committed to arts and I think because of that commitment they will put up money to find a place for the arts if needed because the town is so committed but it doesn't solve the other problems. We have this adult daycare program that I haven't heard people talk about. There's just less excited people about it but it also serves our community. It's an incredibly valuable program and then we have preschool program and you don't need a bunch of things there so it's a difficult thing. Mr. Pierce. Well, it's hard to follow that because she was just talking about a show with kids in it and asking if I wanna disrupt that, make it a school. No, I really don't and I don't think it's viable because it's older, it would cost a lot of money as Mr. Thielman suggests and I love the idea of having some type of campus arrangement whether it's for younger kids or high school age kids. When we were in town hall, I said what is the viability of just building a new building and that's frankly where I stand on this. I'd like to see instead of big apartments and condos going up in Arlington, I'd like to see viable performing arts spaces or viable schools going up because those are the things that we really need as a town here. That's where I stand. I really want that to be a school of last resort for us. Right. I look at it as being all tied to the high school thing and I wanna see the possibilities of doing a performing arts center at the high school because we have such a great theater department, such a great music department and such awful space for them. We've gotta do that better and we can probably come up with some sort of arrangement like Barnstable or Chelmsford has done to have a performing arts component. If we're doing that to add town money into the high school project to build an arts center in there is well to meet that need that would be shared space between the high school and you'd integrate programs. And if we did that, okay, we'd move ACA over into the art center, the town art center attached to the high school and we'd be able to use Gibbs as a school without all the disruption that we'd have. I mean, the thing is, is that everybody went into the Gibbs knowing that it's a school in reserve and we were renting it at below market rates because it was a school in reserve and there might come a time where we'd need it and that time is there. I mean, that's a reality. So it to me comes back to what is the town willing to pay for? Are they willing to pay for a premium on a school project in order to keep the services and amenities in the Gibbs or to provide them a new home somewhere else in the town? I think the town would wanna do that. I think it's that kind of town. How we do it, I don't know. So I'm not really locked into any one solution but I must say that Dr. Allison Ampey's thoughts of building seven, eight on the high school site and seeing if we can wrap it into the SBA gets us a little more reimbursement money and might be the most cost effective wonderful thing we could do. So I think it's important just to when we talk at the next meeting that the committee hasn't really reached the decision. So I think we need to be clear about that. No vote, no decision. Right, right. But you've got a sense of the wide sense. But on the neighborhood schools, we're all in on that. There's a lot of clarity. Right, that's clear. And I think it's fairly clear that we all think the middle school is too big in the way it is and we'd like to see it small. Too large as it is, yeah. Okay, it is 9.59. I'm looking for a motion to do what? To extend, which we have to move. To move the 10 o'clock rule until 10.30. Motion by Dr. Seuss. Second by Mr. Pierce. All in favor, opposed. That's unanimous. So facilities, are we now done with? Mr. Chairman. Yeah, Dr. Elson-Ampie. Can I bring up another thing because we've talked about it and I don't want parents to freak out. Just that, can we hear from the administration about the, what is it like if we move the fifth grade students to, you know, a five, six school or to the oddison and just educationally as it sounds, socially and emotionally as it sounds, because I know it's something that some parents are going, I think parents feel less strongly about it because we didn't have an uproar about having the strut and fifth graders at the middle school. Fourth graders, yes. But fifth graders, no, they're cool with it. And I'm not saying that everyone will feel that way, but just that we need to be acknowledged. This is something that's going to bother some people and we should know at least what our thinking is and whether we feel it's worth the trade-off, so. Okay. District, count, oh, okay. There's one last thing, which is we need input on this because we are being asked to make a recommendation on the Thompson. And so, you know, we're gonna meet next week, we can talk about it some more. But we've got a, you know, I don't know, I mean, Kathy, we got to make, they're asking us for some recommendation on the Thompson, task forces for the January town meeting. Well, the recommendation doesn't need to be made the next meeting. There is time in early January. But this is possible, we may not know the answer to the high school when we meet on the 22nd. It's possible. But I think this committee, we need to know what we need to be thinking about as a committee so we can have a conversation about, maybe it's too late tonight.  Yeah. But you do wanna have modulars to relieve the stress and it would make sense, particularly in this case, to do the modulars next year. However, it's more complicated than that. You're talking. I'd like to see the numbers, how much it would cost to build permanently to install. I sent it to you. Okay. It's in this report. Oh, okay. And I put some caveats on it. This is just industry numbers. This isn't, it's really just a magnitude of comparison. They could be off somewhat. They're estimates at this point. But in rough numbers, permanent modulars cost twice as much as temporary. Maybe not quite as much, because there is a rental fee with them every month. Yeah, it depends on how much. But there is. The installation's always the issue with modulars. And the other piece that's different is the planning time to get permanent is roughly twice as long. Okay. We can take that up again next time. Yeah. So I think next week we need to, next Thursday night, we need to have time on the agenda to just talk about this question, because they're asking us what do you want to do? Yeah, yeah, right. You know, so I want you to add, I know that the Thompson community is having some sort of gathering of parents to talk about issues. And I'd love to hear from them specifically about common core spaces. So that's a big worry, I think. Common core? Common spaces, right. They're doing the common coral. Sorry. Common spaces is a big worry. And so I know one suggestion is to take one of those classrooms and use it as an auxiliary gym, because that's maybe, you know, gym is just too small to, and you can't double up gyms. I mean, they, in one case, this was just one example, they doubled up the gym and they couldn't do anything and they did a rock, paper, scissors thing. That is just not a good thing to do, right? I mean, we need kids to move around, run around. So we need more gym space. So I'd love to hear from the community some suggestions about common space issues and I don't wanna overlook those issues. I think that if we build classrooms and we ignore the need to potentially expand the common spaces, we're gonna be kicking ourselves. So we wanna sort of have a clear idea of what our future needs are in that direction. Okay. District Accountability, Cork Instruction Assessment, Mr. Thielman. We met this evening at 5.30 p.m. and we talked about different pieces of information we should have for the four categories of the superintendent evaluation. I don't know where those notes are, but I mean, basically we're gonna meet again in January. We're gonna ask for time on the agenda of the school committee in February and we're gonna come before you with recommendations on evidence that the superintendent should start pairing now on the four standards, Instructional Leadership Management and Operations, Family, Community Engagement, Professional Culture, as well as two goals that we chose, closing the achievement gap and then developing a space plan and then a practice goal for the superintendent and a other goal. All right, yeah. Student achievement. Student achievement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we'll have something for you and we're working on it and we'll have a good process for the evaluation. Okay. Community relations. So our next meeting is on 12.14 where we're going to talk about the our January Visioning Meeting and that I have a question for the committee. New information last night, the task force agreed to co-sponsor the January Visioning Meeting, which is January 7th. We want to know if this should be a community relations meeting or it should be a school committee. I mean, should it be, should it? Should the school committee? I want to take a vote on whether we should be a official school committee meeting co-sponsored by the Enrollment Task Force. And actually, frankly, potentially there might be other co-sponsors, but this is where we stand right now. Should it be a sponsor of the event or should it be our meeting? I think you're asking for us to be a co-sponsor of the event. We are a co-sponsor of the event, I guess.  Do we not want to do that and just say this is a school committee meeting that is then co-sponsored by the Enrollment Task Force? Okay, so. That's the motion on the table. Is that specific enough? Well, you know, I just want to ask. So I think this particular meeting is about school visioning should be chaired by someone from the school committee. Yeah, so you were the chair. So it's not a co-sponsor. I wouldn't. No, I don't want to sponsor that's what I was saying. It should be a school committee. So really the question is, right now it's. Is it a subcommittee meeting? Is a subcommittee sort of sponsored thing or is it a school committee sponsored thing? I think it sounds better. And by the way, I think that we should all be involved in this so we're going to talk details on Monday. Who specifically should do what and we're all going to go to you for asks pretty soon. To get involved. Just as a warning. Because we really have to come out of that. We have to come out of that with. With the answer to those four questions, but not just a pie in the sky. Well, we have to come out with some community thoughts and feelings about things. I'm sure we're going to come out of the answers. No, not necessarily answers. We need to. We need to solicit opinion at this meeting. And we need to educate the community. It's partially educational. It's partially soliciting feedback. So you're looking for something that's almost like the one we did in September? I'm looking, no, actually. Somebody tell you a little bit of details. Actually, for the next school committee meeting, we should have a draft agenda. We have a draft agenda now, but we need to work on it more. Stacey Smith of Consensus Building Institute, who is a hardy parent, who's worked at the town on numerous occasions, has volunteered her services. So she is going to meet with us on Monday and we're going to talk details. But basically the idea is this. Two parts or three parts. First part presentations, answering logistical questions. Second part, small group discussions at the table about broad visions. And the third part, specific areas, talking about particular issues. So there might be a sort of area here about neighborhood schools, thoughts, feelings, concerns. Something else about grade distribution. Eighth grade to the high school, whatever, thoughts, feelings, concerns. And so that we are both broad and general and specific about these things. So I think it should be a school committee meeting. Okay, so that's the question. But I do want to give you guys all more details and that we'll definitely be ready for the next meeting. So then when we get the details, we can decide how we want to do it. But yeah, it sounds like a school committee event. I think it's going to go with all seven of us. Yeah, yeah. So okay, so we should take a vote on that. Next time when we see the agenda. Okay, okay, that's fine. The reason I should write it for you tonight is I thought when we start advertising it, I could advertise it as such. It's a school committee event and how we structure and organize it doesn't much matter. So we can advertise it now that it's a school committee. As a school committee event. That's actually the question I wanted to give you. Any objections to advertising this event as a school committee event? Seeing none, go for it. Okay, great. Okay, that's what I wanted. Let's see, executive session minutes. We've done that warrant committee. People have been paid school enrollment task force. We've talked about that up down sideways. We need a vote to approve the memorandum of agreement between the Arlington School Committee and the Arlington Education Association, Unit A, health insurance premium deductions for employees who receive 21 paychecks per year. So moved. Moved by Mr. Thielman, second by Mr. Pierce. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor. Hi. All opposed. The chair will sign the document. We have now reached the point of executive session. I don't have the official legal language in front of me. But we're going into executive session for the purposes of, I'm trying to do this from memory and it's after 10 o'clock. Purposes of negotiations. For purposes of negotiating and preparing for negotiations which have held in public might be detrimental to the district. We will not return to public session after the meeting. Motion by Mr. Thielman, second by Mr. Pierce. Roll call, Dr. Allison Ampe. Mr. Thielman. Aye. Dr. Seuss. Aye. Ms. Starks. Aye. Mr. Pierce, the chair votes aye. We are in executive session. Thank you for everybody for watching this wonderful little TV show tonight.