alright here we go i'd like to call the meeting of the jericho town school district to order can you hear me yes the microphone working up to par way back okay i'll just remind you that i'm dave barrington i'm also school moderator in a separate election and susan is here to represent the directors of the board and she's feeling lonely so be a comfort to her i draw your attention to the warning which is on page fifty six of the town report and at the same time i'm gonna draw your attention to the reports of the officers of the school which start on page fifty eight and the budget which is on page sixty one seem to me to be the critical things you wanna pay attention to we're a little bit at sea about how to proceed because we are going there are a set of reports in the town report and we also have a budget to prove and susan is going to speak to both town reports and budget so i haven't quite figured out how to fit that in but we'll see what we can do i'll begin by asking what you would like to do with article i which is to hear and act upon the reports of the town officers of the school officers and i remind you this is an explicit reference to the written reports that are in the report whether you are happy with them and submit it or whether you'd like to make comments or corrections to the reports of the directors and just remind you of that susan will also give an oral report article i okay so article i has been moved by jesse and is there a second thank you gentlemen what would i do without you so i think without i think what i'll do is move on to written reports if you have any comments or questions about those and then we'll treat susan's presentation as all relevant to article two i'm sort of making this up anything about the written reports you'd like to comment on the budget so the question is on article twoi thank you i think the meat of the matter would be when we listen to susan so gary nothing i take it that you have no comments to the written reports and they can be accepted as presented i'm gonna ask for your vote on that all those in favor accepting article one reports as presented please say aye aye oppose nay abstain abstain article one is passed okay article two is the inevitable article to allow the school board to do business this comes up every year it's routine it reads voters with the jericho town school district authorize the school board under sixteen psa fifty two nine to borrow money like issuance of bonds or notes not in excess of anticipated revenue for the school year that this is in order to make it possible for money to be available to short term until taxes are collected to keep things moving what do you wish to do with article two moved by paul gross and seconded by okay any questions or comments or discussion about authorizing the school board so none are you ready to vote all those in favor please say aye aye oppose no and abstain abstain article two's passing unanimously all right let's get article let's see what you wanna do with article three so article three is to vote a budget of three million seven hundred and ninety eight thousand five hundred and ninety eight to meet the expenses and liabilities of the town school district what do you wish to do with article three paul gross moves the article onto the floor is there a second so we can finish it off jesse fountain jesee fountain second all right so i will invite susan then to give her presentation which as i say is a combination of report information and aid in understanding the budget use the mic please and feel free by the way to interrupt at any time it is actually possible for you i should say just a couple of interesting things you can amend this project by changing the money but you cannot direct that money to a specific purpose there's a peculiarity of school meetings that you can say well i wanna increase the school budget and advise the directors how to assign that increase but you can't tell them how to do it that's the business that we have before you yeah so that means we could amend the bottom line but we can't amend that's right you have to advise them as to how to proceed i raised before to reaffirm hey good afternoon can you hear me okay let me let's see well let's see where you are start talking good afternoon keep talking welcome to this whatever how's that that you want me to go to this jericho town school back people are you hearing her that's all i got okay how about if i put it a little closer is that better yes use your teacher voice all right i'll do that i'll use my mother voice okay there we go go okay that's better there we go so welcome and appreciate that this i have come to believe over the years that it is the true diehards who care so deeply about our town and our school who just come back after the lovely lunch period to listen to us talk about our school so appreciate everyone being here and welcome questions and comments i am here representing all five of the board members so none of whom was able to make it one who made still be straggling in but others who had work commitments so can we go to the vision slide there we go i will always like to start with just reminding us all of jericho elementary school's vision statement which is to provide a quality education to all students we do this by celebrating diversity forming a strong academic foundation ensuring that students understand their local community and environment and nurturing children's innate curiosity so that they can participate in our democratic society and in the global community we do this in a collegial and innovative environment and i'm not gonna read each of these items but you can peruse the ways some of the many ways in which we celebrate diversity could you explain pbis sure pbis stands for positive behavioral intervention and support and it's basically a schoolwide i don't know if i would call it discipline system but i don't really love that word what would you say vicky schoolwide behavioral support system schoolwide behavioral support system and i don't like the word discipline because it connotes to me that we're only responding to negative behaviors and that is not what pbis is all about but that's what it stands for okay ways in which we form a strong academic foundation there are many is there a few of the highlights understanding our local community and nurturing learners innate curiosity i might just add not on this slide but of note i think our fabulous enrichment program that we have at jericho elementary school which is available to all students and new this year and integrated arts program going by the acronym of colm which stands for connecting our library and music so kids are doing some projects that connect to sort of some of their special classes and some really interesting fun innovative ways and if anyone's interested we can talk more about that later okay so our vision statement informs our action plan curriculum and assessment which all sort of then inform each other just information on enrollment last year this year and what's anticipated for next year so you can see that our enrollment is actually going up due in large part to a large incoming large kindergarten class this current school year why is the old school special education member that's just a function of how many students we have at any given time who actually are eligible to receive special education services so it's relatively the kids in the population correct right and staff just a little snapshot of staff we have fourteen fulltime classroom teachers around nine other teachers which include foreign language our music pe actively the library is in there yes instructional aids and special education aids we have lumped together in one number do you want me to and they come out of the local budget or is that something the special ed i believe come from the special ed budget which is and the instructional assistants for the regular education classroom aids such as we have in our kindergarten classrooms for example that always come from the local budget yeah that's a good question okay and another little snapshot of who we are as a district okay now we want to oh another little photo we wanted to talk a little bit about the fairly hot off the press most recent necap which stands for the new england common assessment program results this is based on testing that was administered in the fall of two thousand and twelve which best assesses progress from the twenty million one hundred and twelve thousand and twelve school year and you can see that we are jericho elementary continues to score significantly above the state averages in math reading and science this is data for third and fourth graders but because that's the first year that we administer necaps oh the bullets are gonna come up one by one susan yes in the report there's more segmented discussion about subgroups yes and the results on the necaps i know i thought that would be too hard to read as a slide so i didn't put it all in there but it is in the report yeah question yeah it seems to be a significant gender differentiation and the fact that susan would you repeat the question he's not on a microphone yeah jesse was just mentioning that jesse what page is that what page on page sixty on page sixty there's a more explicit breakdown of the necap scores disaggregated by some of the sub groups including gender and disability status and economic status and jesse was pointing out that he's noticing some discrepancies between female scores and scores of our boys i'm gonna turf that one to vicky do you wanna do you wanna take a stab is that something that we see sort of nationwide or what can we do about this i mean we recognize that somebody's gotta be i don't know we did expect to see consistent results just introduce yourself yes i'm vickie the building principal so it's something that we're beginning to see used to be that you would see their scores better than females scores so the trend's changing the female scores being better than male scores we had this question from the floor last year and so what we did is we looked at it over time this is a small snapshot so we kind of walked it out over time to see what we looked like not k4 but k8 and we seem to level out though the girls tend to continue to be the gap narrows but girls tend to be doing a little bit better across time as well as across grade levels sort of another factor within this that we saw as a subgroup is the number of students that you have sort of what crossreferences you have male and female but then you have your disability category within that so you might be male disabled or you might be female disabled so we saw some pieces of the year that kind of so was it gender was it disability and the number of children who were boys who were disabled so there was a it's a piece of data that we started looking at more closely really based on the kind of the conversation that happened last year i tend to think of when i look at my sub scores i tend to look at ses and i tend to look at disability i hadn't looked closely at gender until last year kind of thinking more about that so typically when i look at my scores the place that worries me is low ses across the board that seems to be the place where there's a gap that i'm most worried about but certainly sort of this data and the data that i've looked at in the past year can we be much more wondering about that sort of looking at and i think some of the work around common core so if you look at that reading score there's gonna be a huge increase in looking at informational texts versus nonfiction versus fiction text and really increasing that number boys tend to like nonfiction texts more so as you look at common core standards there'll be a real sort of increase in the number of that amount of text children are supposed to be reading which is sort of a change for elementary education certainly middle school or high school education that's the focus and we're really looking at that at the elementary level so i'm thinking that a number of the things that are gonna happen within common core will kind of address those issues does anyone else have any questions about the necap data before i move on move closer to the mic please in looking at the malefemale discrepancy which was to me i wonder if you could also include in your information gathering children who are living with a male parent or a female parent for both parents and if that if the presence or absence of a male parent makes any difference that you have to gather data over time but i would encourage you to do that lizzie i wanna ditto what she just said i don't think that's too wacky and in fact i would say that with the fall of nasa star trek star wars kinds of stuff kids aren't you've gotta get them excited about science they've gotta have a kind of a math and science club feeling we've gotta get excited about it perhaps somebody can come in and help with school with robotics and get the kids excited about these things to help some of the boys who are excited and think of themselves as men of science so indeed this past school year this current school year we have a science in residence program that our enrichment teacher and one of our parents has organized to kind of we basically invite scientists real practicing scientists who come in and tell us what it is to be a scientist and what you get to do and we've had a geologists come in we've had a physicist come in and it's really been exciting we've had a person who studies wildlife biology so that's really neat it's like a celebrity comes to school and that celebrity is a scientist so it's been pretty exciting and i think those things are a piece of the work sorry the other case sorry and get out of the way the other case would be really looking at that science and what science inquiry means and really looking at our science units to increase inquiry if you look at our we're working on that obviously increased the most exciting part of science if you look at our current science curriculum it's strong inquiry you'll see a strong inquiry unit in first grade second grade we really were changing those units to make them stronger inquiry based units and then again looking at third grade as a strong inquiry base and then trying to improve that within fourth grade so we really saw some places where children take that science test only once in our school they take at the spring of fourth grade so some of the strongest inquiry work was in first and third grade so really looking to move that across time so you will see kids who get to have that experience more often so more inquiry experience and understanding the rigor around that that you sort of the rigor around sciences it's not just an experiment that you really have to know how to collect and analyze and use data so that science inquiry task that they have to do is pretty rigorous around those kind of pieces and we've been also thinking about some work our first grade teachers are combining their data unit and mathematics with their science unit so really to kind of say that this is connected sort of trying to show those connections so i think we are beginning to address it what's happening nationwide is we're gonna have the next generation science standards coming in so if you watch the new common core and reading and writing and mathematics and sort of next on the plate is a science so we're kind of preparing for that so ongoing work which is critical i agree okay let's move on to the budget those of you who attend to every year i'm sure that you now understand all the ins and outs of how the budget relates for your property taxes but in case there's anyone new or anyone who takes a long time to finally get it like myself i'm gonna go over this cause i think that's really important to understand and it is fairly complex way that this works here for us in vermont so yeah that would be helpful let's just yeah there should be a little bit more there we go so property tax rates are based on education spending per equalized pupil and you can see where they asterisks what an equalized pupil actually is how we're defining an equalized pupil stop me at anytime if you have questions districts which have have the same education spending per equalized pupil will have the same equalized property tax rate with me so far okay pending legislative approval the statewide homestead tax rate is going to be ninety two cents something we have no control over and the base education amount also does fine which is also defined by the legislature of eight thousand nine hundred and fifteen i think it's really important to emphasize that that is a number that is not intended and was never intended to be a recommended per pupil expenditure it's a number that is used for calculating the tax rate current symbol okay so if the education spending per equalized pupil is equal to the base education amount then the tax rate will be ninety two cents spending more than the base education amount per equalized pupil will increase the tax rate okay now just a little caveat here but at act one hundred and thirty just to point out that the town jericho town school district could place its own tax rate and the mmu school district also pay for its own tax rate and then the two tax rates are prorated by the number of equalized pupils in each district and added together so we end up with one overall tax rate so based on this proposed budget our education spending per equalized pupil at the elementary level is fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighty six which is six thousand five hundred and eighty six more than the base ed base education amount and so then you could see what that will do to the tax rate which is increase it by six thousand five hundred and eighty six and leave us with a tax rate of one hundred and fifty three that then gets prorated by the number of elementary school aged equalized pupil in jericho or i'm sorry by the percentage of pupils which aren't elementary pupils and we end up with our prorated homestead tax rate dumped it all okay questions so far i'm rob allen you started your presentation with the fact that the number of students is going up last year to this year by a considerable jump does that mean that the number of actual students this year will be higher than the number of equalized students because of the twoyear averaging so we through our spending per pupil is artificially high because our enrollment's going up yearoveryear well yes to the first part of the question and vicky did you wanna say something about that oh bob fanie hi i'm bob fanie a business manager for chittenden east and if there is a lag with the equalized pupil because of the average so you could have a the weighted daily average it's a two year average daily membership and there's some weighting factors that are incorporated in the calculation so you can see differences the directions could be different until there's a catchup if there's a sharp change in the number of students in a particular district it's that answer yes yes yes yes so till next year okay so yep oh let me talk to austin i did a question about how is the percentage of elementary students calculate it is that something like k through four versus five through twelve in jericho yeah k through four we are defining elementary pupils as students who would attend jericho elementary school so that's k through four only fifth through 12th grade is part of the mmu school district for our purposes okay so the common level appraisal i'm not gonna go through all of this you can read it ask me if you have questions basically right now jericho cla is so close to one hundred that it is not going to change your tax rate for this it's in the 10th of a cent range the change the tax rate and then it ended up rounding back to the forty seven cents so that simplifies that for this year at least so this sort of this chart shows how the elementary portion elementary home portion that homestead tax rate combines with the mt vans fields portion for students in grades five through twelve to get our overall tax rate and just a little bit about income sensitivity if we could just go to that next slide just like to point out that there is adjustment for income sensitivity so you can see that up through an income of ninety thousand there is some adjustment in a downward fashion of what you have to pay what you would have to pay i believe that caps out at ninety thousand household income about two thousand the last year this slide will have to be up here because act eighty two was phasing out but basically act eighty two limited the amount of increased spending that school boards could school districts can propose well we can propose anything we wanted but at over a certain cap there would have to be a complicated two vote sort of situation which fortunately for us we are not in this year so we were able to come in under the maximum increase allowed this might be a little hard to see this is also on page sixty six was sort of summary of the budget and what i tried to do with this chart was just include the line items that have gone up or gone down with a couple of exceptions that snuck in into my chart that have gone up and down by four or more so that you could see really what's driving the budget this year and what is driving the budget our increases in teacher salaries by the negotiated settlement so that's sort of a given health significant prehealthcare premium increases a very large increase one thousand three hundred and eighty one increase in our jericho's portion of the special education assessment right yeah because what was the question we pay based on the number our total number of students we pay this they're asking about the special education assessment which vicky and i just talked about this why even though we have fewer students eligible for special ed currently this year why our special education costs are going up and a special education budget is calculated as a supervisory unionwide system that we are part of where each school is assessed a certain share of the special ed total cost based on how many students we have so that based on in the district so we have two hundred and thirty odd students so our share of the special education assessment is or the special ed budget what we're assessed is based on that number of students smaller elementary schools pay a smaller share bigger schools pay a bigger share because the predictability of need from yeartoyear it's unpredictable so right now we may be paying more than we're actually using other years we may be kind of getting a good deal basically it would not be feasible for us to set that budget in a way that it's just the amount of the special ed need is unpredictable so we can't just have a flat number from year to year does that make sense it's marsha morel i'm just wondering where is the cost per special ed service or whatever i mean where that is either going up or down i mean i hear our assessment's going up and i base that my assumption is on our enrollment is going up so we have more kids but where do we affect that budget that total amount spent so that as our percent goes up or stays the same we can make some kind of decisions on that number finished up my question yeah i think so i mean one thing i can say to speak to that is that i mean need in general for special ed services is going up so we're needing more special educators we have more kids who are eligible for special ed services and we're obligated to provide appropriate education for every student regardless of need so if as a district as a supervisory union we have more special education eligible students we're going to have the budget is going to go up and i think that just the general trend not this year in this school but the general trend is that more kids are being identified as in need of special ed services so that's one sort of a general statement the special ed budget is approved on a supervisory union level so that's the central office it's part of this it's a central office so i'm not really sure how we affect that as an individual board unless we decide that we're not gonna participate at all or that we're gonna somehow decide as an elementary school that we want to contract out or pay for our own special ed services but that's a big risk because if we have one student come in next week who we weren't budgeted for that could entail another expense in the tens of thousands of dollars that wasn't budgeted for and because students go in and out with not a lot of predictability this is kind of a way that we assure that we are able to afford to provide the special ed services for any student who might need them and kids will be identified sometimes in the middle of the school year we didn't know johny was gonna need a oneonone aid but now he does does that answer your question or not really what i'm really trying to figure out is where do we figure out how much are the cost of individually going up after you can choose the number of ways to provide yeah that's fine it could be going up i'm sorry i'll address the question this special education budget is prepared by the special education director she's an employee of the supervisory union each student need is evaluated and then determine what services are appropriate for that student once all this information is gathered it is sent to the state and they'll review for appropriateness the individual a plan that is prepared for each special education student so that's really where we have a first step of checking to make sure that the budget is appropriate and then the money is being spent properly if things happen during the course of the year then we'll have to spend more than we budgeted we end up doing the first cut of this draft budget almost a year ahead of time it's really hard to predict what's gonna happen to put into the budget we have to spend the money it's by statute we have to provide the services for the special education students and we track the expenditures during the course of the year if there's any adjustments that can be made that takes place what we're seeing lately is increased number of students and also increased need for each student so that they're meeting more oneonone services and of course that's gonna drive up cost so that's what has been happening i also just would like to point out that one decision that the jericho school board did make was to decrease our funding of our contingency fund by ten thousand this year in order to try to offset some of the increases over which we have very little control so that we could hold down the bottom line to a relatively smaller increase than we would have had if we had continued to fund the contingency at the level to which we would like to in different economic circumstances and we're also saving a little bit of money as our debt gets paid off so that's helpful okay i guess sort of moving out of the budget section here except to show you our estimates for class size by grade level for next school year so you can see it that sort of in the lower in the earlier grades we have some higher numbers which is good and some of the smaller classes we'll be phasing out and moving on to middle school that is not per teacher no i'm sorry yeah that's not per teacher that's the total grade that's the total grade yeah i should probably change the title of that slide that's a little confusing yes right grade size grade sizes yeah yeah each grade level has three teachers with the exception of fourth grade which has two so you can do the math that math but okay and just briefly the things to kind of keep in mind for future annual school meetings our capital plan a significant amount of work was done this past year on the heating and ventilating system of the school so we have a much much better more functional hvac system and we also have both two relatively new roofs so we're feeling good about some of the infrastructure expenditures that we've made in the last few years and our capital plan is going through a major overhaul and update this year we tend to do that every three to five years and this year it's being looked at and with the help of our facilities coordinator who is employed halftime by the supervisory union that's a new position this year and he's helping vicky and lucian lop here head custodian look at the plan and look at and just to be aware of what we'll be needing to keep in mind for the future with regard to our building hi yeah well ben jocelyn there's a pretty substantial crack in that top court of this particular trust right between the bolts there's crack running all the way from the wall all the way across the roof it looks like any information on that i was not aware vicky were you lucia no but certainly this roof has been redone and repaired within this were our first roofs we did three years ago so everything was structurally looked at at that point in time so some of what you see underneath here if you go into one of our first grade rooms there's bolts hanging out of the wall they're no longer sort of they're no longer functional that what the roof did so we basically rebuilt a roof over at this place where we sort of rechanged our slope rebuild the roof so in terms of structural we're in good shape on this wingless fifty seven eighty this wing has been redone so the roof that really probably was originally so when they looked at the roof we started we went in from the top down rather than we went in from above and fixed things there was a flat roof over here that they rebuilt and so all the work within from the top so your roof and your structure right here is in good shape but we're not having any leaks or any problems anywhere in the roofs now at this point the only other sort of leaks moisture you have were when we replaced the heating system we were getting pinhole leaks in our heating system as well so we really are seeing a redecreasing those kind of leaks so you don't need to worry about our roofs we're in great shape mr we think in our lifetime we're not gonna have to worry about either roof that's our plan okay we love our new roofs especially our 50year standing seam metal roof that was just put on last summer and prek if you've been following the national news at all you might have heard president obama speak to universal prek in his state of the union address there've been a few recent articles in national publications in the last couple of weeks that i've seen with some pretty highlevel policy makers talking about the importance of a universal prekindergarten available to all fouryear olds nationwide and we are as a board philosophically very very much in supportive prek we did not feel this year that it was something that was physically sort of doable in the current budget climate or in the context of the budget that we're working with but it is something that on the state level is being talked about a great deal and we're really looking toward the legislature to see what happens possibly even in this session with regard to prek so i think it's a question that probably will be coming up before us as a school board and as school board school voters in the next couple of years so something to think about okay thank you and please let us know what other questions you might have or comments on anything i said or anything i didn't say hi i'm tom joslin i noticed the health insurance is going up nearly twenty three i was wondering how much of that reflects insurance premium rates and how much of that is a change in the composition of enrollees in the the health plan i might have to defer to bob on this but i believe that most of it is premiums going up i don't have the actual breakdown between the two but there are healthcare coverage changes within that figure and there is a fourteen premium increase included in the budget but i don't have this with jesse belvin the board of directors report mentions i assume the retirement of mr driscoll and mrs johnson yes and the addition of karen reinhardt as the mathematics coach and the teacher's salaries which sounds to me like the reduction of at least one fulltime equivalent and yet line one hundred and ten has an increase in teacher salary so i assume that there've been replacements hired or something for the classroom teachers well yes we're down one classroom teacher but that position was replaced for the fulltime mathscience coach so our total number of teachers is the same and the reason the reason there was an increase is because we have negotiated settlement which gives teachers a salary increase every year other questions hi hi i'm just wondering how many fulltime teachers teach and that composed the one million eighty eight thousand one million looking at line one hundred and ten okay jericho school district it was in the report oh yes actually it's one million eighty eight thousand eight hundred and forty four okay so you mentioned can we go back to that slide you know yeah because it's not just class that's not just classroom teachers that are in that set in that number okay just have to look at my just don't wanna misquote you here so we have fourteen classroom teachers and ninety two fulltime equivalent other teachers does that include aids that does not include aids okay so there's ninety two aids is separate line item they're in the classroom with the teacher but they're not actually teaching right right but in terms of the numbers what's represented in teacher salaries is classroom teachers but also so when i have my classroom teacher i mean a first grade teacher or a third grade teacher a second grade teacher other teachers the art teacher the music teacher the pe teacher the foreign language teacher the mathscience coach those are all also lumped into the bat line item for teacher salaries aids are a separate line item but they are paraprofessionals that are in the classroom either as a general education aid social support classroom teacher right or as a special education aid which has a separate within that line item okay in the million dollar one hundred and eighty eight for the first one in that line one hundred and ten okay okay i'm just trying to determine on my own self and the negotiated salary increases yes are they voted on by the taxpayers they are well by proxy i mean they're probably voted on by you vote for your school board members and your school board each school board in the supervisory union sends representatives to each school board has to vote on the negotiated settlement the settlement is the teacher negotiation so in salary negotiations happens on supervisory union level so jericho's teachers have the same contract as underhill teachers as huntington teachers as bolton teachers as mmu grounds teachers so that happens on the supervisory union level and each school board sends a representative to the negotiations committee and ultimately any contract is voted on by all the school boards has to be approved by all of the boards in order to fly so is it a forum where taxpayers can actually discuss this with the school board yeah and every school board meeting is open to the public right and we do welcome how much was last year's increase the last time that it was approved how much was the increase the current contract the new latest contract bob do you know that for teachers it's three average increase but that doesn't include and that's a oneyear contract that's a oneyear contract that will be voted on again it'll come up and it'll be renegotiated again yeah so that was well what we have is a oneyear contract right now are there health care just out of curiosity are the eighteen rise in healthcare that's in this budget is it also negotiated at that point or is that some school board not negotiate that well i mean it is i mean it is in a way although some of that comes from i mean some of that is not in our control comes from state the vermont what is it the school board insurance trust so some of our costs in terms of the health care that's not something that we can vote on but they're not capped though there's no cap on those expenses those could go up to twenty and the school board would not that's not something that the school board limit i mean when they negotiate with this when those rates go up are they capped in any way are those expenses capped in any way or is it just something that you have to pay i don't really know the answer to that question can we get you a mic please try and see if that works is it on yep rate of increase on the healthcare premium is fourteen and that's pretty much a number that we receive from our healthcare carrier i guess what can limit the amount of the increase is how much the employee can contribute towards that healthcare cost and that does get negotiated within the contract so that would probably be the only thing that would limit how much the increase could go up i guess that's about it that would be the only item that i'm aware of i wish we had more control over it but unfortunately the cost just seemed to keep going up so this is your chance to ask anything about the budget and we are near the end of the discussion i believe anything else all right so i'll draw your attention to the action on the floor or on article three which is the budget article devote a budget of three million seven hundred and ninety eight thousand five hundred and ninety eight to meet the expenses and liabilities of the town school district are you ready to vote on the budget as presented all those in favor please say aye aye oppose nay nay abstain abstain the budget has passed article four is to transact any other business thought this is your chance to bring up anything that is relevant to the affairs of the district jesse pelton just a matter of curiosity i guess about two things i'm wondering how having mansfield academy in the building is working out for all students and i'd like to request my annual report on safe routes oh i can answer both of those but i'll let becky well you can i mean it seems more appropriate for you to speak to that both of those things so having mansfield academy as part of our school has been a wonderful easy transition i think it's really worked well and their locations seems to work wonderfully for them and they relate they just feel like part of our community and at the same time really are protected and have the supports they need in order to feel not be in the general population an any more so that they are comfortable so i think it's been wonderful better than we could expect becky could you just explain what the mansfield academy is so mansfield academy is district alternative program for elementary there's a program for kindergarten through grade twelve we have the elementary portion of that program kindergarteners for fourth graders so it's really children with some emotional socialemotional difficulties who really need an alternative setting so we have children we just have children from different elementary schools within the district who are housed here in this it's gone very well and then with safe routes to school we knew that question was coming friday if people know we've got a large infrastructure grant from san francisco that we were hoping that you would see a wonderful new front of our building this school year but because of hurricane issues our proposal sat at so we couldn't go out to bid for last summer we looked like we have bid ready documents as of the end of this week and hopefully we'll be going out to bid within the next few weeks for a summer project so you will see what that will do is really provide an easier entrance for walkers and bike riders to our school when jes was built it was a school for time to go home the school was built for a really up commuter traffic and really trying to improve that so you will see traffic calming in the front dropping off and picking up the kids by car looking different and also ways for kids to come in from the back of the building and be able to know like where do you go if you come from one of our paths you kind of go like how do i get into this school so barring looks like everything's in place they have to do a little bit more in terms of looking at drainage or those kinds of things and we'll be going out to bid so this time next year you'll see the second infrastructure grant we originally got original grant and was connected to streetscapes which extended our sidewalks beyond the streetscape project so that kids could walk safely to school anything else proper well done go ahead help yourself yep has anyone considered that you have a walking school bus it's been tried in some other communities basically a walking school buses instead of having the adult supervisor being the school bus driver with the kids inside the school bus that either in certain times a year or within certain close distances of the school that there would be a responsible adult shepherding the kids to school by walking would that be a way of sort of encouraging people to school in a more supervised in a little bit safer manner i mean if we're talking about these sorts of things is that something that has been considered yes would you like to come walk with us we walk in we do a walk during international walk to school day we have had times of more often and less frequent and less frequent walking school buses we certainly do and we gather in the neighborhoods and walk into school and celebrate that so with that we need volunteers from once the weather gets better and also really part of our cases we have a safe routes to school plan and that we've written in part of those things in order to kind of take the next level the next step really we needed to create improve some of our infrastructure to make it safer for kids and that's kinda what we've been waiting for we're at some level of a platinum member or one of those things to safe routes to school so the events we do we're renowned for what we do around bike safety through our phys ed program now and that's really our phys ed teacher has taken that on and has done an outstanding job with that and we recognized for that so indeed encouraging walking to school is something walking to school and because many of our kids ride buses during those events we're encouraging walking to school we also encourage walking at school to kind of think about once you get to school and doing walking so walking bike riding and really having a safe place so that when you enter this when you come from route fifteen there's an easy way to get to the front door by sidewalk to make that so it's just easier for families to be able to do that so yes come walk with us we'd love to have you okay what else it's all in your mind okay hearing nothing or seeing no sign i'm gonna suggest that somebody move to adjourn paul gross and a second jesse so there's no objection the meeting has come to a close thank you all for coming it's a nice turnout for the school meeting