New Peirce principal first chosen via online interviews
“It’s a difficult time for everyone. The motion and these comments have nothing to do with how hard the schools have been working.”
— Len Kardon
UPDATED, May 22: The Arlington School Committee says town teachers should be doing more virtual live video instruction with students during remote class sessions.
At the May 14 meeting held via Zoom webinar, the committee voted on a motion to direct Superintendent Kathleen Bodie to develop a plan with more weekly video lessons between teachers and students. This vote came after hearing an update on the remote-learning plan from Bodie and Assistant Superintendent Roderick MacNeal Jr., who presented models of the weekly “grids” that teachers have made at different grade levels to break up the school day into periods where students complete learning-enrichment activities.
At the kindergarten level, for example, students are advised to start the day with five to 10 minutes of mindfulness activities, such as coloring or breathing exercises, and then move on to 30 minutes of online math videos and games. In second grade, students are recommended to spend 15 to 20 minutes on social-studies slides or teacher-made videos. MacNeal said the grids have taken “countless hours” to develop.
There are live Google Hangout meetings to connect with students face-to-face, but the emphasis of those meetings is not on learning, according to Bodie.
“The purpose of the live classroom, the intent is to give them time to say hello and hang out with their classmates,” said Bodie. “The intent is not to be teaching new material. That is for the asynchronous videos.”
Committee member Jane Morgan brought the motion before the committee in response to feedback from parents that their students were not getting enough face-to-face education. The School Committee members also think live video calls would give schools the opportunity to test and learn about best practices for remote learning, something that could prove valuable in the future.
“It’s a difficult time for everyone. The motion and these comments have nothing to do with how hard the schools have been working,” School Committee Chair Len Kardon said during the meeting.
Asynchronous learning refers to students learning the same material at different times of the day, through readings, assignments and prerecorded videos. Synchronous learning is when all the students are gathered together to learn the material at the same time, with live instruction via video call with the teacher. The Arlington School District has mainly been following guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which recommend asynchronous learning, because not all students have flexible home lives to be able to log on at a specific time of day.
Read the agenda documents referring to this topic >>
Virtual graduation
Arlington High School graduation will take place June 6, Bodie said. The day will begin with a parade of seniors through town at 1 p.m. A committee of students, teachers, parents and administrators have been working with the Board of Health and the Arlington Police Department to make it happen safely, and banners and yard signs will be placed through town. Then Arlington Community Media inc. will be streaming a virtual graduation ceremony at 5 p.m.
More detail from the first local report about the 2020 graduation >>
“I think we all feel very badly for the seniors,” Bodie said. “All kinds of losses they’ve had their senior year, the athletic season for one and the spring musical for the second.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Bodie showed a video made by Arlington High School students virtually singing the finale to “Tommy,” the musical by the Who, which would have been the school’s spring musical if it had not been canceled because of Covid-19.
Bodie said that summer education programs will be canceled. There has been no information released yet about what learning will look like in the fall. Bodie said discussion about options continues.
Remote ELL instruction, counseling
At the same meeting, Carla Bruzzese, director of English language learning, http://www.arlington.k12.ma.us/departments/English_Language_Learners/ gave a presentation about what her team is doing to educate students remotely. Unlike the rest of the district, much of the instruction for ELL students has happened over live video call, which Bruzzese said is part of her department’s instruction model.
Many of the families of ELL students experienced challenges with technology, according to Bruzzese, including lack of devices and access to WiFi, and struggling to get on to Google Classroom.
“For a good chunk of the week, our teachers were on phone calls, texting families, making sure they had the devices they needed, making sure they had printed materials if they need them,” Bruzzese said.
Bruzzese said ELL teachers have been adding visuals to text to represent concepts visually, and providing online interactions so students can discuss and process the information they are learning.
She said the work of the ELL teachers this month has been very similar to that of social workers, reaching out to families and checking up on their social-emotional well-being.
Read the agenda documents referring to this item >>
Sara Burd, director of the counseling department, presented on what the district is doing to address students’ social-emotional well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since the school closings were announced March 12, school counselors and social workers began reaching out to students to see who might need help. They have been making priorities for students with previous mental-health histories, and making sure the students have a plan for continuing to get treatment in quarantine. They have also been working with classroom teachers to identify the students who aren’t showing up in class or handing in assignments to make sure they are well.
The department is referring students to the Arlington Youth Counseling Center for telehealth therapy, but has also partnered with William James College’s INTERFACE referral service, in anticipation of a spike in demand for mental-health treatments.
Burd cited much work underway in mental health, to avoid severe mental-health spikes.
Read the agenda document referring to this agenda item >>
The department is also working with art, music and physical education departments within the Arlington Public Schools to find activities that regulate brain activity and help students calm down from stress.
College and career planning counselor Danielle Rakowsky came on the webinar to say that her department provides Arlington High School seniors with remote postsecondary planning, including lists of virtual college tours that they can take. She said many seniors are worried about their grade-point averages and how this atypical learning period will appear on their high school transcripts to potential colleges.
New principals, superintendent search update
Andrew Ahmadi, former assistant principal at Henry Whittemore Elementary School in Waltham, has been selected to be the new principal at Peirce Elementary School in Arlington starting in July. He was hired after a search process that was conducted virtually.
Ahmadi
Read a news release from the schools >>
“He was certainly very well received by all stakeholders in the process,” Bodie told the School Committee. “It is the first time we have done a principal search totally virtually.”
Ahmadi will replace Peirce’s current principal, Karen Hartley, who is retiring at the end of the school year. She has led Peirce since 2009.
Gibbs candidates
The town’s public-school administration is in the middle of another search, to find a new principal for Gibbs middle school. Community members will be able to meet virtually with the four finalists for the position on Thursday, May 21, at 6:30 p.m., an email from Human Resources Director Rob Spiegel says. Each finalist will have the opportunity to meet with community members for 30 minutes.
On May 22, School Committee candidate, posted to the Arlington Email List a link to her notes about the Gibbs candidates. Read them here >> She included the names and links to resumes:
Fabienne Pierre-Maxwell, Rochelle Rubino, Wendy Salvatore and Matt Kuklentz
The School Committee also voted unanimously to select the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to conduct the search process for a new Arlington Public Schools’ superintendent. The current superintendent, Bodie, is retiring from the position in one year.
The Superintendent Search Subcommittee, headed by School Committee member Paul Schlichtman, received two proposals from vendors looking to conduct the search process: one from MASC and one from Sunshine Enterprises, a company based in Florida.
“Having reviewed the proposal, the first thing that happened is we found the MASC proposal to be advantageous and the Sunshine Enterprises proposal to be unacceptable,” Schlichtman said.
After the unanimous vote, Schlichtman said he has high hopes for the search process.
“There are many outstanding candidates who should be attracted to Arlington at this point, and I think we are going to have a wonderful search,” he said.
Read the documents related to this agenda item >>
Teacher evals suspended, coaches will be paid
At the same meeting, the School Committee voted unanimously to suspend teacher evaluations for the 2019-2020 school year under an agreement with the educators and administrators unions.
“It’s a new environment for everybody, and it’s been very difficult for our administrators to evaluate teachers,” Spiegel said. “We’ve agreed with the unions that we would suspend evaluations for the year.”
The School Committee also unanimously approved a motion to pay spring sports coaches a half-season stipend for the work that they did before the start of the spring athletic season, until they found out that athletics would be canceled for the rest of the term.
“The coaches were still preparing and in touch with their teams, that continued until the end of April,” Spiegel said. “In recognition of all the work and preparation that had been done, we decided with the union that it would be fair to give them half.”
Arlington Public Schools’ Covid-19 FAQ
May 3, 2020: Students average about half of recommended time on remote learning, survey says
April 11, 2020: April school break canceled; online classes continue
March 25, 2020: Remote learning during shutdown discussed; geothermal wells scrapped
This news summary by YourArlington freelancer Eileen O’Grady was published Sunday, May 17, 2020. It was updated by Bob Sprague on May 22, to include Gibbs candidates.
