001I've got fudge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for religious hands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and we have a role sure Tony paragini and Harrigan here Faith ham here and you have a Quantum thank you um so um I'm gonna open it up to see if we have any public comment I should say um did we do we have nothing to comment on okay um first order of business is a review of the minutes from the May 9th no no no from the September 12th um 2022 meeting um I think we we truly have already reviewed them um do I have a motion to accept bye we'll move that okay um are there any discussions on the minutes
002Corrections amendments okay hearing none um the motion is to approve the minutes from the September 12 2022 meeting all those in favor say aye I'm looking around YouTube okay this is gonna go fast um all right so next order is this is It's new business and um an update on the Contemporary fiction book club we had what I thought was a really productive meeting um 10 days ago um and um great discussion um civil discussion which was lovely and so um this is a follow-on to some of the changes that have um been made and I am going to hand it so it was 10 days ago huh already wow it seems like it's been a month and at the same time it seems like it was just yesterday yeah so the timeline was that
003we had that open forum and there were some there was some discussion about a seventh grade contemporary fiction book club at dad and some parents objected to the book club choices and we had talked about providing additional choices to that reading list so the following day Mr Woods Kevin Hanlon Kristen Shanley Kristen Castellano myself met with the teachers and talked about having an opportunity to include two additional books to that list so we have since done that that's been sent out to parents and the first thing I want to share with you is the choices that students made for their book clubs so this is these are all of the choices I'm those are coming around to you yeah so the first is Ghost boys and we had 50 students families choose that the bridge
004home 35 Genesis begins again 41 front desk 32 Lillian Duncan 29 boy 2169 wink 24 and forget me not 26. so that's gives you like a nice snapshot I think of the choices that were made available so what are the new the new editions the last two that is Wink and forget me not um so there were some some questions about the unit and so I I'll share a few things and then I know our Middle School folks are eager to share some of their thoughts as well what I put in front of the board is a summary of each of the book titles and these summaries I took from a company called booksource and the reason I took it from bookstores is that they are a vendor from which we get many of our
005books they're considered the leading provider of books for classroom libraries incidentally they're a family-owned company out in St Louis Missouri and they've been around since 1974. so the summaries were taken directly from there they were not crafted in-house I put on there the Lexile level the H in HL stands for high interest we've got the Lexile number so what's Alexa the Lexile is the reading the level of reading goes from low to high and then the reading age as described by the publisher so you can see that the Publishers are Publishers of books for young children so little brown books for young children penguin young readers groups Scholastic um and then you have Simon and Schuster little brown Etc again just just to give some um some context to who decides what age group this
006is appropriate for and that would include taking into consideration the Lexile level and the reading age and grades and then bookstore sort of lets you search by certain subjects and so this one about ghosts called ghost boys if you were searching for black and African-American protagonist you that would pop up as a as a book that was on the list so the book one of the books that was in question was a book called ghost voice and I only shared this with you as information that the teachers take into consideration when making their selections so they look at you know who else thought this was a good book because the classroom teacher might think it's a good book but they go to different different lengths to understand where where these books are in the genre
007foreign so that you can get an idea of the material that teachers looked at before making this decision I know there was some question about developmental appropriateness which is why I sort of highlight some of these sorry faith I probably should not just put them together no that's for you but she likes passengers I do so pretty widely read pretty widely um you could see some nutmeg Award nominees in there for Connecticut you get an idea of some of the grade levels certainly is I think a wide variety not a not a niche or a unknown in talking with the teachers there was a conscious effort to represent student groups at Dodd and so what I did was just to pull up some of the percents of students that were that we have in uh
008it for some of the students that we have in our schools and so we have um five percent of students who represent two or more languages in the seventh grade so they're coming to us knowing two or more languages meaning is that not accurate that's two or more races two or more races sorry we do have information on languages though do we not hang on no it must be right here I'm sure it's right here well let me start we've got at dot point two percent for American Indian 10 who are Asian five percent black not Hispanic 75 white six percent Hispanic and four percent that represent two or more races so when the teachers had spoken about having windows and mirrors within the reading material I think that's part of what they're getting at
009having a having a variety of characters in the novels that they've selected so what else can I tell you I have a question sure um were any because this this was done in the past year past three this is our third year Mr wood three years um any of these books on the all of those books except for the two additional choices so we've been going with the same books for a couple years now yeah for the support here this is the third year can you um take us go back three years ago how did we get into book clubs like what was what was the process who um I mean you know what adult book clubs are a lot I mean you know they're not always just reading sessions we don't buy the wine
010in our book okay I didn't say that but you know so I guess I just how did you decide that setting up book clubs would be a um uh effective for a um it would just be a and a valuable curriculum Choice yeah I think this Shanley is absolutely ready sorry yeah no question only because I saw some of her materials so back when we were making this decision first of all I think you know that our curriculum is primarily based in independent reading so we were making a change to that to allow for this age group to have participate in conversation because research shows that that at this age they're eager to communicate with them with one another and they want to have that discussion um there's lots of I have quotes here from
011um various sources talking about how it's essential for building empathy and having those communication having those conversations centered around similar texts allows for growth for students so a couple of the things that we are mindful of is building Norms in our discussion and having the teachers go through some conversation starters at the beginning of the unit and make sure that students are aware of how to participate a conversation they do that by modeling a short story text give the students a chance to participate in that and then they break them up into their book club groups okay I'll just add to that I think where you're gonna I mean book clubs have been around as a as a tool for many years I would say probably in the early 2000s they really started becoming more
012popular within schools I worked in my previous School District they were just setting up book clubs when I was teaching and getting into Administration my district was getting into book clubs and those types of things like Kristen said it was because it was especially at the middle school it allowed students to have some more controlled conversations in which they were able to be respectful of one another and pathetic of things and it also allows an instructional tool for teachers to really take a look at authors pose what perspectives those types of things they can really get into actually how the book was designed and what the author was thinking so it was a good Tool uh to get at that okay and could I just add yeah you know the pandemic we were so Reliant
013communicating by a customer that our kids really kids were struggling to communicate with each other just face to face the opportunity of the classroom to do that in a really structured way teaching them along the way how to have respectful conversations and how to communicate with one another I would add to that because we're experiencing this at the college level at the University we need we need to get kids back working collaboratively on projects and talking just talking to each other because nobody's talking to each other right now how did you conduct these during my pandemic and I do remember we discussed this during the curriculum review meeting a couple of years 18 months ago we did a combination of Google leads and so some students were remote so we had a Google Lead set
014up and some students were in the classroom um and when in the springtime when we do our book clubs we had them Outdoors a lot of the meetings took place Outdoors so they were able to be socially distanced yeah and what differences do you see now versus that I mean especially with those in-person outdoor meetings what are you seeing in terms of conversations in terms of understanding I mean so it's um interesting the students we do book club surveys after the book clubs just to get their feedback on things and they said that that there was some lagginess with technology sometimes and that was a struggle but they really appreciated the um ability to be able to communicate with their peers during that time even though it was over a computer but now they're talking
015about so last year's were saying I mean I've lots of quotes from different kids but they said that participating in a book club allowed them to take in um I learned that if a lot of people read the same book they will each take it in differently and then um one thing I learned while participating in the book club is that you should always be open about other people's ideas because sometimes you might learn new things about the book you would never have thought of so they oh here's another one um I learned that there are many great ideas coming from students and it's easier to express them to peers in small groups than in front of a whole class it felt like my classmates inside the group book club meeting were more animated and
016shared more ideas than when they were in front of an entire class um so I'll I'll try to sort of weave in a couple of other things that were brought up that day at the meeting one of them was about common sense media because the link that was sent out to parents had a link to Common Sense Media so that parents could sort of go on there and and read a little bit about it and I wanted to um explain why that link right like why not book Source or why not some something else and what we found was that Common Sense Media was a a resource that parents who especially those in the PTA were using to pick out movies that were appropriate for the parent for the PTA movie night so they would
017they that was like common lingo language resource amongst parents that they had been familiar with and using since elementary school so when the team looked at where should we go to give parents some ideas on you know Ruby views and you know just to get a overall summary of the book Common Sense Media was something that parents were familiar with that could be utilized not necessarily the resource that the teachers were using to select a book this is another tool that teachers are familiar with um this has been something that's been around it's um from achieve the core and it is a rubric that helps teachers to take a piece of text and identify where it lies as far as being complex moderately complex Etc so there's one side for literary text and one side
018for informational text so this isn't not necessarily a tool that teachers pull out every single time once they've used the rubric and gotten familiar with it it's something that helps them guide complex text and so this would be something that is in their toolbox that maybe they used for this maybe not but it's something that they're familiar with and use in general to look at and select texts for students foreign sort of mentioned that night was about what are we teaching if not the books that they're reading and the answer is we are not teaching the content in the book rather we're using a genre of books to teach Common Core grade level reading and literacy standards and these here are those standards and then there's some essential questions on the back that we're using
019in all of our in all of our standards in seventh grade you know what is the evidence whatever you're making your claim on whatever the character is saying what is the evidence in the book for that talking about inferences so you know you're looking at some enduring understandings about finding text evidence defining inference and these are this is the Crux of what is being taught and this happens whether it's an independent book it's an independent reading book and I want to stress that as as I think you said already but I'll just reiterate that there is a large volume of reading that students are doing in seventh and eighth grade they have choice of that these choices that were given for book club were again were six choices that we expanded to eight choices and
020I think that's what parents were looking for that we are we want kids to be happy with their choices we want to meet families where they are we want kids to have high interest books to read that these decisions that our teachers are making are coming from their work every day with students their interactions with parents during parent conferences and questions and the sorts of feedback that they're getting from being in the trenches at the middle school over a year's time especially when hearing about you know kids who just aren't interested in a certain book so making making these selections High interest which I know you're doing in independent reading but it also extended to the book clubs as well foreign we also talked about um talked about when I shared the demographics I wanted
021to make sure I put that in context and that when I was talking with Kristen we're talking about again those windows and mirrors and looking at Grant funds to support the buying of texts which we have done over the years to make sure kids have those opportunities to read things that you know are both a mirror so that they can see themselves in love with literature that they're reading and also a window into different points of view and different different lives different cultures Etc do we provide the students with whatever text they do yes yes and then they give them back to us and use them in Mexico so that we have to order more books I think we did the other question I have about adding two more choices did that do anything significantly
022to the the or maybe you don't know the answer to this yet to the size of the groups and to so because there were more choices it did make the groups in a lot of cases smaller um so you know because we were honoring in almost all cases their first choice We There are some groups that are like three instead of what normally last year would have been more like five-person groups do you have a group size um typically teachers don't want more than five it just tends to be not as productive once you get more than that and were there a lot of kids who had already selected the books and did they go back and change once they were given what what was the rate of change once they were given the second
023selections so um there was one team of students who had not yet um responded initially so I can't speak to them but we had 40 46 kids that chose the two new titles um amongst the three teams so there were some of them obviously were from had had already started and changed and then others were new you know just were interested in these titles okay um so under just curious on the rubric um how the seven books there where do they fall typically are they the extremely and very or do you so if you look at this that Marley okay so um where it talks about the left side level you'll notice that a lot of these Lexile levels are not particularly difficult but the other thing to to take into consideration is obviously the
024subject matter so by combining the two of those things I think then that is where that other rubric that you're talking about with complexity of text comes in as well so I think it's it's a combination of the features that are being shared um for ghost voice for example is told from um it involves a ghost and so that conceptually for some students is very difficult to like wrap their heads around right so even though it may be a low Lexile level the manner in which the book is written is a much higher like reading level does that make sense [Music] okay so on this rubric one text could go like in a lot of different levels and whatever like the language might be really complex but the idea is less or vice versa correct
025I'm going to share another piece of information and this is a sample of when kids are reading what kinds of questions might we be asking foreign so I hope that this provides some context around the discussion that was held at the Forum of 10 days ago and gives some context around how choices were made why they were made and how teachers came to the conclusions and the decisions that they did that it was not you know a group of people sort of in isolation making these choices but rather a real consideration of a variety of of inputs so I remember several years ago when this whole thing came to us and we were we were talking about this new idea of having bullets and this that and the other thing but I have to say
026I'm really um I'm actually kind of glad to be taking this having you present us with this deep dive because from my perspective I already I was quite on board with that as a curriculum Choice as a teaching learning choice [Music] but seeing sort of the amount of thought that goes into what we're doing I mean I just have to commend you this is a this is a very um well put together section of the curriculum I'm sure all the sections are as well researched and as well because you all are professionals you know what you're doing right um but um I'm happy to have taken this deep dive into what goes into putting together curriculum for one section in the seventh grade curriculum it's a lot there's a lot to it I agree and
027um I'm amazed at the amount of work that goes into this and so going forward um is this I mean there doesn't seem to be anything anything secretive about this or and I'm sure when you have your parent groups you do go into this Deepa dive with them I'm just thinking if this had been out there um could we have allayed anxieties or even prevented them uh you know if we saw the number of book awards awards that these books got um over you know that alone is an endorsement for the book which might have kind of quelt some of the fears or concerns and and um um I know you guys provided the descriptions for the books but you know reading levels and the Publishers and putting it out there because these are not
028fly by night Publishers I mean they're respected Publishers that we all leave books from um you know we read Little Brown books we read Simon and Schuster so it's not like it's you know the weather the Weather Underground suddenly bought a publishing house and we're trying to indoctrinate the kids I mean and so I'm just wondering if if putting this up there and those parents at least offering it making it available so those parents who are concerned saying where did this come from it's it's not a bunch of activist teachers you actually went and did the research and I don't know what you think if that's possible I mean it's just and I'm of the Mind more information is best and a lot of it will be ignored or people a lot of people will
029ignore it but for those who are concerned I think we can certainly put something up on our curriculum web page related to these book clubs and maybe even gather these same resources for the upcoming book club so that there is a plethora of information out there that people have access to yeah and I'm not saying overwhelm them but uh although it may this would this one this one home with everything no and I'm not saying no we'll break our budget for sure I'm just saying make it and just a few trees yeah um but they just have it as a resource for them it might just kind of you start a different kind of discussion then and and I love the way our discussion glad you know a couple Thursdays ago went eventually but it
030could have gone in a very different direction um so another thing and this is this is kind of my Bugaboo about modern reading you say you're not teaching context and and yet these are these are contextual questions here I mean this is what the what the child is getting now and I guess that makes me kind of sad because I you know we can read for technical expertise but do we read because we love it I think there are places in the curriculum where we do both okay yeah okay this just does not happen to necessarily be one of them but isn't that why we get into book clubs I mean ultimately is to I I mean I love the idea that they're going back and forth and my guess is they're not talking about
031pulling textile to meet a certain demand they're talking about this theme or that theme and I agree with this theme and and that is what kind of Fosters the love and appreciation of literature and I would hate to think that in you know the state's quest to make us technical readers we lose sight of the beauty of reading and why we do it in the first place which is which is really almost entertainment uh is sure beats TV these days but I don't know just I'd be interested in your thoughts on that yeah I think um when students are given the choice during the rest of the year they have an independent choice of any book they want to read and that's usually Guided by Teacher book talks in a first some teachers do the
032first chapter Fridays where they read the first chapter of a book and inevitably after you read that first chapter of us you have author of students coming up here and say I love that book I want that book so there are a bunch of opportunities during the school during the um length of the curriculum length of the school year to Foster that love of reading and I think the book clubs do that too just in a different way um I found that a lot of kids who didn't think they were going to enjoy the experience of the book club ended up not only making experience but loving a book too so I think it happens in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways and we just tend to do that differently
033in every unit uh so there's a developmental aspect here too to have when I go in and see the classes and see what the kids are having a conversation about I mean there are parts of you that are kind of like holy cow these kids are really asking me questions some said they have to be prompted they have to be coached if we taught how to ask those questions and I think we'll close especially in seventh grade really Foster that so yes there is a technical aspect of the reading but there's also a very technical aspect of how we engage one another in a group in seventh grade especially because in that group you're going to have highly motivated readers you're gonna have some unlimited readers you're going to have people you know so for
034them to participate in that like Kristen said in it's an experience and I think that's something Elementary's kind of get to that point but I think when kids are doing that at the level that they're doing it in seventh grade I think that's a part of the experience that they really like that their voice on on the textual reading Was Heard validated and then also in the discussion and that's I think when the kids are older at the high school level in college then they do that independently that's the essence yeah and anecdotally I I've seen over the years kids really enjoying reading more and more due to the choices that they have whether it's sensory choices in a book club or the choice of any book they want to read rather than being told
035they have to read this book yeah have you one other question I'm just wondering if you've thought of asking is um this is something that I used to do long ago when I used to teach and I we I was in the classical school so we were reading classical you know the classics and but I would say does this does this book Merit the classic label and with modern or contemporary fiction I would love to hear the the kids respond to will this book stand the test of time will we will your children be reading this book and if so why um in what technically but also um thematically just overall context of the book do you think it's a worthy raid we didn't ask that question exactly but one of the questions on the
036eighth grade book club survey was something to the effect of do you think this was an appropriate choice for this book like to be offered in book club unit and um and why so sort of similar because they had to say why they felt it was worthy and the other thing about book clubs is sometimes there's a really great book and it you could love the book but then to bring it to a book club conversation or or to say we're going to read it for book club it may not have anything to discuss or it may lack discussion points so I feel like that was another thing that we were mindful of in choosing these books is that they were going to be able to have conversations around them so I like that question
037and I think that we can definitely incorporate that to uh to ourselves right right yes that's like an old capped question yeah okay um I I'm just I want to just because it was raised um just how do you guys address the parents who were concerned and raise the point about political content and there are concerns in that area how would you how would you address that point with them if you had been there I mean what would you because they these are dealing with current event issues I mean how do I say you know I mean they're hot button issues these days um it is contemporary I know I I understand and uh you know when I was long ago I was you know reading about the wild west because it was current events
038no I don't know um just you know I think there are a lot of a lot of people are on edge right now and I think people thought these books were feeding into that so can you address that Mike into Christmas I think that a lot of this addresses that too that there was this was not a you know I think when you get to know Mike and you come to the parent conferences and you hear from these teachers and they talk to you about how they selected this and they present with this information um they really like their jobs most days and they're not looking to jeopardize that or to put children in a difficult position their aim is to give kids the tools to become adults who can navigate situations and make their
039own decisions so I think when we say that we're not teaching the content of the book it's not with an ulterior motive you know it's because of all the all of the reasons that were shared as to why that why that's here for kids I think that's at the heart of it and I'll let you know certainly certainly them speak but just having worked with them knowing where they're coming from understanding that um it's apparent in all the work that they do what Their aim is and their aim is clearly here um and and not wouldn't be right it wouldn't be right appropriate or ethical to do that to right and to fully understood and you and I discussed this and these guys are just new to Dodd parents don't know you parents are learning
040this school and and we talked about that didn't we yeah and maybe this is a unit that comes later in the seventh grade year once you guys are all much more familiar territory or turf and um but you brought up a valid point the fact that you know as a former social studies teacher whenever something current was happening you always we always try to relate everything to that current to get the kids engaged and that is a part of what this was as well you know we had some contents that some content standards that had to be taught um wasn't always the most engaging and it wasn't always the most kind of pull kids in the way we would take a look at these content but if you have a vehicle and we we've said
041this before in communication you know Keller and I sat if the vehicle could be really something that engages kids it really makes for some great teaching um and I think part of that yeah I mean I think a part of that does that like you said today's societies is we're very how do we walk that you know that narrow Edge has become narrower and narrower over the years um and I think kind of going forward with this becoming into the third year I think we I know I felt we were kind of in strive with this we kind of had to pulse on the community we kind of had everything and obviously you know there were some more concerns and I I know I had anticipated so but for that being said it was not
042in any because we had done it two previous years there wasn't anything here from my perspective of even working with you know our ELA teachers there was nothing to the line of you know this is a an agenda of things this is a political thing this is there wasn't any of that and that's the piece where it was you know and we're here talking about it now because we had to overcome that and I think you do bring up some valid points about trust um I think that's not only from Community to school I think a lot of that can go on society as well right now but I think that work you know that has come up um that being said in seventh grade we did have teachers kind of approach Us in different
043ways we had a teacher who was able to do it in person at a parent night and I think people when you see someone in person you can kind of get a little bit of building some trust there um and that teacher did a great job and had started the unit probably a few days before everybody else and there wasn't anything because I think people had that uh trust there um I think we we definitely taking a look at that for future you know pieces like I think you bring up some valid points about maybe getting to make sure we have that trust gained before start heading down some of these you know maybe some push button topics thanks I want to conclude my thoughts by saying thank you to Martin and your team for
044going above and beyond and including two more titles because I know that there's work behind that when you're thrown a curveball in the middle of doing something um so I just want to say thank you for you know your work in in helping these parents get to a comfortable place yeah you know so all right somebody Harrison agenda thank you guys um you can stay through this scintillating meeting if you want to get this information back to you because yeah you know it's going to be readily available on the website sometimes sure if you can hang on stuff do you want me to hang on to mine and bring you Thursday no you don't have to I'll have I'll have extra for everything on Thursday okay we're going in yeah maybe I do no I
045wrote on them okay thanks you guys thank you thank you both very very much all right um information items um first up Master oh our school master schedule [Laughter] so we have assembled a schedule committee to look at both our daily schedule and our advisory schedule we shifted our advisory to 40 minutes rather than 20 but reduce the number of meetings so that we could better accommodate programs and not impede on the daily schedule so that we'd have time to run programs and you know we've run a block schedule in response to covid we developed a Blog schedule so that we had flexibility so we could have longer classes so students could take Mass breaks so that we could have fewer transitions in the day that was a huge consideration when this whole thing started
046we maintained that so that was the first year of code that we maintained that last year because we started the year with masks and needed time and we maintained it this year because we've heard from teachers and from students there's been so much uncertainty please no changes so we maintained it but it's important to pull together a group of teachers so we have nine teachers we have seven students two from each grade we're waiting for one one additional ninth grader to be able to join our committee two parents and three administrators um and include yeah three administrators uh who are working together to do the following here's the scope of the committee Jeff obviously talk about the context and the why behind the the schedule that we developed to recall that we have 30-minute lunches
047so whatever we do there are just some realities we have to ensure we can accommodate 30-minute lunches we also need to ensure and this was a meask a New England Association of schools and colleges accreditation recommendation slash requirement ensure that we are providing time during the school day for teachers to collaborate we've worked that through um by associating that collaboration time and splitting the longer periods of teachers can collaborate and then Provide support to students the other half of the period that's just one way we've handled it um and to just to to also support drop-in support for students so those are some pieces that you need to keep so the first piece is what's the context which I shared with you the second what are the requirements of our schedule the third most importantly
048as a committee and as a school what do we want our schedule to accomplish what's so what's important to the community and then review feedback from feedback we have from our faculty from last year and then feedback we will get this year through this committee from our community which includes parents students teachers the whole community and then talk about the pros and cons of block schedule and other schedules we will also include collection and review of research meaning what are other schools endurance A and B doing for their schedules we've done we've done some preliminary work there we don't have an exhaustive list quite yet but there are a number of schools that have that maintain a block schedule in Dirk's A and B uh some that have and have a combined block some with
049more of a rotation so we're looking at what's out there and then we'll determine through the committee how to communicate our ongoing progress and then the ultimate piece is uh making a recommendation by February so that we so that we know what we want to be by the end so those are the goals committing I love the fact that we have students from every grade level two kids who reach grade level so that some students have never had a different schedule the students so we need to know how coming in from ninth grade do you go from 52-minute classes sometimes you have an extended 50 you know extended class in Middle School to the longer 80 or 85 minute class on advisory day they're 75 minutes so we're looking at and all of that and
050the positives and uh mm-hmm I have the schedule so we're doing a pretty deep dive into into this work and we have a terrific team to do it so and I communicated with the faculty uh so that they know who the representatives are from each department so that they can speak to them if they have recommendations we'll send that up to students as well for their their peer Representatives and the parents as well what's the time of our blocks at the high school before code we had it depended on the day it was just about an hour just about an hour and so we had uh six classes that rotated through a to d now we have alternating days so you'll see your class every other day so there are were other schools already doing
051more of a block scheduling either um I don't know the history of it was before covet some of some of our work is defined that the rationale behind their their block and why they went to it if it was coveted related why would they stay with it there have been a number of schools in Connecticut who have already been on a block schedule for for well over a decade yeah that's what I was thinking a Blog schedule where the class times were more like 80 correct yeah and allowed to only four transitions um and so we've had some preliminary feedback from students so it's it's no I think it makes a lot of sense to to research it before turning back to what we were doing before because maybe this is better yeah and we
052just want to make sure we want to make sure so we're looking at every angle so between rotating and blocks are there other scheduling options that are um that have come up and there are schedule options yeah that make my head spin I'm sure yeah some have um you'll have a straight eight then you'll have four periods in the block then you'll do a rotating day it is and there are some schools that do a combination some have a combination that is exceedingly complicated why because everyone's trying to fit in enough instructional time enough connection time to students so that you've had so you can build that Rapport um and it takes time to do that to reduce transitions because that's that's just helpful to to slow the day down because it can feel so
053frenetic when you have you know your classes are too short you feel like you can't get anything done if they're too long it feels you know we're looking for the Goldilocks schedule actually yeah hopefully we will find it nothing nothing is perfect though um but yeah there are there are multiple schedules that serve a number of purposes one other piece is we have to make sure that um our students who go to school at the um at the Arts Academy that put in all the requirements before they break for the day so we can't have afternoon classes meeting in the in the morning and then have more requests to meet in the afternoon to rotate because then it would close them up so there are just a multitude of considerations um I could go on
054so so we have to look at all of those all those elements as we as we explore how many meetings have you had so far we had one preliminary meeting in our first full meeting with everyone who can participate we had someone like I can't you know so we we had the preliminary to set the agenda this is what we're working on do we all agree great we're going to confirm our group membership and then our first one is the 25th okay my first full formal meeting and so obviously you're going to be presenting the ideas I mean these um 16 2018 22 people are not going to come up with they're not going to be tasked with okay you because you've got a lot of lay people here hey I looked at this my
055friend teaches here here's what they're doing so they're already sharing some ideas which is right so will you report back to us on February March yes once you know I'll let you know what the recommendation is absolutely yeah and how we got there okay that's I guess that's the question is there any do you want to come back before then to give us I can do it why don't we see what your next meeting is at and if you have some things to report I think it'd be great to just keep these guys in the loop absolutely as we go along yeah okay what we're wrestling with yeah I think uh it might be really interesting to have the teacher and the students that's like an expressing how it works for them or how it
056doesn't work that's why they're all that's why they're all involved in our initial conversation is really interesting to hear student perspectives and teacher perspectives and for them to hear each other has been great and then what's nice is then that starts to bubble out into the larger community so it's nice yeah great thanks sure all right and um our last item is we have an out-of-state overnight DC we do so these students who are attending who are asking to attend this trip they are students who did not have a chance to go to Washington DC and they played so exactly yeah yeah okay yeah yeah so this is the AP History Class apux class that will be headed to Washington DC to see where the seat of government decision making happen they'll be looking at
057um the let's see there's another piece that the national museum Vietnam War Memorial the World War II Memorial the Korean memorial the Jefferson Memorial seeing all of it um and also get a chance to see the FBI headquarters and diplomatic reading rules um and this is a much smaller group yes yes which is great yeah so how big is the 440 today I'm heading down by motor coach that's a long ride um there are only 40 kids that did not make no no in the 18 years yeah exactly okay okay [Laughter] to do this yeah all right but do they have to pay for it yes it is uh yep 27 711 and 800 depending on remedies um sounds great uh any questions I think those I think it's great yeah yeah I work in
058the Department of Agriculture are they going to the department oh my goodness yeah they will already be really warm like that so yeah yeah all right well that brings us to oh my goodness that was four minute shy um I know you want to go before the clock rings again um if you're ready I I we got six minutes I don't think we have that much to talk all in favor yeah all right thank you